Definitions for "Post-modernism"
beginning in 1960s, this movement incorporates a sense of ambivalence about scientific achievements and technological advances, and recognizes the benefits as well as drawbacks of life in late twentieth-century society. This sentiment is manifested artistically in a wide variety of ways, but began by reacting against the signature modernist trends of abstraction and pure formalism. Post-modern artists often incorporate classical imagery in their work as well as contemporary references, spanning the traditional gap between high art and popular culture. This combination of traditional artistic techniques and contemporary, critical sentiment results in an art that can be ironic, ambiguous, and often humorous.
Media-influenced aesthetic sensibility of the late 20th century characterized by open-endedness and collage. Post-modernism questions the foundations of cultural and artistic forms through self-referential irony and the juxtaposition of elements from popular culture and electronic technology.
A term used to define the developments in architecture and interior design that originated in modernism but began to diverge from that style. Unlike modernism, it includes ornamentation and uses historical references that are whimsically out of context.
The view held by many scholars that new patterns of authority and organization brought about essentially by the computer in an information age, are replacing those of the prior industrialized structure of society, thereby altering human relationships and ways of interpreting human behavior.