Well this week was not short of interesting moments as they all are, but of particular importance was when we were graced with the presence of Doc Casey. He came in to go over Jencks’ different ideas about the changes and principles of postmodernism. I think the way in which he went over each one definitely cleared up any misconceptions that I had about the entire thing. Perhaps the most interesting aspect to me was the urbane urbanism, when showed this Doc Casey stressed about a return to the old and that the new buildings should not be able to be told apart from the old ones. In other words they should belong there. I found this very interesting because I had always thought that these “new wave people” had to do weird stuff and didn’t like to color in the lines. It seemed like a giant pissing contest of who could make the most outrageous building, but this seems less and less true the more I learn about postmodern architecture. I think know it might be out there, but i keep coming back to the idea of intertextuality with all of this. I know we had learned it for a reason and maybe it just clicked for me for the first time but it seems the entire postmodern movement in ALL aspect is much like intertextuality in the sense that to exist it depends on other ideas such as classicism and neo-classicism, and modern times as well. It sometimes even depends on the romantic period. I believe that is what sets this movement apart from the rest, whereas the other periods seemed to focus just on their goals or perhaps a recovery of one other period. In the case of postmodernism it takes from everything, there are multiple ways of viewing things so this makes the entire experience so interesting because there are essentially no rules. I like that idea, i mean after as much as i hate to say it, art is what you make it.
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I cannot agree more with all you have mentioned above. First of all, it is clear that Dr. Casey's presentation was an amazing aid to the understanding of Postmodern architecture. Jencks does explain all the terms but actually being able to visually associates them made everything a lot clearer to me. I think I finally really grasped what Postmodern architecture was and by extension, postmodern ideas.
ReplyDeleteI like when you mention intertextuality in relation not to a written text but in relations to architecture. I had not put two and two together before you made me think of it. But it is so clear that nothing comes from nothing and that postmodernism seems to be all about that. Taking from past and previous ideas and elevate a new concept from what we already had.
So basically what I got out from this last class is that visuals do help a lot understanding ideas and concepts so new to me. I think it helped everyone understand postmodernism better and the idea of intertextuality constantly at play around us.