Transcript humch21 - Homework Market

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The Age of the Masses and the
Zenith of Modernism 1914–1945
The Collapse of Old Certainties and the Search for
New Values
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Between 1914 and 1945 Western culture was shaken by
four cataclysmic events: World War I, the Russian
Revolution, the Great Depression, and World War II.
However, the age’s defining feature was the arrival of
the common people on the cultural stage. We see the
birth of “mass culture”
The rise of the masses was also entangled with the
advent of modern dictatorships. Capitalizing on the
uncertainties of modern, urban life, dictators of
various types rose to power across Europe.
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World War I
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The Central Powers-Germany, Austria-Hungary, Bulgaria &
the Ottoman Empire (Turkey) fought against the Allied
Powers-Britain, France, Russia, (also Italy & late in the war
the United States) .
The war saw killing at an unprecedented level due to the
technological advances in weaponry. The war bogged down
into relentless trench warfare with tens of thousands of
soldiers dying to gain a few thousand feet of territory.
Germany’s unrestricted U-boat campaign and other factors
brought the United States into the war in 1917 which helped
shift the balance of power.
The Treaty of Versailles ended the war, but was so punitive to
Germany that it set the stage for World War II.
More than 16 million people died as a result of the war (10
million soldiers and almost 7 million civilians)
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Weapons of the
First World
War
Europe after World War I
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The Russian Revolution
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In 1917 Russia was plagued by an incompetent ruler, a
weak economy, the ravages of war, and social and political
discord. Revolution broke out, and a small band of Marxist
communists, the Bolsheviks seized power.
Led by Lenin (r. 1917-24) set up a totalitarian communist
state. After Lenin’s death, Josef Stalin (r. 1928-53) emerged
as the sole ruler of the Union of Socialist Soviet Republics
(U.S.S.R.) as the Russian Empire was now called.
Claiming that is was a “people’s republic,” it was noting but
a harsh dictatorship that controlled all aspects of life. Stalin
was ruthless, killing over 10 million men, women, and
children in his forced collectivization of agriculture.
Millions more were murdered or died in forced labor camps
called Gulags.
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Lenin and Stalin
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The West and Islam
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World War I finished off the Ottoman Empire and much of its
territory was divided between the victors.
Syria and Lebanon were in France’s “sphere of influence.”
Palestine, Transjordan (modern Jordan), and Iraq were in the
British “sphere of Influence” and Egypt was a British
protectorate.
In 1917 Britain issued the Balfour Declaration which
supported Palestine as a “national home of the Jewish
people.”
After a War of Turkish Independence (1919-23) the Republic
of Turkey was formed from the ashes of the Ottoman Empire.
In Egypt in 1928 the Muslim Brotherhood was founded, a
religious social movement designed to promote Muslim
identity.
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The Great Depression of the 1930s
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The excesses of corporate greed and industrialization
resulted in the worldwide economic calamity. The stock
market crashed, thousands of banks closed wiping out
people’s savings, businesses failed, farm foreclosures shyrocketed, and unemployment reached over 50%.
In the United States President Franklin Roosevelt responded
with the “New Deal,” a wide-sweeping series of programs to
revitalize the economy and create a social safety net.
Similar steps were taken in other democracies, but some,
particularly Germany (hardest hit by the depression), Italy
and Spain came under control of “fascist” dictatorships.
Japan was relatively unscathed by the Great Depression and
used the distraction to seize Manchuria and attack China.
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Images of the Great Depression
Images of the Great Depression
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The Rise of Fascism
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Fascism sought to bind the masses by appealing to non-rational
sentiments about national destiny and finding scapegoats to blame for
problems.
Fascists, like the communist dictatorships, believed that the individual
was insignificant and the nation-state was the supreme embodiment of
the destiny of the people.
It relied on militarism, nationalism, and the loss of personal freedom,
through strict control over the press, education, the police and the
judicial system.
It was also innately aggressive, leading to strong military dictatorships
which were used to conquer new lands in Europe and to win colonial
empires.
