As Sandler goes on to illustrate, modernists abhorred art which was seen as commercialised and mass-produced. ‘Kitsch’ in particular was regarded as the antithesis of high art (Sandler, 2018). Postmodernists reacted to these criticisms by arguing that there cannot be an objective value judgement for taste. The separation of high and low art was, for postmodernists, another example of a unified assumption, a universal truth about quality.
One of the most popular postmodern artists was Andy Warhol (1928-87). Warhol sought to criticise mass culture by replicating and imitating it in his art. Sandler writes that ‘Warhol chose to portray images of commodities because of his interest in them as commodities—as icons of consumerism. He emphasized their nature as commodities by employing the technique of commercial art to duplicate them… Warhol’s commodities exemplified consumption—and advertising’ (2018). Examples of this included his work Brillo Boxes (1964) which were precise copies of the original packaging; Campbell’s Soup Cans (1962) which handpainted the mass-produced advertising campaigns for Campbell’s soup onto canvas, imitating the repetitive nature of commercial advertising; and Marilyn Monroe (1967), a silkscreen painting of the famous actress consisting of fifty repeated images. Warhol’s work unveils the darker side of American consumer culture, and its need for uniformity. Thus, Wahrol challenged perceptions of what gives art value. There is a clear connection here to the work of Baudrillard who saw that postmodern society had begun to resemble nothing but a simulation, our reality constructed through copies of copies.
Postmodern Literature
Like postmodern art, postmodern literature sought to challenge absolute meaning. As such, this literature is often absurd, fragmented, metafictional and features temporal or narrative disruption. This type of fiction also challenged authority and was often political. The postmodern text often draws attention to its own artifice and comments upon the nature of literature and fiction, subverting conventional expectations of plot, genre and narrative. The playful use of the text’s construction often indicates the randomness of daily life which, whilst often comic is existential in nature, with the characters’ absurd actions hinting at the purposelessness of life. Postmodern literature includes texts such as Thomas Pynchon’s Gravity’s Rainbow (1973) and David Foster Wallace’s Infinite Jest (1996).
This bleak outlook can be further seen through the Theatre of the Absurd, coming from the absurdist philosophy of Albert Camus (‘The Myth of Sisyphus’, 1942). This philosophy posited that while there may well be a meaning to life, humans are limited in their mental capacity and cannot, therefore, ever find such a meaning. Humanity thus continues on lacking a true understanding of its purpose. Such absurdity can be seen in the work of Samuel Beckett. (1906-1989). Beckett’s work is often categorised as ‘tragicomic’ and reveals the bleak nature of human existence through absurdity and black comedy. Emblematic of this is his play Waiting for Godot (1953) two men engage in conversation while waiting for their friend Godot who never arrives. Zehra Gündar in Postmodern Absurdity writes that ‘[t]he uncertainties, the non-resolutions, the waiting for the end to come, the gaps and impasses accompanied with nonsense, incomprehensible language solidify the metafictional or the metatheatrical aspect of [Beckett’s] plays’ (2019, 12). Other famous postmodern writers include Kurt Vonnegut, Thomas Pynchon and Kathy Acker to name but a few.
Criticism of Postmodernism
Criticism of postmodernism has tended to be directed towards specific disciplines, rather than the broad theory. As Robert F. Barsky states in Noam Chomsky: A Life of Dissent ‘[t]heorists seldom agree on how to define postmodernism, and the problem is compounded when one moves from one discipline to another’ (1997, 193). Critiques of postmodern architecture, understandably, are different to those of postmodern literature or philosophy and so on. As such, this section will briefly outline some of the main arguments against postmodern philosophy, art and literature.
Postmodern philosophy, particularly that of Baudrillard, has been condemned by Christopher Norris most notably in his work Uncritical Theory: Postmodernism, Intellectuals and the Gulf War (1992). This was published in response to Baudrillard’s essay ‘The Gulf War did not take place’ (1991) which argued that the war had been a hyperreal event in which the circumstances of the war can be questioned due to the propaganda surrounding it. Norris condemns this line of thinking by arguing that by accepting this hyperreality as unreal, there is no need for resistance to such atrocities as those occurring during the Gulf War. It is worth noting, however, that Norris does not take issue with all aspects of postmodernism and finds Derrida ‘an example of postmodern lucidity’ (Barsky, 1997, 194).
In Roy D’Andrade’s article ‘Moral Models in Anthropology,’ he criticises the theory’s definition of objectivity and subjectivity suggesting that moral and objective models must be separated as ‘they are counterproductive in discovering how the world works…Science works not because it produces unbiased accounts but because its accounts are objective enough to be proved or disproved no matter what anyone wants to be true’ (D’Andrade 1995: 402-4).
Pauline Marie Rosenau provides a thorough examination of the contradictions within postmodernism in Post-Modernism and the Social Sciences: Insights, Inroads, and Intrusions (1991). In this work, Rosenau argues that ‘post-modernism devalues any pretensions to theory building. But an anti-theory position is itself a theoretical stand.’ She further points out that although postmodernists stress ‘the importance of the irrational and expressing grave doubts about the Enlightenment’s intellectual tools of reason, logic, and rationality, post-modernists employ these latter instruments in their own analysis.’
In addition to postmodern philosophy being accused of using the theoretical models it criticises, postmodern art has likewise been criticised for its uneasy relationship with the mass production it tends to condemn. As Stefan Morawski argues in The Troubles with Postmodernism,