Download
1 / 66
680 likes | 899 Views
Day 2 – Age of Anxiety. Entrance task : Think: In what ways does art, literature and/or music reflect our world today? Today: The Age of Anxiety Homework: Ch. 28-3 & 4. The Age of Anxiety. The Interwar Period. Uncertainty in Modern Thought. The devastation of World War I left many
E N D
Day 2 – Age of Anxiety Entrance task: Think: In what ways does art, literature and/or music reflect our world today? Today: The Age of Anxiety Homework: 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 shockThe 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 socialist • Rejected democracy and believed a small revolutionary elite should firmly rule a socialist society
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 Logical empiricism (positivism)
Existentialism • Most thinkers were/are atheists • Existence 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 Christianity • The 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 Psychology • Sigmund 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.
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: Composition with skull
George Braque – 1929 -Still life Georges Braque's Still Life: Le Jour, 1929
Composition VII - 1913 Wassily Kandinsky born: Moscow, Russia; 1866died: Paris, France; 1944
Dada • Dada [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 – The Ballerina
Marcel Duchamp - Nude descending staircase No.2
Surrealism A 20th-century literary and artistic movement that attempts to express the workings of the subconscious by fantastic imagery.
Surrealism The 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.
Edvund Munch Self-portrailt – between clock and bed (Expressionism)
Piet Mondrian – 1918 - Composition with gray and light brown (abstract expressionism)
Franz Mark – 1913-1914 Fighting Forms This German artist was killed in WWI
