Postmodernism

By Richard Appignanesi & Chris Garratt
With Ziauddin Sarder
&
Patrick Curry

Postmodernism

I took out this book from the library to help me out on understanding postmodernism better. It explains the roots of Postmodernism over the last 100 years of art, History, Politics and Philosophy. I have found this book to be really helpful as it also covers a bit of modernism. 

The book is a graphic guide which makes it a lot easier to read and help with some of the understanding of Postmodernism. The book defines postmodernism by saying "What do you mean Postmodern? The confusion is advertised by the "post" prefixed to "modern". Postmodernism identifies itself by something it isn't. it isn't modern anymore.." 

It also explains it by defining the actual word "... latin origin of modern, modo, "just now". Postmodern therefore literally means "after just now"." so what i understood from that is it's not just now its after just now so it isn't modern it is after modern, the future. 

It also talks about "machine aesthetic" "...the role of abstraction in human life and an emphasis on machine-like, undecorated flat surfaces.Their aim was to form a universally applicable "modern style", reproducible anywhere, transcending all national cultures." This is a postmodern idea as it is talking about a machine based future rather then human so that everything can be reproduced through machine. 

Andy Warhol is also mentioned in the book because he turned mechanical reproduction into art representing that the only real human touch in his work is applied colour. everything else is done through printing onto canvas much like how a machine works.