Modern art was explored to its limits from the early twentieth century till early 1950s. By this stage, many artists realized that they have reached the limits of modern art ideas. Artists needed new ideas to encourage new growth, just as modern art had come as a new force to change the style and rules of pre-modernity. This new force of ideas is postmodern art.
Postmodern art period started in late 1950s and in the world of this artistic expression, the change in ideas that arose with the rise of postmodernism was the biggest development. The old methods and strategies of the linear perspective were left out in the favor of new advanced ways of looking at ideas and objects. Postmodern art gave us various new ideas and concepts to bring the art world forward in a new direction.
Postmodernism theory takes various different styles and explores a broad range of themes and ideas. However, a large number of postmodern artworks include materials, themes and forms which challenge widely accepted values and traditions in culture and society, including those related with Modernism in art.
Postmodernist art theory may be seen as a response to the concepts and reductionism of Modernism. Modernists tried to discover the fundamentals or universals of art, but postmodernism aims to unseat them, to embrace contradiction and diversity. A postmodern concept to art thus totally rejects the difference between ‘high’ and ‘low’ forms. It also rejects hard genre boundaries and favors eclecticism, the integration of forms and ideas. Similarly, it also promotes irony, parody and playfulness. Unlike modern art, postmodern art does not consider fragmentation as somehow defective or undesirable, but rather enjoys it (1).
Postmodern art challenged all that had gone before; modern art was then seen as outdated. Postmodern art is radical and progressive by comparison.
Roy Liechtenstein presented his postmodern art in the form of comic pictures, which are usually humorous in subject matter. Liechtenstein combined humor and modern art to produce his postmodern work. In some of his later works, he parodied modernist art by bringing them into his comic pictures, which truly represents postmodern art.
Roy Liechtenstein also demonstrated the postmodern art technique of halftone printing technique in paintings like his ‘Wham’ in 1963. Liechtenstein was fascinated with this idea and technology adopted in printing common comics and other art. By enlarging halftone prints on large prints, he made the characteristics of halftone printing popular in the postmodern art.
Postmodern art does have a definite place in current art history. It enabled us to move away from modernity and all that went with it. In the visual field it represents a distinct mark in the arrival of postmodernism.