Germany and Italy supported the fascist during the Spanish Civil War
with troops and equipment. Italy invaded Ethiopia and annexed
Albania. Hitler annexed Austria, the Sudetenland, and ultimately
Czechoslovakia.
When Hitler invaded Poland (1939) it set off the Second World War.
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Hitler & Mussolini
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Nazi Party Rally, 1936
Roots of the War
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Adolf Hitler came to power in 1934 and
started a massive rearmament of Germany.
 Japanese Nationalist created the “Greater
East Asian Co-Prosperity” and invaded
China in 1937.
 In 1939 Hitler invaded Poland went to war
with and France and England.
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World War II: Origins and Outcome
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The origins of World War II lay in the unfairness of the
Treaty of Versailles, the Great Depression, nationalism, and
the expansionist policies of the fascist regimes.
In 1939 Hitler invaded Poland and World War II began.
The Germans quickly defeated France in 1940 using the
“blitzkrieg” (lightening war) and attempted unsuccessfully
to bomb Britain into submission.
In June 1941, Hitler launched a surprise attack against the
Soviet Union and pushed deep into Russian territory.
On December 7th, 1941 Japan attempted to destroy the U.S.
Pacific fleet with a sneak attack on Pearl Harbor and
successful attacks on U.S. possessions on Guam, Wake
Island, and the Philippines.
Germany and Italy, allies of Japan, also declared war on
the U.S.
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Famous
World War
II U.S.
Propaganda
Poster
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U.S. Propaganda Poster by Norman Rockwell
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World War II: Origins and Outcome
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The Axis Powers (Germany, Italy, and Japan) had many
early victories, but the combined military power of the Allies
(Great Britain, the U.S., and the Soviet Union) combined
with the tremendous industrial and economic strength of
the United States, slowly turned the tide of the war.
In the new era of technology the powerful industrialmilitary state complex that could mass-produce weapons
and machines of war, harness their nations economy, and
mobilized vast citizen armies.
Ultimately the Allies were victorious because of the welloiled industrial military state complex that was developed,
particularly in the United States, where labor and
management worked together under the direction of the
government and civilians willingly made necessary
sacrifices to insure victory.
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World War II: Origins and Outcome
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As the Allies began pushing into German-occupied territories
they uncovered the Nazi Death Camps where millions of Jews
and other “undesirables” had been systematically murdered.
The U.S. and Great Britain began an “island hopping”
campaign in the Pacific, getting close enough to bomb the
Japanese home islands. When the Japanese refused to
unconditionally surrender we dropped two new atom bombs
on them.
The Hiroshima bomb killed some 80,000 people. The
Nagasaki bomb killed approximately 60,000. Additionally,
tens of thousands more died later due to radiation.
The Second World War was the most devastating conflict in
human history and cost around 60 million lives (22-25 million
military deaths and the rest civilian).
The war ended with the United States and the Soviet Union
being the two most powerful nations in the world.
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Nazi Death
Camp in
Belsen,
Germany,
1945
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The Nazis
murdered
over 11
million
people in
their death
camps, six
million of
whom were
Jews.
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Bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki
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Medicine
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In the field of medicine major medical events between 1900
and 1945 occurred primarily in two areas: the
identification of disease pathogens and the development of
pharmaceuticals.
Medical researchers identified these new pathogens –
disease causing agents; organisms that cause diseases such
as typhus, organisms that produce tropical illnesses like
malaria, and the viruses that cause mumps, measles, and
polio.
Aspirin the world’s most universal pain reliever was
discovered and became common. Penicillin and other
antibiotics were developed to fight infection and saved
countless lives.
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Mass Culture and Technology
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Mass Culture was a direct outgrowth of industrialized
society. The new generation of consumers demanded
products and amusements that appealed to their tastes:
inexpensive, energetic, and easily accessible.
Entrepreneurs, using new technologies, flooded the
market with consumer goods and new entertainments.
The untapped consumer market let to the expansion of
new industries, including automobiles, household goods,
and domestic appliances.
Most forms of mass culture, - radio, newspapers, comic
strips, cartoons, professional sports, picture magazines,
movies, recordings, and musical comedies – had existed
before World War I, but now, between the wars, they came
into their own.
