PR - Posthumanism Theory Research

The roots of Posthumanism, in art and in general, can be found in its predecessor and antithesis - humanism. It originated in Renaissance Europe, when Christianity was the central concept behind the creation and production of art. Many famous painters and sculptors transmitted the beauty of humanism through the representations of human figures - think Michelangelo’s David or Pietà.

For centuries to come, humanism dictated the rules in art and imposed the rules on how artworks should look like and what they should depict.

The Cremaster Cycle, a series of five feature-length films, together with related sculptures, photographs, drawings, and artist's books, created by American visual artist and filmmaker Matthew Barney.

Posthumanism was born with technology, much later, as an evolved, much advanced version of humanism, and it aimed to change everything the humans were, and thought they were.

By inventing robots and discovering space, for instance, we diminished our specialness as a species, focusing more and more on scientific discoveries that would make our past clearer and our future easier.

These tendencies were reflected by and in art, in all fields of it, be it literature or visual arts. Perhaps the first specific step towards Posthumanism art was taken by Futurism, through their bold manifesto written by F.T. Marinetti in 1909: ‘We want to hymn the man at the wheel, who hurls the lance of his spirit across the Earth, along the circle of its orbit… and We stand on the last promontory of the centuries! … Why should we look back, when what we want is to break down the mysterious doors of the Impossible? Time and Space died yesterday. We already live in the absolute, because we have created eternal, omnipresent speed.’

The famous Futurist sculpture, by Umberto Boccioni, Unique Forms of Continuity with Space (1913), which melds human forms with mechanical ones. Museum of Modern Art