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

2. An exampleof postmodern
culture

3. 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?

4. Postmodern culture proposes a world of
signifiers without signifieds

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

6. Realism
…a
commitment to
show things as
they really
are…

7. Realism
…set of stylistic,
aesthetic and
narrative
conventions…

8. Modernism
…making the world look strange
…making you look again
Pablo Picasso, Guernica, 1937

9. Modernism
disillusionment with modernism
modernism becomes
just another part of the
art establishment
it loses its ability to shock
becomes associated with elite
tastes
Pos
t

10. Postmodernism
…a revolt against cultural elitism
challenges the distinction
between ‘high’ and ‘low’
culture

11. elevate the everyday to the category of art
Andy Warhol, 32 Campbell’s Soup Cans, 1962

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

13. collapse of the distinction between high and low culture
collapse in the grand
narratives
politics religion science

14. 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

15. …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

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

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

18. …we live in an environment
saturated with media images…
Simulacrum
identitical copies without an original
Hyperrealism
substitution of images for the ‘real’ thing

19. ‘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.’

20. ‘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.’

21. the hyperreal U.S.A.

23. Fredric Jameson,
Postmodernism: or, The Cultural Logic of
Late Capitalism, 1991
…a culture
of pastiche

24. 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.

25. Pulp Fiction, Dir. Quentin Tarantino, 1994
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ik-RsDGPI5Y
…the history of aesthetic styles
displaces ‘real’ history