"With Derrida's dictum that everything was a text, that "nothing is outside-the-text," both self and society became simply constructs of language, arbitrary verbal categories, dim referents in a ghostly allegory of texts about texts, language about language. Since there was no criterion of truth in interpretation, only the assurance of a multiplicity of readings, all meaning was rendered unstable and all reading became a form of misreading."

--Literary critic Morris Dickstein describing the first phase of Deconstructionism as quoted in "Art of the Postmodern Era" by Irving Sandler, 1996, IconEditions, HarperCollins Publishers, Inc, New York, p 339

More on Derrida later.

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Perhaps you missed the 1972 dynamiting of the Pruitt-Igoe housing development in Saint Louis, Missouri on July 15 at 3:32 p.m. Pruitt-Igoe was an award-winning design in the early '50's when it was built to pure, modernist, International Style standards. But the American Institute of Architects, who gave the award, didn't have to live there.

The long, sterile corridors, designed to be "streets in the air" following the precepts of Modern architect Le Corbusier, became more like crime alleys. The tradition-busting, rational, and modular lifestyle that the high-minded architecture tried to impose on its residents instead made them hate the 14-story slab buildings. They vandalized and defaced them them so often the authorities gave up painting over the graffiti, and fixing the the broken windows and elevators in favor of blowing up most of the buildings.

And, as the plunger was pushed, says Postmodernist architect Charles Jencks, Pruitt-Igoe exploded as a great rebuke in the face of Modernism's believers and practitioners.

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Even the name they gave their era, "Modern," shows their hubris. What were their successors to call themselves? They were stuck with the awkward and literally-nonsensical "Postmodern." But what could be expected from a bunch of European white males like Freud, Marx, Le Corbusier, Picasso, Einstein and their fellows--smug in their self-assurance that they had it all figured out, that it all COULD be figured out, rationally, objectively, scientifically.

What a pack of fools they look now, but in their day they were pretty darn sexy. Strip all those stupid, ugly, USELESS decorations away, they demanded of the crenated old Victorians. If it's not functional we don't want to see it, because, they persuaded the world, purely functional things have a grace and beauty all their own.

Besides, it looked like the world was going to need all that functional, efficient architecture and art for the Worker's Paradise that was just around the corner. After all, the whole of Russia, then China, had embraced Marxism. And Marx said that the seizure of the means of production by the proletariat was inevitable. Antimacassers and wing-back chairs were NOT the backdrop of the Revolution.

Speaking of inevitable, Albert Einstein and other physicists were closing in on all sorts of universal truths, the Unified Field Theory, the Special and General Theories of Relativity, the Quantum Theory of Energy--why pretty soon, humans would know everything there was to know. If we could split an atom, what couldn't we split?

These brave new Modernists didn't even have to make art that looked like the real world. What does the "real" world look like anyway, but shifting light and air and constant movement of people and objects? Let's paint THAT, said the Impressionists. So they did, and the Cubists painted people and things from all sides at once, and the Expressionists painted how they felt and the Abstractionists just painted paint, because that's all a painting is, isn't it?

Perhaps not, said Dr. Freud, and how did you get along with your father?

In a way, Modernism was a culmination of the Renaissance. It followed the same path through the rational, empirical methods of Western philosophy, science, and art toward the same goal of human liberation and universal truth.

"Modern architecture, as the son of the Enlightenment, was heir to its congenital naivities..."

--Charles Jencks, "The Death of Modern Architecture"




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But, you couldn't possibly be a real anti-Modernist. If you were you probably wouldn't even own a computer, much less be able to figure out how to hook it up to the internet.



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What does it mean to be a Postmodernist? There is no one aesthetic/political/philisophical Postmodern stance. On one hand Postmodern thought was born out of the left-wing, populist politics of the '70's--deeply critical of western civilization, partiarchy, and consumer/corporate capitalism--but. on the other hand came to be characterized by Ronald Reagan and Maragret Thatcher's reactionary, retro-fifties anti-communism, "supply-side" capitalism, and resurgence of western power and Americanism.

At about the time the Pruitt-Igoe was being demolished, architect Robert Venturi wrote "Learning from Las Vegas" which advocated abandoning the high ideals of Modernism (and trying to impose those ideas through architecture) and embraced the populist/capitalist consumer-orientated architecture of strip malls, Disneyland, and Las Vagas. Venturi built the influential early-Postmodern New York AT&T building which looked like a Chippendale-topped grandfather's clock.

Even earlier, beginning with his "Of Gramatology" ("De la Grammatologie," 1967, Les Editions de Menuits), Jacques Derrida, a French philosopher, began formulating what became know as Deconstructionism in divergence to Structuralism, the prevailing linguistics theory of the time. Brian Artese, Derrida scholar explains it this way,
"Deconstruction does not say that words don't mean anything. It simply says that words get their meaning through paraphrase and metonymic association. You know--how do you get at 'the meaning' of a speech of Hamlet's? Well, you interpret it, right? That means, you offer a verbal or written paraphrase after you've read it. The appropriate interpretive associations and contexts that could be applied to a given text are quite limited, even though one can keep following that limited chain of association as time unfolds--for one wouldn't suggest that someday we will reach the "final, correct" paraphrase of "Hamlet!"
.

