• Difficult to define…………. easier to describe• A flexible term: Postmodernity is everywhere• Many find it confusing: this is a first look for you• Often applied specifically to art, literature and music: an

approach to creating things that you should know about• Historically it is a reaction to Modernism…..

10/10 Postmodernism 10/10 Postmodernism

MODERNISM POSTMODERNISM• Industrial Revolution period:

western, mass production, standardisation.

• Enlightenment values: progress, rationality

• Desire to create something new.

• A sequence of movements and art styles.

• Optimistic and utopian• Hierarchical: high culture v

low culture• Values fixed truths

PROGRESS RULES

• War and economic decline creating uncertainty

• Scepticism rules, rejecting absolute truths and optimism

• Succeeds fading Modernism.• Offers different directions:

pluralism.• Complex, lacks hierarchy.• No movements, no rules.• Multiple approaches and styles.• Diversity, contradiction, choice • Worldwide impact via the web

NOW TRANSIENCE/UNCERTAINTY

Is Postmodernism a movement?

Is there a style?

Architecture shows a clear break to postmodernism, but it

has its own issues

“The painters have every advantage over us today.

Besides being able to tear up their failures - we can’t seem to

grow ivy fast enough – their materials cost them nothing.

They have no committee of laymen telling them what to

do. They have no deadlines, no budget. We are all sickeningly familiar with the final cuts to

our plans at the final moment.”Philip Johnson (1906 -2005)

Utopian plansfor

modernityv

Reality“Is not Main Street almost always all

right?......We were calling for an architecture that promotes richness and ambiguity over unity and clarity, contradiction and redundancy over

harmony and simplicity.” Complexity and Contradiction in Architecture, 1966, Robert Venturi

MODERN POSTMODERN

• No decoration.• Truth to materials.• New materials.• Smooth, angular.• Purity of form and technique.• Machine aesthetic.• No reference to past.• Monochromatic.• Vertical and horizontal.• “Less is more.” (Ludwig Mies

van der Rohe)

• Use of ornament• High-tech/low-tech.• Acknowledgement of past.

Pastiche.• Vernacular.• Free form.• Carbon footprint.• Any appropriate material.• No rules. No dogma.• “More is more, less is a

bore”, (Robert Venturi)

Villa Savoye, Le Corbusier, 1929

Modern and postmodern approaches to custom builds.

Venice Beach House, Frank Gehry, 1986.Local Vernacular deconstructed

National Theatre, Sir Denys Lasdun, 1976Brutal modernism.Materials.

Pompidou Centre, Rogers and Piano, 1971-77New ideas about exhibition spaces.Manifesto.

Architecture’s Post-Modern Styles

• 1. Richard Rogers. Hi-Tech • 2. Norman Foster. Organic • 3. Frank Gehry. Free form, collage, sculpture.• 4. Philip Johnson. Pastiche, whimsy.

1. Pompidou Centre, Rogers and Piano, 1971-77

RED HUMANSGREEN FLUIDS BLUE AIR YELLOW CABLES

2. Richard Rogers, Lloyds building, 1979-84.Steel frame, glass curtain wall. Exposed services become ornament

3. Frank GehryGuggenheim museum, Bilbao, 1997The realisation of the “impossible”.

4. Nationale-Nederlanden Building, 1992-96,

Prague.“Ginger and Fred”

More form than function

Defining Postmodern Art & Design• Rejects the distinction between high and low culture. Regards the

mass media material as a suitable subject to use and adapt• Aims to appeal to a wider audience.• Uses appropriation and pastiche, plundering and recycling• Employs influences from an array of past movements, joyfully• Encourages the mix of ideas, medias, and forms to promote parody,

humour, and irony. • Embraces diversity, lacks a dominant hierarchy.• Utilises new technologies, techniques and art forms, e.g. video,

installation, performance, and the internet.• Utilises new materials, readymade objects, industry.• Sometimes seems to lack depth and meaning.

Next: early versions then a review of the features picked out in italics

Duane Hanson, 1969.Andy Warhol, 1964

EARLY MANIFESTATIONS IN POP

1970s EARTH ART: “Spiral Jetty”, Robert Smithson, 1971 an earthwork

designed to disappear.

Material

Pastiche - ImitationJeff Wall appropriates Hokusai's image in recreating it.Tarantino’s film draws on many influences from popular culture.

ParodyA comment on life in the USA, indifference, in Chris Talbot’s work.

Jeff Walls photograph gently pokes fun at modernism.

Graphic DesignJamie Reid tears up the rule book in the spirit of punk.Brash fluorescent colours. Ransom note typography.

THE PAOMNNEHAL PWEOR OF THE HMUAN MNID

Aoccdrnig to a rscheearch at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy, it deosn't mttaer in waht oredr the ltteers in a wrod are, the olny iprmoatnt tihng is taht the frist and lsat ltteer be in the

rghit pclae. The rset can be a taotl mses and you can sitll raed it wouthit porbelm.

Tihs is bcuseae the huamn mnid deos not raed ervey lteter by istlef, but the wrod as a wlohe. Amzanig huh?

DAVID CARSON

Culture and Design in the Postmodern age now seems consumer lead, popular. accessible and media aware. We will return to Postmodernism and its impact soon.