Toward A New Culture

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Toward A New Culture

• Modernist Culture- Early 20th century

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Richard Wagner

• Transition to Modernism
• Revolutionary and a nationalist
• Violently anti-Semitic

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Richard Wagner as a Romantic

• German Romantic
• Recreated ideal world of chivalry
• Incorporated natural world in his works
• (rivers, sunshine, etc.)

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Richard Wagner as a Revolutionary

• Tristan and Isolde
• Sexual love in a very practical manner

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Philosophers and Intellectual Thought

• Nietzsche
• Bergson
• Freud

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Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900)
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Nietzsche

• Reason plays little role in life
• Disliked Christianity

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Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900)
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Nietzsche

• New World Order
• Civilization was nothing more than collective
  fantasy
• The intellectuals must lead the way

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Nietzsche

• Despised nationalism, militarism, democracy, and
  equality

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Nietzsche

• Racial persecutors and dictators distorted
  Nietzsches views to fuel and justify their cause

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Henri Bergson

• Influential intellectual forces in early 20th
  century
• Inner reflection he called intuition
• New attitude to time
• Believed in the creative process (unlike
  Nietzsche)

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Henri Bergson

• Creative Evolution
• Valued religion and morality in a spiritual sense
• Wanted to free people of excessive dependence and
  rationalism

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Henri Bergson
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Freud (1856-1939)

• Viennese physician
• Wanted to understand the human subconscious and
  unconscious
• Controversial theories
• Created the 20th century western view of human
  existence

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Freud

• Wrote explicitly about human sexual behavior
• Clinical not moral terms
• All individuals born with strong sexual identify
  and drives

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Freud

• Masculinity and femininity acquired during
  childhood
• Children aware of parental power to block sexual
  functioning

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Freud

• Family relationships were the root of the human
  psyche
• Cause of emotional disturbance
• Sex was not an anatomical function but affected
  by cultural factors

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Freud

• Society repressed womens sexual drives and
  caused hysteria
• Fainting attacks signs of abnormal sexual
  development

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Freud

• Womens sexual drive equally as powerful to men
• BUT..approved of their passive domestic role to
  offset male aggression

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Freud

• Homosexuality
• All children pass this this phase
• normal children emerge from it

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Freud

• Psychoanalysis
• Studied neurosis
• Significance of dreams
• The Future of an Illusion
• Id, Ego, Superego

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Realism and Symbolism

• Emile Zola
• Individual lives principally shaped by both
  heredity and environment
• Destroyed by forces of nature that are powerless
  to control
• Naturalist

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Zola

• Social ills of society
• The Dram Shop (alcoholism)
• Nana (prostitution)
• Germinal (industrialization)

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Zola

• Social ills of society
• 1898 Dreyfus Affair
• Pamphlet opposing the armys handling of Dreyfus
  (Jewish Frenchmen) accused of being a spy

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Thomas Hardy

• Novelist who wrote of despair
• English country life
• Industrial progress ruined traditional
  agricultural life
• Modern efficiency was destructive

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Thomas Hardy

• Novelist who wrote of despair
• Tess of the Durbervilles
• Destroyed by rigid code of social behavior
• Is executed by hanging

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Thomas Hardy

• Novelist who wrote of despair
• Jude the Obscure
• Destiny prevents characters from achieving
• Hardy has a passionate concern for humanity
• But is seen as a pessimist towards his Creator

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Impressionism

• Rejected realism
• Emphasized abstract color, shape, line
• Its all about the subjective!
• Direct observation
• ..paint it just as it looks to you, the exact
  color and shape, until it gives your own naive
  impression of the scene before you. Monet

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What does the Salon think of Impressionism?
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The Salon of the Refused

• Manet
• Renoir
• Cezanne

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Olympia, 1863 (Manet)
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Monet

• Concerned with light, color, and shadow

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Mary Cassatt

• American
• Why talk about her?

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Mary Cassatt

• Lived in Paris to study with Impressionists
• Painted spontaneous scenes of everyday life
• Subjects caught unaware in a moment of intimacy

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Degas
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Just kidding!
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Degas

• Good friends with Mary C.
• Spontaneous scenes
• Had a thing for ballerinas

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Seurat
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Gaugin
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Van Gogh
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Post Impressionists

• Only had one thing in common they all rejected
  Impressionism (thats all they have in common)

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Post Impressionists

• Seurat tiny dots to build geometric forms
• Gauguin exotic scenes of Tahiti with broad
  washes of paint
• Cezanne monumental landscapes and ordered still
  life, abstract sense of balance, treat Nature in
  terms of its geometrical shapes
• Van Gogh terrible passions of humanity,
  swirling lines, violent colors

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Matisse
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Matisse

• Luminous, festive scenes
• Glowing still life
• The Joy of Life
• It drove the other artists crazy to see how
  happy Matisse was.

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Expressionist Edvard Munch

• Mainly German
• Expressed strong emotions
• Munch was Norwegian
• Bold images captures extreme states of mind
• Loneliness, alienation, hysterical moods

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Cubism

• 1908-1914 in Paris
• Braque and Picasso
• Challenged the universal idea..

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Cubism

• 1908-1914 in Paris
• Braque and Picasso
• Challenged the universal idea..that works on a
  2-D surface should be 3-D
• Abandoned traditional perspective

• Early Cubism
• Use canvas as a geometric grid
• Break up image and put it in various places
• Braque showed object that in reality could only
  be seen separately (violin)

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Futurism

• Italian movement
• Rejected traditional culture
• Instead valued the cult of the machine and the
  technological future
• Marinetti and Boccioni glorified violence
• Enthusiastic about World War I

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