Title: Postmodernism: the 10 key moments in the birth of a movement | Art and design | The Guardian
Headings: Postmodernism: the 10 key moments in the birth of a movement
Art and design
Postmodernism: the 10 key moments in the birth of a movement
Stuart Jeffries
1972: The demolition of the Pruitt Igoe housing scheme
1973: The birth of late capitalism
1979: The Postmodern Condition is published
1984: Art is colonised by commerce
1989: Jeff Koons gets jaded
1992: The End of History
2001: Apple launches the iPod
2002: Dr Evil embraces hip-hop
2011: Pop-up culture goes mainstream
The future

Content: Probably none of this happened, but who can resist sending up a man who has girls' dancewear for a surname? Lyotard argued that the intellectual foundations of western thought as built by Kant, Hegel, Marx, though probably not De Botton, were teetering. Western societies since the Enlightenment had, he argued, been informed by "grand narratives" that were no longer convincing stories of human progress. He, like lots of other soixante-huitards, was disappointed by the failure of one of those grand narratives, Marxism, to deliver paradise. He glanced narrowly too across the Channel and, seeing Thatcher's policies (soon to be echoed by Reagan) of economic deregulation, selfish enterprise culture and the denial of society, thought that political progress – as he and like-minded beret-wearers had comprehended it since 1789 – might well be over. Henceforth, he and the likes of Foucault thought, localised political interventions – feminism, environmentalism, identity politics – would replace mass progressive movements. And then, bored by his thoughts, Lyotard put his hands back up his girlfriend's jumper, like the French stereotype we've imagined him to be. 1984: Art is colonised by commerce
In 1984, literary theorist Fredric Jameson wrote his essay Postmodernism, or the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism, arguing that art had been colonised by commerce. This was before adman Charles Saatchi started buying up YBAs and decades before Damien Hirst claimed to have sold a diamond-encrusted skull for £50m.