A Lost Generation?

Standard 10.6.3 Understand the widespread disillusionment with prewar institutions, authorities, and values that resulted in a void that was later filled by totalitarians.

Standard 10.6.4 Discuss the influence of World War I on literature, art, and intellectual life in the West (e.g., Pablo Picasso, the "lost generation" of Gertrude Stein, Ernest Hemingway).

What was the Lost Generation?

The lost generation was a term coined by Gertrude Stein to describe young American artists (mostly writers) who rejected American ideals in the 1920s and moved to Paris to live the bohemian lifestyle (party it up, live for today, because there may be no tomorrow). Famous members of the Lost Generation included Stein herself, Ernest Hemingway, Ezra Pound, and F. Scott Fitzgerald.

The Lost Generation thought

that Western Civilization was

coming to an End…

Why would intellectuals

have thought WWI was

the end of the superiority

of Western Civilization?

1918

The Lost Generation felt betrayed by

their leaders, their culture, and their

institutions.

They asked themselves “How could all this

death and destruction have been allowed to

happen?”

They felt helpless, and lost. They despaired

for the future. Where once they had trusted,

now they did not. It appeared that Good

had lost the battle against Evil.

Writers tried to capture the bleak

hopelessness of War T.S. Eliot- The Waste Land (1922)

JRR Tolkien- The Lord Of The Rings (1937-1954)

F. Scott Fitzgerald- The Great Gatsby (1925)

Ernest Hemingway-

An American novelist

Served in WWI

A Farewell to Arms (1929)

"I know the night is not the same as the day: that all

things are different, that the things of the night cannot

be explained in the day, because they do not then

exist, and the night can be a dreadful time for lonely

people once their loneliness has started."

Modern Art- Artists tried to capture new

perceptions of reality…

Old styles of art couldn’t express the deep distress caused by WWI.

In many cases, people did not want to remember the war too clearly or too exactly.

WWI changed the way people perceived the world and this was reflected in their art.

“Oppy Wood” – John Nash, 1917

“Gassed and Wounded”

Eric Kennington, 1918

“Those Who Have Lost Their Names”

Albin Eggar-Linz, 1914

Cubism- Reality broken into Pieces Cubism was born out of

the experience of the WWI battlefield.

At night, exploding bombs lit the sky in quick flashes, causing the world to look disjointed, distorted, disordered, and broken up into stark pieces.

In Cubism…

Objects are broken up and re-assembled in abstract form.

Picasso

Pre-WWI work

African masks

What do

you see?

Pablo

Picasso,

Three

Musicians,

1921

What do you see?

Pablo

Picasso,

Still Life,

1924

Surrealism- Trying

to show how things

Feel During WWI, the founder of

surrealism, André Breton, who had trained in medicine and psychiatry, served in a neurological hospital where he used the psychoanalytic methods of Sigmund Freud with soldiers who were shell-shocked.

He sought a way to express the inner workings of the mind, those feelings, experiences, urges and impressions that were separated from logic and reason.

Surrealism is an art movement that sought to link the world of dreams with real life.

Surreal—beyond or above reality

Yves Tanguy, Indefinite Divisibility 1942

How is this painting connected to the

idea of Perception?

Salvador

Dali, The

Persistence

of Memory,

1931

What do you see?

Salvador

Dali, The

Temptation

of St Anthony

What does

this painting

tell you

about how

the artist is

feeling?