Blackwell Reference Online

Extract

Postmodernism is one of a series of terms, including postmodernity and poststructuralism, that is applied to cultural production in western Europe and North America in the period from the 1960s to the present. Postmodernity is sometimes used to refer to the cultural history of this period. Poststructuralism was a critical practice directed toward literary, linguistic, and philosophical movements that flourished around this time. The term “postmodernism” itself is defined in opposition to “modernism” in order to describe contemporary forms of art and architecture and their aesthetics. Postmodernism began in the 1960s as a response to high modernism, particularly in architecture and the plastic arts (→  Art as Communication ). The qualities of postmodern literature were less well defined (→  Fiction ). The distinction between modernism and postmodernism was perhaps always clearer for critics than for cultural practitioners. High modernism's most influential critic was Clement Greenberg, whose essays such as “Modernist painting” seemed to capture an aesthetic that was already passing. Greenberg's notion of purity in artistic goals and his insistence on maintaining the distinction between high art and popular culture were being contradicted in practice by minimalists, pop artists such as Andy Warhol, and video artists such as Nam June Paik and Steina and Woody Vasulka. In “Art and objecthood,” ... log in or subscribe to read full text