postmodernism

…’80s and became known as postmodernism.

The 1960s were marked by dissatisfaction with the consequences of the Modernist movement, especially in North America, where its failings were exposed in two influential books, Canadian Jane Jacobs’s The Death and Life of Great American Cities (1961) and American Robert Venturi’s Complexity and…

…the principal figures in the postmodernist movement.

…for his role in defining postmodernist architecture.

…with the advent of the Post-Modernist architectural movement, that the unadorned functionalism of the International Style was moderated to permit a modest use of ornament, including classical motifs.

…was an American architect whose postmodern approach to building incorporated a variety of historical styles. His projects are located in many parts of the globe and comprise nearly all types of architecture, including homes in tony towns, residential towers in urban settings, dorms and buildings at universities, senior living communities,…

…a rather playful variant of postmodernism, making use of unconventional building axes, complex geometric shapes, and brightly coloured decorative elements. His New State Gallery, or Neue Staatsgalerie (1977–84), in Stuttgart, Germany, a combination of classicism and geometric abstraction, is considered by many to be his finest achievement. Among his other…

…the eclectic movement known as postmodernism.

One response was the postmodern novel of William Gaddis, John Barth, John Hawkes, Donald Barthelme, Thomas Pynchon, Robert Coover, Paul Auster, and Don DeLillo—technically sophisticated and highly self-conscious about the construction of fiction and the fictive nature of “reality” itself.

(Such eclecticism, sometimes called “postmodern,” also showed itself in other kinds of fiction in the 1980s. Julian Barnes’s A History of the World in 101/2 Chapters [1989], for example, inventively mixes fact and fantasy, reportage, art criticism, autobiography, parable, and pastiche in its working of fictional variations…

Thought and sensibility at the end of the century were in thrall to postmodernism, which has been variously described as a radical attack on all authoritarian discourse and a return to conservatism by the back door. Jean-Franƈois Lyotard’s La Condition postmoderne (1979; The Postmodern…

In the last decades of the 20th century, German literature was influenced by international postmodernism, a movement that combined heterogeneous elements in order to appeal simultaneously to a popular and a more sophisticated readership. Parody, pastiche, and multiple allusions to other types of cultural…

…from the modern to the postmodern. The line of demarcation is not clear. Postmodern literature avails itself of most of the techniques introduced by modern literature, particularly self-consciousness of its own status as literature. The difference, perhaps, is that postmodern literature does not aspire to be profound or pretend that…

A Russian form of postmodernism, fascinated with a pastiche of citations, arose, along with various forms of radical experimentalism. During this period, readers and writers sought to understand the past, both literary and historical, and to comprehend the chaotic, threatening, and very different present.