After the readings, I discussed this with a fine artist friend of mine a question I had. Even after the readings I was confused: Is modernism/postmodernism a time period or a personal way of life for artists and designers? And: What period are we in now? He wasn’t sure himself – so I decided to do some of my own research. I watched two great videos about modernism and postmodernism. They try to summarise the ideas within two minutes:

Modernism: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vDCEtnXlA4Y

Postmodernism: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lKomOqYU4Mw

Here’s what I think after doing my own research: It’s both. I know, helpful right? I think that modernism and postmodernism are indeed personal ideologies – however, those ideologies were spread and manifested during certain specific time periods.

So what are they?

This is my *very basic* understanding so far. I know it’s probably not right but it’s what I think so far, hopefully as the course progresses I get a better understanding.

Modernism

Modernism was a time period just after world war 1, so 1920s. Things were pretty bleak at the time. A lot of people probably thinking “what the fuck just happened?!” and a period of self reflection of the human race – at least that’s how I’d feel. It seems like a lot of the artists at the time went through a sort of analyzing spree – what does it mean to be human? What is the world? Can we change the way the world works? Why are we the way that we are?

This was the period of the ‘isms’ symbolism, expressionism, dadaism etc – however, it rejected realism in art. It was almost about mockery, and self exploration – irony of oneself. What if someone's face wasn’t drawn super life-like? What if I drew someone’s face as a bunch of cubes?

It was also a period of extreme change – the industrial revolution was changing society massively. So a lot of people were thinking “how can we make this better” or “how can we all make the world better” and I think there was also a lot of denial of the war, that we should look at the good things in the world.

Postmodernism

Postmodernism came after modernism, and basically disagrees with everything in modernism. People thought that modernism was too idealistic, it showed too much of the good things in the world without showing what’s true. Postmodernists also believed modernism was pretty boring in general, nothing really visually interesting or stimulating.

State of play now

It’s interesting, because if I had to pick between the two I think I’d lean to postmodernism. It seems to deal with issues and show the true picture of society. I feel as if these days, modernism is still very prominent – for example, banksy strikes me as a very postmodern artist. For example, recently his artwork was sold at auction, as soon as it was sold it was torn to shreds – his philosophies remind me of the ‘Fountain’ artwork by Marcel Duchamp. Basically asking “what is art?” and sparking discussion.

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I remember the first typeface i really studied in detail was on the first iPod I ever owned. The screen resolution wasn’t great back then, and I had never really held a computer that close to me before, so I hadn’t really noticed the pixels. I remember being so curious how those letters were drawn on the screen – what makes some pixels black and what makes some white?

Funnily enough – I also remember wondering that if the resolution was any lower, would the text still have been readable? Where is that threshold? It’s a lot like what the author was alluding to with the ‘A’ analogy.