Editing Postmodernism (section)

== In the arts ==
{{See also|Postmodern art}}
[[File:Warhol-Campbell_Soup-1-screenprint-1968.jpg|thumb|211x211px|Andy Warhol's ''Campbell's Soup I'' (1968)]]
Postmodernism encompasses a wide range of artistic movements and styles. In visual arts, [[pop art]], [[conceptual art]], [[feminist art]], [[video art]], [[minimalism]], and [[neo-expressionism]] are among the approaches recognized as postmodern.<ref>{{Cite web |title=About Contemporary Art |url=https://www.getty.edu/education/teachers/classroom_resources/curricula/contemporary_art/background1.html |access-date=Oct 23, 2024 |website=[[J Paul Getty Museum]]}}</ref> The label extends to diverse musical genres and artists: [[John Cage]], [[Madonna]], and [[punk rock]] all meet postmodern definitions. Literature, film, architecture, theater, fashion, dance, and many other creative disciplines saw postmodern expression. As an example, [[Andy Warhol]]'s pop art across multiple mediums challenged traditional distinctions between high and low culture, and blurred the lines between fine art and commercial design. His work, exemplified by the iconic ''[[Campbell's Soup Cans]]'' series during the 1960s, brought the postmodernist sensibility to mainstream attention.<ref name=":14">{{Cite magazine |last=Acocella |first=Joan |date=June 1, 2020 |title=Untangling Andy Warhol |url=https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2020/06/08/untangling-andy-warhol |access-date=April 1, 2024 |magazine=The New Yorker |language=en-US |issn=0028-792X}}</ref><ref name=":13">{{Cite news |last=Metcalf |first=Stephen |date=December 6, 2018 |title=Andy Warhol, Cold and Mute, Is the Perfect Artist for Our Times |url=https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2019/01/andy-warhol-pop-art-whitney/576412/ |access-date=April 1, 2024 |work=The Atlantic |language=en |issn=2151-9463 }}</ref>

Criticism of postmodernist movements in the arts include objections to departure from beauty, the reliance on language for the art to have meaning, a lack of coherence or comprehensibility, deviation from clear structure, and consistent use of dark and negative themes.<ref name="paglia">{{cite web|url=http://www.ipod.org.uk/reality/art_bollocks.asp |title=Art Bollocks |publisher=Ipod.org.uk |date=1990-05-05 |archive-date=January 31, 2015 |url-status=unfit |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150131083911/http://www.ipod.org.uk/reality/art_bollocks.asp }}</ref><ref>{{Cite magazine |last=de Castro |first=Eliana |date=12 December 2015 |title=Camille Paglia: "Postmodernism is a plague upon the mind and the heart" |url=https://faustomag.com/camille-paglia-postmodernism-is-a-plague-upon-the-mind-and-the-heart/ |magazine=FAUSTO - Filosofia, Cultura e Literatura Clássica |quote=Postmodernism is a plague upon the mind and the heart. }}</ref>

=== Architecture ===
[[File:Portland_Building_1982.jpg|alt=Michael Graves "Portland Building" (1982)|thumb|[[Portland Building]] (1982) by [[Michael Graves]], considered the first built example of postmodern architecture in a tall building<ref name="trib-nov20112">{{cite news |date=November 17, 2011 |title=Portland Building gets a place on national history list |url=http://portlandtribune.com/component/content/article?id=15793 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150402114428/http://portlandtribune.com/component/content/article?id=15793 |url-status=dead |archive-date=2 April 2015 |access-date=July 6, 2013 |newspaper=[[Portland Tribune]]}}</ref> and "a seminal Postmodern work"<ref name="D-GravesDies2">{{cite journal |author=Marcus Fairs |date=March 12, 2015 |title=Michael Graves dies aged 80 |url=https://www.dezeen.com/2015/03/12/michael-graves-dies-aged-80/ |journal=Dezeen |access-date=August 23, 2017}}</ref>]]
[[File:Espicopal Acad int.JPG|thumb|Interior of the Chapel at the [[Episcopal Academy]] near [[Newtown Square]], PA by alumnus of the Academy architect [[Robert Venturi]] ]]
{{Main|Postmodern architecture}}

