What's all the fuss about anyhow?
Ask 5 people what post-modernism means and you'll likely get five different reactions or none at all. It's one of those elusive academic terms applied to many different fields of study. Everyone appears to understand what it means individually, but few agree collectively. To make mattters even more complicated, it is often used in discussions about "deconstruction"
post-structuralism, the post-industrial, post-human, or even post-post modernism. All these terms share a certain amount of similarity and are sometimes interchanged with one another. The bottom line is that any comments about Post Modernism by anyone should be understood with their peculiar interpretation in mind.
Where did post modernism begin and what is it? Long after
modernism
of course, but many would agree that it began in achitecture in the 1950's as a reaction against the
International Style
Some characterisitcs of Post Modernism:
- A turning away from the modernist obsession with abstraction
- Reactionary & Nostalgic
- Progressive
- Schizophrenic
- Indeterminancy
- Discontinuity
- Pastiche
- Contextual
- Social & Technological Realism
- Escapism
- Pluralism
- Overproduction of artifacts & inflation of theory (like Modernism)
The idea caught on quickly and spread across many fields including literary criticism, philosophy, cultural criticism, the other arts, and culture in general.
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Examples:
Fredric Jameson
Identified John Portman's Bonaventure Hotel in L.A. as 'post modernist' (pictured on right). He also used the term hyperspace with this description to acknowledge the 'decentering' effect it has. Any walk through the Bonaventure with its warped spiral staircases and lack of straight lines will attest to this.
Charles Jenks :
Defines Post Modernism with a paradoxical dualism or "double coding" which its hybrid name entails the continuation of modernism and its tracnscendence. The combination of Modern techniques with something else (usually traditonal building) in order for architecture to communicate with the public and a concerned minority, usually the achitects.
"To some it's an excuse to pile together oodles of wild and crazy decor, to others it's another example of the weakness of standards and values, to others a transgressive resistance to the sureness of catagories, to others a handy way to describe a particular house, dress, car, artist, dessert, or pet and to others, it's simply already over"- Kruger
Clement Greenberg
defined post-modernism in 1979 as the antithesis of everything he loved. The lowering of aesthetic standards caused by the democratizatoion of culture under industrialism.
John Barth, David Lodge, John Gardner, Jorge Louis Borges,
Umberto Eco:
Display Jenks definition of Post Modernism as writings which may use traditonal forms in ironic or displaced ways to treat perennial themes.
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Examples of Post Modern Art:
Where the artist creates his own tradition, style, meaning, or mythology...
- Pop Art
- Hyperrealism
- Photorealism
- Allegorical & Political Realism
- New Image Painting
- La Transavanguardia (promoted at the time by Italian critic Bonito Oliva)
- Neo Expressionism
Lastly, there has been further debates on wether this period after modernism should be considered "Late Modernism" with its commitment to the 'tradition of the new', its integrity of invention & usage or "Post Modernism" with its complex relation to modernism and art history, its 'pluralism', it's ongoing redefining of itself etc...
