POST-MODERNISM

• It is a cultural movement that developed as a reaction to modernism;
• the name made up of:
• a prefix: Post means both “after” and “development, something going beyond”
• a suffix: Ism means that the cultural  movement was seen in a negative way by the people;
• it developed since the sixties  on (still going on today);
• its main tenets are:
• it does no longer believe in the existence of an absolute meaning because it is always slipping, still to come, differed;
• it questions the  idea of a centre, truth or authority;
• it abolished the difference between low and high culture;
• it denies the existence of a transcendent reality;
• it judges people not free because their opinions are influenced by their own background;
• it believes that reason is a weak tool and cannot lead through knowledge or truth;

MODERNISM

• It is an aesthetic movement that developed as a reaction to Neoclassicism;

• the name is made up of:
• the suffix: Ism gives the name a negative acceptation => people feel at ease with their own habits;
• it developed roughly from the 1910 to the 1930ies
• its main tenets are:
• it may be a response to a sense of social breakdown
• it sees the world as fragmented, unrelated in its pieces
• it questions the purpose of art because it perceives the world as falling apart
• it believes that people are easily seduced by transitory pleasures
• it still believe in the possibility of finding a centre