Intro to Postmodernism Irony

Postmodernism is a late-20th-century movement in the arts, architecture, and criticism that was a departure from modernism. In the perspective of Postmodernism, absolute truth does not exist, all things are relative according to differences in perception and aesthetic. Postmodernist reviews the truth with irony, and challenges the objective understanding of beauty, war, and  politic. The art peace "Fountain" by Duchamp challenged the idea, that all art peace should been aesthetic appreciated. Joseph Heller satiric war with his novel catch-22 by telling the ugliness of warfare.

Art is like a shipwreck .. it's everyman for himself." - Marcel Duchamp In New York, in 1917, Henri Robert Marcel Duchamp stood a plumbing fixture on its back, signed "R. Mutt" to the left side of the plumbing fixture, it is the first exhibition of the Society of Independent Artists under the title "Fountain". Fountain has question the standard of beauty with itself as an example, what is art? what is beauty?

In August 1944, Heller flew on a mission made him faced the possibility of death for the first time. That mission, says Heller biographer Tracy Daugherty, shaped the way Heller thought about war, a sensibility that permeates his novel. In the novel Catch-22, Joesph Heller created a paradoxical situation from which an individual cannot escape because of contradictory rules. Catch-22s often result from individuals has no control over.

In Netflix`s episode, House of Cards. Beau Willimon use depict how powerful politicians manipulate each other to gain power,On the stage, they are famous and powerful leaders of people, but behind the stage, you never know what they did.  The comparison between what they promote and what they actually do become an irony.

All of three of those above are the production from the postmodern era, they are not universal recognized, , they challenged traditional objective ideas of beauty, warfare and politics.and showed mankind is regressive. And over all, they were expressed themselves with a different way- Irony.

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Duchamp`s fountain; Funtrivia; http://www.funtrivia.com/en/subtopics/Duchamps-Fountain-197323.html; 2012
Catch-22 (logic); Wikipedia; http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catch-22_(logic); 2012.
House of Cards TV episode; Netflix; 2013-2014.