Scholarship regarding postmodernism and architecture is closely linked with the writings of critic-turned-architect [[Charles Jencks]], beginning with lectures in the early 1970s and his essay "The Rise of Post-Modern Architecture" from 1975.<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Jencks |first=Charles |author-link=Charles Jencks |date=1975 |title=The Rise of Post Modern Architecture |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=fdtUAAAAMAAJ&q=The+rise+of+Post-Modern+architecture |journal=Architectural Association Quarterly |volume=7 |issue=4 |pages=3–14 |via=[[Google Books]]}}</ref> His ''magnum opus'', however, is the book ''The Language of Post-Modern Architecture'', first published in 1977, and since running to seven editions<ref>{{Cite book |last=Jencks |first=Charles |title=The language of post-modern architecture |publisher=Rizzoli |year=1977 |isbn=0-8478-0167-5 |location=New York}}</ref> (in which he famously wrote: "Modern architecture died in St. Louis, Missouri, on 15 July 1972 at 3:32 p.m. (or thereabouts) when the infamous [[Pruitt–Igoe]] scheme, or rather several of its slab blocks, were given the final coup de grâce by dynamite."<ref>{{Cite web |last=Beal |first=Justin |date=2022 |title=What is/was Post-Modern (or Never Take the Marble for Granite) |url=https://www.jencksfoundation.org/explore/text/what-is-was-post-modern-or-never-take-the-marble-for-granite#77c4d4167e90 |access-date=Oct 6, 2024 |website=Jencks Foundation}}</ref>).

Jencks makes the point that postmodernism (like modernism) varies for each field of art, and that for architecture it is not just a reaction to modernism but what he terms ''double coding'': "Double Coding: the combination of Modern techniques with something else (usually traditional building) in order for architecture to communicate with the public and a concerned minority, usually other architects."<ref>{{cite book |last=Jencks |first=Charles |author-link=Charles Jencks |title=The Language of Post-Modern Architecture |publisher=Academy Editions |location=London |date=1974}}</ref>

In their book, "Revisiting Postmodernism", [[Terry Farrell (architect)|Terry Farrell]] and Adam Furman argue that postmodernism brought a more joyous and sensual experience to the culture, particularly in architecture.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Farrell |first=Terry |title=Revisiting Postmodernism |publisher=[[RIBA Publishing]] |year=2017 |isbn=978-1-85946-632-2 |location=Newcastle upon Tyne}}</ref> For instance, in response to the modernist slogan of [[Ludwig Mies van der Rohe]] that "less is more", the postmodernist Robert Venturi rejoined that "less is a bore".<ref>{{Cite web |last=Schudel |first=Matt |date=2018-09-28 |title=Remembering Robert Venturi, the US architect who said: 'Less is a bore' |url=https://www.independent.co.uk/news/robert-venturi-postmodern-architect-less-is-a-bore-a8555936.html |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20221016075701/https://www.independent.co.uk/news/robert-venturi-postmodern-architect-less-is-a-bore-a8555936.html |archive-date=2022-10-16 |access-date=2023-12-24 |website=Independent}}</ref>