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Life and Look Magazines were Published from the 1930’s
until the 1970’s (Look) and the 1980’s (Life)
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Bourke-White,
Russian Tank
Driver (1941)
This picture
illustrates the
growing field of
photojournalism
in such magazines
as “Life” and
“Look”
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High Modernism, 1914–1945
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Experimentation in Literature
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Modernist writers during this era remained dedicated to
experimentation , a stance that reflected despair over the era’s
instability. The most distinctive method that arose was “streamof-consciousness” writing, a method where the narrative
consists of the unedited thoughts of the character.
James Joyce uses this narrative in his classic novel “Ulysses”
(1922) and did Virginia Woolf in “To the Lighthouse (1929).
Ernest Hemingway (1900-61)emerged as a major literary star.
He popularized the term “lost generation” to refer to those that
came of age after World War I.
William Faulkner (1897-1962) a giant of 20th century literature
wrote often highly emotional, subtle, and complex stories of a
wide variety of characters including former slaves or
descendants of slaves, poor white, agrarian, or working-class
Southerners, and Southern aristocrats.
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The Zenith of Modernism: Painting
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Pablo Picasso was still the reigning cubist painter, and
painted such recognized masterpieces as “Guernica,”
which illustrates the suffering of people bombed during
the Spanish Civil War, but some painters now moved
beyond cubism to complete abstraction.
Kasimir Malevich (1887-1935) was the most influential
Russian painter of this period. He was a pioneer of
geometric abstract art.
He originated the “Suprematist” movement, which was
an art movement, focused on basic geometric forms,
such as circles, squares, lines, and rectangles, painted
in a limited range of colors.
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Pablo Picasso, “Guernica” (1937)
Guernica shows the tragedies of war and the suffering it inflicts
upon individuals, particularly innocent civilians. This was painted
to depict the bombing of the town of Guernica during the Spanish
Civil War in 1937 by fascist forces.
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Kasimir
Malevich ,
“Suprematist
Composition ”
(1917)
This painting
recently sold
at auction for
$60 million
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Kasimir Malevich , “Suprematism” (1916) and “Complex
Presentiment: Half-Figure in a Yellow Shirt” (1928-1932)
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The Zenith of Modernism
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Georgia O'Keeffe (1887-1986) was an American
artist. O'Keeffe has been recognized as the Mother
of American Modernism. However, she refused to
follow European painters down the path to pure
abstractism.
 She pursued a distinctive type of American
abstractism, using subjects drawn from nature
which she pared to their pure form and color.
 Many observers claimed that O’Keefe’s artwork
often was intended to present vaginas. O’Keefe
always denied that this was true.
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Georgia
O'Keeffe,
“Cow's Skull
with Calico
Roses
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Georgia O'Keeffe, “White and Blue Flower Shapes” (1919)
and “Red Canna” (1924)
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Georgia O'Keeffe, “Blue Flower” (1918) and “Grey Line
with Blue, Black, and Yellow” (1923)
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The Zenith of Modernism
The most unusual art movement of the 20th
century was certainly “Dadaism.”
 Believing the spiritual claims and traditional
beliefs of Western humanism were dead, the
Dada group embraced “anti-art” as the only
ethical position for the artist of the modern
era.
 The French artist Marcel Duschamp (18871968) was the leading artist of this school.
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Marcel Duchamp,
“The Bride
Stripped Bare by
Her Bachelors,
Even” (1915-23)
Over nine feet tall,
and freestanding two
panes of glass with
materials such as lead
foil, fuse wire, and
dust. It combines
chance procedures,
plotted perspective
studies, and laborious
craftsmanship
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Marcel Duchamp, Nude (Study), Sad Young Man on a
Train and Nude Descending a Staircase, No. 2 (1912)
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Surrealism
Dadaism led to “surrealism” an art movement that began in
the 1920’s. Surrealism was basically a pictorial art that was
inspired by Freud’s teachings that the human mind
conceals hidden depths.
 The surrealists sought to explore the unconscious mind
through dream imagery, fantasies, and hallucinations in a
direct fashion.
