1. Andreas Huyssen After the Great Divide

2. Structure of lecture What is the great divide? Modernism - a historical background After the divide - postmodernism? Examples

3. Definition The Great Divide is the kind of discourse which insists on the categorical distinction between high art and mass culture” (Huyssen: viii).

4. The distinction implies: A divide between types of media: old ones are superior to the new ones! A divide between aesthetic and cultural value; elite culture superior to popular culture! A divide in moral; elite culture promotes good norms and values, popular or mass culture promotes bad, the are immoral! A divide in appeal; elite culture is for the individual and unique, popular culture is for the masses!

5. Braque vs. superman

6. Webern vs. Crosby

7. Modernism Rise of a high culture from 1850 Defined through exclusion of mass culture Autonomy of art (separating art from reality) Abstract painting, atonal music, rationalism in design

8. The historical avant-garde Attacks the bourgeois institution of art Reunite art and reality shock techniques Duchamps L.H.O.O.Q elle a chaud au cul” (”she has a hot ass”)

11. A mixture and a nivellization of cultural hierarchies A loss of tradition, meaning and reference. Liberation from established cultural hierarchies f.ex. through subversive humor Two tendencies: –Popular culture include elements from high culture (modernism) –High (elite) culture borrowing from popular culture.

12. Historical trends after WW2 Polarization replaced by optimism Education society Alternative cultures Not so much an establishment of new canons / hierarchies as a fundamental challenge and questioning of cultural hierarchies as such.

13. Mapping the postmodern Pomo is neither a continuation of modernism, nor a radical split. Criticism of modernism: –Modernism has become a dogma, an affirmative culture –Privilege to the rational and self-reflecting. –Excludes the female

14. Modernism Unité d' habitation in Marseille, 1947-52 Le Corbusier

15. Pomo NBC Tower at Cityfront Center (1989)

17. Pop art Fascination for popular culture as most fundamental characteristic Elite cultural (art galleries), but included a lot of conventions, styles and icons of popular culture. Combines art and reality (commercial culture)

20. Pop art as critique How can Warhol’s art be a critique of society? –It became a symbol of opposition in Europe –frees critical tradition from Adornos / modernist insistence on critique as a negation –Emphasizing the mechanism of the culture industry use, but in a discrete manner: through serialization, repetition, simplification. –Tries to integrate art and life (reality) through celebration of the sensual, common and popular.

22. The breakdown of the great divide The breakdown is permanent Huyssen a postmodernist, but not in an “anything goes” way He remains in a critical tradition ” Affirmation or critique – that is the question”.