FloRida, Jencks

Jencks begins his article by stating, “Often in history there is a combination of continuity and change which looks perplexing because our view of both the old and the new is altered. Thus, with Postmodern Classicism the meanings, values and forms of modernism and classicism are simultaneously transformed into a hybrid combination.” He makes this statement in relation to art and architecture. I believe that this statement also relates to most everything in our lives. Life constantly changes and evolves, never slowing down and always progressing. Postmodern Classicism, in my mind, means that we are breaking boundaries for new ideas but still forming them from classical concepts and perspectives by keeping the classic in the back of our minds! Jencks relates a certain set of rules to the new ideas and architecture. He comments that, “Now, rules or canons for production are seen as preconditions for creativity, a situation caused partly by the advent of the computer, which makes us conscious of the assumptions behind a building.” We consciously make decisions about things based on our minds being conditioned to think or do something specific. There are eleven canons (rules) that he mentions and the one that I could understand most was the first one about beauty and composition. “In place of Renaissance harmony and Modernist integration is the new hybrid of dissonant beauty, or disharmonious harmony. Instead of a perfectly finished totality ‘where no part can be added or subtracted except for the worse’ (Alberti), we find the ‘difficult whole’ (Venturi) or the ‘fragmented unity’ of artists...” Society no longer has one concept or meaning for anything. We connect ideas, beliefs, words, and art to create what we find beautiful and meaningful. Pieces are used to create a whole. “Inevitably art and architecture must represent this paradoxical view, the oxymoron of ‘disharmonious harmony’, and it is therefore not surprising that we find countless formal paradoxes in postmodern work such as ‘asymmetrical symmetry’, ‘syncopated proportion’, ‘fragmented purity’, ‘unfinished whole’ and ‘dissonant unity’.”