Post-Modernism

Post-Modernism

Post Modernism began with the end of Modernism, some say even before it ended, in the late 1970’s. Artists were disillusioned with the role of Western society with the Oil Crisis of the time and began focusing on commodification and consumer culture for inspiration. They pushed the boundaries of Modernist limits of traditional painting and sculpture using body art, performance and deconstruction to express their disenchantment with the utopian ideals of the Modernist era.

Post-Modernism ended very recently. There are still many artists making work in this vein because the dialog around it is unclear enough to cause a large amount of confusion about what post-modernism is in the first place. Umberto Eco, Gilles Deleuze, Michel Foucault, and Jean-Francois Lyotard are just a few of the most well-known critics of Modernism. They have critiqued and philosophized on the works of artists like Jeff Koons, John Cage, John Fekner, and Christo and Jean-Claude. The aesthetic character of Post Modern art can be just about anything that makes a statement about how we got where we are today. For example, John Fekner’s installation on the Pulaski Bridge from Queens to Brooklyn in New York City displays the words “Wheels over Indian Trails” pointing out the scope of human advancement over time and leading the viewer to question just how life got to be the way it is. Other themes in Post Modernism are the re-working or questioning of Modernist works, aimlessness, artifice, absurdity, humor, abjectivitiy and a rejection of anything Greenburgian.