Post modernism
A key tendency of post modernism is the lack of innovative thinking, everything has been done before.
•Modernism:
Initially born out of modernism, reaction to the 1st world war, in hope to harnessing technology to improve peoples lives
Ended up as a doctrinaire, blind obedience. Form follows function started to seem limiting.
Le Corbusier, Villa savoye, Poissy, 1929. The insistence to be function led lacks human feel, becomes dry and lifeless.
MODERNISM is associated with;
EXPERIMENTATION
INNOVATION
INDIVIDUALISM
PROGRESS
PURITY
ORIGINALITY
SERIOUSNESS
Post modernism doesn’t see originality as extremely important, the idea of the creative individual is doubted.
POSTMODERN condition is characterised by –
EXHAUSTION
PLURALISM
PESSIMISM
DISILLUSIONMENT WITH THE IDEA OF ABSOLUTE KNOWLEDGE
Some areas overlap...
Modernism: Expression of; Modernlife/Technology/New materials/Communication
Postmodernism: Reaction to; Modern life, technology.
Anti aesthetic, anti modernist. – Jean Tinguely ‘Homage To New York’ 1960;
A work of art that has no progressive message whatsoever, design to blow up and destroy itself, a way of expressing how the modern world is destroying itself.
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.
1960s – Beginnings
1970s – Established as a term (jenks)
1980s – Recognisable style
1980s & 90s – Dominant theoretical discourse
Today – Tired & simmering
Uses of the term ‘postmodernism’
-after modernism
-the historical era following the modern
-contra modernism – a direct aggressive respone to modernism
-equivalent to ‘late capitalism’ (Jameson)
-Artistic and stylistic eclecticism
-‘Global village’ phenomena: Globalisation of cultures, races, images, capital, products.
Hip hop can be seen as stylistic and eclectic, uses technology, drum machines and samples, mixing up old music and re-working it.
Key starting point to post modernism?
The demolition of Pruitt.
‘Modernism died its death on 15th of July, 1972, 3:32pm.’ According to Charles Jencks.
Perfect idea of modernist living, all equal spaces. Poor peolple living together with fairness and equality, new modern architecture.
Condensing these area with the poor forced them to become slums and ghettos, with drug use, prostitutes and violence. – modernism had got it wrong.
Le Corbusier ‘Plan Voism’ 1927 – Utopia and Technological Determinism (the belief that new technology will make the world better)
This idea of technology driving the world to abetter place is dismissed by Post-modern ideologies.
POSTMODERNISM
Not about equality, its about difference, more personal.
A reaction to these rules
•Starts as a critique of the international style
Park Hill Flats, Sheffield, c.1960 – Modernist, designed to house everyone give everyone opportunity. Very aggressive aesthetics, its become a slum a horrible place to live, to the point that the people that live there have raised a petition to have it demolished.
-Cant be knocked down, listed building due to its architectural history.
Mixing the old and the new is a quintessential trait of post modernism – AT&T building by Phillip Johnson.
James stirling, Neue Staatsgalerie, Stuttgart, Germany, 1977 – 1983.
-References old classic skyscrapers, the building seems to be falling down. An attack on the seriousness of a building.
-Selfridges, Bullring, Birmingham – excellent postmodern architecture example.
J-F Lyotard – The post modern condition – 1979.
He said, the postmodern condition could be summarised by a disbelief of what he called metanarritives (a total belief system, a vision of the world that seeks to explain where you’ve come from and where you’re going)
‘We have now realised that such total belief system are lies, they have never been the worlds collecting vision, a vision of certain elites posing their view on the rest of the world’.
Post modernism is about undermining the structures from the past, exposing them as flawed. Without that foundation we are left confused. Where do we go, what do we do?
Opposed to following one way of thinking as a whole, people form sub-cultures to follow, more concerned with the individual.
Postmodern aesthetics
complexity chaos
mixing: materials/styles (bricolage)
re-using images: parody & irony
The rejection of mettanarrative and replacing with mininarratives.
High art/low art divide begins to crumble. On e big mess that we try to make sense of.
Postmodern Utopia – Las Vagas
Robert Venturi on Las Vagas.
‘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….’
Las vagas represents the degeneration of society in the eyes of Post modernism.
Postmodern Dystopia – Bladerunner, postmodern film.
Peoples identities start to change in this post modern era, Andy Warhol is a good example of the change in attitude.
Art became an utter attack on what it meant to be artistic. A style of art that expressed pure emotion and gesture.
Fredric Jameson stated - A new deathlessness, Waning of affect (cant be moved by anything anymore), A culture of ‘retro’ styles rather tan a culture of ideas that seek to change things. Instead we just quote and reference.
“Advertising is the greatest artform of the 20th Century” Marshall McLuhan
People define themselves through material things.
‘Generally post-modern artists and designers like to mix the highbrow and the populist, the alienating and the accessible, and to ‘sample’ elements from different styles and eras….’
The Memphis group founded in 1981, Postmodern designers ripping on the aesthetic modernism.
Sottsass – Memphis group, totally rejects form follows function – crazy bookshelf.
‘…..now you can reinvent yourself endlessly, gaily pick ‘n’ mixing your way through the gaudy fragments of a shattered culture’
‘An inconclusion’
•A vague disputed term
•Po-Mo attitude of questioning conventions of the world, art, design and culture (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?
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