===Dance===
{{main|Postmodern dance}}
The term "postmodern dance" is most strongly associated with the [[Judson Dance Theater]], located in New York's [[Greenwich Village]] during the 1960s and 1970s. Perhaps its most important principle is taken from the composer [[John Cage]]'s efforts to break down the distinction between art and life,{{sfn|Banes|2008}}<ref name=":0">{{Cite web |last=Guadagnino |first=Kate |date=Mar 20, 2019 |title=The pioneers of postmodern dance, 60 years later |url=https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/20/t-magazine/postmodern-dance.html |access-date=Oct 19, 2024 |website=[[New York Times]]}}</ref> developed in particular by the American dancer and choreographer [[Merce Cunningham]], Cage's partner.<ref name=":0" /> The Judson dancers "[stripped] dance of its theatrical conventions such as virtuoso technique, fanciful costumes, complex storylines, and the traditional stage [and] drew on everyday movements (sitting, walking, kneeling, and other gestures) to create their pieces, often performing them in ordinary spaces."<ref>{{Cite web |last=Custodio |first=Isabel |date=Jan 24, 2019 |title=The Voices of Judson Dance Theater |url=https://www.moma.org/magazine/articles/29 |access-date=Oct 19, 2024 |website=[[Museum of Modern Art|MoMA Magazine]]}}</ref> [[Anna Halprin]]'s San Francisco Dancers' Workshop, established in the 1950s to explore beyond the technical constraints of modern dance, pioneered ideas later developed at Judson;<ref>{{Cite book |title=Moving toward life: five decades of transformational dance |date=1995 |publisher=Wesleyan University Press |isbn=978-0-8195-6286-9 |editor-last=Halprin |editor-first=Anna |location=Hanover, N.H |pages=254 |editor-last2=Kaplan |editor-first2=Rachel}}</ref> Halprin, [[Simone Forti]], and [[Yvonne Rainer]] are considered "giants of the field".<ref>{{Cite web |last=Kramer |first=Michael J. |date=Jun 30, 2019 |title=The Mind Is a Muscle: Postmodern Dance and Intellectual History |url=https://s-usih.org/2019/06/the-mind-is-a-muscle-postmodern-dance-and-intellectual-history/ |access-date=Dec 7, 2024 |website=Society for U.S. Intellectual History}}</ref>

The Judson collective included trained dancers, visual artists, filmmakers, writers, and composers, exchanging approaches, and critiquing traditional dance,<ref>{{Cite web |last=Banes |first=Sally |date=Nov 9, 2009 |title=Judson Dance Theater |url=https://www.oxfordmusiconline.com/grovemusic/display/10.1093/gmo/9781561592630.001.0001/omo-9781561592630-e-1002083961 |access-date=2024-12-07 |website=[[Grove Music Online]] |language=en |doi=10.1093/gmo/9781561592630.article.a2083961}}</ref> with a focus "more on the intellectual process of creating dance than the end result".<ref>{{Cite web |last=Conyers |first=Claude |date=Feb 23, 2011 |title=Postmodern dance |url=https://www.oxfordmusiconline.com/grovemusic/display/10.1093/gmo/9781561592630.001.0001/omo-9781561592630-e-1002092662 |access-date=2024-12-07 |website=[[Grove Music Online]] |language=en |doi=10.1093/gmo/9781561592630.article.a2092662}}</ref> The end of the 1970s saw a distancing from this analytical postmodern dance, and a return to the expression of meaning.<ref name=":22">{{cite book |last1=Banes |first1=Sally |title=Terpsichore in Sneakers: Post-Modern Dance |date=2011 |publisher=Wesleyan University Press |isbn=978-0-8195-6160-2 |pages=xxiv}}</ref> In the 1980s and 1990s, dance began to incorporate other typically postmodern features such as the mixing of genres, challenging high–low cultural distinctions, and incorporating a political dimension.{{sfn|Banes|2008}}

