Studies of postmodern theory of allegory in the contemporary art and allegorical aspects in the photography of yanagi miwa and morimura yasumasa

This thesis explores how and why post allegory is a critical tool for understanding postmodern work. To begin with, the thesis investigated allegory's origin of meaning and chronological usage from simple rhetoric to allegory theories of Benjamin and Owens. Benjamin claimed Baroque allegory, a redemption in the fragmented period of Baroque and early Modernism enables the disjunctive, arbitrary connection of form and content. Then the redemptive quality is passed down to Craig Owens and his contemporary critics in 1980s American postmodern art. Owens broadened allegory theory to the realm of art criticism theory in reading postmodern art. The thesis suggests three methodologies of allegory that involve the intertextual reading of artwork as well as artistic production and criticism. Finally the writer examined allegory situated in the Japanese photography work of the 1980s and 1990s by the works of Yanagi Miwa and Morimura Yasumasa. Their work is distinctive in theatrically constructed settings, and the female body and image are becoming objects in the postmodern world which encompass the concept of allegory demonstrated in the view of society and self.