Foster

Reading the Foster article gave me the sense that he is trying to recreate and define terms that appropriately describe the work of postmodernism.  This seems to generally happen whenever a new vein or genre of art bursts forth into the art world and cannot be put into its predecessor's labels and definitions. Using Lacan as a guide, he helps to mold the new vernacular, using Sherman, Kelly, and Miller's works as examples of how this new vocabulary is to be used.

When reading stuff like this, I stop and wonder sometimes- what comes first, the art or the vocabulary/phycology to describe the art?  In this case of Foster, seems he, Lacan, Foucault, etc. are inventing these new ideas from the art that is developing.  But haven't the points of all these authors we've read been that these words and ideas describing current art are already innate in the artist's being? (or Being? ugh Heidigger...)  Yet at the same time, while these things are innate in the artist, the authors must write and describe them back to artists, art historians, critics, etc.  And when exactly does one set of vocabulary trump a previous set?  Do they overlap at all?  Or, as it seems with most postmoderns, do the current sets strive to demolish the old, to shake off the dust and shock the world with a fresh, and often brash, perspective?

Who knows...it seems that art changes as people change, society changes, and environments change, and as such folks will always need to try an explain things.  Personally I think trying to explain art is like trying to catch a butterfly on a windy day.  Art isn't math.