Architectural History, Theory & Criticism - Essay Example

WHAT IS POSTMODERNISM? By Location Introduction Post-modernism is still contentious and critics disagree over its meaning, as an unfinished movement of five decades. Post-modernism has been attacked, debated and defended for over three decades. Nonetheless, it is not just a fashion or style, but post-modernism is entrenched in all areas of culture, and one which obstinately persists like its parent modernism. As avowed by Proctor (2012), an extensive series of terms and suppositions in arguments and statements from various schools of thought, and actions in the arts complicate the study of postmodernism. In all the dialogue, we need to distinguish the terms and notions of postmodernism. Even so, according to Jencks (2010), Postmodernism is deepening of modernism. It is a combination of modernism and other things, a slide away from its parent rather than an act of parricide. It is considered a loyal opposition rather than a movement that is anti-modern. On the other hand, Ronald Nash refers to postmodernism as a present-day movement that rejects dogmas, allegedly taught during the age of enlightenment by thinkers, and by proponents of those ideas, who assisted in producing the movement we now know as modernism (Proctor, 2012). Post-modernism has returned as a major movement in the arts since the millennium post-modernism. This has happened with the revisiting of landmark sculptures and the explosive growth in iconic buildings, and ornaments and pattern making in architecture and the arts. Most post-modern concerns of the 1970s and the 1980s have become central to the society (Jencks, 2012). Jencks states that a typical post-modern building is one that is hybrid and one that dramatizes opposing trend mixtures, of the past, present and future to create a miniature city. Thus, it is based on numerous codes, combining modern universal technology and local culture, in a double coding that is characteristic. A typical building that is post-modern speaks at once on several levels to both high and low culture. It also recognizes the global situation where no single culture can speak for the whole world. The postmodernism concept Conferring with Vartola (2012), postmodernism concept is in three-fold. First, postmodernism is quoting Umberto Ecos the age of the lost innocence that is characterized by double-coding, ambiguity and irony and a transition to a post-industrial or late-capitalist social order in the Western culture in the late 20th century. However, its temporal borders are disputable. Next, postmodernism, is a thought orientation and acts as a headline for numerous critical perspectives, as a concept towards 20th modernism in the 20th century. The most distinguishable theoretical models for the new condition of knowledge were phenomenology, structuralism, semiotics, feminism, pop art and neo-Marxism. The models aimed at challenging the techno-rational ideology, lack of historical perspective and the monocultural thinking prevailing in the arts. Lastly, post-modernism was an idiosyncratic style of architecture which proclaimed the death of contemporary architecture. It also underlined the architecture role as a form of symbolic communication, and experimented with the neglected elements of architectural expression. Its characteristic features are the figurative use of the column, historical reference use and complex form language. It is also characterized by cable roof use, use of chimneys, and weather vans, windows of geometric forms and modernism curtain walls. Additionally, it is also distinguished by distinctive entrances that are highlighted with canopies and porticos, as well as the use of symmetry, color, and ornamentation. Postmodernism discussion Charles Jencks estimably argues that post-modernism was not just a fad that was passing, he illustrates its hybridization or how it has paired with modernism to define much of today’s world. Jencks is one of the renowned theorists who stressed the dissimilarities between modernism and post-modernism. He also affirmed modernism failure as an adequate reason to legitimize the arrival of postmodernism. Charles Jencks works tries to understand postmodernism rise through its relationship to modernism while exploring the broad dimension of the two aspects. He explores the reasons and conditions of the rise of postmodernism. An assenting postmodernism rose during the 1970s. It was quite distant from a reactionary movement that found its legality in its modernism criticism (Barsky, 2001). When defining postmodernism, Charles acknowledges for semiotic balance. Postmodernism definition was possible through movement construction both as a language and as a narrative. He initially starts by posing postmodernism as a language. It is then presented as a tendency that is porous and open to various interpretations and influences, including modernism and claiming inclusiveness as one of its main features. Consistency between the various postmodern productions was essential. It was postmodernism narrative that offered this overall frame in which the language of postmodernism could grow. The narrative of Jencks for a novel architecture originates with the concept of camp and pop architecture and progresses slowly to become postmodernism. The narrative of the novel postmodernism offers intricacy and inclusion as its features of focus and at the same time outlines specific rules for this