Major Trends

Artistic & intellectual innovations of pre-WWI yrs became more widespread and accepted

Why? Political insecurities Economic insecurities Social insecurities

Art

“Modernism in art and music meant

constant experimentation and a search for

new kinds of expression.”

McKay, A History of Western Society

Artistic Response to the Contemporary World

What shapes and colors do you see?

What words or phrases describe the tone of this

piece?

How is this a response to the time period in which the

artist lived?

Carra’s Manifesto for Intervention, 1914

Leger’s Remorqueur, 1920

Magritte’s On the Threshold of Liberty, 1929

Picasso’s Guernica, 1937

Ernst’s Europe After the Rain II,

1940-1942

Leger’s Le Petite Dejeuner

Fauvism

1898-1908

color & simplified lines

“How do you see these trees? They are yellow. So, put in yellow; this shadow, rather blue, paint it with pure ultramarine; these red

leaves? Put in vermillion.” -Paul Gaugin, 1888

Woman with Hat

Henri Matisse, 1905

Harmony in Red, 1908, Matisse

Cubism

1909-1914

multiple viewpoints simultaneously

fragmented, geometric forms

“The cubist is not interested in usual representational

standards.” -Perry, Western Civilization

Georges Braque

(1882-1963)

Woman With a Guitar, 1913 Violin and Candlestick, 1910

Pablo Picasso

(1881-1973)

Portrait of Dora Maar Seated, 1937

Les Demoiselles d'Avignon, 1907

Expressionism

Indebted to Freud Art tries to penetrate the

façade of bourgeois superficiality and probe the psyche—that which lurks beneath an individual’s calm and artificial posture

Expressionism

Subliminal anxiety Dissonance in color and

perspective Pictorial violence—manifest*

and latent** *Manifest (adj) readily perceived by the

eye or the understanding; evident; obvious; plain

**Latent (adj) present or potential but not visible, apparent, or realized

                                                       

                                                                     

Edvard Munch

The Scream

1893

Ernst Ludwig Kirchner

Street Scene with a Cocotte in Red

1914

Oskar Kokoschka, The Tempest, 1914

Max Beckmann

The Night

1918-1919

The Age of The Age of UncertaintyUncertainty“Age of Anxiety”

“The Great Break”What did doubt and searching mean for western thought, art

and culture?

The Age of The Age of UncertaintyUncertaintyThe postwar period was one of loss and uncertainty but also

one of invention, and new ideas.

Dada Movement

Cultural movement (art, literature, theater)

Peak 1916-1920 – France, Switzerland, Germany (international in scope)

Reaction to WWI, struggle with modern world

Rejection of laws of beauty & social organization

“anti-art”, absurd

Artist George Grosz described Dada as "the organized

use of insanity to express

contempt for a bankrupt world."

-S. Stamberg

Marcel Duchamp

Fountain by Marcel

Duchamp, 1917,

photograph by Alfred

Stieglitz.

Hannah Höch

Cut with the Kitchen Knife

George Grosz (ca. 1919)

Extra editions fly high! PeaceExtra editions fly high! PeaceIn the grenades rain downIn the grenades rain downAnd hacked-up soldiersAnd hacked-up soldiersMuch champagne is drunk in the Mascotte Much champagne is drunk in the Mascotte

PavillionPavillionLittle Lisa dances secretly at the Art Club—Little Lisa dances secretly at the Art Club—INTENSIFIED TURBULENCE OF THE WORLDINTENSIFIED TURBULENCE OF THE WORLDtalk and countertalktalk and countertalk!! COURAGE: to AFFIRM the absurdity of !! COURAGE: to AFFIRM the absurdity of

existence!existence!!! The GIGANTIC nonsense of the universe!!!! The GIGANTIC nonsense of the universe!!Accomplished by the rear- end of the world!Accomplished by the rear- end of the world!

SurrealismSurrealism

Movement in visual art and literature

Grew out of Dada movement

Founded in 1924 in Paris - Interwar period

Influenced by Freud Unconscious as

source of inspirationIndefinite Divisibility

Yves Tanguy, 1942

Surrealism

Explores the dream world, a world without logic, reason, or meaning

Fascination with mystery, the strange encounters between objects, and incongruity

Subjects are often indecipherable in their strangeness

The beautiful is the quality of chance association

Illogical and fantastical

Dali’s Persistence of Memory, 1931

Dalí in the 1960s wearing the mustache style he popularized.

The Philadelphia Museum of Art for the 2005 Salvador Dalí exhibition

Dali’s Invention of Monsters, 1937

The Elephant Celebes (1921) by Max Ernst.

Giorgio de Chirico

The Vexations of the Thinker

Salvador Dali, The Persistence of Memory

Max Ernst

Two Children are Menaced by a Nightingale

Joan Miró, Dog Barking at the Moon

Marc Chagall

Self-portrait with Seven Fingers

1913

Architecture

Functionalism—Buildings should be “functional” or useful, fulfilling the purpose for which they constructed

Art & engineering were to be unified All unnecessary ornamentation was

to be stripped away. Believed that art had a social

function

Architecture

Chicago School Louis Sullivan Frank Lloyd Wright

Bauhaus School Walter Gropius Tried to blend fine arts (painting &

sculpture) with applied arts (printing, weaving, & furniture making)

Wanted to unify arts and crafts to create buildings and objects of the future

Music

Igor Stravinsky Sought a new understanding of irrational

forces in his music Inaugurated a modern musical

movement The Firebird (1910), Petrushka (1911),

and The Rite of Spring (1913) Arnold Schönberg

Experimented with atonal music (tonality is abandoned)

Literature

Interest in the Unconscious Stream-of-Consiousness: author

relates the innermost thoughts of each character James Joyce—Ulysses (1922) Virginia Woolf—Mrs. Dalloway Hermann Hesse—Steppenwolf

Focused on spiritual lonliness & psychological confusion of modern people in a mechanized and urban society

Psychology

Carl Jung Challenged Freud’s ideas▪ Said his theories were too narrow

2-Part Unconscious▪ Personal Unconscious▪ Collective Unconscious▪ Place where memories of all human beings reside

and includes mental forms, archetypes, & images from dreams▪ Archetypes are common to all people and help

create myths, religions, etc.▪ Archetypes would bring the collective mind of all

of humanity to the fore in individual human minds

Physics

7 subatomic particles had been distinguished by 1940s Laid the groundwork for the atomic bomb

Werner Heisenberg Uncertainty principle—humans can’t predict

phenomena because the very act of observing an electron with light, for instance, affected its location

Signified a new worldview—uncertainty, not predictability, lay at the heart of all physical laws

Mass Culture

Revolution in mass communication Radio

2.2 million radios in Britain in 1926, 9 million in 1930s Movies

Increased size of audiences and their ability to give audiences a shared experience

Growth of mass leisure Sports

World Cup begun in 1930 1920s and 30s era of stadium-building

Tourism Air travel, trains, buses, and cars made excursions

more popular and affordable