=== Film ===
{{main|Postmodern film}}
Postmodern film aims to subvert the mainstream [[Convention (norm)|conventions]] of [[narrative structure]] and [[characterization]], and to test the audience's [[suspension of disbelief]].<ref name="Susan12">{{cite journal |last=Hopkins |first=Susan |date=Spring 1995 |title=Generation Pulp |journal=Youth Studies Australia |volume=14 |issue=3 |pages=14–19}}</ref><ref name="Laurent13">{{cite journal |last=Kretzschmar |first=Laurent |date=July 2002 |title=Is Cinema Renewing Itself? |journal=Film-Philosophy |volume=6 |issue=15 |doi=10.3366/film.2002.0015}}</ref><ref name="Linda22">{{cite web |last=Hutcheon |first=Linda |date=January 19, 1998 |title=Irony, Nostalgia, and the Postmodern |url=http://www.library.utoronto.ca/utel/criticism/hutchinp.html |publisher=University of Toronto English Library}}</ref> Typically, such films also break down the cultural divide between [[High culture|high]] and [[Low culture|low]] [[art]] and often upend typical portrayals of [[gender]], [[Race (classification of humans)|race]], [[Social class|class]], [[genre]], and [[time]] with the goal of creating something that does not abide by traditional narrative expression.<ref>{{Cite web |title=Representing Postmodern Marginality in Three Documentary Films. - Free Online Library |url=https://www.thefreelibrary.com/Representing+Postmodern+Marginality+in+Three+Documentary+Films.-a0204861632 |website=www.thefreelibrary.com}}</ref>

Certain key characteristics are used to separate the postmodern from modernist cinema and traditional narrative film.<ref name=":2">{{Cite book |last=Woods |first=Tim |title=Beginning postmodernism |publisher=[[Manchester University Press]] |year=1999 |isbn=978-0-7190-5211-8 |edition=1st |location=Manchester |pages=214–218}}</ref><ref name="archive.org">{{Cite web |last=Betz |first=Mark |date=March 23, 2009 |title=Beyond the subtitle : remapping European art cinema |url=http://archive.org/details/betz_beyond-the-subtitle-remapping-european-art-cinema |publisher=Minneapolis : University of Minnesota Press |via=Internet Archive}}</ref> One is an extensive use of [[Homage (arts)|homage]] or [[pastiche]], imitating the style or character of other artistic works. A second is [[meta-reference]] or self-reference, highlighting the relation of the image to other images in media and not to any kind of external reality.<ref name=":2" /> Viewers are reminded that the film itself is only a film, perhaps through the use of [[intertextuality]], in which the film's characters reference other works of fiction. A third characteristic is stories that [[Nonlinear narrative|unfold out of chronological order]], deconstructing or fragmenting time to emphasize the constructed nature of film. Another common element is a bridging of the gap between [[highbrow]] and [[Low culture|lowbrow]],.<ref name="Laurent13"/><ref name="Linda22"/><ref name=":2" /> [[Contradictions]] of all sorts are crucial to postmodernism.<ref name="Laurent13"/><ref name="Mary1">{{cite book |last=Alemany-Galway |first=Mary |title=A Postmodern Cinema |publisher=Scarecrow Press |year=2002 |location=Kent, England}}</ref>

[[Ridley Scott]]'s ''[[Blade Runner]]'' (1982) has been widely studied as a prime example of postmodernism. The setting is a future [[dystopia]] where "replicants", enhanced [[Android (robot)|android]] workers nearly indistinguishable from humans, are hunted down when they escape from their jobs. The film blurs boundaries between genres and cultures, and fuses disparate styles and periods: futuristic visuals "mingle with drab 1940s clothes and offices, punk rock hairstyles, pop Egyptian styles and oriental culture."<ref name=":2" /><ref name="Laurent13" /> The blending of [[film noir]] and [[science-fiction]] into [[tech noir]] illustrates the deconstruction of both cinema and genre.<ref>{{cite web |last=Sherlock |first=Ben |date=February 21, 2021 |title=One Movie Both Invented and Perfected the Tech Noir |url=https://gamerant.com/80s-movie-invented-tech-noir/ |work=[[Game Rant]]}}</ref> The film can also be seen as an example of major studios using the "mystique and cachet of the term 'postmodern' as a sales pitch", resulting in [[Cinema of the United States|Hollywood]] movies that "demonstrate all the postmodern characteristics".<ref name=":2" /> From another perspective, "critical responses to ''Blade Runner'' fall on either side of a modern/postmodern line" –  critical analysis from "modernist" and "postmodernist" approaches produce entirely different interpretations.<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Begley |first=Varun |date=2004 |title="Blade Runner" and the Postmodern: A Reconsideration |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/43797175 |journal=Literature/Film Quarterly |volume=32 |issue=3 |pages=186–192 |jstor=43797175 |issn=0090-4260 }}</ref>

