Parody vs Sincerity discussion at Studio RR18 on 21 Nov 2010.
Discussion Notes:
“… a good painting possesses a consciousness of its genre that allows it to transcent it without parody or irony, reflecting a positive reactivated sense of tradition, not a received experience of the past.”
Parody as distance - Parody as positional.
Awareness of irony = parody.
Awareness of the position = parody.
There is a double positioning in parody - you have to stand outside - parody represents to you in a way that is critical of what is inside - Antonioni / Duttman.
Parody is where the viewer is invited to stand outside with you.
Content in parody art - there is a balance that has to be struck between humour and social comment. Get the complexity and the balance right.
How does ‘parody’ or ‘sincerity’ as an aesthetic factor operate in a work of art?
Sincerity is:
- to lay the heart on the line;
- to say ‘this is what I believe in’;
- uncool;
- sentimentality;
- shows that the artist is ‘ignorant’.
If we make art without irony, it is deemed to be ignorant/innocent. As if we have not looked around to see what other people are doing/saying.
In our computer age/information age, can we be ignorant/innocent, can we accept ignorance/innocence?
Naive Art - Outsider Art: innocent, sincere - work made in a bubble?
Johanna Drucker - ‘Sweet Dreams: Contemporary Art and Complicity’ - there are no rules to break.
Parody is a way of navigating a post-structural world where everything has been broken down, where everything is known, or should be ‘in the know’. As such it is the only possible position left. Where everything has been made ‘equal’ or flat, where there is no landscape, ‘knowingness’ is the only valuable currency, hence irony/parody is the default position.
Jessica Flood Paddock - ‘Big Lobster Supper’.
Claire Bishop on irony.
Humour gives you a different optic. It reorientates the subject-viewer positioning.
