m can be connected with Lyotard's definition of postmodernism as 'incredulity towards metanarratives', in this case the metanarrative of technical development in painting. Early attempts to define postmodernism in the visual arts by writers such as Krauss and Owens, 'started from an assumption that the stylistic diversity of art after Modernism ... conceals from view some underlying unifying principle:' (Modernism in Dispute, p.237). However, it is arguably easier to say that a specific work, or the work of a specific artist, is postmodernist than to define what, precisely, constitutes postmodernism. The range of concepts associated with postmodernism are, as Harrison and Wood admit, complex and prone to a degree of vagueness and instability. There are, however, a number of recurrent issues associated with postmodernism which can be related to Burgin's views on the importance of representations, historical context and signifying practice. These include critiques of: gender and ethnic difference; the supposed importance of originality, authorial status and allied issues; and historical narratives. Cindy Sherman's work provides relevant examples of these critiques. Her series of self-portraits showing her in different roles use photography rather than the more 'artisanal' medium of painting. Some of her pictures take their images from cinema, pointing to the stereotyped representation of women in that medium (e.g. No.13, pl.74). Others use images from 'old master' paintings: No.228 (pl.72) shows her in the role of Judith with the head of Holofernes, and draws attention to a complex series of ideas, including feminist interest in masquerade and the exploitation of male desire, and (by means of the obviously fake, humorously grotesque severed head) the constructed artificiality of representation. Her use of numbers rather than titles may be an ironic reference to the similar practice of canonically Modernist painters such as Pollock. Sherma...
