aro0823, 2-1

I know that teachers plan field trips in attempt to make their students translate the concepts learned in class and apply them to the real world, but I have never been on a field trip that was effective. Sure, going to the zoo to study the animals in their “natural” habitats was fun in third grade; however, I struggled to connect what we learned from the colorful textbook to what I was seeing in the screened-in wire cage in front of me. After observing examples of postmodern architecture in class on Tuesday, I left still unsure of many of the concepts. Though, upon studying the various facets of the buildings up close, everything became a lot more clear.
Unfortunately, though, many of the “rules” of postmodernism are inherently illogical. You can learn them in theory, but still be left scratching your head contemplating their existence in its entirety. For example, double-coding purposefully plays upon irony, ambiguity, and contradiction. In the instance of pluralism, the artist “withholds gratification,” forcing the viewer to look elsewhere for a unifying point of view. While “returning to the absent center,” one aims to preserve and revamp simultaneously. So, I can easily empathize with and understand why many individuals despise postmodernism; it is so unnecessarily convoluted and confusing!
I am beginning to fall steadily into the school of thought that doesn’t appreciate the goals of postmodernism. It is possible that I don’t like those goals because there is purposefully no clear destination. My life is made easier when I know the destination and have to do as little interpretation as possible. During the Renaissance, the goal was linear perspective. Artists in the Baroque Era aimed to capture every detail of their subjects. Romantics use color and whimsicalism to play upon the emotions of their audiences. Realists told it like it was with none of that fluffy stuff. And finally, modernism: semi-confusing because of the whole “essence capturing,” but overall easy to understand. Postmodernism contradicts all of the logic of past art movements. The more abstract and confusing one is as an artist the more successful one becomes. Unfortunately, for us students responsible for its critical analysis, there is a lot of room for interpretation, but simultaneously unlimited wrong answer choices.