KhrióMagazine / Inspire
03/11/2011
A little contraversey from Ted Polhemus no 5 Post-post-moderm
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When in 1994 I was putting the finishing touches on the ‘Streetstyle’ exhibition at the Victoria & Albert Museum, London, one of many bones of contention was the meaning of the term ‘post-modernism’. As if we didn’t have enough problems!
My colleagues in the fashion department contented that post-modernism was simply a design style which emerged in the 70s and 80s and was characterized by a delight in decoration, a juxtaposition of different styles and a wry, iconic sense of humour. For me post-modern was so exciting because it was so much more than this: at heart a top-to-toe shift of worldview.
Where the driving energy of modernism was an optimistic, futuristic lust for tomorrow – for progress and for change for its own sake – post-modernism peered nervously over the cliff of ever accelerating change and opted instead for a mocking of time itself and a jumbling of past-present-future into an infinite number of alternative, parallel universes.
Or something like that. And a host of other things besides. But just a quirky design style of the 80s? No way.
Equally important to me was the fact that, far from just an elitist creation of high end designers and navel-gazing architects, the roots of post-modernism could also be clearly seen in a plebeian ‘street’ phenomenon like Punk. Sampling & mixing a cacophony of different styles – Amazonian Primitive, B Movie Sci Fi, workmen’s ‘bother’ books, the innocent and the fetishistic, The Good, the Bad and the Ugly – the Punks set out all the basic principles of Po Mo style: (1) more is more, (2) eclecticism, (3) unlikely juxtapositions and (4) the triumph of semiotics over pure aesthetics. And to modernism’s incessant optimism the Punks proclaimed ‘No Future’.
Now, in 2011, the V&A has opened a new major exhibition specifically focused on ‘Post-modernism’. I’ve not seen it yet – and will report in my next piece my reactions after I get up to London to see it. I like that the V&A’s publicity notes that ‘The modernists wanted to open a window onto a new world. Post-modernism, by contrast, was more like a broken mirror, a reflecting surface made of fragments’. Good.
But where are my beloved Punks amongst the fancy architects and oh-so-pleased-with-themselves designers? I’ve been invited onto a panel to (it says here) discuss the ‘impact’ of post-modernism on pop culture and streetstyle. And there I was thinking the impact was the other way around. Stay tuned – I’ve a mind to put the cat amongst the pigeons.
So, post-modernism . . . an ultra decorative, ironic design style which flourished between 1970-1990 or something more fundamental? And if post-modernism ended in 1990 what to call the present age? Post-post? No, we’re still reeling from the death of modernism – in an age so uncertain of itself that it can only be defined by what it is not.
What do you think?
PS: There is a more developed discussion of post-modernism in fashion, style and design in the postscript to the new edition of my book Fashion & Anti-fashion which is available (print-on-demand or ebook) at
http://www.lulu.com/spotlight/tedpolhemus
with further details at my (new and improved – yippee!) website
www.tedpolhemus.com
