Postmodernism was the result of
the people’s uprising against what they saw as an unnecessarily restrictive
nature of Modernism. They had grown tired of being fully practical and
minimalist and sought in Postmodernism a certain freedom of expression. Venturi
was speaking for the wider community when he said, “[We] can no longer afford
to be intimidated by the puritanically moral language of orthodox Modern
architecture. […] I am for messy vitality over obvious unity.” (1966).
Postmodernism can be considered a
remix of old ideas and works to bring new meaning to a particular thing,
whether it be design or other cultural fields.
After “questions were raised whether the […] modernist aesthetic could
cater adequately for the increasingly variegated tastes and desires of the
consumer,” (Woodham, 1997 , p. 183), Postmodernism sought to bring new life to
design and increase accessibility, whatever the individual’s taste or desire.
The image below (fig. 1) is a
remix of an original renowned painting by Salvador Dali, which has been brought
into the Postmodernist era with an adaption to a ‘Simpsons’ theme. It
historically quotes Dali’s ‘The Persistence of Memory’ (fig. 2), directly
re-presenting the placement of the objects in the new image as they were in the
original, and by the same style in which they appear to be melting. Even though
this remixed image is cartoonised, the elements quoted make the image
recognizable. Humour is also used in the image by adding ‘The Simpsons’
characters, with their iconic yellow colour and/or caricatures, that television
audiences are so familiar with. It is funny because the melting figures mock
the strange concept behind Dali’s painting – ‘The Simpsons’ characters do not
melt over tree branches, but neither do clocks as portrayed in the original.
The remix utilises this
historical quotation in combination with humour to add meaning, by making the
artwork more accessible to the current generation, to whom ‘The Simpsons’ is an
incredibly well recognised television show. A work of art is use unless there
is an audience to whom it means something. A humourous take on a famous
painting, the original of which seems so inaccessible and ‘ancient’ to today’s
society, and not at all to their developed taste for art, gives meaning to both
the remix and the original, because it appears familiar, not formidable, to the
audience of today. This, a ‘license’ to take history and apply it to today, is
the root of Postmodernism – a response to the period of Modernism, which was a
time when rules of ‘good and proper design’ did not allow for such freedom of
expression.
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| Fig. 1 - sourced from: http://www.sjsu.edu/faculty/wooda/171/171syllabus13chapter7.html |
(Original)
 |
| Fig. 2 - sourced from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:The_Persistence_of_Memory.jpg |
Citations:
Venturi, R. (1966). Complexity
and Contradiction in Architecture. New York: Museum of Modern Art.
Woodham, J. (1997). Pop to
Post-Modernism: Changing Values in Twentieth-Century Design
(pp.182-203) Oxford; New York: Oxford University Press.
