What is Postmodernism - Essay Example

WHAT IS POSTMODERNISM? By Location Introduction Several philosophers such Fredrick Jameson, Jean-Francois Lyotard, have profoundly analyzed postmodernism. According to Fredrick Jameson, Postmodernism refers to the end of art, ideology, social and democratic class and Leninism crisis. On the other hand, Jean-Francois Lyotard, highlight that postmodernism indicates the end of met narratives of modernity and that it topic hopes in human liberation. He argues that all these were constructed by various political, esthetic and philosophical discourses that were dominant. He adds that postmodernism breaks down those grand narratives that give a framework to people to comprehend the world. He firmly believes that the essence of the postmodern is in the concept of Kant of the sublime. For him, postmodernity is rewriting modernity and not a radical departure from modernism. We are not concerned with supplying reality but inventing conceivable allusions that cannot appear presented. Therefore, postmodernism is a reaction that is against enlightening values and does not believe in the inevitable nature of progress. This is due to scientific discoveries and human rationalities. 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 theory is in three-fold. First, postmodernism is quoting Umberto Ecos the age of the lost innocence that appear characterized by double coding, ambiguity and irony and a transition to a post-industrial or late-capitalist social order in 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 planning 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 vanes, 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 in Japan Japan was left in a state of anxiety and confusion by the World War II. Her faith in superiority and confidence in government appears undermined. Her cities were in ruin. Reconstructions were prioritized by the government and architects. Destroyed cities were built using older Japanese traditions and not new city planning. Thus, many small scale buildings were made by the citizens. Postmodernism in Japan is similar to western countries. The critic in the modern arts in Japan Shigemi Inga explains postmodern Japan as a structure that is floating on a flow of mass information. Postmodernism discussion Charles Jencks estimably argues that postmodernism was not just a fad that was passing; he illustrates how it has paired with modernism to define much of today’s world. 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 increased 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 appears 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 description of Jencks for a novel architecture originates with the concept of camp and pop structure 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 postmodernism 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, artists 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 analysis, hypothesized as possessing a trajectory that was or was not in the modernist viewpoints, optimists 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 of 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. 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 preferred 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. Innovation suffers from elitism and postmodernism attempts to get over that elitism. In addition, the very notion of change is closely related to the principle that it is both possible and essential to break with tradition and institute entirely 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 structure 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. Differences and Similarities between using the meaning of the term post-modern in the writing of Charles Jencks and Jean-Francois Lyotard 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 makes 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. Lyotard 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 thinking no longer seems transparent but dependent and made. On the other hand, Charles Jencks described postmodern as deepening of modernism. It is a combination of innovation 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 Lyotard uses the term postmodern in philosophy. The ideal post-modernist According to Jencks is mostly 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 efficient 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 toLyotard (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, analogy and anamnesis that elaborate an original forgetting. He goes on to state that the ‘post’ prefix proposes that any postmodernism is indistinguishable bound up by modernism either as a modernism replacement or as a chronologically after modernism (Wakchaure, 2012). Conclusion Modernism failed in satisfying public esthetic demands and responding to social issues. It brought about era full of diversity and architectural pluralism. Changes in politics economy and social life are the root of postmodernism. Postmodernism corresponded with various economic and political configurations based on consumer economy as well global capitalism. Capitalism mainly invested in architecture, advertising, and marketing because it yearned to leap high profits. City fragmentation, individualism in process design and the engaging public in decision-making paved way for new architects to carry out experiments without following central universal rules. In Japan, role and self-confidence of the architects were facilitated by rapid progression in her economy, increased power to the local authorities and state capital amalgamation. Buildings were considered as businesses that could be used and replaced. Economic growth gave the architects a chance to design small buildings that were in line with the culture of the country. In this age of globalization, designers face various challenges as they come up with their personal styles. Environmental concerns have become of great importance in this century. 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 : 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 Proctor, B. 2012.A Definition and Critique of Postmodernism.Xulonpress. 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: 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