The composite, collage, 'anything goes' approach of postmodernism has caused some critics to deny that it is a style at all, merely a broad statement applied to architecture since the 1970s, continuing through today. How can postmodernism be a style if it is no style at all? Because it arose during the historic preservation movement and embraces the old, not the new, it merely seems to feed off of the old rather than make a new contribution to the architectural cannon (Paradis, 2003). However, even postmodernism's critics admit that it would be difficult to mistake a postmodern structure for a historic structure of another era. Rather than showing one period, or reviving a period style from the past, postmodernism often exaggerates the past, and "does not necessarily try to replicate historic styles as did the period styles, but instead makes fun of it, using a wide variety of historic forms, simplifying and mixing them into an unorganized, illogical jumble of a building" (Paradis, 2003).
Rather than structures that rise organically from the ground, postmodern structures seem to be grafted onto the ground, without rhyme or reason. They may contain fixtures and artifices that appear real or functional, but in fact are not. Such jarring surfaces, apparent 'ugliness' and nostalgia for an admittedly false past in postmodern architecture that revolutionized and opened up the field from the formula of modernism has had a negative as well as a positive effect -- it has resulted in a tendency for it to be depoliticized, or even reactionary in its ideological orientation, despite the fact that it arose during a radical period of world history, where seismic changes were occurring in the social structure of America and the world.
Most notably, "Leon Krier proposed the recreation of European cities based on medieval principles and a return to a preindustrial, craft society. Krier would later become an apologist for Albert Speer's Nazi architecture, claiming that the architecture had no representative political...
And it was Krier's anti-Modern impulses that would make him a supporter of Prince Charles' predilections for British village life as an antidote to urban sprawl" ("Art and culture: Postmodern architecture, 2007).
Because of its very nature, expense, and the way that it is used, however, Mary McLeod argues that one cannot separate architecture as a process or as an artifact from its political process, and she finds its potential for elitism troubling (McLeod 25-26) Although some early expressions of postmodernism had populist sympathies, the anti-populist, anti-functionalist strain cannot be denied, Michael Graves longed for a public who could appreciate the world of Poussin and Roma villas (Macleod 28). Moreover, the defense that at least postmodernism is not structured by capitalist needs seems to be belied in the Las Vegas postmodern embrace of eclecticism -- what could be more corporate than such a collage? However, regardless of the political implications of postmodernism, given that architecture is often far slower to change than the other arts, because of its monumental nature and expense, the public is likely to live with the eclectic, neo-nostalgic legacy of postmodernism for many generations.
Works Cited
Art and culture: Postmodern architecture." Arts & Culture Website. 10 Oct 2007. http://www.artandculture.com/cgi-bin/WebObjects/ACLive.woa/wa/movement?id=131
Foster, Hal. "(Post) Modern Polemics.'" Perspecta 21:1984.
Jencks, Charles. "Post-Modern Space,' & 'Conclusion - Radical Eclecticism?' From the Language of Post-Modern Architecture. London, 1977, pp118-126 & 127- 132.
McLeod, Mary. 'Architecture and Politics in the Reagan Era: From Postmodernism to Deconstructivism.' Assemblage. 8: 1989.
Paradis, Tom. (2003). "Postmodern Commercial and Situational Architecture."
Architectural styles of America. 10 Oct 2007. http://www2.nau.edu/~twp/architecture/postmoderncom
