Pastiche = an artistic work in a style that imitates that of another work, artist, or period.
Parody = an imitation of the style of a particular writer, artist, or genre with deliberate exaggeration for comic effect.
Frederick Jameson -
- Pastiche
- Parody becomes pastiche
- modernism
- postmodernism as a capitalist construct
- The disappearance of an individual subject, along with its formal consequence, the increasing unavailability of the personal style, engender the wall-high universal practice today of what may be called pastiche.
- Thomas Mann
- Faced with these ultimate objects - our social, historical and existential present and the past as 'reverent' - the incompatibility of a post-modernist "Nostalgia" art language with genuine historicity becomes dramatically apparent.
- The contradiction propels this mode, however, into complex and interesting new formal inventiveness; it being understood that the nostalgia films were never a matter of some old fashioned 'representation' of historical content, but instead approached the 'past' through stylistic connotation, conveying 'pastness' by glossy qualities of the image and the '1930-ness' or '1950-ness' by attributes of fashion (in the following the prescription of the Barthes of mythologies, who saw connotation as the purveying of imagery and stereotypical idealities, "sinite" for example as some Disney-EPCOT "concept" of China)
- Post-modernism is a parody of modernism.
- Parody of modernism as it does not regard and mocks. Pastiche would celebrate through taking something pre-existing and recreating it in your own style.
- Jameson holds little regard for imitation in form of nostalgia.
- Jameson relates post-modernism to ego and believes that original work can be produced in post-modernism.
"Pastiche is, like parody, the imitation of a peculiar or unique, idiosyncratic style, the wearing of linguistic masks, speech in a dead language' (Jameson. F. 'Parody' p.16)
- Jameson's view on post-modernism as ego.
Linda Hutcheon -
- Parody
- Political
- Post-modernism
- Modernism is a capitalist construct
- Believes that without the past work, old styles and also the nostalgia of this then post-modernism would be without meaning.
- Relates post-modernism meanings to politics.
- Postmodernism celebrating the past by using parody to subvert and legitimise the material it mimics not to mock.
- Parody unsettles all Doxa (
Greek word meaning common belief or popular opinion), all accepted beliefs and ideologies.
- Hutcheon argues that parody is not depthless "But rather that it can and does lead to a vision of disconnective ness".
"Parody is doubly coded in political terms: it both legitimises and subverts that which it parodies" (Hutcheon. L. 'Politics'. P.101)
- States all postmodernist artwork should share the same quality of being "resolutely historical and inescapably political, precisely because they are parodic".
- Argues that the existence of post-modernism does not share the same principles as modernism and cannot be looked at from the perspective of it ever achieving "genuine historicity" as Jameson desires.
- Postmodernism should be looked at as a form of protest on that it challenges the possibilities of there ever being an 'ultimate object as modernism tries to achieve.
- Criticism of Jameson's description of pastiche. Stating that post-modernist architecture is not random or "without principle" to think this would ignore and disregard architects such as
TASK
- Jameson's view on post-modernism is that is a parody of modernism, though there appears to be a hostility towards parody, as it seems he believes modernism is a strong deep movement and that the imitations and mimicry through post-modernism mock this work in ways. Jameson sees "the incompatibility of a post-modernist "Nostalgia" art language with genuine historicity becomes dramatically apparent" meaning that whatever homage or celebration of modernism trying to be achieved in post-modernism is out of touch and only ends up mocking modernist design rather than to celebrate it. Hutcheon's opinion is the opposite to Jameson's, she believes that all post-modernist artwork shares the same quality of being "resolutely historical and inescapably political precisely because they are parodic"(1986, p180), Hutcheon sees the historical celebration in the fact that post-modernism is parody rather than Jameson's opinion that it cannot celebrate modernism through parody, only mock it and decrease its value, though Jameson does state that he believes the mocking style of parody can become pastiche through original works of postmodernism, again Hutcheon criticises Jameson's description of pastiche, where he describes, post-modernist architecture as "random" and "without principle" to say this would be to ignore the work of postmodern architects such as Joel Bergman. Barbara Bielecka. Ricardo Bofill. Mario Botta. Hutcheon believes that postmodernism should not be compared with modernism in some aspects, for one because they do not share the same principles and postmodernism can not be looked at from the perspective of it ever achieving "genuine historicity" as Jameson desires, though this can stem from Jameson's unwavering view that modernism is king and should not be parodied as he believes postmodernism parodies it.
Looking at examples of pastiche within the contemporary graphic design world, brought up design studio 'Stranger and Stranger', a studio which focusses on packaging and branding. They are known for their bottle packaging, branding wine, spirits and beers. Their look is distinctively old-fashioned and high end, this adds a bespoke quality within their style. The designs which they use employ multiple design methods such as illustration, embossing, foiling and typesetting.
Another example of pastiche and parody is James Reid's 'God save the Queen' artwork for the punk band the Sex Pistols, his work uses imagery of the union jack and the Queens portrait, collaged with type to cover her face, this uses popular imagery parodied into new art, though it changes the meaning of the original imagery to create something with a completely new perception, the images were used to show the queen and the flag to show the country but within Reids work he changes them and they are now iconically known as anarchistic images which represent punk music and culture.
