History Notes Tri 3: Interwar Period-Art

Existentialism

• People became disillusioned by meaningless hurt and evil from WWI

• People embraced Nietzche’s rejection of middle-class western society

• Started in the Interwar Period but continued to grow and mutate in WWI France

Nietzche’s rejection of middle-class western society

• Reason and science are incapable of producing meaning

• Life is meaningless and all myth and religion are a waste of time

• We create meaning in our own lives - you are the sum of your actions

Jean Paul Sartre

Being and Nothingness: posited man is not given meaning

Simone de Beauvoir

• In an open relationship with Sartre

• The Second Sex: second wave feminism

Albert Camus

The Stranger: absurdist novel that said nothing really matters

New Physics

• Einstein’s Theory of Relativity (1905)

  • Rather than the world complying with a strict Newtonian model, mass and time were dependent on reference

  • Intellectuals say that this reduced the perceived reliability of science, leading to further nihilism, existentialism, etc

New Science

Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle (1927)

• The more precisely the position of a particle is known, the less precisely its momentum is known (and visa versa)

• Raised more questions about reliability of science

New Psychology

Sigmund Freud

• Rather than viewing humans as primarily rational, Freud saw people as driven by desire and instinct

• Id, Supergo, and Ego

  • Saw Id as being subconscious for humans, making humans more unknown than previously posited

Modern Art

• Dada

• Futurism

• Surrealism

• Art Deco

• Bauhaus

Futurism

FT Marinetti issued the Futurist Manifesto in 1909

• Encouraged an embrace of modernity, progress, and patriotism

  • Reaction to classical art conventions and societal norms

• Starts in Italy but is noticeable in the US and Russia

• In art, this produced mostly angular abstraction

Surrealism

• Influenced by Freud’s emphasis on the unconscious mind as revealed in dreams and fantasies

• Portrays strange objects, often unrelated to one another, symbols of artists inner mind

Art Deco

• Style of the rich and cosmopolitan in the interwar period

• Combined Louis XIV art sensibilities with Cubism, Fauvism, Asian art, and modern art industrial materials

Bauhaus

• Named for Bauhaus School of Architecture

• Started in Germany, known as the International School in the US

• Emphasized bare functionality and clear, straight lines using modern material

Twentieth Century Art

Tom Wolfe wrote “The Painted Word” in 1975. He maintains the fact that by the middle of the century the “story” of the piece and “what it was trying to do” became more important than the beauty of the piece

• Resulting in art movement becoming more individualized and self-defined

Twentieth Century Literature

• Challenged accepted social values, leaned into irrationality of humanity, and expressed discontent with middle-class life

• Stream of Consciousness

James Joyce

Ulysses: The Odessey retold as day in the life of frustrated man Dublin putting reader in his head

Marcel Proutst

Wrote novel build around idea of involuntary memory

TS Elliot

Wrote stream of consciousness poetry, such as The Waste Land and Love Song of J Alfred Prufrock

Situating Interwar Period in History

Sometimes called Age of Anxiety

• Anti-Renaissance or Anti-Enlightenment

  • Instead of returning to Medieval and Christian beliefs, comfort of reason and objective morality were rejected as an Eastern awareness (hoplessness and meaninglessness)