Age of Anxiety in
the West
The Time Between Two Wars:
1920-1940
Philosophy and Science

Friedrich Nietzsche
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Rejection of Common
Morality
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“God is Dead.”--If Human
existence is meaningless
then how should we live
our lives?
Existentialists: “Man is
Condemned to be Free”-J.P. Sartre
Albert Einstein--New theory
of Special Relativism

Potential energy in
universe around us.
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Psychology
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Shell shock shows new
vulnerable mentality of
modern mind.
Freud’s theories, (known as
psycho-analysis) which
used dream theory and the
unconscious mind to define
human behavior, became
popular during this era.

Freud stresses irrationality
of human mind.

Freud and followers’
theories become accepted
and undermine the
traditional optimism of
human nature and mind.
World Depression

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Massive global economic recession (or "depression") that ran from
1929 to approximately 1939.
Numerous bank failures, high unemployment, as well as dramatic
drops in Gross Domestic Product (GDP), industrial production,
stock market share prices.
The Wall Street crash of 1929 is widely considered to be the
foremost event which marked the start of the world-wide financial
crisis. In fact, in the United States unemployment soared from
approximately 3% to over 25%.
Art: Expressionists, Cubism, and
Surrealism

Paul Gauguin (1848 - 1903)
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Pablo Picasso (1881-1973)
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Expressionism
Cubism
Salavdor Dali (1904-1989)
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Surrealism
Paul Gauguin
Haystacks in Brittany, 1890

Originating in Germany, Expressionism
encompasses all art in which the artist
is free to move beyond the limitations
of objective subject matter and to
concentrate on the feeling and impact
derived from the artist’s inspiration.

Expressionist sought to reveal inner,
spiritual and emotional foundations of
human existence, rather than the
external, surface appearances
depicted by the Impressionists.
Man in a Café, Picasso

The key concept of
Cubism is that the
essence of objects can
only be captured by
showing it from multiple
points of view
simultaneously.
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Guernica, Picasso, 1937
Surrealism
Surrealism: movement in visual art and literature, flourishing in Europe
between World Wars I and II. Surrealism grew principally out of the earlier
Dada movement, which before World War I produced works of anti-art that
deliberately defied reason; but Surrealism's emphasis was not on negation
but on positive expression
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Literature

Modern novel

Stream of
consciousness
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V. Woolf, Faulkner, J.
Joyce
Modern hopelessness

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T. S. Eliot
Post WWI Poetry
We are the hollow men
We are the stuffed men
Leaning together
Headpiece filled with straw.
Alas! Our dried voices, when
We whisper together Are quiet and
meaningless As wind in dry grass
Or rats' feet over broken glass
In our dry cellar Shape without form,
shade without color,
Paralyzed force, gesture without
motion;
Those who have crossed With direct
eyes, to death's other Kingdom
Remember us -- if at all -- not as lost
Violent souls, but only
As the hollow men The stuffed men.