Cover Slide
Maps and Images for
McKay 8e
A History of Western
Society
Chapter 28
The Age of Anxiety
Berthe Morisot, In the Dining Room
Berthe Morisot, In
the Dining Room
Berthe Morisot (18411895) was one of the
original members of the
Impressionist group.
Many of her paintings,
such as this one, deal
with home life, women,
and domestic scenes. The
liberated brushwork and
expressive use of light
and shade are hallmarks
of her style.
Monet, Impression: Sunrise
Monet, Impression: Sunrise
Impression: Sunrise, 1872 by Claude Monet, which gave Impressionism its name,
was greeted with derision and contempt, because the painter broke with artistic
convention. The substance of the composition was replaced by an assortment of
dabs of color, applied with loose, short brush strokes against a blue backdrop.
(Musee Marmottan, Paris/The Bridgeman Art Library International)
Pissarro, L'avenue de l'Opéra
Pissarro, L'avenue de l'Opéra
Camille Pissarro was one of the leading Impressionists. In this painting, L'avenue
de l'Opéra, Sunlight, Winter Morning, he portrayed the broad new avenue
designed by Baron Georges Haussmann (1809-1891), which transformed Paris
from a dirty medieval city to a beautiful modern one. The avenue leads to the new
opera, in background, also planned during the Second Empire.
Post War Uncertainty
• World War I spelled the death of the old
order.
– World War I dealt a staggering blow to
Western civilization.
– A new world began to take shape in the
ashes of the old.
– The building process created an age of
anxiety in Western society.
Grosz, Draussen und Drinnen
Grosz, Draussen und Drinnen
George Grosz (German painter and graphic artist, 1893-1959) developed a bitter,
savagely satiric style to express the disillusionment of his post-World War I generation.
In this detail from his painting Draussen und Drinnen (Outside and Inside) he captures
Anti-French poster "Hands off the Ruhr"
Anti-French poster "Hands
off the Ruhr"
The French occupation of the
Ruhr to collect reparations
payments raised a storm of
patriotic protest in Germany.
This anti-French poster of 1923
(Hands Off the Ruhr) turns
Marianne, the personification of
French republic virtue, into a
vicious harpy. (International
Instituut voor Sociale
Geschiedenis)
"Smokeless Chimneys/Anxious Mothers"
"Smokeless
Chimneys/Anxious Mothers"
In Britain, where the depression
followed a weak postwar recovery,
large numbers suffered involuntary
idleness for years at a time. This
poster--Smokeless Chimneys and
Anxious Mothers!--was used in the
Conservative Party's election
campaign of 1931, when
unemployment rose to a new record
high. (Conservative Research
Department/The Bridgeman Art
Library International)
Post War Uncertainty
• The critics of the pre-war world
anticipated many of the post-war ideas.
– Nietzsche believed that only the creativity of
a few supermen could structure the
maligned world.
– Logical empiricists maintained that only
experience was worth analyzing.
– Abstract concepts like God were sheer folly.
"The War, As I Saw It"
"The War, As I Saw It"
The War, As I Saw It was the
title of a series of grotesque
drawings that appeared in 1920
in Simplicissimus, Germany's
leading satirical magazine.
Nothing shows better the
terrible impact of World War I
than this profoundly disturbing
example of expressionist art.
(Caroline Buckler)
Post War Uncertainty
• The critics of the pre-war world anticipated
many of the post-war ideas
– Existentialists viewed a world where the individual
has to find his own meaning.
• Sartre and Camus are representatives of this group.
– Christian existentialists like Kierkegaard believed
that Christian faith could anchor the individual
caught in the tempestuous sea of modernity.
– The above views gained greater acceptance after the
Great War’s destruction.
Post War Uncertainty
• The horrors of war brought about
Christianity’s revival.
– T. S. Eliot created his work within a
perceived traditional Christian framework.
– Eliot advocated literary allegiance to
tradition.
– Graham Greene turned to religion for hope
and meaning.
Post War Science
• The postwar world witnessed many developments in
physics and psychology.
– Einstein’s theory about the relativity of time and space
challenged traditional ideas of Newtonian physics.
– The Newtonian system that had dominated society since the
seventeenth and eighteenth centuries began to give way.
• Freudian psychology seemed to reflect the spirit of the
age, with its emphasis on men and women as greedy,
grasping, irrational creatures.
– Freud believed that human behavior is irrational.
– He believed that the key to understanding human behavior is
the irrational unconscious (the id).
