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What is postmodernism?


The postmodern condition can bee seen and experienced in our everyday lives. Anything from the decor of a room, to societal and economical shifts can be, and are, described as postmodern. While modernism looked beyond material truth and searched for abstract truth, postmodernism sees no abstract or universal truth. It attempts to challenge the distinction between "high" and "low" culture; likewise, it holds no difference between "good" and "bad." Unlike modernism, which saw history as something we can learn from for the future, postmodern theory says the future is uncertain; we cannot learn from the past and we can live only in the present. Works of art and science (as is history) are seen as texts, understood only in themselves and are not, what modern theory suggests, windows to the truth.
Jean-Francois Lyotard views the condition of postmodernism as "marked by crisis
in the status of knowledge in Western societies.
Modernist critics believe that art theory must be taught to the public before they are able to analyze the symbols or motivation behind the image, also that an image can have only one analysis made of it. This one way is an assessment of the actual technique that was used in the creation of the artwork or a description like ‘heavy black and whitish or gunmetal chiaroscuro’. (Greenberg 124)
‘'Postmodernism'. Definitions seem to vary with every citation’.(Greenberg 124) This taken into consideration we may say that postmodernism is simply what anyone wants it to be, changed to suit their view on the matter. Perhaps that is what the person who coined the phrase wanted it to be, an entirely personal piece of art that is not supposed to be interpreted by anyone else. Therefore, a postmodern art critic would have to be someone who interprets the work as a visual representation of the society from any perspective they choose, so the conceptual framework (world, audience, artist and...