(Re-)Constructing Reality. Jeff Wall, Roland Barthes and Jacques Derrida on Postmodern Image Making

Art Style | Art & Culture International Magazine Abstract Anything goes is a conviction that is central to the postmodern attitude. In a flat understanding it promotes pluralism, arbitrariness and relativism. As a consequence, postmodern art and culture has often been suspected of not only renegotiating orders of representation and sense making, but of destructing sense and negating the aesthetic, epistemological and ethical value of artworks. Considering Jeff Wall’s visual reflections and Roland Barthes’ and Jacques Derrida’s theoretical reflections, I will take the concerns regarding a flat postmodernist conception of art and culture serious. By looking at some main points of reference, the context and the implications of the postmodern movement on the one hand and by analyzing pictorial and textual material on the other hand, I will develop an affirmative and, yet, not uncritical perspective on postmodern image making. In this understanding, postmodern image making promotes pluralism and variety. It problematizes dualistic setups such as original vs. copy or reality vs. fiction and underlines the prominence of repetition as well as difference. However, it also hints at the importance of holding a critical attitude, an attitude that aims at creating works that walk a fine line between referring to and developing a new approach, between recording, processing and creating. Such a postmodern approach to image making does not put the case for arbitrariness and boundless relativism. Rather, it is careful about trying and pondering not only the aesthetic, but also the epistemological and ethical gravity of alternative perspectives.Art Style, Art & Culture International Magazine is an open-access, biannual, and peer-reviewed online magazine that aims to bundle cultural diversity. All values of cultures are shown in their varieties of art. Beyond the importance of the medium, form, and context in which art takes its characteristics, art is considered the significance of socio-cultural, historical, and market influence