There has been much discussion about when “modernity” began, whether and when it came to an end or even continued to exist. Was it replaced by postmodernity – or was this just a historical episode? What is postmodernity anyway? A colourful, eccentric style like the fashion and furniture of the 1980s? The time after the failure of the promises of modernity? Or a way of looking at the world with pleasure in its diversity and its contradictions? If in modernism it was “form follows function”, in postmodernity it became “form follows fun”.
One thing is certain: Postmodernity has many facets. The Bundeskunsthalle in Bonn is examining some of them until 28 January 2024 under the title “Everything at once. Postmodernity 1967 – 1992”. According to the museum, postmodernity “marked the beginning of our present: modernism, which believed it could sort everything out with the same houses, furniture and rights for everyone, was abandoned and a bizarre world emerged from its ruins. Architects declared the amusement park to be the ideal city, designers liberated themselves from good taste, and the struggle for self-realisation took the place of system struggles. New media synchronised the globe, and images became the stage on which style and recognition were fought over.”
Staged by the “postmodern architecture and design legends” Nigel Coates and Neville Brody, the show curated by Eva Kraus and Kolja Reichert leads chronologically through a fascinating era. Using examples from design, fashion, pop music, architecture, cinema, philosophy, art and literature, it shows what set the tone between 1967 and 1992. It tells of the beginning of the information society, the unleashing of the financial markets, the great era of subcultures, disco, punk, Memphis design and MTV. And not to forget the “boom of the temples of culture”, to which the exhibition owes its largest exhibit, the Bundeskunsthalle itself. When it opened in 1992, it says, “the Cold War was over, and Francis Fukuyama declared ‘the end of history’ in his famous book. Today it is clear that history has moved on, and postmodernity is also being argued about again.” Therefore, the question is also asked: Is postmodernity over – or are we in the middle of it?
The exhibition is accompanied by a catalogue in German and English with essays by Nikita Dhawan, Diedrich Diederichsen, Oliver Elser, Gertrud Koch, Eva Kraus, Sylvia Lavin, Kolja Reichert, Lea-Catherine Szacka and others, as well as conversations with AA Bronson, Joseph Vogl and Moritz Schularick, Neville Brody and Eva Kraus, Denise Scott Brown and Kolja Reichert, New Models with Kevin Driscoll, among others.
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