Modernism and Postmodernism

The concepts of modernism and postmodernism are considered to be fashionable concepts that meet in a plenty of literature.  Rather than avoiding to explore these conceptions labeling them as widely debated buzzwords this article will examine the contours of the mentioned terms because referring to those concepts helps to identify in what kind of world we live – modern or postmodern or whether this question is relevant and does it add a value to our understanding of the world and perception of reality.

In the scholarly literature modernism and postmodernism may be referred as two theories, periods, movements, tendencies, worldviews or particular styles and are used in the context of literature, arts, architecture, philosophy and social sciences. We will henceforth comparatively examine modernism and postmodernism and discuss the concepts basically from two opposing perspectives. We will apply the results of the analysis in the context of arts. This discussion will give the readers an opportunity to later come up with their own conclusions what is modern and what is postmodern art.

Modernism-postmodernism debate emerged as a result of two key articles written by German philosopher Jürgen Habermas and French philosopher Jean-François Lyotard. The theses of these authors serve as the fundamentals for the discussion in the current article, forasmuch as these authors initiated the formerly mentioned debate (developed by other authors later on as well) heavily stressing on arts and using it for substantiating their arguments.