And, as for subjectivity/objectivity, said Derrida and other French Deconstructionist philosophers--no such thing, never was. Deconstructionism exposed the shaky ground under all of ModernismÕs dearly held assumptions. It unraveling their ideas to show the biases, ignored or repressed data and ideas, and politics that were the woof and weave of "universal truth," "rationality," "reality," and "stability."

Deconstructionists told Western civilization to take its rational thought and insert in in a dark place. Rational, Fasc-ional, they said, thereÕs no such thing, you made it up by ignoring and supressing all the stuff that didnÕt fit your pre-conceptions or approval. And look what all your empirical science and "reason" got us: the Final Solution, Apartheid, the atom bomb, the Cold War, and the imminent annihilation of human-kind by nuclear holocaust.

Nice work, Modernists, way to go.

Physics provided Postmodernists with ample ammunition. Quantum Mechanics Relativism showed that there would always be an area of permanent uncertainty in science. Chaos Theory and Complexity Theory indicated that there is a whole lot we donÕt know and will never know because the only factor that seems universal is anarchy.

Anarchy was becoming popular in politics, too. For starters, the entire Soviet Bloc collapsed and splintered into dozens of new near-lawless mini-countries, some of which splintered into even smaller states. We told you so, say the Postmodernists. ÒUnitedÓ soviets, states, nations or anything else is out, decentralisation, tribalism, and nationalism are in.

In the visual arts, Deconstructionist philosophyÕs ideas merged with the impulse to overturn the ideas of the past. Formalism and detachment were blasted in the Ô70Õs by artists of the Vietnam War generation who wanted to paint about politics, society, emotion, and popular culture/media.

Representation returned to art, often in the form of ÒappropriatedÓ images from advertising, movies, television, and magazines. Richard Prince appropriated Marlboro Man ad images, removing only the text. Cindy Sherman photographed herself in poses, settings, costumes and makeup evoking film stills or theatrical publicity photos. William Wegman did the same thing with his dog Man Ray.

Artists also explored the idea of art-as-commodity. Jeff Koons had advertisements (text and all) reproduced as oil-paintings. He also mounted The Banalty Show in 1989 featuring such objects as a kitschy porelain statuette of Michael Jackson and his pet chimpanzee. Ashley Bickerton built a digital meter into one of his works showing the steady increase of the piece's worth. Sherrie Levine sold

In many quarters painting was frowned upon as a dead art. Photography, video, computer-art, conceptual, and performance art were preferred media. However there was also a neo-expressionist painting movement, especially in Germany.

If there is any unified theme to Postmodern art, architecture, philosophy, etc, it is the use of juxtiposed images or elements "sampled" from other eras or places. Deconstructionism, though originally concerned with the slippery meanings of words and cycles of metaphors has been applied to images and objects.



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So, you ask, how do Postmodernists throw a party?

It will be a diverse crowd, of course. And, the food, music, and decorations (lots of decorations) will be eclectic: plastic, red-checkered tablecloths with Celtic and African wall hangings, and prints of the Mona Lisa and other celebrity paintings, for instance. You will be served pizza with Thai spicy peanut sauce topping. Quench your thirst with local microbrews.

For entertainment a Klezmer band followed by a Ska group will be the warm-ups for a performance artist dressed as Le Corbusier who will do a deconstructionist strip-tease down to pasties and a girdle that says "Viva Las Vegas".

The cake will be in the shape of Robert Venturi's AT&T building. On the other hand, a birthday/anniversary cake is too much in the Western tradition. Ritual tattooing is more appropriate.

Whether you attempt to reinact the demolition of the Igoe-Pruitt is between you and your local authorities.



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Acknowledgments:
John Neff for alerting me to the anniversary and loaning me several books on Postmodernism, Leonardo Rago and Brian Artese for information about Jacques Derrida (and I'm sure I still got it mostly wrong), Jud McIntire for the loan of the Charles Jencks book.



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Book recommendation:
"Introducing Postmodernism" by Richard Appignanesi and Chris Garratt, with Ziauddin Sardar and Patrick Curry, Totem, New York, 1995, ISBN 1-874166-21-8. A very Postmodern review of the book.

Other Links:
Jacques Derrida, a web-site of links.

The Postmodern Generator, this appears to be the source of much of the reference material I've been trying to read for the last few weeks.

What's Wrong With Postmodernism, a salvo in the academic wars.

Postmodernism, definitions and characteristics.

Postmodern and Cyberculture more links to Postmodern-related stuff