Post Modernism Presentation

In the beginning of the twentieth century there was a radical change in the lifestyle of humanity. This was a huge advance in different aspects of any individual. This development came in social, political, cultural and economical advances. Europe was no longer a monarchy but instead we see democracy, socialism and communism taking place. We also have a huge advance in technology. The introduction of the motorcar, the wireless radio, feature films, the airplane and manufactured art materials. It was an era of experimentation and innovation. This changed how people started to look at the world and how artist started to look towards art. Such advances made it so much easier to artists to get their hands on different materials and technology in order for their creations. The philosophical term “Cogito ego sum” which means “I think therefore I am” plays an important role towards how artists started to go towards their artistic notions. Such terminology was persuaded artists to ignore spirituality and what was done in the past in order to create new art. So we started to see a different art movement evolving that effected the graphic language. In Modernism we see a rejection towards traditional and decorative design. Everything is stripped off from such thing. Designers started to go towards functionality, simple and clean cut designs. One also sees the use of bold geometric shapes, primary colours, non-symmetrical design and the use of the idea of “less is more”.Post Modernist believed in the theory “less is a bore” unlike the previous movement Modernism. Post Modernism reacted against this movement (modernism) and basically rejected what it had to say to say about design and history.
In this art movement artists started to challenge the term “form following function” and also started to use past references in order to create something new. In the graphic design word this was being referred to as the “New Wave.” Characteristics of Post Modernism were taking concepts and styles form other artistic periods and mic them with new designs in order to have an original design, Also such era made artists and designer want to break the grid, rules and make use of collages. In this period of time we see artists like Andy Warhol playing a huge role of using references to his artwork such as objects that where very common to find at that time and icons of that time also. We also see Wolfgang Weingart, one f the most influential people in postmodern design. He took the Swiss Design and edited and made his own.

Andy Warhol - Marilyn Monroe

The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. 2014. Plato.stanford.edu ONLINE [Available at: http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/postmodernism/