postmodernism

Late-20th-century movement in architecture and the arts that rejected the preoccupation of post-war modernism with purity of form and technique, and sought to dissolve the divisions between art, popular culture, and the media. Postmodernists use a combination of style elements from the past, such as the classical and the baroque, and apply them to spare modern forms, often with ironic effect. Their slightly off-key familiarity creates a more immediate appeal than the strict severity of modernism. Among a diverse number of groups and individuals who emerged in the 1970s and 1980s are the architects Robert Venturi and Michael Graves (both US), the novelists David Lodge (English) and Thomas Pynchon (US), and the artists Gerhard Richter and Sherrie Levine.

After World War II, modern art and architectural practice and theory had become increasingly minimalist. Modernist artists believed that art would inevitably be reduced to the bare essentials of pure abstraction. Minimalist artists achieved this with their almost invisible squares of white. As in art, modernist architecture evolved towards purely formal abstraction and utilitarianism, which resulted in the erection of austere tower blocks and high-density housing. Their functional, hard, minimal designs were in response to the modernist rejection of 19th-century style, namely elaborate decoration and exaggerated ornamentation.

Having reached this extreme, artists and architects began to revolt against what they felt were restrictive and narrow theories of art, and instead, focused once again on issues of identity and self-expression. Modernist architecture was seen as depressing and dogmatic, with its rather unhomely notion that a house was a ‘machine for living in’. This reassessment and new approach to modernism became known as postmodernism. In this new phase, there was a more light-hearted return to ornamentation, decoration, and colour. The humorous flair of postmodernist design is exemplified by the AT&T Building (1978–83) in New York, which is a glass and steel tower with a Chippendale-style pediment perched on top.

Renowned postmodernist theorists such as Michael Foucault, Jean Baudrillard, and Frederic Jameson discussed issues of art, sociology, and anthropology as one field and sought to return art to everyday life, rather than having it separated at an aloof distance. Postmodernists were working in an environment that for the first time saw many young artists achieve great wealth and status very quickly; the traditional, romantic image of the tortured young artist struggling outside the art establishment was no longer applicable.

postmodernism

In music, a style of composition in which the composer draws on the influence of a variety of musical periods and styles. The term is used specifically to describe the music of certain 20th-century composers. Igor Stravinsky was the first great postmodernist, working in neoclassical and serial styles, as well as a more traditional, yet progressive Russian style. Postmodernism began to blossom after the period of integral serialism in the 1950s, when composers reacted against the rigid restrictions imposed by that technique (of fixing the parameters of every compositional component: pitch, rhythm, dynamics, duration, and so on). Contemporary postmodernist composers include Peter Maxwell Davies, who writes in a wide range of styles, influenced by elements of music from the 16th-century masters right through to the modern techniques of the twelve-tone system.