insertion. Additionally, a proper environment for the sophisticated language of postmodernism to develop is provided through the tolerant and homogenizing postmodern narrative. Defining post-modernism as both a narrative and a language simultaneously, intended for justifying the complex characteristic of the new discourse and providing a general consistency to the diverse production and actors that were considered postmodern. Speaking about postmodernism or postmodern, presumes there was something known as modernism from which or beside which something can be post, Irvine (2013) states. For historians, philosophers, artistes and theoreticians who have established arguments concerning these historical movements, modernism and postmodernism are all engrossed in a discourse web with suppositions and ideologies that require a self-reflexive critique (Terry, Enwezor & Condee, 2008). Much of the argument presumes the possibility of a history critique, hypothesized as possessing a trajectory that was or was not in the modernist viewpoints, optimisms and ambitions of the 1930s to 1950s. And ever since about 2000, a newfangled debate on the postmodern has unwrapped. There is a mutual sense in various areas of cultural practice that many postmodernism issues are over assumed, and we are now in a diverse universal moment, nevertheless, that is to define (Irvine, 2013). In addition, postmodernism is related to an awareness of communal and cultural evolutions after World War II (Dhuldhar, 2012). There were the effects on the west optimism of the war. These effects were greatly aggravated by the Nazi totalitarianism experience and mass extermination and the threatening fact of overpopulation. It is also associated with the upsurge of mass-mediated entrepreneurial prevalent ethos in the 1960s-1970s. Postmodern opinions of antiquity and national individuality archetypally revoke a pledge to modern master narratives or metanarratives. It also interferes with myths of national and cultural identities as natural unity foundations. Postmodernism also opposes old-fashioned metaphysics of purity and considers hybridization of global communities (Pieterse, 2003). Postmodernists generate scholarly threat to social and political leaders besides orthodox religion. The postmodernity issue is an issue of expression or thought representation in art, philosophy, politics and literature. For instance, a society that is postmodern experiences a strange compression of time and space as a result of the newfangled digital media. The internet is presently a postmodernist sensation (Davis, 2012). A brief look at modernism Modernism is a comprehensive term for new style explosion and trends in the arts in the half of the 20th century. It dons the desirability and the probability of a steady identity that endures through time. Modernism entered the day to day life through modern art dissemination and consumer products society. It carries rebellion by rebelling against the past and on the other hand fosters a newfangled form to impose a different medium of expression. While postmodernism has become a permanent present and prefers plurality and fragmentation, modernism was a period and believes in a single vision (Thompson, 2004). As a result of postmodern, it was possible to see modernism as a closed and somehow inflexible entity. Modernism suffers from elitism and postmodernism attempts to get over that elitism. In addition, the very notion of modernism is closely related to the principle that it is both possible an essential to break with tradition and institute completely novel means of living and thinking. Criticisms As Guermaz (2014) contends, Jencks’ large number of diagrams and evolutionary trees and his relentless effort to adopt newfangled movements is debatably not a sign of the freshness or liveliness of his postmodernism. Instead, it is a sign of an empty modernism that is in need of a large number of representations and a continuous attempt at categorization. If postmodernism could provide a clear and stable direction for architects, Jencks would not have felt the need to classify it continuously. Classification can be alleged to be a significant part of a healthy course of outlining an emerging artistic tendency. However, it could also be considered a false accumulation of different concepts that reflect a hollow and failing movement. In other words, there is some fear of dissolution Guermaz (2014). If the classification of postmodernism by Jenck, he went to a simple trend of architecture. Subsequently this is a result of his cynicism about the theorization force of this movement. One fact that is clear though is that Jencks used classification to give life regularly to postmodernism and avoid its decay because of an extended period of stagnation. In some of his diagrams, while attempting to classify different works, he restrains architectural production within the limits of categories and styles and transformed postmodernism into a constrained form of authoritarian democracy. In fact, his categorization of postmodernism is very similar in its form and objectives to the way in which historians and theorists classified modernism. The only dissimilarities were the classification tools, Guermaz (2014) goes on to argue, that what Jencks’ diagrams were for postmodernism is what historiography of architecture was for modernism. For Jencks to claim the death of modernism and then obliquely announcing the birth