Post Modernism &

Deconstructivism

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Modernism

Post Modernism

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What is Postmodernism?• An Oxymoron?• An overused and meaningless term?• A “response” (or, “responses”) to modernism.

“ Art without a central artistic element that involves the recycling of past styles and themes in a modern-day context, as

well as the break-up of the barrier between fine and high arts and low

art and popular culture. “

Why Postmodernism ?

Had Modernism fulfilled its promise?

• Modernism's universality and higher spiritual autonomy suffered a gradual crisis of confidence after 1945.

• Science, technology, reason, and the central state showed a nightmarish side in the highly organized, state-sponsored murder of six million Jews in Nazi Germany.

•  International Style architecture continued into the 1980s and responded to a new critique of its impersonality mounted after World War II 

Louvre Pyramid (1989)I.M. Pei

Gerard Ritcher

Defining Postmodern art

• Post modernism was a late 20’th century movements.

• It opposed the Modernist preoccupation with purity of form and technique.

• It aimed to eradicate the divisions between art, popular culture and the media.

• Postmodern artist employed influences from an array of past movements , applying them to modern forms.

• Postmodernist embraced diversity.

• They rejected the distinction between “high” and “low” art.

• Ignoring genre boundaries , the movements encourages the mix of ideas , medias and forms to promote parody ,humor and irony.

Love & Art, Francis Berry (2007)Watercolour

Cartoon Peanut Senior sits on a fence with two Amish-like fellows and Peanut Junior at his right; next, a beatnik towers at his left. This fivesome conveys old values for cultural homogeneity dissipating before a pervasive mood of indifference to differences. If the postmodern zeitgeist could reduce to a pronoun, "whatever" would be a good candidate

One character over to the right, each member of the threesome reveals an interest and mood of his own ranging from Mr. Peanut's detached curiosity and the Peeping Tom's timid voyeurism to the enraptured lyricism of a French chef in earnest pursuit, no Freedom Fries, pleas

This idyllic lighthouse may hark back for some to the fifties Americana of Edward Hopper (see The Lighthouse at Two Lights1929, Oil on canvas, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York). For all the postcard appeal of its twilight drama, this lighthouse never seems to wholly divest itself of a nostalgic twinge for the rhythm of a bygone era. Call it my souvenir plan, a buffer against the accelerated pace of our postmodern era.

One ambitious hopeful offers Erato, the Greek Muse of lyric and love poetry, a flower. At extreme right a squid-like rocket takes to the upper edge of the image.

Lower Right Detail: As Marcel Duchamp pointed out, the title of a work of art colors its meaning. "De-fence," a radio rides upon the back of a feline chimera. Saturated with imagery, Love and Art's dense layering of information teeter-totters between cohesion and dissolution, meaning and non-meaning.

The French chef undisturbed by his diminutive size and blind ambition woos the apple of his eye. Below him, a drummer entertains Euterpe, Greek Muse of music, called the "Giver of Pleasure," as she insinuates her blue serpentine vibes in time and space. Tune in.

• Installation art• Performance art• Conceptual art • New Classicism• Lowbrow art• Inter media and multi-media• Appropriation art and neo-conceptual art• Neo-expressionism and painting• Institutional critique

Movements in Postmodern Art

Christo, Wrapped Tree

Installation Art

The gates, Christo

Umbrella ,1984-91, Christo

John Le Kay, 1991 ladder and wheelchair

Conceptual art

Joseph Kosuth, One and Three Chairs

Performance Art

Yellow period, Yves Klein

Chris Burden during the performance of his 1974 piece Trans-fixed where he was nailed to the back of a Volkswagen

Zaha Hadid

Zaha Hadid (born 31 October 1950) is an Iraqi-British architect & winner

of the Pritzker Architecture Award in 2004. Her work experiments

with spatial quality extending and intensifying landscape.

Best known for her seminal built works (Vitra Fire Station, Land Fomation-One and the Strasbourg Tram Station).

Vitra Fire Station

• It was not designed as an isolated object, but developed as the outer edge of the garden.

• Defining the space rather than occupying space.

• The entire building is freezing motion. This expresses the tension of being on the alert, and the potential to explode into action at any time.

• The walls seem to glide past each other, while large sliding doors are like a moving wall.

Land Formation One

• The project was designed to serve as an event and exhibition space for the garden festival in Weil am Rhein 1999.

• The suggested structure does not sit in the landscape as an isolated object, but emerges from the fluid geometry of the surrounding network of paths.

Deconstructivism

Started in1980s

About Deconstructivism• Started in the 1980’s and still going on

today.• Deconstructivism is an approach to

building design that attempts to view architecture in bits and pieces.

• Deconstructivist buildings may seem to have no visual logic

• Ideas were borrowed from the French philosopher, Jacques Derrida.

• Buildings may appear to be made up of abstract forms.

Contemporary art• Two strains of modern

art, minimalisn and cubism , have had an influence on deconstructivism.

•  A synchronicity of disjoined space is evident in many of the works of Frank Gehry and Bernard Tschumi.

Frank Gehry• Frank Owen Gehry, is an architect

based in Los Angeles, California.

• His buildings, including his private residence, have become tourist attractions.

• Gehry's best-known works are as follows

Guggenheim Museum Bilbao• It is very curvy, has a spider sculpture • outside of it, a lot of shapes put together.• This is a museum of modern and contemporary art.• This building has been hailed as a "signal moment• in the architectural culture“.• The museum is clad in glass, titanium, and limestone

The Frederick R. Weisman art Museum

• Made in 1993 in Minneapolis, Minnesota by Frank Gehry.

•  A teaching museum for the university since 1934.

• Curvy frame, round shapes and very angular.

Gehry House• Frank Gehry made this

house at Santa Monica, California in 1978.

• It has a light wood frame and is an unnatural shape for a house.

• Made up of lots of shapes that are different sizes.

• It makes use of unconventional materials, such as chain link fence  and corrugated steel.

Stata Center • Academic complex designed

for the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).

• It has a pointy frame with square and triangle shapes.

• Several MIT classes held here.

Dancing house• The very non-traditional

design was controversial at the time.

•  Czech president ,Vaclav Havel who lived for decades next to the site, had supported it, hoping that the building would become a center of cultural activity.

• The “dancing” shape is supported by 99 concrete panels, each a different shape and dimension.

• Windows of dancing structure.

The monorail, built for Seattle's 1962 Worlds Fair

• This museum, focussed on pop music and is dedicated to Jimi Hendrix.

•  This building seems more confusing than most of Gehry's buildings.

•  This large sculptural building (140,000-square-feet).

Some artworks