Tuesday 13 September 2011

Talking about someone else's generation

I feel a strange sense of relief when I see the dates for the V&A's upcoming show Postmodernism: Style and Subversion 1970-1990 - like I've been exempted from something. So much of my university education was dedicated to post-this and ism-that, that it's nice to see someone draw a line back when I was still at primary school.

Apparently artists asked to take part in the exhibition have an even more complicated relationship with this particular period-label:

“It is a real issue that so few people identify positively with postmodernism,” said Mr. Adamson [co-curator of the exhibition]. “And a whole list of people do not want to be identified with it.” Among them is the American architect Frank Gehry, although the V&A eventually persuaded him to participate.

Meanwhile, in other preview media pieces, the Independent manages to go from postmodernism to Facebook and 'postwhateverism', the Financial Times asks whether the exhibition can rescue the 'movement's' reputation, Prospect Magazine asks if this exhibition seals postmodernism's tomb, and Jonathan Jones asks if it all started with Close Encounters of the Third Kind.




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