Postmodernism

Are we living through a shift in the way in which the how we see, understand and experience the world?

An example of postmodern culture

Is The Simpsons a send-up of the twee American family sitcoms that came before it, or is it a send-up of American life?…and to what is the distinction between representation and ‘real’ life anyway?

Postmodern culture proposes a world of signifiers without signifieds

Postmodernism

Are previous dominant paradigms – realism and modernism – no longer adequate explanations or representations of the world?

Realism

…a commitment to show things as they really are…

Realism

…set of stylistic, aesthetic and narrative conventions…

Modernism

…making the world look strange

…making you look again

Pablo Picasso, Guernica, 1937

Modernism

disillusionment with modernism

modernism becomes just another part of the art establishmentit loses its ability to shock

becomes associated with elite tastes

Post

Postmodernism…a revolt against cultural elitism

challenges the distinction between

‘high’ and ‘low’ culture

elevate the everyday to the category of art

Andy Warhol, 32 Campbell’s Soup Cans, 1962

Peter Blake, Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band (cover), 1967

Pop Art

collapse of the distinction between high and low culture

collapse in the grand narratives

politics religion science

Grand narratives (or metanarratives)according to Jean-Francois Lyotard…

…established universal principles

…lay privileged claims to ‘truth’ and ‘authenticity

…crisis in the status of human knowledge in Western societies

…crisis in the status of human knowledge in Western societies

Arts and culture

…how do represent and give expression to a world if there is no truth or authenticity?

Politics

…what do ‘freedom’, ‘democracy’, ‘progressive’ mean?

Education

Jean Baudrillard

...it is no longer possible to separate the cultural from the economic

images, representations, feelings - are just as likely to be part of economic life at material goods

…we live in an environment saturated with media images…

Simulacrum

identitical copies without an original

Hyperrealism

substitution of images for the ‘real’ thing

‘It is no longer a question of a false representation of reality (ideology), but of concealing the fact that the real is no longer real.’

‘It is no longer a question of a false representation of reality (ideology), but of concealing the fact that the real is no longer real.’

the hyperreal U.S.A.

Fredric Jameson,

Postmodernism: or, The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism, 1991

…a culture of pastiche

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y3qxUqwrNDA

…a world in which stylistic innovation is no longer possible, all that is left is to imitate dead styles, to speak through the masks and with the voices of the styles in the imaginary museum.

Pulp Fiction, Dir. Quentin Tarantino, 1994

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ik-RsDGPI5Y

…the history of aesthetic styles displaces ‘real’ history