Welcome to Doug Yelmen's PostModernArt.com or

PostModernArt Blues

The below is art .a sort of story. It doesn't necessarily mean I experienced all of it.
There is horror everywhere. Everyone suffers.
That said, I am aware that these works are not ever going to be hung in some fantastic museum.
I do hope they tell some sort of truth about such big subjects such as war, peace, abuse,
love, death, anger, beauty. I hope I tell it honestly.

Some have called my art dark. I agree. But maybe for different reasons. It is dark, it speaks of pain and suffering, like the Blues, but it also speaks of hope and beauty like the Blues.

This web site and the work within it is dedicated to those who have suffered, been traumatized, and survived and to those who take the time to even try to see what I am doing.

2003 Work

1998 to 2002

Early Digital Work

Dogs of War Series

Abuse Series

Depression Series

Photography Section

Love #1

Where were you

Death by....

For You

Racism

Hate #1

Hate #2

Beauty1

Love #2

Addiction Series #1

Addiction Series #2

Love and Suicide: The Killing Floor

Other Web Pages I
work on:

1. Vietnam Veterans
and Others Survivors of Trauma

2. Arts of War and Peace Gallery

rtist: Steppenwolf Lyrics
Song: Tenderness Lyrics

She tried to show me how to love
I bit her lips and bruised her arms
No I hadn't learned Tenderness
She asked, "what does love mean to you?"
I grabbed her hair and pulled her down
I looked in her eyes and I laughed
The love I feel is hard and fast
It's for a face and for one night
I don't need to own anyone
She said, she said, "All your women burn in your flame
But as it dies, as it dies, they'll leave you and seek revenge"
She laughed and said, "You'll go through hell
You'll live in lonely rooms I know
And watch for my love's Tenderness"
Oh I went from her to someone else
And someone else mmmm
Oh I couldn't feel satisfied
(instrumental)
She said, she said, "All your women burn in your flame
But as it dies, as it dies, they'll leave you and seek revenge"
I wish that I could find her now
My love is soft, my love is warm
I'd take her to bed tenderly
Oh i'd take her to bed tenderly
Yes I'd take her to bed tenderly
mmmhhhmmmm

The supergraphics of post-modern banners contrast with the neoclassical portico of the Field Museum, Chicago
Postmodernism is a term applied to a variety of artistic, architectural, philosophical, and cultural movements that are said to arise after and in reaction to modernism.
The term and its use have a wide variety of different meanings in different disciplines, and the existence of post-modernism as a coherent set of ideas is often debated. The most commonly cited area of disagreement comes from disagreements over what the basis for knowledge and political philosophy should have.
Modernism is usually said to frame itself as the culmination of the Enlightenment's quest for an authoritatively-rational aesthetics, ethics, and knowledge. In contrast postmodernism is usually held to be concerned with how the authority of those would-be-ideals, sometimes called metanarratives, are subverted through fragmentation, consumerism, and deconstruction. This dichotomy is somewhat problematic, since it ignores the strong emphasis on irrationalism and fragmentation within modernism. For this reason postmodernism can equally be seen as a development of aspects of modernism while rejecting others, in particular the emphasis on authenticity. Jean-François Lyotard famously described postmodernism as an "incredulity toward metanarratives" (Lyotard, 1984). Postmodernism attacks the notions of monolithic universals and encourages fractured, fluid and multiple perspectives and is marked by an increasing importance in the ideas from the Sociology of knowledge.
A related term is postmodernity, which refers to the state of things after modernity. This includes a focus on the sociological, technological, and other conditions that distinguish the Modern Age from what is thought to have arisen thereafter. Postmodernism, on the other hand, denotes intellectual, cultural, artistic, academic, and philosophical responses to the condition of postmodernity. Another related term is postmodern, an adjective used to describe either a condition of, or a response to, postmodernity. For example, one may refer to postmodern architecture, postmodern literature, postmodern culture, postmodern music and postmodern philosophy.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Postmodern

"The simulacrum is never what hides the truth--it is truth that hides the fact that there is none. The simulacrum is true."
Ecclesiastes
Simulacra and Simulation by Jean Baudrillard
a simulacrum is a copy without an original. i am still trying to understand just what PostModern is...

"...wail against the postmodern loss of meaning and emotion."
from a review by Kirkus Reviews on the book, "Literal Madness"
by Kathie Acker

There is only one thing more powerful than all the armies of the world, that is an idea whose time has come.
- Victor Hugo

Perhaps in time the so-called Dark Ages will be thought of as including our own.
- Georg C. Lichtenberg

We are here to do.
And through doing to learn;
and through learning to know;
and through knowing to experience wonder;
and through wonder to attain wisdom;
and through wisdom to find simplicity;
and simplicity to give attention;
and through attention to see what needs to be done.
from the Pirke Avot (Sayings or Ethics of the Fathers)

"Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired, signifies in the final sense a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed."
President Dwight D. Eisenhower
April 16, 1953

