MODERNISM
-Born out of optimism, aftermath of WWI
New technology e.g. steel, photography etc.
View to harnessing tech to improve peoples lives
Le Corbusier, Villa Savoye, Poissy, 1928-9
FORM FOLLOWS FUNCTION
Associated with:
- experimentation
- innovation
- individualism
- progressed
- purity - lack of narattive. e.g. Pollocks paintings
- originality
- seriousness
...Post modernism is generally the opposite of this.
Post modernism characterised by:
- exhaustion
- pluralism
- pessimism
- disillusionment with the idea of absolute knowledge
Some overlap
Modernism - expression of modern life/technology/new materials/communication/modernity
Post modernism - reaction to..all of the above
Jean Tinguely - 'Homeage to New York'
MDMA - Museum of Modern Art
- Made sculpture right outside entrance. Made of rubbish, like a machine, smoke spits out and it blows itself up. Self destructing and temporary art. Piece of art almost against the idea of art and it being timeless. Technology is flawed, is maybe what it's saying.
ORIGINS OF PM
1917 - German writer Rudolph Pannwitz. spoke of 'nihilistic, amoral postmodernist time'
1960s - Beginnings
1970s - Established as terms (Jencks)
1980s - Recognisable style
80's/90s - Dominant theoretical discourse
Today - Tired
USES OF THE TERM POSTMODERNISM
-After modernism
-The historical era following the modern
-Contra modernism
-Equivalent to 'late capitalism' (Jameson)
-Artistic and stylistic eclectism - sentiment that reminds you of PM
-"global village' phenomena - globalisation
15 July 1972 3:23pm - Modernism dies according to Charles Jencks (Language of Postmodernism Architectue 1977)
Built something to save the world and then thought fuck it. - The demolition of the Pruit Igoe development in St, Louis. Housing projects, a modernist view. Taken down as it led to crime etc. "projects' is a hip hop term and part of the hip hop culture.
Became like slums, crime, drugs, vandalism. Didn't feel like they belonged to the environment. Lack of individualism and personalness with work.
Le Corbusier "Plan Voisin 1927"
-Plan for perfect city - different with people and dirt. Something maybe not foreseen.
Living in a neat and perfect house, reduces human to something regulated by the house and not the other way round. Bauhaus architecure.
UTOPIA + TECHNOLOGICAL DETERMINISM
POSTMODERNISM
A reaction to these rules->
FUNCTION BEFORE FORM -> vice versa?
-starts as critique of international style
-Robert Venturi -> Learning from Las Vegas, 1972
-Ideas developed
1957- Mies Van Der Rohe + Phillip Johnson
-Seagram building, New York 1957
-Ambition of international style architecture
Still there now. Extravagant materials. Cheaper materials used, crumbles.
1960 - Park Hill flats, Sheffield 1960
Mass social housing
crumbles.
Looks grim, erods, falling apart
unpopular development
problems with crime -> underclass shoved in housing and buildings
cold, soulless
Cant be knocked down as it's a Grade 2 building
Park hill had abit of a post modernist makeover
Proposed regeneration by Urban Splash
Didn't happen cleaned up abit and coloured it up abit.
Epitomised everything wrong with Modernism, ignored peoples needs over design principles.
React to MODERNISM, trying to MINIMALISE IT.
AT+T Building, Phillip Johnson NYC 1982-
Humanised looking skyscraper, top of t looks 'comfy', top shaped like a familiar house.
Serious, but at the same time, a reaction and abit different and odd. Bit more of a lighthearted exterior.
Frang gehry - Guggenheeim - Bilbao 1997
Definitely not function before form.
Supposed to be 'fun', not 'austere' sticking to rules
->James Stirling, Neue Staats Galerie, Germany 1977-1987
Literally made to look like holes in it, references to classical architecture. Modernism never looked back, yet in PM there's no rules now!
"is somebody proposing to dive from this tower?" Prince Charles 1984. Not a fan of PostM.
"leeds style of architecture" - References bricks of modernism in some leeds buildings, Own collee, LCA, has the same references.
