Have just finished reading (for the second time) Jay Merrick's feature in the Independent today about post-modernism and the forthcoming major exhibiton at the Victoria & Albert Museum.
Why is he so angry?
There was a more measured assessment by Rowan Moore in the Observer on 4th September.
Jay Merrick asks "why we're in thrall to something so shallow".
I think that the issue is one of personal freedom. For all its austere beauty, modernism represents the elite telling ordinary people how their lives should be lived. In this respect Modernism is every bit as totalitarian as Fascism, Nazism or Communism (possibly more so - even the Third Reich didn't try to dictate what sort of cutlery people should use).
Post-modernism can be interpreted as "free to choose" (I have used that phrase deliberately). And Jay Merrick will have to accept that being free to choose means allowing people to choose kitsch if they wish. The alternative is a modernist autobahn to serfdom.
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