 The Spanish painter Salvador Dali (1904-89) and the Swiss
painter Paul Klee (1879-1940) were the leading artists of
surrealism.
 Sometimes the great Mexican artist Frida Kahlo (1907-54)
is considered a surrealist.
 Henri Mattisse continued to paint expressionist works, as
did German painter Max Beckmann (1884-1950) whose
works register horror at the era’s turbulent events.
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Salvador Dali, The Persistence of Memory (1931)
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Salvador Dali, “The Great Masturbator” (1929) and
“Soldier Take Warning” (1942)
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Paul Klee “Senecio” (1922) and Flower Myth (1918)
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Frida Kahlo,
“The Two
Fridas”
(1939)
Some consider
Kahlo a
surrealist others
consider her a
muralist
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Frida Kahlo, “The Broken Column” (1944) and “Girl with
Death Mask” (1938)
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Henri Matisse
“Decorative
Figure in an
Oriental
Setting”
(1925)
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Max Beckmann, “The Departure” (1932-35)
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Max
Beckmann,
“The
Night”
(1918-9)
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Le Corbusier, Savoye House (1929-31) and Walter Gropius, The
Bauhaus (1925-6)
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Architectural style
became sleek,
geometrical, and devoid
of ornament, reflecting
the modern industrial age
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Film and Movies
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The Silent Film era saw the first use of advanced story-telling
techniques in D.W. Griffith’s “Birth of a Nation” (1915). It had
large-scale battle scenes, used close-ups and long shots, as well as
crosscutting to tell a complex story in an exciting fashion.
Unfortunately “Birth of a Nation” was an incredibly racist film in
which the Ku Klux Klan are the “heroes” and blacks (white actors
in blackface are portrayed as animalistic villains).
The Russian filmmaker Sergei Eisentein pioneered the
“montage” technique in his classic “The Battleship Potemkin”
(1925).
Other filmmakers soon copied these methods and filmmaking
became a serious art form as well as a popular part of mass
culture.
Great German silent films include The “Cabinet of Dr. Caligari”
(1922), “Nosferatu” (1922), and Metropolis (1927 ).
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D.W. Griffith’s “Birth of a Nation” (1915)
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Great German Expressionist Films of the Silent Era
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Film and Movies
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We also see the rise of Hollywood, as the home of American
filmmaking. Hollywood began dominating the film industry
worldwide after the First World War. That dominance
continues to this day.
Great classics such as “King Kong” (1931), “The Wizard of
Oz” (1939), “Gone with the Wind” (1939), “The Grapes of
Wrath” (1940), “Citizen Kane” (1941), “The Maltese
Falcon” (1941), and “Casablanca” (1942) are made.
Film is also seen as a powerful weapon of propaganda.
Leni Riefenstahl (1902-2003), the German director and
actress produces “Triumph of the Will” (1934) a
documentary depicting the sixth Nazi Party Congress and
“Olympia” (1938) a documentary of the 1936 Berlin
Olympics. Both films, beautifully directed, glorify Nazism.
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Radio and Music
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The broadcasts of live drama, comedy, music and news
characterized the Golden Age of Radio. Before television,
radio was the dominant home entertainment medium.
The three major television networks NBC, CBS, and ABC
began as radio networks.
During the Golden Age of Radio, radio featured genres and
formats popular in other forms of American
entertainment—adventure, comedy, drama, horror, mystery,
musical variety, romance, thrillers—along with classical
music concerts, big band remotes, farm reports, news and
commentary, panel discussions, quiz and game shows.
Music became more popularized and people could by
recordings of their favorite music to play at home on
phonographs.
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The Legacy of the Age of the Masses and the Zenith of
Modernism
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We still live in the Age of the Masses and high modernism.
The era was marked by the most destructive wars in human
history.
The worldwide mass culture exploded with movies, radio,
newspapers, and this mass culture began to dominate public
life.
Advances in medicine, vaccinations and antibiotics resulted
in longer life spans.
American emerged as a world leader politically,
economically, and militarily. But perhaps more
significantly, America emerged as a world leader culturally.
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