Both modernism and postmodernism are reactions to change, with modernism reacting to the rapidity of technological and social change at the end of the nineteenth century, while postmodernism is a reaction to the social uniformity of modernism. Again, each makes a statement in a certain way because it has been made possible to make statements in just that way. Postmodernism is a restatement of the private and personal after the modernist era of the social and public. When Harvey cites the technological changes contributing to the development of postmodernism, he is citing the changes that permitted the artist to shape material for personal tastes and individual needs (Harvey 66). In this sense, and with reference to architecture, the postmodernist shapes public space in a certain way because he or she can so shape it.
Levin agrees as well that postmodernism has derived from the ability of artists to produce works in a mass quantity, so to speak, because of new processes and products involving mass production: "By the time men were traveling to the moon, art was being assembled in factories from blueprints" (Levin 5). While the postmodernist may see the modernist era as more scientifically oriented, it is clear that postmodernism is also influenced by scientific developments and possibilities. Levin says that modernism was highly optimistic, while postmodernism is more cynical. This came about as the result of new social forces that challenged the assumptions of modernism and that developed a new introspective culture, and internalized and personalized culture rather than the public culture of modernism (Levin 5-6).
Levin sees postmodernism as involving a radical change in thinking because of the demise of the energy of modernism. He finds that toward the end of the modernist period, the modernist movement came to be seen as reductive and austere. Levin sees this change to postmodernism as more wrenching and traumati...