Quick Intro to Post-Modernism
The book you are reading (yes, you are reading, reading, reeeeaddingggg) is a very post-modern text. So what is a post-modern text? First, what is/was modernism? In the early 20th Century science had made some important advances (I can´t remember what they were, but that doesn´t matter. I mean, you can find out. ) So artists (meaning artists, writers,photographers, dancers, musicians) reacted to this by trying to prove how important art is to human existence. In other words, science is not sufficient in explaining ´the human condition´. Think of it like this: when you are unwell you might take some medicine to cure the illness. But watching your favourite film, episode of ´The Simpsons´, or reading a good book or magazine might also help your recovery. We need more than science. So, artists set out to prove that art is just as important as science. How did they do this? That´s the complicated bit. They made art very referenced (full of references to other art) to show that it has as much depth and requires as much knowledge as other areas of knowledge. It was also very perfected, very complete and tried to make form match function. This also meant that it was very élite (it could not be accessed by just anybody). Take, for example, the first few lines of this poem,T.S Elliot´s ´The Wasteland’ , the full version of which is over 400 lines long.
I. THE BURIAL OF THE DEAD APRIL is the cruellest month, breeding Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing Memory and desire, stirring Dull roots with spring rain. Winter kept us warm, covering Earth in forgetful snow, feeding A little life with dried tubers. Summer surprised us, coming over the Starnbergersee With a shower of rain; we stopped in the colonnade, And went on in sunlight, into the Hofgarten, And drank coffee, and talked for an hour. Bin gar keine Russin, stamm’ aus Litauen, echt deutsch. And when we were children, staying at the archduke’s, My cousin’s, he took me out on a sled, And I was frightened. He said, Marie, Marie, hold on tight. And down we went. In the mountains, there you feel free. I read, much of the night, and go south in the winter.
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What do you think? What the hell is the Starnbergersee or the Hogfarten? Why is there a line written in German? Who is Marie? What do you think of it aesthetically?
If this poem doesn´t really give you an idea of what the modernist aesthetic is about, look at modernist art and architecture. Hold on!!! I´ve just remembered one of the important scientific developments of the The 19 th Century: Charles Darwin´s theory of evolution. This had a huuuuuuuuuuge (doesn´t it annoy you when people do that with words? That´s quite post-modern and we´ll talk about that later) impact on the modernist movement, because it threw up the possibility that maybe there´s no God, thus releasing art from any religious or realistic aesthetic. It doesn´t mean all modernists were anti-religion, but that they were looking for new truths, and thus new ways to represent the world. Anyway, let´s stop this post-modern-MTV-generation jumping around and get back to art and architecture. Pablo Picasso was a big modernist (not big as in tall, big as in y´know, really modernist). His paintings distort realism, but the subjects are all clearly recognizable.
As far as I know (and that isn´t that far), no artists ever sat down over a cup of coffee and a cigarette back in 1920 and said, “ God these scientists think they´re great. Shall we start making art better and more, well, arty to show them we´re pretty clever too?” No. I don´t think it happened quite like that, but it was a clear movement with shared goals and they did influence each other. Now, all ´movements´ or trends or fashions in art can at the same time reject and copy the previous one. Let´s look at musical fashions of the last sixty years or so. Oh, sorry! An example of modernist architecture is:
Right, so, music and movements, baby.
Post –modern, literally means after-modern, which is confusing in itself because how can something be after the modern, if modern is up-to-date and right now? Let´s not really worry about that, though. The principal difference between modern and post-modern literature (not the other arts) is that modernism was designed to be writerly and high-brow in order to show the skill and importance of art, but post-modernism moved towards being readerly and lowbrow, meaning that the reader was important, the author was diminished and the text could be read more easily and was more open to anybody (you don´t need a degree in classical literature or Latin to understand it).
This doesn´t mean that post-modern literature is easy and simple and modernist literature is all complicated and difficult to read. Post-modernism on a text-level is generally simpler, but tends to have more layers of meaning. This is the main point of post-modernism: there are no absolute truths. None. If post-modernism grew up after World War Two, why do you think that it could be based in fragmentation and a loss of any rules or truth? Whilst you are thinking about it, read this poem. There´s a clue to the answer (although there are no answers, are there?) in the poem.
Post-Modernism by James Galvin A pinup of Rita Hayworth was taped To the bomb that fell on Hiroshima. The Avant-garde makes me weep with boredom. Horses are wishes, especially dark ones. That's why twitches and fences. That's why switches and spurs. That's why the idiom of betrayal. They forgive us. Their windswayed manes and tails, Their eyes, Affront the winterscrubbed prairie With gentleness. They live in both worlds and forgive us. I'll give you a hint: the wind in fits and starts. Like schoolchildren when the teacher walks in, The aspens jostle for their places And fall still. A delirium of ridges breaks in a blue streak: A confusion of means Saved from annihilation By catastrophe. A horse gallops up to the gate and stops. The rider dismounts. Do I know him?
Can you understand the poem? Sort of? What kind of feeling does it leave you with? Whilst you´re still thinking about that, let´s have a look at a post-modernist painting:
How does Pollock´s painting compare to Picasso´s? Of course, not all post-modernist art is as abstract as this. Let´s take another example.
We can all see what this is, can´t we? And if not, the artist has helpfully written the name of the item on. But why paint a picture of a bloody hamburger? Well, why not! Post-modernism is all about recognizing the mundane and the ordinary too. Can´t a hamburger be beautiful? Postmodernism rejects what we call the ´grand-narratives´, the big, established, canonical things and elevates the day-to-day items. Ok, so coming back the question of how World War Two marked the beginnings of the postmodernist movement… No, the answer is not that hamburgers became popular in the 1950s, just after the war. It is because WW2 brought into the world a new kind of horror that had never been seen on such a scale before. Of course, the world had always had horrors (slavery, The Spanish Inquisition, not very nice things), but never in such a mechanized and total way. Eleven million people were put to death in the Nazi concentration camps and then the US dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Human beings now had the capacity to wipe out all life on earth. So with that possibility what truth or logic or belief can anybody really hold to?
Should I include this awful picture? Just in case you couldn´t imagine how horrific atomic bombs are?
With this in mind, the simplest way I can think to explain the post-modernists is to say they are a bit like clever teenagers who have had bad parenting. They´ve seen their parents do nasty things and thus have lost respect for authority and rules and tradition. They don´t care about making things beautiful and their way of coping with the horrors of this modern world is by making fun of things (being irreverent). So if all of this has not really made clear what post-modernism is. 1) Don´t worry. There are no fixed truths or answers. 2) I suggest watching Gus van Sant´s film, ´Elephant´about the Columbine High School shootings. Watch it right up to the (rubbish) ending! 3) If you still feel lost (we´re all lost, guys), watch this clip from ´The Simpsons´: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QdO9orWQ-Nk