=== Literature ===
{{Main|Postmodern literature}}
In 1971, the American literary theorist [[Ihab Hassan]] made "postmodernism" popular in literary studies with his influential book, ''The Dismemberment of Orpheus: Toward a Postmodern Literature''. According to scholar David Herwitz, American writers such as [[John Barth]] (who had controversially declared that the novel was "exhausted" as a genre), [[Donald Barthelme]], and [[Thomas Pynchon]] responded in various ways to the stylistic innovations of ''[[Finnegans Wake]]'' and the late work of [[Samuel Beckett]]. Postmodern literature often calls attention to issues regarding its own complicated connection to reality. The postmodern novel plays with language, twisted plots, multiple narrators, and unresolved endings, unsettling the conventional idea of the novel as faithfully reflecting the world.{{sfn|Herwitz|2008|loc=History of Postmodernism}}

In ''Postmodernist Fiction'' (1987), [[Brian McHale]] details the shift from modernism to postmodernism, arguing that postmodern works developed out of modernism, moving from concern with what is there ("[[Ontology|ontological]] dominant") to concern with how we can know it's there ("[[Epistemology|epistemological]] dominant").<ref>{{cite book |author-link=Brian McHale |last=McHale |first=B. |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=ec2HAgAAQBAJ |title=Postmodernist Fiction |location=[[Abingdon-on-Thames]] |publisher=[[Routledge]] |date=2003 |isbn=1134949162 |via=[[Google Books]]}}</ref> McHale's "What Was Postmodernism?" (2007)<ref>{{Cite journal |last=McHale |first=Brian |date=20 December 2007 |title=What Was Postmodernism? |url=https://electronicbookreview.com/essay/what-was-postmodernism/ |access-date=4 April 2013 |journal=Electronic Book Review }}</ref> follows [[Raymond Federman]]'s lead in now using the past tense when discussing postmodernism. Others argue that postmodernism in literature utilizes compositional and semantic practices such as inclusivity, intentional indiscrimination, nonselection, and "logical impossibility."<ref>{{Cite book|title=Narrative Skepticism: Moral Agency and Representations of Consciousness in Fiction|publisher= Fairleigh Dickinson University Press|page=7|author=Linda Schermer Raphael}}</ref>

=== Music ===
[[File:Madonna Adi 9 (cropped).jpg|thumb|American singer-songwriter [[Madonna]]]]
{{Main|Postmodern music|Postmodern classical music|Art pop}}

Postmodern influence extends across all areas of music; its accessibility to a general audience requires an understanding of references, irony, and pastiche that varies widely between artists and their works.<ref name=":8">{{Cite web |last=Pasler |first=Jann |date=Jan 20, 2001 |title=Postmodernism |url=https://www.oxfordmusiconline.com/grovemusic/display/10.1093/gmo/9781561592630.001.0001/omo-9781561592630-e-0000040721 |access-date=2024-12-15 |website=[[Grove Music Online]] |language=en |doi=10.1093/gmo/9781561592630.article.40721}}</ref>  In [[popular music]], [[Madonna]], [[David Bowie]], and [[Talking Heads]] have been singled out by critics and scholars as postmodern icons. The belief that [[art music]] – serious, classical music – holds higher cultural and technical value than [[Folk music|folk]] and popular traditions, lost influence under postmodern analysis, as musical hybrids and crossovers attracted scholarly attention.<ref name=":8" /><ref name=":9">{{Cite journal |last=Alper |first=Garth |date=Dec 2000 |title=Making sense out of postmodern music? |url=https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/03007760008591782 |journal=Popular Music and Society |language=en |volume=24 |issue=4 |pages=1–14 |doi=10.1080/03007760008591782 |issn=0300-7766}}</ref>

