During the last decades of the twentieth century, a series of debates erupted across the fields of art and design. At issue was a range of styles and ideas labeled “postmodern.” These new approaches were so multifaceted that they remain difficult to group into a single movement: postmodernists found inspiration in both social activism and commercial culture, theoretical detachment and bodily sensation. During this period, many artists, architects, and designers came to agree that modernism had somehow become “exhausted.” Ironically, though, postmodernism itself ran out of steam before the close of the century. 

This graduate seminar surveys the rise and fall of postmodernism, with an eye to its afterlives in the present. Course readings and screenings are arranged into three thematic, loosely chronological parts: Part 1 reaches as far back as the eighteenth century, Part 2 concentrates on the 1960s and ’70s, and Part 3 covers the ’80s and ’90s. Lectures focus on art, architecture, and design while referencing parallel developments in politics and popular culture. Student performance is evaluated via weekly discussion questions, two reading presentations, and two response essays. Glenn Adamson and Jane Pavitt’s Postmodernism: Style and Subversion 1970–1990 (2011), identified below as “A& P,” will act as our our textbook during the second half of the course.

Introduction

1.
Modernisms and Anti-Modernisms