Lecture 6 - Postmodernism

Modernity - main associations:

• Experimentation; innovation, individualism; progress; purity; originality; seriousness.
  

Postmodern is concerned with:

• Exhaustion; pluralism; pessimism; disillusionment with the idea of absolute knowledge.

Some characteristics overlap:

Modernism: Expression of: Modern life /Technology / New Materials / Communication [Modernity]

Postmodernism: Reaction to: Modern life /Technology / New Materials / Communication [Postmodernity]

Postmodernism origins:

•1917 - German writer Rudolph Pannwitz, spoke of ‘nihilistic, amoral, postmodern men’

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

These people had broken away from modern European civilization values.

· 1960s beginnings

· 1970s established as term (Jencks)

· 1980s recognisable style

· 1980s & 90s dominant theoretical discourse

· Today: Tired & simmering

Uses of the term postmodern.

· after modernism

· the historical era following the modern

· contra modernism

· equivalent to ‘late capitalism’(Jameson)

· artistic and stylistic eclecticism

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

The demolition of the Pruitt - Igoe development, St Louis -

15 July 1972, 3:32pm - Modernism dies, according to Charles Jencks. The death of modernist architecture.

Frank Gehry, Guggenheim museum, Bilbao, 1997 Looks like melting in the heat - possible response to global warming? - making us as viewers become disillusioned with this idea / knowledge.

Roy Lichtenstein 'This must be the place' 1965.Robert Venturi 'Las Vegas - postmodern city?' 1972
High art / low art divide.

David Shrigley ‘Art Lovers’ 2000

I think this is a good example of showing the divide - showing what is clearly mimicking atroicious art, but is deemed excellent by those with money.

Andy Warhol.
Things begin to change - a postmodern 'cult' of celebrity obsession and focus starts to set in (like in today's culture - being on T.V. has now become more important than what's actually on it.) as does a commodity culture - depicted here in:
Roy Lictenstein 'Red painting (brushstroke)' 1965
Richard Hamilton, 'Just what is it that makes today's homes so different, so appealing?' 1956

Key quotes from the lecture:

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….’

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…

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 & multiculturalism"

CONCLUSION: postmodernism is...

• 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?