Across musical traditions, postmodernism can be identified through several core characteristics: genre mixing; irony, humor, and self-parody; "surface" exploration with less concern for formal structure than in modernist approaches; and a return to tonality.<ref name=":9" /> This represents a loss of authority of the Eurocentric perspective on music and the rise of [[world music]] as influenced by postmodern values. Composers took different routes: some returned to traditional modes over experimentation, others challenged the authority of dominant musical structures, others intermingled disparate sources.<ref name=":8" />

The composer [[Jonathan Kramer]] has written that avant-garde musical compositions (which some would consider modernist rather than postmodernist) "defy more than seduce the listener, and they extend by potentially unsettling means the very idea of what music is."<ref>{{Cite book |last=Kramer |first=Jonathan |title=Postmodern music, postmodern listening |publisher=[[Bloomsbury Academic]] |year=2016 |isbn=978-1-5013-0602-0 |location=New York |pages=45}}</ref> In the 1960s, composers such as [[Henryk Górecki]] and [[Philip Glass]] reacted to the perceived elitism and dissonant sound of atonal academic modernism by producing music with simple textures and relatively consonant harmonies,{{citation needed|date=June 2024}} whilst others, most notably [[John Cage]] challenged the modernist account of structure by including the contingent in the structure of his compositions themselves.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Williams |first=Alastair |url=https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/cambridge-companion-to-john-cage/52F3631719F4EBFBA9133AC011F4618A |title=The Cambridge Companion to John Cage |date=2002 |publisher=[[Cambridge University Press]] |isbn=978-0-521-78968-4 |editor-last=Nicholls |editor-first=David |series=Cambridge Companions to Music |location=Cambridge |pages=231–232 |chapter=Cage and postmodernism |doi=10.1017/ccol9780521783484}}</ref>

In 2023, music critic Andy Cush described Talking Heads as "New York art-punks" whose "blend of nervy postmodernism and undeniable groove made them one of the defining rock bands of the late 1970s and '80s."<ref>{{Cite web |last=Cush |first=Andy |date=Sep 21, 2023 |title=Talking Heads' Original Lineup on Stop Making Sense, Their Early Days, and the Future |url=https://pitchfork.com/features/interview/talking-heads-reunion-2023-stop-making-sense/ |access-date=Sep 25, 2024 |website=[[Pitchfork (magazine)|Pitchfork]]}}</ref> [[Media studies|Media theorist]] [[Dick Hebdige]], examining the "[[Road to Nowhere]]" music video in 1989, said the group "draw eclectically on a wide range of visual and aural sources to create a distinctive pastiche or hybrid 'house style' which they have used since their formation in the mid-1970s deliberately to stretch received (industrial) definitions of what rock/pop/video/Art/ performance/audience are", calling them "a properly postmodernist band."<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Mitchell |first=Tony |date=Oct 1989 |title=Performance and the Postmodern in Pop Music |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/3208181 |journal=Theatre Journal |volume=41 |issue=3 |pages=284 |doi=10.2307/3208181|jstor=3208181 }}</ref> According to lead vocalist/guitarist/songwriter [[David Byrne]], commenting in 2011, "Anything could be mixed and matched – or [[Mashup (culture)|mashed up]], as is said today – and anything was fair game for inspiration.”<ref>{{Cite web |last=Jensen |first=Emily |date=July 27, 2022 |title=How Virgil Abloh Defined Postmodern Fashion |url=https://jingdaily.com/posts/virgil-abloh-off-white-louis-vuitton-postmodern-fashion |access-date=Sep 25, 2024 |website=Jing Daily}}</ref>

