On Postmodernism

Critiques of Postmodernism {288}

modernism in painting (since inception with Manet and impressionists)
heroic struggle against bad taste or kitsch
postmodernism is latest name of commercial bad taste
Model of development of modernism
immanent evolutionary principle
inner artistic logic
firm what it is: flatness
endeavor to maintain the high standards of the old masters against commercialism, withdraw from commercial taste
Modernism to stem the decline of aesthetic standards threatened by the relative democratizing of our culture under industrialism
to maintain the levels of the past
Any deviation from modernism is betrayal or corruption of aesthetic standards
so postmodernism is the urge to relax (pop art)
to justify preferring less demanding art
Radical-neo-Marxist (Fredric Jameson) [292]
Two varieties of postmodernism - a cultural phenomenon of late capitalism
good[ anticapita;ist
bad reactionary
Postmodernism lost subversiveness of older modernism
modernism is politically powerful subversion of false bourgeois values
postmodernism antiaesthetic and therefore less subversive [293]
Postindustrial (and culturallypostmodern society)
new types of consumption
planned obsolescence
penetration of advertising, television, and media
automobile culture
But Jameson ppreciates
John Cage, Phillip Glass and Terry Riley
Jphn Ashberry and "L=a=n=g=u=a=g=e Poets"
Thomas Pynchon, William Burroughs, French nouveaux romanciers
Bob Perelman
Ambivalence
Both conservative and Marxist
modernism is the hero
for ascetic opposition to corruptions of art market
postmodern is relaxation

On Postmodernism