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Modernism, tends to present a fragmented view of human subjectivity and history but presents that fragmentation as something tragic, something to be lamented and mourned as a loss. Many modernist works try to uphold the idea that works of art can provide the unity, coherence, and meaning which has been lost in most of modern life; art will do what other human institutions fail to do.
Postmodernism, in contrast, doesn't lament the idea of fragmentation, provisionality, or incoherence, but rather celebrates that. The world is meaningless? Let's not pretend that art can make meaning then, let's just play with nonsense.
Even modernists talk about the absurdity of it all in a longfaced manner. But behind it is the artist's ambition that he will breathe coherence into it all.