Remodernism is an artistic and philosophical movement aimed at reviving aspects of modernism, particularly in its early form, in a manner that both follows after and contrasts against postmodernism. The movement was initiated in 2000 by stuckists Billy Childish and Charles Thomson, with a manifesto, Remodernism in an attempt to introduce a period of new "spirituality" into art, culture and society to replace postmodernism, which they said was cynical and spiritually bankrupt. In 2002, a remodernism art show in Albuquerque was accompanied by an essay from University of California, Berkeley art professor, Kevin Radley, who said there was a renewal of artists working without the limitation of irony and cynicism, and that there was a renewal of the sense of beauty. Adherents of remodernism advocate it as a forward and radical, not reactionary, impetus.

Postmodernism is an intellectual stance or mode of discourse characterized by skepticism towards scientific rationalism and the concept of objective reality. It questions the "grand narratives" of modernity, rejects the certainty of knowledge and stable meaning, and acknowledges the influence of ideology in maintaining political power. Objective claims are dismissed as naïve realism, emphasizing the conditional nature of knowledge. Postmodernism embraces self-referentiality, epistemological relativism, moral relativism, pluralism, irony, irreverence, and eclecticism. It opposes the "universal validity" of binary oppositions, stable identity, hierarchy, and categorization.