Postwar architectural change is commodification’s next stage, not Modernism’s end
Evidence
It is hard, then, to see what has occurred in architecture, any more than developments in painting, as representing the end of Modernism. The architectural changes in particular seem rather to constitute a further stage in the process of commodification involved in the postwar triumph of the International Style. To stress the incorpora tion of Modernism, let alone that of its ‘Postmodern’ variants, does not require that we see all this as a betrayal of some original radical meaning. As I argue in chapter 2 above, Modernism in its heyday was characterized by its ambiguity, its capacity to express a variety of different political positions, from Marinetti’s fascism to Brecht’s Marxism, as well as, more frequently, to constitute precisely a flight from politics. The years since 1945 have not seen the Modernist revolution betrayed. — Alex Callinicos, Against Postmodernism, 588
Categorization
- XREF: This is the core anti-Jameson argument: ‘postmodernism’ is a further stage of commodification, not a rupture. Directly contests Jameson’s periodizing of a late-capitalist break in architecture/painting. — connects to: Defining Postmodernism as internal to Modernism abandons its periodizing claim; Postmodernism is a tendency within late modernism, not its successor — Aijaz Ahmad, In Theory: Nations, Classes, Literatures, 236; Postmodern architectural disputes are inseparable from capitalist spatial reorganization — Alex Callinicos, Against Postmodernism: A Marxist…, 577 (+2 more)
- QUESTION: The claim that the International Style’s postwar triumph equals commodification — worth checking how Callinicos’ account of the International Style’s ascendance squares with its earlier Bauhaus/utopian phase.
- ADDENDUM: The commodification-of-an-artistic-style arc parallels ‘Grafting & Growth’ and its grafting metaphors — here an art movement gets ‘grafted’ onto corporate capitalism rather than betrayed.
Broader Connections
- Postmodernism is a tendency within late modernism, not its successor
#corroborates(0.82) — Aijaz Ahmad, In Theory, 236 - Modernism emerged from a specific industrial-capitalist conjuncture that postwar capitalism destroyed
#expands(0.82) — Alex Callinicos, Against Postmodernism, 562 - Postmodern architectural disputes are inseparable from capitalist spatial reorganization
#corroborates(0.80) — Alex Callinicos, Against Postmodernism, 577 - Accelerated turnover transforms modernist aesthetics into postmodernist flux
#expands(0.78) — David Harvey, The Condition of Postmodernity, 940