Frederic Jameson - Modernism vs. Post-Modernism

To simplify the difference between modernism and postmodernism Jameson has compared two works depicting shoes: First he looks at the shoes of a peasant- Vincent Van Gogh's "Pair of Shoes" and two different ways of interpreting the painting. One claims that he is trying to compensate for the hardshipof the peasants by painting their world in a beautiful manner. The other is more philosophical and romanticised, the shoes are explained to reveal the world to us and have a connection to earth. The main point is that both these readingsare hermeneutical; they allow the shoes to connect back to a vaster reality.

In contrast to this we have Andy Warhol's glittery "Diamond dust shoes" which, according to the author, lacks anyconnection with the real, it is simulacra- a copy without an original. You may be able to trace them back to other images but not actually to any real shoes that Warhol, or anyone else for that matter, has had a physical experience of. Warhol's work turns around commodities and can in general exemplify the limited potentials of art todayto be innovative, Jameson asks us if it's even possible to make critical and political art in the age of late capitalism. Photography and the photographic negative (which enables reproduction) are blamed to be the main factors for this death of content and meaning. The feeling, creating subject has altogether dissapeared.

This is a short summary, if you are interested of this theme read more in:
Frederic Jameson "The Cultural Logic of late Capitalism" (pp. 6-9)