Cartoon: Unlocking Power of Atom
Cartoon: Unlocking
Power of Atom
Many of the fanciful visions of
science fiction came true in the
twentieth century, although not
exactly as first imagined. This
1927 cartoon satirizes a
professor who has split the
atom and unwittingly destroyed
his building and neighborhood
in the process. In World War II
the professors harnessed the
atom in bombs and decimated
faraway cities and foreign
civilians. (Mary Evans Picture
Library)
Literature and the Arts
• Post-war literature and the arts
witnessed a minor renaissance.
– Literary figures such as Proust, Eliot, and
Joyce experimented with language in an
attempt to reflect the dynamics of society.
• The postwar moods of pessimism, relativism, and
alienation influenced novelists and poets.
Picasso, Guernica
Picasso, Guernica
Pablo Picasso (1881-1973) was probably the most significant artist of the early twentieth
century. For more than seventy years, he personified the individuality, freedom, and
revolutionary creativity of the modern arts. His passionate involvement in his times infuses
his immense painting Guernica, often considered his greatest work. Painted for the Spanish
pavilion at the Paris International Exhibition in 1937, this mural, with its mournful white,
black, and blue colors, was inspired by the devastation of Guernica by fascist planes in a
single night.
Literature and the Arts
• The music of Stravinsky, Berg, and
Schoenberg challenged traditional
standards of musical theory.
– The concept of expressionism affected music.
– Schoenberg and other composers abandoned
traditional harmony and tonality.
Josephine Baker in Paris
Josephine Baker in
Paris
The young American
Josephine Baker suddenly
became a star when she
brought an exotic African
eroticism to French music
halls in 1925. American
blacks and Africans had a
powerful impact on
entertainment in Europe in
the 1920s and 1930s.
(Hulton Archives/Getty
Images)
Literature and the Arts
• Architecture tended toward functionalism.
– The Bauhaus Movement appeared at first to be a
sinister, inhuman reflection of the anxiety of the age.
• Artists like Cezanne, Picasso, and Dali
revolutionized art by turning to increasingly
nonrepresentational expressions.
– Cubism concentrated on zigzagging lines and
overlapping planes.
– Nonrepresentational art focused on mood, not
objects.
Virginia Woolf
Virginia Woolf
This photograph of Virginia Woolf
by Gisele Freund shows the
famous author in a pensive pose.
Her novels captured sensations
like impressionist paintings, and
her home attracted a circle of
artists and writers known as the
Bloomsbury Group. Many of
Woolf's essays deal with women's
issues and urge greater
opportunity for women's
creativity. (Gisele Freund/Photo
Researchers)
Searching for Peace and stability
•
•
•
•
•
•
Versailles Treaty
The Rhineland
Purpose of reparations
Forced payment
Insecurity
The Great Depression
• Uneven riches
• Consumer debt / buying on credit
• Get rich quick / Market speculation
– Over inflated prices for stocks
– Margin buying
• Too many goods too little demand
Depositors gather outside this bank in
April 1933 hoping that it does not fail.
The Crash
• US Black Tuesday 29th – Bottom falls out
– Margin buyers wiped out
– Only people w/o money in market survive
– Kennedy's etc….
• US called in debts Gold began to flow
into US and out of Europe
• Austrian banks failure / began panic in
Europe
Dorothea Lange depression photo
Dorothea Lange depression
photo
Dorothea Lange (1895-1965)
was one of the most effective
photographers in making the
public aware of the plight of the
poor. Her most famous
photograph, Migrant Mother,
Nipomo, California, shows a
32-year-old widow, later
identified as Florence
Thompson, with two of her ten
children. This young woman-with her worried look and
prematurely old face--told
Lange that she had just sold the
tires from her car to buy food.
Causes of the Great Depression
• Over-speculation (unreal value of stocks)
• Protectionist Tariffs backfires
– Retaliation kills foreign trade
• Unstable economy
– Overproduction of goods
– An uneven distribution of Wealth
• Limited purchasing power of low/middle class
"There's No Way like American Way"
"There's No Way like American Way"
In this classic 1930s photograph, Life magazine photographer Margaret Bourke-White (1904-1971)
captured the contrast between advertisers’ view of the ideal American family and the reality of mass
poverty in a land of plenty, in this case a line of Louisville flood victims, 1937. Bourke-White was one of
the most important photographers of the twentieth century. She was a woman doing a man's job, in a
man's world, from the foundries of Cleveland to the battlefields of World War II. (TimePix/Getty
Images)
A soup kitchen in 1931.
