Here I would’ve thought that a Modernist architect was someone like Gaudi (i.e. lots of ornamentation), but I’ve understood Modernism to generally mean Western culture, pre-WW1 (or pre-WW2, at the latest; see also: Joyce, Yeats).*
I’ve never really understood “postmodernism” except in the sense that it follows Modernism (as I’ve described it above). I couldn’t figure out whether the things it describes are supposed to be a negative, or a positive? (Perhaps the answer is “yes”)
*I’ve mentioned on the BBS before, I had an English professor who further distinguished between Modernism (art for art’s sake, elitist and even outright misanthropic e.g. Baudelaire, Yeats) and avant-garde (provocative, socially engaged, political: e.g. Surrealism, Mexican muralists, Situationist, punk rock). If, perhaps, Dada is where some things might have switched from one to the other, then that’s also right after WW1, though the older Ubu Roi might go under this definition of avant-garde. Same professor was also skeptical of postmodernism, but also without explaining (in a way that I, at least, could understand) what it is.
