Postmodernism

I

Introduction

Postmodernism, movement that developed in the late 20th century and that can roughly be said to be characterized by the combination of modern forms, materials, and techniques with the subtle and highly conscious use of motifs and conventions from earlier periods. In architecture, it developed largely as a reaction against the starkness and uncompromising modernism of the International Style. In art, it can be seen as a subtle shift away from the espousal of abstraction and conceptualization that had dominated avant-garde art since the early decades of the 20th century, and also as a development from the precedent set by Pop Art, whose eclecticism and populism exploited the semiotic power of everyday objects.

As the Postmodernist theorist Charles Jencks has put it, Postmodernism “is both the continuation of Modernism and its transcendence”. The term “Postmodernism” also applies to literature and to dance: these aspects of the movement are described in Postmodernism (literature) and Postmodernism (dance) respectively.

II

Architecture

Postmodernism has been a particularly significant phenomenon in architecture, especially during the 1980s, when prominent commissions were given to such leading figures as Robert Venturi, Michael Graves, James Stirling, Terry Farrell, Charles Moore, Hans Hollein, and Arata Isozaki. Their work drew on a variety of styles, including Modernism, classicism, and even vernacular domestic architecture. This eclecticism recognized the essential pluralism of post-industrial society, a particularly important factor in the field of architecture, since most significant buildings are today used by a range of people with very different tastes and cultural preferences.

The desire to appeal to a broad public has led Postmodernist architects to combine scholarly references to earlier architectural styles with more obviously enjoyable decorative features. A particularly fine example of this is James Stirling's and Michael Wilford's Staatsgalerie (1977-1984) in Stuttgart, where brightly coloured fixtures, such as handrails and canopies, adorn a building that also contains allusions to Classical architecture. The element of populism in such buildings can be compared with the narrow appeal of Modernism, whose austere structures were, according to the Postmodernists, enjoyed only by a cultural elite.

The Modern Movement's preoccupation with abstract forms, devoid of decoration, also denied the important role that cultural associations play in our perceptions of architecture. The Postmodernists, on the other hand, fully exploited the symbolic qualities of specific architectural styles. The cultural and historical connotations of Classicism were utilized in such museum buildings as the Staatsgalerie in Stuttgart or Venturi's Sainsbury Wing (1986-1987), that is a physically and visually contiguous addition to the National Gallery in London. While Stirling's structure inevitably evokes the museums that Schinkel constructed in Berlin in the early 19th century, Venturi responds to an even more relevant precedent—the main building of the National Gallery, with its classicizing façade, completed in 1887. As well as harmonizing with the original gallery, the front of the Sainsbury Wing also contains an engaged column designed to correspond with Nelson's Column in Trafalgar Square, whose northern side the gallery overlooks. However, other more modern features, such as the façade's asymmetry and the recessed glass wall on the ground floor, underline the fact that the wing was constructed in the late 20th century rather than the 19th. In his selection of architectural forms, therefore, Venturi has exemplified the Postmodernist's desire to express the complex historical and physical context of his building, factors that a Modernist architect would have pointedly chosen to ignore.

The parody of traditional architectural forms is in fact a recurrent feature of Postmodernism. Michael Graves's Portland Public Services Building (1982) in Portland, Oregon, is basically a large cubic office block, illuminated by identical rows of small unmoulded windows, as in most Modernist buildings with this function. However, it also contains numerous classical features, including a pair of pilasters and a keystone, so enormous that they take up many storeys of the façade. A comparable effect was achieved in Robert Stern's project (1980) for the Chicago Tribune Tower, an enormous structure whose façade is covered with reflective glass like that of a Modernist office block by Ludwig Mies van der Rohe. Despite the modern materials, the shape of the tower is in fact that of a classical pier with superimposed pilasters, resting on a pedestal and bearing an entablature. In this case the historical references are particularly complex, not only recalling a distant historical past but also the similar design that the Austrian architect Adolf Loos had made in 1922 for the same project.

III

Art

This combination of modernity with allusions to both the distant and recent past is also a feature of much of the painting and sculpture of the Postmodernist period. In Sandro Chia's work, the bright, unnaturalistic colours, distorted forms, and complicated surface patterns show the influence of Modernism, in particular Italian Futurism. However, Chia represents not the modern urban scenes favoured by the Futurists but the idyllic way of life of the rural Mediterranean. The mythical quality of such works is, however, combined with a humorous irony not unlike that of Postmodern architecture. In Chia's Son of the Son (1981, Leo Castelli Gallery, New York), for example, the central figure is a ridiculously colossal peasant, who is carrying a sack filled not with his produce but with three golf clubs.

While Chia employs specifically Mediterranean imagery, Mimmo Paladino's paintings contain complex allegories that allude to tribal ritual and Christianity, as well as Classical legend. In common with many Postmodernist artists, Paladino never allows the viewer to make a straightforward interpretation of his work. This quality of ambiguity is also exploited by Christopher Le Brun, where the imprecise brushwork adds to the dreamlike atmosphere of the painting. A similar poetic mood, although achieved by different means, is apparent in the sculptures of Anne and Patrick Poirier, in which subjects taken from ancient myths are represented by enigmatic fragments, such as the giant bronze eye in Mimas (1983, Sonnabend Gallery, New York).

The Postmodernists' inclination towards Classical imagery has led some critics to dismiss the movement as merely a reactionary tendency, akin to the art and architecture of fascist regimes in the 1930s. None the less, Postmodernism can be regarded as a constructive response to the wide range of styles and techniques at the disposal of the artist and architect at the end of the 20th century, and to the prevailing uncertainty concerning their role and authority.