Postmodernism in art
Main article: Postmodern art
Where modernists hoped to unearth universals or the fundamentals of art, postmodernism aims to unseat them, to embrace diversity and contradiction. A postmodern approach to art thus rejects the distinction between low and high art forms. It rejects rigid genre boundaries and favors eclecticism, the mixing of ideas and forms. Partly due to this rejection, it promotes parody, irony, and playfulness, commonly referred to as jouissance by postmodern theorists. Unlike modern art, postmodern art does not approach this fragmentation as somehow faulty or undesirable, but rather celebrates it. As the gravity of the search for underlying truth is relieved, it is replaced with 'play'. As postmodern icon David Byrne, and his band Talking Heads said: "Stop making sense."
Post-modernity, in attacking the perceived elitist approach of Modernism, sought greater connection with broader audiences. This is often labelled "accessibility" and is a central point of dispute in the question of the value of postmodern art. It has also embraced the mixing of words with art, collage and other movements in modernity, in an attempt to create more multiplicity of medium and message. Much of this centers on a shift of basic subject matter: postmodern artists regard the mass media as a fundamental subject for art, and use forms, tropes, and materials - such as banks of video monitors, found art, and depictions of media objects - as focal points for their art. With his "invention" of "readymade", Marcel Duchamp is often seen as a forerunner on postmodern art. Where Andy Warhol furthered the concept with his appropriation of common popular symbols and "ready-made" cultural artifacts, bringing the previously mundane or trivial onto the previously hallowed ground of high art.
Postmodernism's critical stance is interlinked with presenting new appraisals of previous works. As implied above, the works of the Dada movement received greater attention, as did collagists such as Robert Rauschenberg, whose works were initially considered unimportant in the context of the modernism of the 1950s, but who, by the 1980s, began to be seen as seminal. Post-modernism also elevated the importance of cinema in artistic discussions, placing it on a peer level with the other fine arts. This is both because of the blurring of distinctions between "high" and "low" forms, and because of the recognition that cinema represented the creation of simulacra which was later duplicated in the other arts.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Postmodernism#Postmodernism_in_art

"Censorship in the Great War was so stringent that for a time civilian photographers were not permitted at the front on pain of death, a rather effective regulation."

Vicki Goldberg
The Power of Photography

"Photographs seem to be the one thing that the War Office is really afraid of."

Jimmy Hare, American photojournalist, 1915

If the path before you is clear, you're probably on someone else's.

Joseph Campbell

The real moment of success is not the moment apparent to others.

George Bernard Shaw

Every creative person has a second date of birth, and one which is more important than the first: that on which he discovers what his true vocation is.

Brassai

Those who have no compassion for themselves have none for others either.

Rabbi Meir

What did you do as a child that created timelessness,
that made you forget time? There lies the myth to live by.

Joseph Campbell

War Poetry

SUICIDE IN THE TRENCHES
By Siegfried Sassoon

I knew a simple soldier boy
Who grinned at life in empty joy,
Slept soundly through the lonesome dark,
And whistled early with the lark.
In winter trenches, cowed and glum,
With crumps and lice and lack of rum,
He put a bullet through his brain.
No one spoke of him again.
You smug-faced crowds with kindling eye
Who cheer when soldier lads march by,
Sneak home and pray you'll never know
The hell where youth and laughter go.

William Butler Yeats

On Being Asked for a War Poem (1915)
I think it better that in times like these
A poet's mouth be silent, for in truth
We have no gift to set a statesman right;
He has had enough of meddling who can please
A young girl in the indolence of her youth,
Or an old man upon a winter's night.

Wilfred Owen

The Parable of the Old Man and the Young
So Abram rose, and clave the wood, and went,
And took the fire with him, and a knife.
And as they sojourned both of them together,
Isaac the first-born spake and said, My Father,
Behold the preparations, fire and iron,
But where the lamb for this burnt-offering?
Then Abram bound the youth with belts and strops,
And builded parapets and trenches there,
And stretched forth the knife to slay his son.
When lo! an angel called him out of heaven,
Saying, Lay not thy hand upon the lad,
Neither do anything to him. Behold,
A ram, caught in a thicket by its horns;
Offer the Ram of Pride instead of him.
But the old man would not so, but slew his son,
And half the seed of Europe, one by one.

You love us when we're heroes, home on leave,
Or wounded in a mentionable place.
You worship decorations; you believe
That chivalry redeems the war's disgrace.
You make us shells. You listen with delight,
By tales of dirt and danger fondly thrilled.
You crown our distant ardours while we fight,
And mourn our laurelled memories when we're killed.
You can't believe that British troops 'retire'
When hell's last horror breaks them, and they run,
Trampling the terrible corpses--blind with blood.
O German mother dreaming by the fire,
While you are knitting socks to send your son
His face is trodden deeper in the mud.

Wilfred Owen
Futility

Move him into the sun--
Gently its touch awoke him once,
At home, whispering of fields unsown.
Always it woke him, even in France,
Until this morning and this snow.
If anything might rouse him now
The kind old sun will know.
Think how it wakes the seeds,--
Woke, once, the clays of a cold star.
Are limbs, so dear-achieved, are sides,
Full-nerved-- still warm,-- too hard to stir?
Was it for this the clay grew tall?
-- O what made fatuous sunbeams toil
To break earth's sleep at all?

Soldiers are citizens of death's gray land,
Drawing no dividend from time's tomorrows.
In the great hour of destiny they stand,
Each with his feuds, and jealousies, and sorrows
Soldiers are sworn to action; they must win
Some flaming, fatal climax with their lives.
Soldiers are dreamers; when the guns begin
They think of firelit homes, clean beds, and wives.
I see them in foul dugouts, gnawed by rats,
And in the ruined trenches, lashed with rain,
Dreaming of things they did with balls and bats,
And mocked by hopeless longing to regain
Bank holidays, and picture shows, and spats,
And going to the office in the train.