Jean-François Lyotard was a French philosopher, sociologist, and literary theorist. His interdisciplinary discourse spans such topics as epistemology and communication, the human body, modern art and postmodern art, literature and critical theory, music, film, time and memory, space, the city and landscape, the sublime, and the relation between aesthetics and politics. He is best known for his articulation of postmodernism after the late 1970s and the analysis of the impact of postmodernity on the human condition. Lyotard was a key personality in contemporary continental philosophy and authored 26 books and many articles. He was a director of the International College of Philosophy founded by Jacques Derrida, François Châtelet, Jean-Pierre Faye, and Dominique Lecourt.
Lyotard, photo by Bracha L. Ettinger, 1995
Lyotard's grave at Le Père Lachaise Cemetery in Paris.
Postmodern art is a body of art movements that sought to contradict some aspects of modernism or some aspects that emerged or developed in its aftermath. In general, movements such as intermedia, installation art, conceptual art and multimedia, particularly involving video are described as postmodern.
Data.Tron [8K Enhanced Version] by Ryoji Ikeda on show in transmediale 10.
Marcel Duchamp, Fountain, 1917. Photograph by Alfred Stieglitz
Solo For Violin • Polishing as performed by George Brecht, New York, 1964. Photo by G Maciunas
Tony Smith, Free Ride, 1962, 6'8 x 6'8 x 6'8 (the height of a standard US door opening), Museum of Modern Art, New York