THE AGE OF CONFUSION

Scott Masters

Crestwood College

• Ongoing industrialization and WWI quickened the crumbling of the “Old Order” – it had staggered imaginations and left traditional values open to question

• New intellectual and artistic (and scientific, political…) trends sought to fill the void; since the “rules” had been smashed, experimentation became the norm…

• This created an atmosphere of relativism…many sought refuge in extremism…

• This process began before the war…

• The theme of relativism extended into all parts of society, and Existentialism continued to be the driving force…– Life has no absolute meaning…– Individuals are accountable to themselves…– There is no god…– There is no absolute morality…– All that awaits us the void (le neant)…– There are no rules total freedom and experimentation…

Jean –Paul Sartre – Huis Clos

Samuel Beckett – Waiting for Godot

• Theatre of the Absurd…

Eugene Ionesco – The Chairs

Freud…

• Psychoanalysis• Id, Ego, Super Ego• Oedipus Complex• The Interpretation

of Dreams• Freudian slips…

• More confusion…

I was thinking of so many things he didnt know of Mulvey and Mr Stanhope and Hester and father and old captain Groves and the sailors playing all birds fly and I say stoop and washing up dishes they called it on the pier and the sentry in front of the governors house with the thing round his white helmet poor devil half roasted and the Spanish girls laughing in their shawls and their tall combs and the auctions in the morning the Greeks and the jews and the Arabs and the devil knows who else from all the ends of Europe and Duke street and the fowl market all clucking outside Larby Sharons and the poor donkeys slipping half asleep and the vague fellows in the cloaks asleep in the shade on the steps and the big wheels of the carts of the bulls and the old castle thousands of years old yes and those handsome Moors all in white and turbans like kings asking you to sit down in their little bit of a shop and Ronda with the old windows of the posadas 2 glancing eyes a lattice hid for her lover to kiss the iron and the wineshops half open at night and the castanets and the night we missed the boat at Algeciras the watchman going about serene with his lamp and O that awful deepdown torrent O and the sea the sea crimson sometimes like fire and the glorious sunsets and the figtrees in the Alameda gardens yes and all the queer little streets and the pink and blue and yellow houses and the rosegardens and the jessamine and geraniums and cactuses and Gibraltar as a girl where I was a Flower of the mountain yes when I put the rose in my hair like the Andalusian girls used or shall I wear a red yes and how he kissed me under the Moorish wall and I thought well as well him as another and then I asked him with my eyes to ask again yes and then he asked me would I yes to say yes my mountain flower and first I put my arms around him yes and drew him down to me so he could feel my breasts all perfume yes and his heart was going like mad and yes I said yes I will Yes.

Surrealism• James Joyce - Ulysses

• “Stream of

Consciousness”

Salvador Dali: Soft Construction with Boiled Beans (Premonition of Civil War),

1936

Salvador Dali: Soft Construction with Boiled Beans (Premonition of Civil War),

1936 Late 1920s-1940s.

Influenced by Feud’s theories on psychoanalysis and the subconscious.

Confusing & startling images like those in dreams.

Themes in Early Modern ArtThemes in Early Modern Art

1. Uncertainty/insecurity.

2. Disillusionment.

3. The subconscious.

4. Overt sexuality.

5. Violence & savagery.

Edvard Munch: The Scream (1893)Edvard Munch: The Scream (1893)

Expressionism Using bright

colors to express a particular emotion.

Wassily Kandinsky: On White II (1923)Wassily Kandinsky: On White II (1923)

Gustav Klim t:

Judith I (1901)

Gustav Klim t:

Judith I (1901)

Secessionists Disrupt the

conservative values of Viennese society.

Obsessed with the self.

Man is a sexual being, leaning toward despair.

Gustav Klimt: The Kiss (1907-8)Gustav Klimt: The Kiss (1907-8)

Henri Matisse:

Open Window(1905)

Henri Matisse:

Open Window(1905)

The use of intense colors in a violent, and uncontrolled way

“Wild Beast” = Fauvism

Georges Braque: Violin & Candlestick (1910)

Georges Braque: Violin & Candlestick (1910)

CUBISM

The subject matter is broken down, analyzed, and reassembled in abstract form.

Cezanne The artist should treat nature in terms of the cylinder, the sphere, and the cone.

Georges Braque:

Woman with a Guitar(1913)

Georges Braque:

Woman with a Guitar(1913)

Pablo Picasso: Les Demoiselles d’Avignon (1907)

Pablo Picasso: Les Demoiselles d’Avignon (1907)

Pablo Picasso:

Woman with a

Flower(1932)

Pablo Picasso:

Woman with a

Flower(1932)

George Grosz

Grey Day(1921)

George Grosz

Grey Day(1921)

DaDa Ridiculed

contemporary culture & traditional art forms.

The collapse during WW I of social and moral values.

Nihilistic.

Marcel Duchamp: Fountain (1917)Marcel Duchamp: Fountain (1917)

Walter Gropius: Bauhaus Building (1928)

Walter Gropius: Bauhaus Building (1928)

Bauhaus

A utopian quality.

Based on the idealsof simplified formsand unadornedfunctionalism.

The belief that the machine economy could deliver elegantly designed items for the masses.

Used techniques & materials employed especially in industrial fabrication & manufacture steel, concrete, chrome, glass.

LeCorbusier

Frank Lloyd Wright

MUSIC…

FILM…