system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
ELI5:Postmodernism

Please explain what postmodernism is, I'm forever seeing this phrase applied to nearly everything and honestly have no idea what it means...
gpt
It's been used a lot in recent history, so some confusion is understandable.

First, plain old modernism was all about reducing things to their simplest, purest forms. Painting isn't about portraying scenes, it's about paint on a canvas, a chair isn't decorative or symbolic, it's should be a chair, as simply as possible, etc.

Postmodernism began as a reaction to that, questioning everything. "What even is a canvas? What even is a chair?" It has typically involved a lot of deconstruction of things, parodying of things, reference to other work and pop culture and such.

A good example is Andy Warhol's famous Campbell's Soup Cans. He took an everyday object, and by changing it's context (painted, in an art gallery), he encouraged people to think about it differently. He took it a step further by making many copies of the painting, making the "art" as mass produced as the supposedly "artless" can.

If all of that sounds a bit like artsy double-speak... well you wouldn't be alone in thinking that, but there are definitely some postmodernists who have done interesting things.