Postmodernism

After trawling through pages upon pages of Internets on the topic of postmodernism, I have discovered it is not limited to a particular era. Unfortunately, in my own head, and as oxford dictionary defines it, Modern is “elating to the present or recent times as opposed to the remote past” or “characterized by or using the most up-to-date techniques, ideas, or equipment”. So you can imagine my frustration in trying to get my head around the fact that modern, in art terms at least, is in the past, and post-modern is the present. Maybe it is my own problem that my mind, so engulfed with the meaning of words and the fact that these meanings are set, will not be more open-minded.

The eras so defined as “post-modern” were the sixties and seventies. Stepping away from the early sixties, where people were celebrating life and experimenting, the later era was a time that looked back at the decades before and laughed at the naivety of them. The post modern era was the conservatives time to shine, taking the culture from the sixties and slamming it together with the self-referential idea of ‘look how silly we all were’. These days, an idea like that is called ‘meta’.

Part popular culture AND part what the...

The seventies was a period of inflation, and women’s rights were taking off so the decade was quite prosperous and gave a lot of people hope and prosperity. From what I can see the era was solely in America, the post war baby boomers had settled and grown up and life in America was getting into full swing. Almost everyone had a television and more people were getting high skill jobs and attending education for longer.

Roy Lichtenstein-a staple in Pop art

Andy Worhol was the artist that defines the PoMo era. Culturally, the art from the postmodernism era was very alike the previous surreal movement and Worhol was no real exception. By taking people perceptions of everyday things and twisting them by changing the colours and view of these things, he was able to get people thinking.

The first time I saw a tin of soup after this, my mind was blown

This is my knowledge of the postmodern era, from what I can tell from this time, people were reveling in the fact that the Vietnam war was over and they were entering into a period of time where the world was richer and new inventions, such as computer games and television were becoming a staple and the art of the time was reflecting this.