Excerpts from a paper on postmodernism

Sassy Rosenblum

PART II
DAVID GREENWALT AND JOSS WHEDON Buffy the Vampire Slayer . .Ted.
DARREN STAR Sex and the City . .Sex and the City.
ELEANOR ANTIN From 100 Boots
DOROTHY GAMBRELL Cat and Girl
CHARLES MOORE Piazza d.Italia

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Just as Antin's use of postcards to distribute her art undermined the business of dealing, many emerging artists utilize the internet to this end, though their motives are usually more practical than political. Since gaining attention and representation in the art world these days is based more on luck and connections than on actual talent, lots of artists have given up waiting for attention and begun representing themselves. Through widespread dissemination and free access to their work, aspiring artists can establish themselves and develop and audience, leading ideally to professional opportunities. Beyond providing an online presence, computers have affected the form of the art itself. As artists must somehow transfer their work to the internet, the appeal of creating art directly on the computer substantially increases. Dorothy Gambrell's weekly cyber-comic "Cat and Girl" is one such print-computer hybrid that, thanks to its online availability, has developed a core following. The weekly adventures of the precocious Girl and her anthropomorphic roommate Cat are self-consciously Postmodern in their high and low references (in "Cat and Girl are Girl and Cat," Girl has a crush on David Foster Wallace while in "Cat and Girl Read the Funny Pages" Cat's leisure reading is an L.L. Bean catalog), pastiche ("Cat and Girl are Highly Derivative 2" is a bittersweet homage to "Calvin and Hobbes"), self-awareness as creations (Gambrell herself makes an rare appearance in "Cat and Girl Wake Up in Kansas") and disembodied diatribes about society and government, usually ending in complacency ("Cat and Girl Are Being Watched" ends its commentary on privacy with a punch line rather than a solution). By encompassing the academic and the pop, the serious and the frivolous, "Cat and Girl" appeals to an audience of hopeful cynics who long to understand the world while still enjoying living in it.