Modernism/Postmodernism

Modernism seeks to find new forms of expression and rejects traditional or accepted ideas. Modernism originated around 1900 and stuck to the 1950's where we saw the introduction of pop art.
Pop art is a post war art movement that furthered the rejection of traditional ideas in art, it imitates the methods, styles and themes of popular culture and mass media. The word 'pop' first came about in 1954 as a way to describe art inspired by images of popular culture by an art critic Lawrence Alloway. It became a craze among young british artists who grew up with the war to use ration books and utility design in their works of collages working towards creating images that would provoke a reaction.

Roy Lichtenstein developed a pop art style of his own - the comic strip with his fixed tradition of using black outlines, bold colours and tones in benday dots. Roy later moved on to exploring modernist styles like cubism, futurism, art deco, dstijl, surrealism and abstract expressionism.

In the late 19th century modernism brought about marxism. It was when Karl Marx published his book on February 21 1848. The history of marxism is strictly based on a scientific outlook of the world it incorporates the science of evolution and dialectic path of thesis, antithesis and synthesis, "It is not the consiousnes of men that determines their existance, but on the contrary, their social existance determines their consiousness". Marxism is a belief in progress. Modernism also has a belief in technology, which is where Bauhaus comes in. Its style became one of the most influential currents in modernist design. It housed everything to do with art and design and they all moved forward with the times together.

Postmodernism followed in 1960 and was a philsophical movement which evolved as a reaction to modernism. It is "post" as it denies any existance of ultimate of dogma regarding scientific, philosophical or religious truth that will explain everything as a whole for everyone.

Samuel Beckett is a good example of both time periods. He is considered as one of the last modernists and was strongly inspired by James Joyce. He is however also often considered as one of the first postmodernists as he was a big influence to many later writers.