Postmodernism

movement aesthetic c. 1960-2000 United States Europe

Postmodernism is the skeptical culture that grew out of modernism's confidence, taking shape in the 1960s in architectural theory and literary criticism before reshaping the visual arts in the 1970s and 1980s. Robert Venturi and Denise Scott Brown's Learning from Las Vegas (1972) argued for the decorated, symbol-covered strip against modernist austerity, and in 1977 Charles Jencks famously declared modern architecture dead. Across architecture, painting, photography, and design, postmodern art quotes the past instead of starting from zero: it mixes styles with irony and pastiche, welcomes ornament, kitsch, and commercial imagery, and doubts any single grand narrative of progress. Critics accused it of substituting style and spectacle for moral and aesthetic seriousness; defenders saw pluralism and a welcome opening to feminist, multicultural, and postcolonial voices.

London - Vauxhall Bridge Road - South Bank - Jubilee Walkway - View East on SIS (Secret Intelligence Services / MI6) Building 1989-94 by Ter
London - Vauxhall Bridge Road - South Bank - Jubilee Walkway - View East on SIS (Secret Intelligence Services / MI6) Building 1989-94 by TerCC BY-SA 4.0 (credit: Txllxt TxllxT) · source

Defining characteristics

  • Pastiche and quotation: historical styles cited, mixed, and taken out of context
  • Irony, play, and wit in place of modernist seriousness
  • Ornament, color, and decoration welcomed back after modernist austerity
  • High and low culture mixed - kitsch, advertising, and commercial forms admitted
  • Fragmentation and collage in composition and facade
  • Symbol and communication favored over pure form (Venturi's "decorated shed")

Key figures

  • Robert Venturi (1925-2018) — Architect whose Complexity and Contradiction in Architecture (1966) and Las Vegas studies defined the movement
  • Charles Jencks (1939-2019) — Theorist who named postmodern architecture and declared modernism dead (1977)
  • Philip Johnson (1906-2005) — Former International Style champion whose AT&T Building (1984) turned postmodern
  • Cindy Sherman (1954-) — Photographer whose Untitled Film Stills (1977-1980) quoted media cliches of femininity
  • Sherrie Levine (1947-) — Appropriation artist who rephotographed canonical images to question authorship

Example works

Sources

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