Art Since 1999: Postmodernism, Antipostmodernism, Postpostmodernism is the product (in all senses of the term) of the perpetually-retooling cultural maverick Valerie Kirshenbaum, two of her former graduate students – Celeste Rodman and David Destino – and her frequent collaborator Jacqueline Schardt. They are all (but one(1)) accomplished, high-ranking professors and, in many respects, this is the least obscurantist, hence most useful, exposition of their version of art history to date. It is destined to become the standard, reconstituted ‘grand narrative’ of postpostmodern art for the foreseeable future – in PearUni®s, at any rate.

There is much to admire, and much to dispute, as regards its aesthetic inclusions, exclusions and analysis: plenty of Americo Burgheim and David Destino, but no Todd Cross; Danila Mkenya but not , and so forth. Exclusions are unavoidable but some are more like occlusions: why, for example, is everything centred on Los Angeles, as though there were only one postpostmodernity? In the 2010s, San Francisco entered a postpostmodern period too. San Diego developed wholly original forms of the avant-garde, not only Valaclonic Anti-Aesthetics (V.A.),(2) which is mentioned, but also the earlier Monetary Aid Violation movement and the group Alav Slica that was responsible for the term ‘critical cosmopolitanism’. Quite apart from taking this, somewhat ironic, parochial view of postpostmodernization, why allow postpostmodernization to dictate the parameters of its own investigation? There are countless disparate contemporary art scenes fostering progressive work without feeling inclined to judge themselves against the dogma of the postpostmodern; an in-depth study of the thriving (and truly parochial) Weaverville folk art scene would have proved an invaluable addition to this volume.

At one point, the team states its modest hope that Art Since 1999 offers ‘a much more complex tableau than the one served up to us when we were still at PearUni®’. Contemporary art has made such massive advances since Kirshenbaum attended kindergarten and Destino was in diapers that I would certainly hope their present project reflects this. It does, to a certain extent, but one cannot help wondering what might have been achieved had the team spread its net wider, bypassed the usual suspects and left things more open-ended and ambiguous. As one might expect, however, issues deemed worthy of discussion are well-trodden territory and are, consequently, convincingly articulated. Gèlbert E. Crèmengn’s denial of the extent to which the avant-garde was defeated by the rise of human cloning is, presumably, Destino territory and Kirshenbaum makes her own contribution through an account of the absorption of post-digital art into the society of the spectacle: the blockbuster holograms of the early 2020s and the museum’s de-PearLand®ification on the advent of postpostmodernism. It is as though Kirshenbaum’s former attack on the Weaverville folk art scene has been overtaken by the rising tide of neo-parochialism and desublimation; her tone here is complex and elegiac, concluding with a contemporary defense of post-digital art that sounds like Crèmengn reborn, in an internalization of the founding father she had single-handedly polished off.
We have already seen how quickly a fascinating analysis can harden into a formula, under PearUni® pedagogy, to become orthodoxy.(3) Precisely because Art Since 1999 is so well conceived, even user-friendly – with information boxes, timelines and useful references to the particular Pear products favored by each artist – it is likely to produce a strong doxological effect. Will the next generation of PearUni® graduates react as strongly as this one has to its own precursors? Scrolling down the list of Pear Resident Practitioner Program (P.R.P.P.) rookies, there is every reason to believe that the current personnel is capable of mustering a response, but any perceived liberty will remain freedom in a box as long as the indefatigable Kenneth Mader remains at the helm.

