Lecture Notes//Post Modern

Post moderism

·      Born out of optimism, aspirational reaction to world war 1 – view to harness technology to improve life for people.

·      Ends up doctrinaire – blind obedience to rules

·      FORM FOLLOWS FUNCTION

Modernism is associated with experimentation, innovation, individualism, progress, purity, originality and seriousness.

Post modern condition is characterised by

·      Exhaustion

·      Pluralism

·      Pessimism

·      Disillusionment with idea of absolute knowledge

Within modernism and postmodernism some of these characters overlap

Modernism expression – Modern life, Technology, new materials and communication.

Postmodernism reaction – modern life, technology, new materials, communication.

Origins of postmodernism

·      1917 – German writer Rudolph Pannwitz – spoke of ‘ nihilistic, amoral, post modern men’

·      1964 – Leslie Fielder described a ‘post’ culture, which rejected the elitist values of Modern Culture

Timeline of Postmodernism

·      1960 – beginnings

·      1970s- established as term ( Jencks)

·      1980s- recognisable style

·      1980s & 90s – dominant theoretical discourse

·      Today – tired & simmering

Postmodern terms:

·      After modernism

·      Historical era following modern

·      Contra modernism

·      Equivalent to ‘late capitalism’ (Jameson)

·      Artistic and stylistic eclecticism

·      ‘global village’ phenomena – globalization of cultures, races, images, capital and products

15 July 1972 – modernism dies according to Charles Jencks – demolition of the Pruitt

Postmodernism has an attitude of questioning conventions

Post modern aesthetic = multiplicity of styles and approaches – space for new voices

Postmodernism

Reaction to the rules

·      starts as a critique of the international style

·      only rule is that there are no rules

·      celebrates what might otherwise be termed kitsch

Frank Gehry – Guggenheim museum, bilbao 1997 – references to modernist skyscrapers. Humour and allusions to waves? Melting in the heat.

J-F Lyotard

The postmodern condition 1979

·      incredulity towards metanarratives

·      Metanarratives = totalising belief systems

·      Result – crisis in confidence

Postmodern aesthetics

·      Complexity

·      Chaos

·      Mixing materials / styles

·      Re-using images – parody & irony

High art / low art divide beginning to crumble.

Quote 1. Robert Venturi

‘I like elements which are hybrid rather than ‘pure’, compromising rather than ‘clean’, distorted rather than ‘straight-forward’, ambiguous rather than ‘articulated’, perverse as well as impersonal….’

At end of 1950’s the purest form of Modernist painting was FORMALISM – theorised by the critic Clement Greenberg

Quote 2. ‘Generally post-modern artists like to mix the highbrow and the populist, the alienating and the accessible, and to ‘sample’ elements from different styles and eras….’

Quote 2 (cont)  ‘…..now you can reinvent yourself endlessly, gaily pick ‘n’ mixing your way through the gaudy fragments of a shattered culture’

Crisis in confidence –

but also = freedom, new possibilities

questioning old limitations

space for marginalised discourse

women, sexual diversity and multiculturalism.

Conclusion

• A vague disputed term

• Po-Mo attitude of questioning conventions (esp. Modernism)

• Po-Mo aesthetic = multiplicity of styles & approaches

• Shift in thought & theory investigating ‘crisis in confidence’ Eg. Lyotard

• Space for ‘new voices’

• Rejection of technological determinism?