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Culture of the Interwar Years

Culture of the Interwar Years. Major Trends. Artistic & intellectual innovations of pre-WWI yrs became more widespread and accepted Why? Political insecurities Economic insecurities Social insecurities. Art. Art.

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Culture of the Interwar Years

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  1. Culture of the Interwar Years

  2. Major Trends • Artistic & intellectual innovations of pre-WWI yrs became more widespread and accepted • Why? • Political insecurities • Economic insecurities • Social insecurities

  3. Art Art “Modernism in art and music meant constant experimentation and a search for new kinds of expression.” McKay, A History of Western Society

  4. 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?

  5. Kandinsky’s Improvisation No. 30 (On a War-like Theme), 1913

  6. Carra’sManifesto for Intervention, 1914

  7. Leger’s Remorqueur, 1920

  8. Magritte’s On the Threshold of Liberty, 1929

  9. Picasso’s Guernica, 1937

  10. Ernst’s Europe After the Rain II, 1940-1942

  11. Leger’s Le Petite Dejeuner

  12. 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

  13. Woman with Hat Henri Matisse, 1905

  14. Harmony in Red, 1908, Matisse

  15. Cubism • 1909-1914 • multiple viewpoints simultaneously • fragmented, geometric forms • “The cubist is not interested in usual representational standards.” • -Perry, Western Civilization

  16. Georges Braque (1882-1963) Woman With a Guitar, 1913 Violin and Candlestick, 1910

  17. Les Demoiselles d'Avignon, 1907 Pablo Picasso (1881-1973) Portrait of Dora Maar Seated, 1937

  18. 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

  19. 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

  20. Edvard Munch The Scream 1893

  21. Ernst Ludwig Kirchner Street Scene with a Cocotte in Red 1914

  22. Oskar Kokoschka, The Tempest, 1914

  23. Max Beckmann The Night 1918-1919

  24. The Age of Uncertainty • “Age of Anxiety” • “The Great Break” • What did doubt and searching mean for western thought, art and culture?

  25. The Age of Uncertainty • The postwar period was one of loss and uncertainty but also one of invention, and new ideas.

  26. 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

  27. Artist George Grosz described Dada as "the organized use of insanity to express contempt for a bankrupt world." -S. Stamberg Marcel Duchamp

  28. Fountain by Marcel Duchamp, 1917, photograph by Alfred Stieglitz.

  29. Hannah Höch Cut with the Kitchen Knife

  30. George Grosz (ca. 1919) Extra editions fly high! Peace In the grenades rain down And hacked-up soldiers Much champagne is drunk in the MascottePavillion 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!

  31. 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

  32. Surrealism 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

  33. Dali’s Persistence of Memory, 1931

  34. Dalí in the 1960s wearing the mustache style he popularized. The Philadelphia Museum of Art for the 2005 Salvador Dalí exhibition

  35. Dali’s Invention of Monsters, 1937

  36. The Elephant Celebes (1921) by Max Ernst.

  37. Giorgio de Chirico The Vexations of the Thinker

  38. Salvador Dali, The Persistence of Memory

  39. Max Ernst Two Children are Menaced by a Nightingale

  40. Joan Miró, Dog Barking at the Moon

  41. Marc Chagall Self-portrait with Seven Fingers 1913

  42. Architecture 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

  43. 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

  44. 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)

  45. 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

  46. 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

  47. 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

  48. 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

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