postmodernism (art)

Late-20th-century movement in architecture and the arts that rejected the preoccupation of post-war modernism with purity of form and technique, and sought to dissolve the divisions between art, popular culture, and the media. Postmodernists use a combination of style elements from the past, such as the classical and the baroque, and apply them to spare modern forms, often with ironic effect. Their slightly off-key familiarity creates a more immediate appeal than the strict severity of modernism. Among a diverse number of groups and individuals who emerged in the 1970s and 1980s are the architects Robert Venturi and Michael Graves (both US), the novelists David Lodge (English) and Thomas Pynchon (US), and the artists Gerhard Richter and Sherrie Levine.