Modernism in Postmodernism

A main component of postmodernism is the appeal of status equality, meaning that if Ian Curtis can sing then I should be able to sing, and if Jimi Hendrix can play guitar, then I can play guitar. However I see this as modernist in the way that this is very elitist. Ian Curtis and Jimi Hendrix are talented, they have real, impressive and amazing talent. Not everybody can play the guitar like Jimi Hendrix, its very egotistical that postmodernists think that just because somebody else can do something, they can do that too.

Postmodernism is extremely pretentious, ergo, elitist. It finds meaning in completely meaningless things. The over analyzation is snobby, and the manner of it portrays a superiority that is almost synonymous with modernism. The similarity is completely contradictory to what postmodernism stands for.

This past weekend while at the Art Institute, I was walking through the modern wing. There was one piece that stood out to me because it completely depicted all that is modernist about postmodernism. It was just a blank canvas painted white, with a yellow border, and then another black border framing the ladder. I understand that a big part of modern art is “Yes, you could have done that too, but you didn’t actually do it,” but that says nothing about the lack of technique that went behind it, let alone the nonexistent meaning. Postmodernists would stand there for hours maybe discussing meanings behind it.

For example in class, when we looked at the “art piece” that was a crumpled up piece of paper. That is not art. That is paper. When you look in the mirror, you are seeing yourself. When you paint a self portrait you are seeing yourself. There is no “deeper meaning” behind those simple things.

While it is always good to be a critic and to think deeply, I believe that too often postmodernist analyses are too elitist and there is too much pretentiousness involved in the search for meaning in things that really just have no meaning at all. This elitism is modernist to me, fueling the paradoxical and contradictory nature of postmodernism.