Avant-garde academics labelled American singer Madonna a "personification of the postmodern" and created a sub-discipline of [[cultural studies]] known as [[Madonna studies]].<ref name="Brown2003">{{cite web |last=Brown |first=Stephen |year=2003 |title=On Madonna's Brand Ambition: Presentation Transcript |url=https://www.acrwebsite.org/volumes/11267/volumes/e06/E-06 |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170419105437/https://www.acrwebsite.org/volumes/11267/volumes/e06/E-06 |archive-date=19 April 2017 |access-date=1 April 2021 |publisher=Association For Consumer Research |pages=119–201 |volume=6}}</ref> Her self-aware constructs of gender and identity, and classic film references in music videos for "[[Material Girl#Music video|Material Girl]]" (1984) and "[[Express Yourself (Madonna song)#Music video|Express Yourself]]" (1989), made her a favorite of cultural theorists, who saw her as "enacting postmodernist models of subjectivity."<ref>{{Cite web |last=McClary |first=Susan |date=Nov 26, 2013 |title=Madonna |url=https://www.oxfordmusiconline.com/grovemusic/display/10.1093/gmo/9781561592630.001.0001/omo-9781561592630-e-0000046456 |access-date=2024-12-15 |website=Grove Music Online |language=en |doi=10.1093/gmo/9781561592630.article.46456|isbn=978-1-56159-263-0 }}</ref> Madonna was seen to embody fragmentation, pastiche, retrospection, anti-foundationalism, and de-differentiation; her "subversion of the subversion of the subversion of the [[male gaze]]" in the "Material Girl" video was analyzed.<ref name="Brown2003" />

=== Performance and theater ===
{{Main article|Postmodern theatre}}
Postmodern theater emerged as a reaction against modernist theater. Most postmodern productions are centered on highlighting the fallibility of definite truth, instead encouraging the audience to reach their own individual understanding. Essentially, thus, postmodern theater raises questions rather than attempting to supply answers.{{Citation needed|date=October 2024}}

=== Sculpture ===
[[File:Kunst - Kröller Müller Museum (49806023072).jpg|thumb|213x213px|"Trowel" (1976) by Claes Oldenburg.<ref>{{Cite web |last=de Graaf |first=Eline |date=Jan 2017 |title=How the silver trowel became blue |url=https://krollermuller.nl/en/how-the-silver-trowel-became-blue |access-date=Oct 29, 2024 |website=[[Kröller-Müller Museum]]}}</ref>]]
Sculptor [[Claes Oldenburg|Claes Oldenberg]], at the forefront of the [[pop art]] movement, declared in 1961: "I am for an art that is political-erotical-mystical … I am for an art that embroils itself with everyday crap and still comes out on top."<ref>{{Cite web |last=Jones |first=Caroline A. |date=2003 |title=Post-modernism |url=https://www.oxfordartonline.com/groveart/display/10.1093/gao/9781884446054.001.0001/oao-9781884446054-e-7000069002 |access-date=2024-10-15 |website=Grove Art Online |language=en |doi=10.1093/gao/9781884446054.article.t069002|isbn=978-1-884446-05-4 }}</ref> That year, he opened ''The Store'' in a [[Variety store|dime store]] area of [[East Village, Manhattan|New York's Lower East Side]], where he blurred the line between art and commerce by producing and selling brightly painted plaster replicas of hamburgers and cans of soda, dresses, underwear, and other everyday objects: "Museum in b[ourgeois] concept equals store in mine".<ref>{{Cite web |title=Giant Three-Way Plug (Cube Tap) |url=https://philamuseum.org/collection/object/312790 |access-date=Oct 14, 2024 |website=[[Philadelphia Museum of Art]]}}</ref><ref>{{Cite web |last=Anapur |first=Eli |date=Oct 3, 2023 |title=Revisiting Claes Oldenburg's The Store - The Slippery Line Between Art and Commodity |url=https://www.widewalls.ch/magazine/claes-oldenburg-the-store |access-date=Oct 14, 2024 |website=Widewalls}}</ref>