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 shock
The Horrors of War
Friedrich Nietzsche
 German philosopher
(1844-1900)
 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

Logical empiricism
(positivism)
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

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.
Post-World War I
Art and Architecture
Cubism
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

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: Dance of the Veils
Picasso: Woman in Green
Picasso: Bathing
Picasso: Composition
with skull
Picasso: Guernica
George Braque – 1929 - Still life
Georges Braque's Still Life: Le Jour, 1929
Abstract
Wassily Kandinsky
born: Moscow, Russia; 1866
died: Paris, France; 1944
Composition VII - 1913
Composition VIII - 1923
Kandinsky – On White
Fernand Leger – 1916 –
Soldier with a pipe
Fernand Leger – Beer Mug
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 :
Configuration
Jean Arp –
The Ballerina
Marcel
Duchamp Nude
descending
staircase No.2
Marcel
Duchamp – La
Jocande aux
Moustaches
Man Ray - Les Amoureux
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.
Salvadore Dali: Illuminated Pleasures
Salvadore Dali: Cannibalism in Autumn (dadaism)
Salvadore Dali: The Persistence of Memory
Yves Tanguy - Indefinite Divisibility
Max Ernst – 1919-1920 Little Machine
Max Ernst – 1927 - The Kiss
Various paintings from the
inter-war era
Edvund Munch
Self-portrailt –
between clock and
bed
(Expressionism)
Edvard Munch
Scream
Piet Mondrian – 1918 Composition with gray and
light brown
(abstract expressionism)
Franz Mark – 1913-1914 Fighting Forms
This German artist was killed in WWI
Franz Mark – The Fate of Animals
Henri Monet – 1916-1923 Water Lillies
(Impressionism)
Post War Architecture
Post war architecture became more
functional that earlier work. Frank Lloyd
Wright was one of the most influential
architects of the period.
Frank Lloyd Wright

Post war architecture became more
functional that earlier work. Frank
Lloyd Wright was one of the most
influential architects of the period.
 Wright became known for a
simplicity of design that broke with
the more ornamental styles of the
Victorian age.
Frank Lloyd Wright - The Allen House
Other developments of the period

Lucky Charles Lindbergh
made the first trans-Atlantic
flight in 1927
Thanks to the success of the assembly line, automobiles were now able
to be produced much faster and much less expensively.
A new culture based
on the automobile
was soon to develop.
Improvements in
radios helped make
the world a smaller
place as information
could now be
transmitted to the
awaiting public.
By the end of the 1920s, radio
was an obsession shared by
both Europeans and
Americans.
Motion pictures were also developed
during this time. These silent films
offered yet another opportunity for
entertainment and escape from the
everyday chores of life.
The End