Day 2 – Age of AnxietyEntrance task: Think: In what

ways does art, literature and/or music reflect our world today?

Today: The Age of AnxietyHomework: Ch. 28-3 & 4

The Age of Anxiety

The Interwar Period

Uncertainty in Modern Thought

The devastation of World War I left many with an increasing uncertainty and a desire to bring meaning and purpose back into life.

Uncertainty in Modern Thought

Before WWI, most people believed in progress, reason, and individual rights

Pre-WWI optimistic views were shattered by the horrors of the war years, as well as the economic crisis that followed

Paul Valery(1871-1945)

French poet “The storm has died away, and still

we are restless, uneasy, as if the storm were about the break. . . . Doubt and disorder are in us and with us. There is no thinking man . . . who can hope to dominate this anxiety, to escape from this impression of darkness.”

Paul Valery(1871-1945)

“We are a very unfortunate generation, whose lot has been to see the moment of our passage through life coincide with the arrival of great and terrifying events, the echo of which will resound through all our lives.”

Paul Valery(1871-1945)

“One can say that all the fundamentals of the world have been affected by the war, or more exactly, by the circumstances of the war; something deeper has been worn away than the renewable parts of the machine. . . The Mind has indeed been cruelly wounded; its complaint is heard in the hearts of intellectual man; it passes a mournful judgment on itself. It doubts itself profoundly.” (1922)

Shell shock The Horrors of War

Friedrich Nietzsche(1844-1900) German philosopher

Rejected Christianity because he claimed it glorified weakness

“God is dead” The only hope for a

person is to accept the meaninglessness of existence and to embrace it

Became widely read after his death & WWI

Henri Bergson(1859-1941) – French philosopher

Believed that experience and intuition were as important as rational and scientific thinking for understanding reality

“Think like a man of action, act like a man of thought.”

Georges Sorel(1847-1922)

French socialistRejected

democracy and believed a small revolutionary elite should firmly rule a socialist society

Logical empiricism (positivism)

Found followers in English-speaking countries

Began with Austrian philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889-1951)

Saw philosophy as the clarification of thoughts that cannot be tested or proven scientifically and/or logically

Issues such as God, freedom, morality, etc. are senseless

ExistentialismMost thinkers were/are atheistsExistence precedes essence

–People have no predetermined nature or essence that controls what we do

–People are free to act independently–People create their own values

through their choices and actions

Revival of ChristianityThe horrors of war clearly portrayed

the sinful nature of people, the need for faith, the mystery of God’s forgiveness, and the relevance of religion

Freudian PsychologySigmund Freud believed human

behavior is basically irrational and is driven by the interaction of three forces:– Id – irrational unconscious– Ego – rationalizing conscious– Superego – Ingrained moral values

New Physics Significant scientific discoveries offered some

comfort to those disillusioned in the post-WWI period

Major contributors– Marie Curie -– Max Planck– Albert Einstein– Ernest Rutherford– Werner Heisenberg

The work of people like Sigmund Freud and Albert Einstein added to the confusion and anxiety of the period. Perhaps nothing could truly be known for certain.

Post-World War IArt and Architecture

An early 20th-century school of painting and sculpture in which the subject matter is portrayed

by geometric forms without realistic detail, stressing abstract form at the expense of other pictorial elements largely by use of intersecting

often transparent cubes and cones.

Cubism

Cubism Cubist style emphasized the flat, two-dimensional

surface of the picture plane, rejecting the traditional techniques of perspective

Cubist painters were not bound to copying form, texture, color, and space; instead, they presented a new reality in paintings that depicted radically fragmented objects, whose several sides were seen simultaneously.

Picasso: Dance of the Veils

Picasso: Woman in Green

Picasso: Bathing

Picasso: Compositionwith skull

Picasso: Guernica

George Braque – 1929 - Still life

Georges Braque's  Still Life:  Le Jour, 1929

Abstract

Composition VII - 1913Wassily Kandinskyborn: Moscow, Russia; 1866died: Paris, France; 1944

Composition VIII - 1923

Kandinsky – On White

Fernand Leger – 1916 –Soldier with a pipe

Fernand Leger – Beer Mug

DadaDada   [1916-1922] the Dada art movement was anti-art. the name, in French means 'hobby horse‘ pointless as it is, was a symbol for the artists

disillusionment and commentary on traditional European and American art and artists.

The Dadaists, by using absurd and "non-art" elements in their art, actively rejected the aesthetics of all art that preceded them.

Jean Arp : Configuration

Jean Arp –The Ballerina

Marcel Duchamp - Nude descending staircase No.2

Marcel Duchamp – La Jocande aux Moustaches

Man Ray - Les Amoureux

Surrealism

A 20th-century literary and artistic movement that attempts to express the workings of the subconscious by

fantastic imagery.

SurrealismThe movement represented a

reaction against what its members saw as the destruction wrought by the "rationalism" that had guided

European culture and politics in the past and that had culminated in the

horrors of World War I.

Salvadore Dali: Illuminated Pleasures

Salvadore Dali: Cannibalism in Autumn (dadaism)

Salvadore Dali: The Persistence of Memory

Yves Tanguy - Indefinite Divisibility

Max Ernst – 1919-1920 - Little Machine

Max Ernst – 1927 - The Kiss

Various paintings from the inter-war era

Edvund Munch Self-portrailt – between clock and bed(Expressionism)

Edvard MunchScream

Piet Mondrian – 1918 - Composition with gray and light brown(abstract expressionism)

Franz Mark – 1913-1914 Fighting Forms

This German artist was killed in WWI

Franz Mark – The Fate of Animals

Henri Monet – 1916-1923 Water Lillies(Impressionism)

Post War Architecture

Post war architecture became more functional that earlier work. Frank Lloyd Wright was one of the most influential

architects of the period.

Post war architecture became more functional that earlier work. Frank Lloyd Wright was one of the most influential architects of the period.

Wright became known for a simplicity of design that broke with the more ornamental styles of the Victorian age.

Frank Lloyd Wright

Frank Lloyd Wright - The Allen House

Other developments of the periodLucky Charles Lindbergh

made the first trans-Atlantic flight in 1927

Thanks to the success of the assembly line, automobiles were now able to be produced much faster and much less expensively.

A new culture based on the automobile was soon to develop.

Improvements in radios helped make the world a smaller place as information could now be transmitted to the awaiting public.

By the end of the 1920s, radio was an obsession shared by both Europeans and Americans.

Motion pictures were also developed during this time. These silent films offered yet another opportunity for entertainment and escape from the

everyday chores of life.

The End