Postmodernism is trying to do everything in opposite way to Modernism, total rebellion to modernism principles. PM reacts to M.
Quinlan Terry 1992-1993 Maitland Robinson Library
Doesn't look PM at all, Neo-classical style. Also abit PM -> reaction to M, but in a different sense. A conservative form of PM.
JF Lyotards
'The PM condition' 1979
-Incredulity towards metanarratives
-metanarratives + totalising belief systems
-result - crisis in confidence
WHAT DO WE DO?
-MODERN MOVEMENT
-SIMPLIFIED AESTHETICS
-UTOPIAN IDEAS
-TRUTH TO MATERIALS
-PM aesthetics
-complexity
-chaos
1965 - Roy Liechtenstein
'This must be the place'
Panel from a superman comic book - taking something 'unimportant' - putting it into galleries and exhibitions
HIGH ART/LOW ART DIVIDE
->beginning to crumble
Las Vegas - Post Modernism city
Robert Venturi 1972
Modernity was Paris
then NYC
he said Las Vegas is the future of architecture
Buildings don't let you know if it's night or day, no windows.
Styles clash.
Las vegas is an allegory of Postmodernism.
->Venturi quote on handout
"I like elements which hybrid rather than 'pure',compromising rather than 'clean', distorted rather than 'straight forward', ambiguous rather than 'articulated', perverse as well as impersonal...'
BLADE RUNNER
Postmodernism dystopia
->Technology - hasn't saved the world. World seemed to be permanently dark and grim.
->People didn't know if they're humans or replicants
->References old detective movies, looking back ->Postmodernism
AKIRA - Postmodernist moviemaking. Futurustic Dystopian Tokyo. Full of crime and vandals and technology changes and at the same time maybe harms the world drastically.
PM ->Andy Warhol - Marilyn Monroe 1962
Not an attempt at painting Marilyn. Found publicity images used to make MM to print it. Didn't even print it in "the factory". IF things go wrong, Fine, leave it like that. Not precious or serious in that respect, different to M. Society creates image, creates stars. Technology isn't perfect, flawed in different ways.
End of the 50's the purest form of modernist painting was FORMALISM.
Franz Kline, Untitled, 1957 - Formalist abstract expressionism
Jackson pollock - Truth to materials, Modernist painting
1965 - Roy Lichtenstein ->Red Painting
Makes Kline - Screenrints in the same style, how can a screenprint be emotional
1978 - Andy Warhol - oxidation painting
Pissed all over copper metallic paint and urine on canvas. Literally taking the piss. Directly attacking the pretentiousness and elitism of modernism work.
David Stringley
'Art Lovers'
2006
->People try to make art that has a high price tag instead of trying to change the world. Damien Hirst?
Piero Manzoni ' Artists Shit' 1961
Canned his own shite. What's inside though, anyone ever opened it. Sold for thousands of pounds. Not a love of art. Again attacking pretentiousness and elitism. Only way to know is to open and then you've ruined the art work or you've opened a can of shit. No win. Very clever.
1984 - Frederic Jameson
Warning of afect - 'A culture of 'retro' styles'
"Advertising is the greatest artform of the 70th century"
Lost interest in "art"
*Quote 2 sums up well
"Generally post-modernism 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'.
Simon Reynolds - The Guardian 1990
E.g. Hip is post modernism, referending funk and jazz.
Memphis Group, founded in 1981.->playful
David Carson - Ray Gun May 1992
Memphis group, bookcase. Form OVER function
Crisis in confidence, but also - freedom, new possibilities, questioning and limitations, space for marginalised
Jamie Reed - Punk movement -> Sex Pistols -> Examples of PM. Rejectes idea of skill, technique, cut, stick and photocopied. Mass copies of same art work.
Negative + angsty, make things cheaply.
IN CONCLUSION
- A vague disputed term
- Post modernism attitude of questioning conventions, especially modernism
- PM aesthetic > multiplicity of styles + approaches
- Shift in thought + theory investigating 'crisis in confidence' E.g. Lyotard
- Space for 'new voices'
- Rejection of technological determinism?
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