Melissa Grönebaum

Distinction of 'postmodernist' from 'modernist' Melissa Grönebaum

Essay from the year 2013 in the subject English - History of Literature, Eras, grade: 2,0, National University of Ireland, Galway, language: English, abstract: The distinction of modern and postmodern artists sometimes seems to be a bit challenging, do to a lack of chronological boundaries, between modernism and postmodernism which are, additionally, extremely blurred. To determine artists by the dates of their works is not necessarily possible, since the epoch of postmodern art did not entered every country at the same time. Although Charles Jencks sets the 'death' of architectural modernism on July 15th, 1972 at 3:32pm, modernism in general is said to end with World War II. In North America, however, it rather ends with the Great Depression. Thus, the broad agreement on the period of Modernism is from 1885-1935. Modernists continued writing even after 1945 but did not earn much attention any longer. The period of postmodernism must have begun some when between then and 1960. Obviously, the passage of modernism and postmodernism is fluent. Postmodernism is said to be nostalgia and retrospective. Collages and imitation are regarded as being postmodern, as well as any rejection of modernism. Modernism in contrast would display the avant-garde forms of expression and the 'shock of the new'. But those definitions are general and just give a hint to what could be the distinction of modernism and postmodernism. Because of this, in the present essay I will elaborate and compare the ways that 'postmodernist' might be distinguished from 'modernist' and solve the question of the differences between these epochs. To do so, I will focus on terms of literature, visual arts, and architecture, which are regarded as being characteristically for modernism or postmodernism.