Contemporary non post-modern art

[Jimmie Higgins]

I think there is a sense of discontent regarding post-modernism in academia. At least the arguments don't seem as strong as they were 10 years ago. We've reached a point where post-modernism has sort of puttered out and lost the momentum and hegemony it once had, but there is nothing that has coherently come along to replace it. Hopefully among activists, the pomo attitudes will be replaced by more radical and militant ideas.

But I'd like to know what people think about post-modernism in the arts. In some ways film is more post-modern than ever but I think literature and visual arts have sort of moved on. In the late 90s there were some artists who were trying to reach beyond post-modernism or explore its limitations in art. There have been some new movements which are explicitly anti or post post-modern such as "the New Sincerity" or "Dogma" or "Stuckism" but nothing has coalesced.

It could just be wishful thinking on my part (because I'd love to see pomo dumped in all areas of culture) but have other people here - particularly students - seen any sort of rejection of pomo assumptions and ideas in the arts or culture?

[x359594]

In American and British poetry the old schools continued to flourish alongside pomo trends like language poetry, and even engenered a "back to form movement" (the neo-formalist school) and the neo-narrative school (taken together they're known as the expansivists.)The plot-driven bourgeois novel of psychological realism never went out of fashion.

Of the popular arts, movies have been the most obviously affected by post-modernism as you already noted, and I guess television must be included too.