n 'wanted to imitate something out of the culture, and also make fun of the culture as I was doing it' (Modernism in Dispute, p,82) Her work thus connects with and critiques the 'history of representations' of women, the nature of art as a medium and, by using a replicable method, photography, together with a reworking of existing images, ideas about originality. It can be seen as an example of art 'centred on a medium but certainly not bounded by it'. A similar range of issues is raised by artists whose work, by its use of consumer durables, spans the boundaries between avant garde art and kitsch, thereby transgressing one of the fundamental tenets of Greenbergian modernism, the clear distinction between 'high art' and 'mass culture'. Although the work of Jeff Koons, which includes displaying vacuum cleaners in a perspex showcase (pl.202) can be seen as postmodernist, it could be connected both with the work of pop artists such as Richard Hamilton (e.g. $he, pl. 149) and the 'readymades' of Duchamp. Koons' work, however, fits with Burgin's view of art as 'a set of operations in a field of signifying practices'. His use of consumer durables as art relates to Baudrillard's ideas about living in 'a world of representations, of consumption, of media images, of shifting surfaces and styles' (Modernism in Dispute, p,241) (where individuals are defined by the types of commodities they possess). By appropriating objects and displaying them as art, Koons critiques the Modernist idea of art as essentially original. His use of commodities as art is also interesting in relation to the commodification of Abstract Expressionist paintings, which were advocated as a sound financial investment in the early 1950s. The variety of work produced by Koons raises an issue not explicitly mentioned by Burgin, the eclecticism often associated with postmodernism. This, and its occasionally ephemeral nature (as in the case of Puppy, made of flowers) relates more ...
