Bringing Back Affect: A New Approach to Post-modernist Art Through the Lens of Doris Salcedo’s Atrabiliarios

Abstract

In this paper, I propose that bringing back affect into the work of art can provide a new reading of postmodernism. In agreement with Fredric Jameson, I suggest that postmodernist art, influenced by a response to capitalism, amongst other things, evolved to the point where individuality, alienation and the self-affect were replaced by commodification and estrangement from the individual. For the purpose of this paper, I will use Jameson’s approach to postmodernism as the end of the bourgeois ego that brings with it a liberation from any kind of feeling since there is no longer a self present to do the feeling. I will use Rosalind Krauss’s concept of the grid, Fredric Jameson’s concept of the ‘waning affect’ and Craig Owens’s reference to allegory to provide a theoretical perspective from which to support my argument. Furthermore, I will incorporate Andy Warhol’s Dust Diamond Shoes and Doris Salcedo’s Atrabiliarios as visual examples of postmodern artworks. Through the latter work, I seek to bring light to the postmodern characteristic of flatness and impersonality, and through the former, an example of an artwork that brings back affect into the postmodernist structure. Lastly, I conclude by suggesting that Atrabiliarios presents a space from which to question postmodernism’s dissociative approach to art, as it brings back affect into the conversation.



Author Information
Vanessa Schuster, The Institute for Doctoral Studies in the Visual Arts, United States

Paper Information
Conference: PCAH2024
Stream: Arts - Visual Arts Practices

This paper is part of the PCAH2024 Conference Proceedings (View)
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To cite this article:
Schuster V. (2024) Bringing Back Affect: A New Approach to Post-modernist Art Through the Lens of Doris Salcedo’s Atrabiliarios ISSN: 2758-0970 The Paris Conference on Arts & Humanities 2024 Official Conference Proceedings (pp. 133-140) https://doi.org/10.22492/issn.2758-0970.2024.13
To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.22492/issn.2758-0970.2024.13


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Posted by James Alexander Gordon