noun

• A late-20th-century style and concept in the arts, architecture, and criticism that represents a departure from modernism and has at its heart a general distrust of grand theories and ideologies as well as a problematical relationship with any notion of “art.”.

  Typical features include a deliberate mixing of different artistic styles and media, the self-conscious use of earlier styles and conventions, and often the incorporation of images relating to the consumerism and mass communication of late-20th-century postindustrial society. Postmodernist architecture was pioneered by Robert Venturi; the AT&T skyscraper in New York (completed in 1984) is a prime example of the style. Influential literary critics include Jean Baudrillard and Jean-François Lyotard

  ‘One way to get out of the ‘postmodernism’ hole is to think about postmodernity rather than postmodernism.’

  More example sentences

  • ‘In the work of some virtual artists many characteristics of either modernism or postmodernism can be found.’
  • ‘The works of these authors inhabit the domains of neo-realism, modernism, postmodernism and magical realism.’
  • ‘There has been an increasingly unproductive debate on the difference between modernism and postmodernism.’
  • ‘Indeed, this leads me to a major criticism of Foucault's postmodernism when applied to the media.’
  • ‘In its extreme forms, postmodernism represents a celebration of choice and the triumph of style.’
  • ‘It is an excellent academic study of cultural criticism, especially postmodernism.’
  • ‘The argument that the black novel anticipates postmodernism can also take a formalist turn.’
  • ‘I do think we have to tackle the issue of relativism, of subjectivity, of all the modern isms including postmodernism.’
  • ‘But this is based on the mistaken idea that modernism and postmodernism are sequential stages in history.’
  • ‘Because we are the heirs of modernism and postmodernism.’
  • ‘In this she sees these artists as contributing to what was to become postmodernism.’
  • ‘Modernism and postmodernism have made us more aware of the complexities of the art form.’
  • ‘Thus has postmodernism helped close the gap between high art and low art.’
  • ‘Its broader presuppositions relate to those of art in the era of postmodernism.’
  • ‘A certain part of postmodernism has involved an attempt to get outside of history.’
  • ‘It's starting to look dated now, a product of the first wave of 1980s postmodernism.’
  • ‘These ideas were our mental tools as we romped in the forest of first-growth postmodernism.’
  • ‘I only make the kind of work I make because of the discourse of postmodernism and the time that I'm working in.’
  • ‘Munck attacks the critics of postmodernism by calling them sociological reductionists.’