New Deal Brain Trust
•
•
•
•
•
•
Well educated technocrats (mostly male)
Thomas Corcoran
Jim Farley
Frances Perkins
Mary Bethune
Jane Hoey
Repairing the Economy: The
New Deal
• National Industrial Recovery Act (NIRA)
– National Recovery Administration (NRA)
– Hugh Johnson
• Public Works Administration (PWA)
Weimar movie poster for "Metropolis"
Weimar movie poster for
"Metropolis“
This Weimar Cinema poster
advertises Metropolis, a film
by the Austrian-American film
director Fritz Lang (18901976). This film explored the
dehumanization and
exploitation of the modern
city. (The Museum of Modern
Art, New York. Gift of
Universum Film
Aktiengesellschaft.)
Philosophical Underpinnings
• Fiscal Policy
– Tried to force up the wages of labor
• Keynesianism - John Maynard Keynes
– Under-consumption
– Federal Deficit is OK
– Government spending is good for the
Economy
– Government borrowing was at the center of
the policy
Scandinavian Response to the Depression
• Of all the Western Democratic countries, the
Scandinavian countries under Socialist
leadership responded most successfully.
• Socialists become the largest political party in
Sweden and Norway.
• Developed flexible and non-revolutionary
Socialism. Labor leaders and capitalists
worked together.
• They used wide scale deficit spending to finance
public works and maintain production and
employment.
Scandinavian socialism poster
Scandinavian socialism poster
Scandinavian socialism championed cooperation and practical welfare measures,
playing down strident rhetoric and theories of class conflict. This Norwegian
poster for The Oslo Breakfast showed the Scandinavian approach, which provided
every schoolchild in the Norwegian capital with a good breakfast free of charge.
(Universitets-biblioteket i Oslo)
Soyer, Employment Agency
Soyer, Employment Agency
The frustration and agony of looking for work against long odds are painfully evident in Employment
Agency, an American masterpiece by Isaac Soyer (1902?-1981 ). The time-killing, pensive resignation,
and dejection seen in the three figures are only aspects of the larger problem. One of three talented
brothers born in Russia and trained as artists in New York, Isaac Soyer worked in the tradition of
American realism and concentrated on people and the influence of their environment.
Rise of
Fascism
and Nazism
German
reparations
Redrawn
national
borders
Powerlessness
of League of
Nations
World
War I
Exploitation
of fears
Worldwide
depression
Unemployment
Use of
terror and
intimidation
Leadership
RISE OF
FASCISM
AND
NAZISM
Economic
Problems
Inflation
Promoting
of extreme
nationalism
Decline
of trade
Weak
Government
In Germany,
disapproval of
government by
both liberals and
conservatives
Rising
taxes in
Italy
Many small
political
parties and
factions
Still of Nuremburg
Still of Nuremburg
This still is from an extraordinary illustration of the Nazi period, Triumph of the Will, a
documentary film on the sixth Nazi Party rally, which took place September 4-10, 1934,
in the historic city of Nuremberg. Directed by a talented young woman, Leni
Riefenstahl (1902-2003), Triumph of the Will has long been recognized as one of the
most compelling propaganda films ever made. (MOMA Film Stills Archive)
Recovery in Britain and France
Britain
• The budget was balanced, but unemployed
workers barely received enough assistance to
survive.
• The economy recovered significantly by 1932
and was 20% higher than the 1920’s.
• Went off the gold standard and established
protective tariffs in 1932.
Recovery in Britain and France
• New industries- automobiles and radiosgrew in the South, leading to a decline in
industry in the North, and a southern
migration.
• Low interest rates encouraged a housing
boom.
Recovery in Britain and France
•
•
•
•
France
Great depression came later due to France’s lack
of industrialization compared to Germany, France,
and England.
Declined until 1935, never reached full
employment before the war.
Unstable government- with so many different
parties no one would cooperate for long.
five coalition cabinets formed and fell in rapid
succession.
Recovery in Britain and France
Civil War in Spain
• France was split over whether to help Spain.
• Conservatives would have joined Hitler and
Mussolini in aiding the attack of Spanish
fascists.
• Communists wanted France to join the
Spanish republicans
Recovery in Britain and France
• French fascists, semi fascists, and communists
were pulling France from all sides.
• Communists, Socialists, and Radicals formed the
Popular Front to avoid a fascists takeover.
• Popular Front encouraged unions, social reform,
paid vacations, and a 40 hour work week, but the
efforts were quickly sabotaged by inflation,
fascists, and conservatives.