Chapter Twenty-One Between the World Wars

1. Chapter Twenty-OneBetween the World Wars The Arts of Modernism

2. The Modernist Credo: Make it New -Ezra Pound

3. Literary Modernism T.S. Eliot (1888-1965) The Waste Land (1922) Fragmentation of line and image Abandonment of traditional forms Sense of alienation Intense desire to find some anchor in a past that feels lost Straining and pushing of language to provide new meanings for an exhausted world

5. The First World War (1914-1918) and Its Significance Drastic loss of life (ten million deaths) Sociopolitical consequences Communism: October Revolution, rise of Soviet State Fascism: Hitler�s National Socialist movement, fascist takeovers of Spain, Germany, Italy Capitalism: Great Depression, American Stock Market Crash of 1929 Cultural consequences Revolution in transportation and communication links previously isolated peoples of the world (mass produced cars, radios) Entertainment (film, radio shows, movies as mass entertainment)

6. The Harlem Renaissance African American writers, artists, intellectuals, musicians create artworks that represent African-American self-identity Themes of African American experience Roots, racism, culture, religion, protest W.E.B. Dubois; Zora Neale Hurston; Langston Hughes African American self-identity, cultural identity, racial identity

7. Cubism Objects viewed as problems to be solved according to the artist�s vision and through his analysis Solution to problem of how to represent three-dimensional objects in two-dimensional paintings Break object into different planes and present as if viewed from all sides at once�hence the reference to the three-dimensions of the cube

15. In the early 20th century physicists completely change how we understand our physical world: it is neither solid, nor constant, nor entirely knowable.  In a new scientific era of relativity and uncertainty, what are artists to do? 1905. Einstein publishes his simple, elegant Special Theory of Relativity, making mincemeat of his competition by relying on only two ideas: 1. The laws of physics are the same in all inertial frames, and 2. The speed of light is the same for all inertial observers. 1915. Einstein, with Hilbert in stiff competition, publishes his stunning General Theory of Relativity, and is lucky enough to be able to find observational support for his theory right away, in the perihelial advance of Mercury, and the deflection of starlight by the Sun. 1924. Louis duc de Broglie proposes the particle-wave duality of the electron in his doctoral thesis at the Sorbonne. He gets the Nobel Prize in 1929. 1927. Heisenberg discovers the Uncertainty Principle that bears his name. 1929. Edwin Hubble, with the help of his mule driver Humason, observes the redshift of distant galaxies and concludes that the Universe is expanding. The Big Bang is formulated. 1935. Young physicist Subramahnyan Chandrasekhar is attacked by famous astronomer Arthur Eddington for his report that there is a stellar mass limit beyond which collapse to what we now call a black hole is inevitable. Chandrasekhar wins the Nobel Prize in 1983 for his work on stellar evolution. From �A Timeline of Mathematical and Theoretical Physics,� http://superstringtheory.com/history/history3.html

16. Abstract Art Art of the pure idea Non-objective Sense that physical sciences are undermining our confidence in the solidity of the world

20. Dadaism Marcel Duchamp Anti-art

24. Futurism Art of speed, technology, and modernity

28. 1900: Sigmund Freud discovers the Unconscious and proposes the interpretation of dreams

29. Freud, the Unconscious, and Surrealism Interpretation of Dreams (1900) Id, ego, superego Dreams and the unconscious mind Psychoanalysis as philosophy Undermines certainty of the subject Human and cultural behaviors

30. Surrealism art of the relative and the unconscious

31. Ren� Magritte

33. Salvadore Dali