Postmodernity

Postmodernism is often used to poke fun at things. It is a fusion of contrasting styles, and asks ‘why do we have to be these things anyway?’ Keywords:
• Innovative
• Individualism
• Progress
• Purity
• Experimentation
• Originality
• Seriousness

Postmodern Condition:
• Exhaustion
• Pluralism
• Pessimism
• Disillusionment with total knowledge

Modernism: Expression of modern life
Postmodernism: Reaction to modern life

Origins

1917- German writer Rudolph Pannwitz spoke of postmodern men. 1964- Leslie Fielder.

Is the Postmodern a culture reserved for the rich/elite?

Visual culture: 1990s- popular

‘After Modernism, historical era following modernism; contra-modern’.

Late Capitalism, Stylist Eclecticism

The ‘global village’ phenomena referring to globalisation and the homogenised world

1977- The Language of Postmodern Architecture
Jencks: 1532 15th July 1972- demolition of the Pruitt-Igoe development St. Louis. Le Courbusier- not consistent with the diversity of human life.

Utopia: Postmodernism rejects this idea. It also rejects the idea of technological determinism.

Park Hill Flats, Sheffield (1960).
AT&T Building, NYC - Philip Johnson 1982
Guggenheim, Bilbao – J F Lyotard

‘The Postmodern Condition’ 1979 ‘increduity towards totalising belief systems results in crisis in confidence’.

There is a directionless society which is a reflection of the simplified aesthetic, utopia and truth to materials.

Roy Lichenstein
Las Vegas

Postmodern city; the idea that it has given up in trying, but is also a city that pokes fun.

Claves Oldenburg – Depped Cave 2001 Koln
Postmodernism – Dystopia
Red painting- Brushstroke 1965 Lichenstein
Jenny Holzer – uses adverts to make art
High art/low art divide crumbles.

Memphis Group

Crisis in Confidence: questioning old limitations. Freedom and new possibilities emerge.

Conclusion is disputed, but most agree PoMo questions conventions and encompasses multiple aesthetics.