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?

Carras
Manifesto
for
Interventio
n, 1914

Legers Remorqueur, 1920

Magrittes
On the
Threshold of
Liberty,
1929

Picassos Guernica,
1937

Ernsts Europe After the Rain

II,
1940-1942

Legers 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

Les Demoiselles d'Avignon,

1907

Portrait of Dora Maar Seated, 1937

Pablo
Picasso
(1881-

Expressionism
Indebted to Freud
Art tries to penetrate the

faade of bourgeois
superficiality and probe the
psychethat which lurks
beneath an individuals
calm and artificial posture

Expressionism
Subliminal anxiety
Dissonance in color and

perspective
Pictorial violencemanifest*
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
Beckman
n
The
Night
19181919

The Age of
Uncertainty

Age of Anxiety
The Great Break

What did doubt and

searching mean for

western thought, art
and culture?

The Age of
Uncertainty
The 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
Hch
Cut with the
Kitchen
Knife

George Grosz

(ca. 1919)

Extra editions fly high! Peace

In the grenades rain down
And hacked-up soldiers
Much champagne is drunk in the Mascotte
Pavillion
Little Lisa dances secretly at the Art Club
INTENSIFIED TURBULENCE OF THE WORLD
talk and countertalk
!! COURAGE: to AFFIRM the absurdity of
existence!
!! The GIGANTIC nonsense of the universe!!
Accomplished by the rear- end of the world!

Surrealism
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 inspiration

Indefinite
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

Dalis Persistence of Memory,

Dal in the 1960s wearing the

mustache style he popularized.

The Philadelphia Museum of Art for

the 2005 Salvador Dal exhibition

Dalis 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
Nightingal
e

Joan Mir, Dog Barking at the Moon

Marc
Chagall
Selfportrait
with
Seven
Fingers
1913

Architecture
FunctionalismBuildings 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 Schnberg
Experimented with atonal music (tonality

is abandoned)

Literature
Interest in the Unconscious
Stream-of-Consiousness: author

relates the innermost thoughts of

each character
James JoyceUlysses (1922)
Virginia WoolfMrs. Dalloway
Hermann HesseSteppenwolf
Focused on spiritual lonliness &
psychological confusion of modern people
in a mechanized and urban society

Psychology
Carl Jung
Challenged Freuds 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 principlehumans cant predict

phenomena because the very act of

observing an electron with light, for
instance, affected its location
Signified a new worldviewuncertainty, 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