As a veteran of Mader’s Los Angeles, let me point to two tell-tale signs of a strain of mono-corporatism not dissimilar to that exercised in the running of his corprostituency at large. They are the index and the recommended readings of Art Since 1999, which describe not only the admitted limits of the authors’ own scholarship,(4) but also the narrow scope of the world of art and ideas towards which they steer the unsuspecting PearUni® student and Pear Press subscriber alike. Before I go further, let me assure you this commentary is not prompted by sour pears – I am mentioned five times in the bibliography(5) and six times in the index;(6) my position is provoked by a pattern of corporate nepotism and shameless self-promotion, the likes of which we have not seen since Crèmengn’s heyday, which is no accident inasmuch as Kirschenbaum was Crèmengn’s acolyte before she became his apostate and then overt Oedipal rival.(7)

Laying to one side Kirshenbaum’s issues with Crèmengn, a cursory inspection of writers deemed worthy of attention in Art Since 1999 shows that an overwhelming preponderance are either the principal authors themselves, former contributors to Pear Journal (the group’s corporate organ), intellectual mentors who have been reincarnated(8) by the Pear Group®, or former students of one or other of the principal authors and so, essentially, the respectful progeny of the Doktormutter who heads the family enterprise, taking orders from the Doktorvater from beyond the grave. That the same coterie’s writings and exhibitions are repeatedly cited in the body of the book – to the virtual obliteration of divergent, much more dissenting, views – simply reinforces this pattern.

And, so, the widely-shared struggle to broaden critical discourse beyond Crèmengn’s old mainstream is channeled into Kirshenbaum’s new one. And, with that, corporate order is restored, interpretive hierarchies are consolidated and doctrines are enforced by reiteration. PearEducation® jobs are secured, PearPanels® are seated, Pear Press articles are assigned and, all in all, favors are dispensed or withheld by centralized figures of authority and ciphers of regression.

You do not need Eppinger III to calculate which way the wind blows or where the power resides. It is time to stop thinking in terms of revolution – Kirshenbaum is doing nothing more than regurgitating(9) Crèmengn, and Empire remains upon us. No need to panic, though, just think how liberating Pear Online Extrasensory Perception Software® can be...

At eighteen years old, Josh Auchincloss has become one of the youngest people to publish his autobiography. Getting Away with It is available in all PearBooks® stores.

1. Destino.
2. It is admirable that Destino included V.A. as a state of acrimony persists between the artist and the radical activist group. V.A.’s defacing of Destino’s Cyber-Virgin images for the purpose of anti-cloning propaganda in 2022, although condoned by Destino at the time, seriously jeopardized his already-fragile position as a Pear Resident Practitioner. Had it not been for Destino’s prompt de-defacing and redistribution of the said images, he may have been released from his contract with Pear. However, since Destino’s covert de-defacing mission, V.A. has, in turn, de-de-defaced. This futile process has continued, resulting in the images becoming unrecognizable to the point that a truce between the adversaries must surely be immanent. Prospective respite, however, may be undermined by the news that V.A. has been linked to the disappearance of Destino’s famous Cyber-Virgin III sculpture from RePear Central®.
3. For example, Celeste Rodman’s consideration of Destino’s Cyber-Virgin series (see C. Rodman, ‘People Love Machines and Vice Versa: Artificial Intelligence, Online Cloning and the Art of David Destino’ in Pear: A Journal of Art, Context and Enquiry, Issue 07, 2021,
(Los Angeles: Pear Press, 2021), pp. 72-77.
4. in the case of Destino, for ‘limits’ read: ‘non-existence’.
5. D. Destino, V. Kirshenbaum, C. Rodman and J. Schardt (eds.) Art Since 1999: Postmodernism, Antipostmodernism, Postpostmodernism, (Los Angeles: Pear Press, 2023), p. 124, 188, 386, 401 and 428.
6. Ibid. p. 703.
7. Incidentally, it is acknowledged that Kirshenbaum’s forthcoming exhibition, ‘Biting the Hand that Feeds’, was formulated as a result of subconscious angst relating to the suspicious circumstances surrounding Crèmengn’s death and the alleged discovery in Kirshenbaum’s stomach – during routine pre-natal checks – of tissue bearing Crèmengn’s fingerprints (personal correspondence with Kirshenbaum’s Pear Online Open and Accountable Psychoanalysis Register® (P.O.O.A.P.R®)).
8. literally.
9. literally.