-Modernism-Roughly Late 19th to Early 20th Centuries

…and some questions to consider

• Ludwig Meidner• German Expressionist Painter

• 1884-1966

German Expressionism

– A manifestation of subjective feeling toward objective reality and the world of imagination. With bold, vigorous brushwork, emphatic lines, and bright color, the German painters produced splendid, almost savagely powerful canvases, particularly expressive of intense human feeling.- Art Through the Ages

Meidner experienced the first half of the 20th Century as an apocalyptic age. Ensconced in his humble attic-studio in Berlin before the outbreak of World War I, he painted visions of the Last Judgment and the end of the world. “Sometimes I feel like hopping out of the window, down four storeys,” Meidner wrote in his autobiography. “When I’m half awake I die many terrible deaths, but I know that I shall come into divine bliss again nevertheless…I’m going to throw myself under a train, so its wheels can run screaming into my serene skull--! Into momentous, grand death-!” Even down to the punctuation, such statements are suffused with an acceptance of the “twilight of humankind”, “fall and scream,” an apocalyptic mood, and also a touch of self-pity, are reflected in Meidner’s words.

- Art of the 20th Century

As a painter he stood under the spell of van Gogh, and affinities with the early Kokoschka are also apparent. Wildly sweeping lines, extreme distortion of features in the portraits, jumbled perspectives in the cityscapes, where the buildings seem shaken by an earthquake and on the verge of collapsing, where the ground is pulled out from under our feet and the sky goes up in flames or disintegrates before our eyes—and in the midst of this chaos, man, alone and forlorn: Meidner himself.

- Art of the 20th Century

Charles Darwin1809-1882

• First published in 1859, On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life rocked the scientific world.

• The Descent of Man, and Selection in Relation to Sex is a book on evolutionary theory by British naturalist Charles Darwin, first published in 1871. It was Darwin's second large book on evolutionary theory, following his 1859 work, The Origin of Species, and is concerned with outlining the application of Darwin's theory to human evolution, and detailing the theory of sexual selection. The book touches on a number of related issues, including evolutionary psychology, evolutionary ethics, differences between human races, differences between human sexes, and the relevance of evolutionary theory to society.

- Wikipedia

Issues that soon follow:• Social Darwinism• Class Struggle • Eugenics• The age-old Science vs. Religion

Debate

• Darwin questions well-established beliefs of where we come from.

Gregor Johann Mendel (July 20[1], 1822 – January 6, 1884) was an Augustinian abbot who is often called the "father of genetics" for his study of the inheritance of traits in pea plants. Mendel showed that the inheritance of traits follows particular laws, which were later named after him. The significance of Mendel's work was not recognized until the turn of the 20th century. Its rediscovery prompted the foundation of genetics.

-Wikipedia

• Mendel questions age-old beliefs of what we are made of.

• Did God make us or are we the product of an innate code? Mendel’s science seems to work in concert with Darwin’s.

• Sir James George Frazer 1854-1941

• A monumental study in comparative folklore, magic and religion, The Golden Bough (1890) shows parallels between the rites and beliefs, superstitions and taboos of early cultures and those of Christianity. It had a great impact on psychology and literature and remains an early classic anthropological resource.

• Frazer questions whether there is only one “correct” way to believe. Is it possible that other belief systems might also be connected and valid?

The late 1800s and early 1900s see Russian Physiologist Ivan Pavlov (top) and Austrian Father of Modern Psychology, Sigmund Freud (below), make momentous breakthroughs in understanding the human mind. Pavlov unveils Classical Conditioning and Freud teaches us about our “unconscious” selves and how to access them.

• Pavlov and Freud question what truly motivates us as human beings. They reveal the complexities of the human mind.

• The late 1800s, early 1900s also see German-born Albert Einstein, Niels Bohr (Danish), Max Planck and Werner Heisenberg (both German) introduce a new (sub-atomic) physical world, one that does not necessarily abide by the laws of classical, Newtonian Physics. Quantum Physics will eventually lead to the invention and use of the atom bomb in the 1940s.

• These scientists question established beliefs of how our physical world actually operates.

Philosophers like the English Herbert Spencer and Germans Ernst Haeckel and Friedrich Nietzsche question belief in God during the late 1800s and early 1900s.

• These powerful thinkers question whether we can feel comfortable in our notions of an all-good, all-knowing, all-powerful God. Will we really go to Heaven or Hell when we die? Does existence make sense? Do we have a foundation upon which to rest ethical and moral behavior? Nietzsche famously states that “God is dead,” for, he reasons, that we would not act as abominably as we do if he were alive.

• Fallout from the age of Modernism: - The church starts to lose its following- In 1914, due to the struggle for colonies, an out-

of-control arms race, and a complex system of treaties, World War I (“the war to end all wars”) erupts.

- In 1917, Czar Nicholas II and his family are executed during the Bolshevik Revolution. Lenin leads Russia, soon to be called the Soviet Union, into a new evolution, one governed by a radical new political and economic system.

• How does this brief intellectual history of Modernism emerge in, inform, and/or reflect literature like The Metamorphosis?

• What central ideas do you see emerging from the history that might inform writers like Kafka and Conrad (our next author)?

• In what ways is Gregor Samsa a poster boy for Modernism?

• What do you think the word, Kafka-esque means?