Postmodernism- An art movement, the origins of which began in the mid to late 1980's. To understand the term it is important to first understand the meaning of Modernism, the movement from which Postmodernism seems to grow and/or emerge. Modernism, as you are no doubt already aware is the movement in visual arts, music, literature and drama which rejected the old Victorian standards of how art should be made, consumed and understood. Its emphasis was on impressionism and subjectivity, on how we see and perceive the world. The fragmentation and discontinuity of form seen in the work of Picasso are an ideal example of modern art and for that matter modern thought. Modernism also rejects the distinction between 'high' and 'low' art and popular culture in its methodology, materials used, distribution and display.
Postmodernism continues with most of these ideas but also concentrates its attention on self-consciousness, reflection, ambiguity, deconstuctured and dehumanized subjects. Basically the Postmodernist argument is that every conceivable avenue has been explored in the last century or so and there is now hardly any scope for novelty or originality. It has therefore embraced as many techniques as possible, sometimes combining various techniques into one piece of work. A great example of this is the work of the early Postmodern artist Shinro Ohtake (b.1955). He works in a variety of disciplines from dense collages (his most famous works) to sculpture, sketches, water colours, oil painting and etchings. Ohtake uses the world as his source, using journeys dreams and his collaged diaries to make sense of the inner surface of layered perception.
Fig 1.
I see Postmodernism as a sort of patchwork quilt of ideas and techniques taken from the past and re-constituted in an attempt to come up with something completely new. It appears to me to be a sort of an art movement stop gap while we wait for the next new BIG change in art. This is what I find most interesting. The question of what will be the next art movement? Post-Postmodernism, Neo-modernism, Mind modernism? Which ever it is (if there is another) I am sure that photography will be integral to it. Why? I'll tell you later.
Reading: art The World of Art, from Aboriginal to American Pop, Renaissance Masters to Postmodernism (Professor Robert Belton 2002)
Postmodernism (Dr Mary Klages last revised April 2003)http://www.colorado.edu/English/courses/ENGL2012Klages/pomo.html
