POST-MODERNISM - OCA notes

Having received some references prior to viewing the Post-Modern exhibition at the V+A, I decided to note down a few of my thoughts about the material suggested.

The first is a review in The Guardian which starts by referring to post-modernism as "all swagger and stance" which although humorous does sound a trifle dismissive; it also refers to post-modernism as belonging to the past which is interesting to note. As someone new to the subject, I was unaware of that.

The journalist, Hari Kunzru, says that post-modernism was all "Fun, bright, clever, but disposable and disturbing." Again, one is left wondering what he means since post-modernism tends to evade definition.

Kunzru's first mentions architecture. Modernism has resulted in a great deal of joyless architecture with the result that there was a revolt and it happened in the modernist skyline of New York with an atrium in the AT&T building. Nicknamed The Chippendale building, it was seen as a bit of a joke yet was to mark the beginning of a new artistic approach.

These days, driving through a city one is surrounded by a plethora of coloured signs, semiotic seductions. I can't help but think of Orwell's novel "1984"which describes a modernist world without any sign of the art that was to replace it which got underway in the 1970's.

Kunzru goes on to define post-modernism, this time in less racy terms, "This is the essence of postmodernism: the idea that there is no essence, that we're moving through a world of signs and wonders, where everything has been done before and is just lying around as cultural wreckage, waiting to be reused, combined in new and unusual ways. Nothing is direct, nothing is new. Everything is already mediated. The real, whatever that might be, is unavailable."

The V+A have decided to cut out the art and literature side of post-modernism, they are essentially a museum of design, and also present post-modernism as a movement that lasted 20 years although they do go outside this time frame. There are numerous examples, the subject of this exhibition.


Postmodernism is said to have ended with 9/11, the toppling of the Twin Towers in New York which ushered in a new era. Obviously, one can not be too dogmatic about this but a parallel can be drawn between the rise of the internet and the end of postmodernism.


Irony has been distinguished as one of the main characteristics and the end of postmodernism has been referred to as the end of the age of irony. Postmodernity follows postmodernism!