"Postmodern" is a broad term, and it essentially means a reaction against modernism. Modernism is also difficult to characterize, but it is partially a belief in progressive i
…mprovement and essential superiority to other periods of history. Modernism also strongly tends to reject tradition and the conventional beliefs of the past in favor of innovations. Postmodernism reacts to these points by insisting on a kind of equality amongst all ideas and times. Some Postmodern writers like Vonnegut, Pynchon, and Palahniuk strongly react against the idea that modern society is improving the world or is superior to other times. Postmodernism tends towards apocalyptic imagery and pessimism about the status quo. History is as much of a mystery as the future. Postmodern art is inspired by or even embraces the fragmentation and disorder of society. Russel Kirk, a social critic, wrote that the postmodern state is akin to picking up bits of a wrecked ship on a beach: one is not always sure what the fragments represent, and often finds both discarded garbage and discarded treasures. The postmodern artist is a collector of fragments of institutions, knowledge, art, myth, and other forms. ^^^NOT RELATED POSTMEDERNISM BEFORE WW2People that saw it didn't understand it was to foreign. People depended on that something had to mean SOMETHING it couldn't just be they wanted his art to be significant or at least signify or have meaning. The whole concept of post-modernism is really defined by the fact that is doesn't NEED to signify anything, it simply allows us a way for out knowledge to become organised. Postmodernists just say to the world what you think is important really is not! So post-modern artists are the ones that blur the lines between sane and insane. They confuse the genre and don't really have a distinction. The post-modern world quotes "life itself is meaningless so lets not be ensnared by the illusions that art can give meaning to it, lets just play with nonsense."By lily Davis (MORE) 
