Susan Sontag ’ s Melancholy Object in the Wake of ( Post- ) Postmodernism
INTRODUCTION
Last year , I found myself gazing at a photograph on my
computer screen . An unknown woman in close-up was staring at me , dressed in a baby pink outfit and shiny jewelry . The clothing , posing , and kitsch that the airbrushed portrait radiated , was both endearing and humorous . It instantly reminded me of the aesthetics from the late nineties and early noughties pop music scene , which were dominated by American musicians such as Missy Eliot , Mariah Carey , and Pussycat Dolls . I was surprised to find out that the person who was photographed was Klein , an experimental musician from London who released her first song around 2016 . The photograph was shot and reworked around the same period by London-based artist and musician Hannah Diamond .
Puzzled by the nostalgia this picture evoked in me , I wondered why it was that this piece transported me back in time . How can a picture deceive us so easily ? I immediately started to think of postmodernist concepts such as parody and pastiche , but also of Susan Sontag ’ s concept of the picture as a Melancholy Object . But is this concept of Sontag , which refers to modernist photography traditions , applicable to postmodernism ? And is a postmodern framework still relevant to our contemporary society and art scene , wherein the theory has been declared dead by multiple scholars for over a decade ? In this essay , I firstly try to revise the concept of the Melancholy Object in postmodernity by using the photograph of Hannah Diamond . Secondly , I judge if postmodern art making and the Melancholy Object are still relevant in a post-postmodern society .
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