of postmodernism assumes that the margins between the new and the old are clear and sharp and that the newfangled mainstream is prevailing, somewhere completely shaped and independent and ready to emerge. This reading of the delivery and life of new movements of architecture is fictional and exceptionally idealized. Compare and contrast the use and meaning of the term post-modern in the writing of Charles Jencks and Jean-Francois Lyotrd The viewpoint of post-modern seems to be taking postmodernity as a given and generating novel remixed works isolated from the modern-postmodern arguments and oppositions. It takes the mixed condition of sources, individualities and newfangled works as a given, not a query or a problem. The network metaphors and convergence in creating subgroups are seen to be live tasks or conditions received and re-performed, not just concepts. Thus, from this more recent perspective, living in remixed hybridity is obligatory and not an option, since it is the base for taking part in a living, networked, internationally linked culture (Irvine, 2013). Postmodern and modern share a powerful sense of disjointedness and rapture, theory simultaneity and practice as well as a conventional art critic. Loytrd defined postmodern as a historical or cultural condition based on a master narratives conclusion or metanarrative conclusion. He goes on to define postmodern as a catastrophe in ideology when ideology no longer seems transparent but dependent and made. On the other hand, Charles Jencks defined postmodern as deepening of modernism. It is a combination of modernism and other things, a slide away from its parent rather than an act of patricide. It is considered a loyal opposition rather than a movement that is anti-modern. Additionally, the term post-modern is used by Charles Jencks in architecture while Jean-Francois Lyotrd uses the term postmodern in philosophy. The ideal post-modernist according to Jencks is essentially concerned with time-binding, with making clear the past, present and future connection (Urrutia, 2014). An example of an ideal post-modernist is Anselm Kiefer, who binds various epochs together in his present day constructions. Jean-Francois fundamental decision is that death camp was so effective in its rationalization and mass-production that it steered in its opposite postmodernism.Jencks admits though that one problem of today’s overriding modernism especially in its late phase is its loss of memory and steadiness. According to Lyotard (2000), the post is first of all an extension of the work of modernist writers, thinkers and painters, the task of questioning thought expressions. Moreover, the postmodern ‘post’ does not symbolize a comeback, flashback or feedback movement. But it is an analysis procedure, anagogy and anamnbesis that elaborate an original forgetting. He goes on to state that the ‘post’ prefix proposes that any postmodernism is indistinguishably bound up by modernism either as a modernism replacement or as a chronologically after modernism (Wakchaure, 2012). Conclusion Postmodernism is a debatable issue whether an epoch or a movement. One thing is for sure though. Postmodernism is the umbrella term that champions the course of particular ideas and fundamentally journeys from the west to the remaining world. Furthermore, postmodernism has released us from the restrictive supposition and selective pyramids, and encouraged us to take notice of several viewpoints and realities that are marginalized. References Barsky, R. 2001. Encyclopedia of Postmodernism (ed.) Victor E. Taylor and Charles E Winquist. New York: Routledge. Davis, T. F. Kurt Vonnegut’s Crusade: or, How a Postmodern Harlequin Preached a new kind of Humanism. Published by State University of New york. USA. Dhuldhar, S. R. 2012. Postmodernism: A State of Mind. Arts, Commerce & Science College, Chikhaldara, Dist- Amravati, Maharashtra (India) Pin- 444 807 Guermazi, I. 2014. An Archeology of Postmoden Architecture: A Reading of Charles Jencks Work. University of Washington. Available at:. Irvine, M. 2013. “The postmodern”postmodernism”postmodernity” Approaches to Po-Mo. Communication, Culture & Technology Program Georgetown University. Available at :< http://faculty.georgetown.edu/irvinem/theory/pomo.html> Jencks, C. 2011. What Then Is Post-Modernism? The Post-Modern Reader, 14-37. Jencks, C. 2012. The story of Post-Modernism: five decades of the ironic, iconic and critical in architecture. John Wiley & Sons. Lyotard, J. 2000. Note on the Meaning of ‘Post’ in Postmodern Literary Theory- an anthology(ed.) Niall Lucy. Oxford: Blackwell, 410. Piertese, J. N. 2003. Globalization and Culture: Three Paradigms. Chapter 3. Available at < Globalization and Culture: Three Paradigms> Proctor, B. 2012. A Definition and Critique of Postmodernism. Xulon press. USA Terry, S, Enwezor, O & Condee, N eds. 2008. Antinomies of Art and Culture: Modernity, Postmodernity, Contemporaneity. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Thompson, W. 2004. Postmodernism and History. New York: PalagraveMacmillan. Urrutia, G. 2014. POP ART and the Origins of Post.modernism. Silvia Harrison. PDF. Available at:< https://www.scribd.com/doc/217164571/POP-ART-and-the-Origins-of-Post-modernism-Silvia-Harrison-PDF> Vartola, A. 2013. The Aalto Card in the Conflict between Postmodernism and the Modernist Tradition in Finland. Wakchaure, S, 2012. What is Postmodernism? Mithibai College, Mumbai Read More