Postmodernism

•-        Cultural movement developed during the 60es as a consequence of modernism;

•-        It does no longer believe in the concepts of truth;

•-        It puts the question of authority onto doubt;

•-        It does not believe in the concepts of a centre as in generally happened in all the previous generation (ex. modernism);

•-        Postmodernism questions all the concepts of modernism à there is no longer one centre but more centres;

•-        There is a continuous slipping of meaning because meaning is never stable;

•-        Relationship between signifier and signified à if they are opposed you are not able to arrive to the truth;

•-        Postmodernism abolished the differences between low and high art;

•-        The word postmodernism is composed of:

•1)    The prefix "post" which does not only mean "after" but it also may mean a development in modernism

•2)    The word modern

•3)    The suffix "ism" which implies something negative

Modernism

•-        Developed during the first three decades of the 20^th century;

•-        It believed in progress;

•-        Succession of art movements characterised by constant innovations and associated with ideal visions of human life and society:

•1)    Vorticism: revolutionary movement led by the artist W. Lewis

•·       It celebrates violence and energy

•·       It combines Cubist fragmentation of reality with derived from the machine and the urban environment in order to express the dynamism of the modern world

•·       It is the British equivalent to Futurism

•2)    Cubism: the most influential art of the early 20^th century

•·       It aimed to explore and expand the possibilities of representation

•·       It was born with Picasso's "Demoiselles d'Avignon"

•·       It shows different visions of the object

•·       It imitates the nature of sight

•3)    Expressionism: art in which the image of reality is more or less heavily distorted in form and colour

•·       It is expression of the artist's feelings or ideas

•·       It originated in the works of Van Gogh, Klee, Picasso and Giacometti