1. Modernism Around 1918-1945 Roots in 1890s

2. Main points  Differences between Realism and Modernism  Modernism Timeline and Social Snaphots  Forces behind Modernism  Characteristics of Modernism in Literature  Canonical Literary Authors  Modernism in Visual Arts

3. Difference between Realism and Modernism  Whereas REALISM Emphasized absolutism, and Believed that a single reality could be determined through the observation of nature  MODERNISM Argued for cultural relativism, And believed that people make their own meaning in the world.

4. Value Differences in the Modern World Pre-Modern WorldModern World (Early 20 th Century) OrderedChaotic MeaningfulFutile OptimisticPessimistic StableFluctuating FaithLoss of faith Morality/ValuesCollapse of Morality/Values Clear Sense of IdentityConfused Sense of Identity and Place in the World

5. Modernism Timeline  1914: Outbreak of WWI  1916: Irish War of Independence 21 Nov 1920: Bloody Sunday  1917: Russian Revolution

6. World War I:1914 (1915-1918)

7. WWI: Air Fights

8. WWI: Trench War Fare and Poison Gas

9. Modernism Timeline  1918: WWI ends  1920: Einstein’s Relativity theory confirmed

10. Social Snapshot of the Times  Result of Political Turmoil Revolutionary Ideologies Rise  Fascism The separation and persecution or denial of equality to a certain group based on race, creed, or origin  Nazism Socialism featuring racism, expansionism and obedience to a strong leader  Communism Control of the means of production should rest in the hands of the laborers.

11. Fascism and Nazism

12. Communism

13. Modernism Timeline  1920 League of Nations begins 19 th Amendment granting women the vote  1921—Irish Free State proclaimed  1922—Fascists march on Rome under Mussolini  1923—Charleston craze

14. Modernism Timeline  1925— Image of human face televised Hitler published Mein Kampf  1927 Lindbergh flies solo across Atlantic Al Jolson, first talkie

15. Modernism Timeline  1929—US stock market crashes  1933 Hitler appointed Chancellor of Germany First German concentration camps Prohibition ends in US

16. Modernism Timeline  1934—Hitler becomes dictator  1936—Civil War in Spain begins  1938—Germany occupies Austria  1939 Hitler and Stalin make pact Germany invades Poland Great Britain and France declare war on Germany

17. Modernism Timeline  1941 Germany invades USSR Japan bombs Pearl Harbor, US enters war  1942 Battle of Stalingrad, Battle of Midway  1944—D-Day invasion of France

18. Modernism Timeline  1945 End of war in Europe Atomic bomb dropped on Japan United Nations founded First computer built Microwave oven invented

19. Social Snapshot of the Times  Scientific Revolution Quantum theory  Explains the nature of matter and energy on the atomic and subatomic level Principle of Uncertainty  In quantum mechanics: increasing the accuracy of measurement of one observable quantity increases the uncertainty with which another may be known

20. Snapshot of the Times: Implications for Nature of Reality  Many-worlds (multi-verse) theory As soon as the potential exists for any object to be in any state, the universe of the object transmutes into a series of parallel universes equaling the number of possible states in which an object can exist. Stephen Hawking posits the possibility for interaction between universes.  Copenhagen interpretation: nothing exists until it is measured: Schrödinger's cat (dead and alive)

21. Schrödinger's cat

22. Forces behind Modernism  Discovery of the unconscious psychoanalysis  The sense that our culture has no center, no values  Paradigm shift from the closed, finite, measurable, cause- and-effect universe of the 19th century to an open, relativistic, changing, strange universe

23. Characteristics of Modernism in Literature  Literature Exhibits Perspectivism Meaning comes from the individual’s perspective and is thus personalized A single story might be told from the perspective of several different people, with the assumption that the “truth” is somewhere in the middle

24. Characteristics of Modernism in Literature  Inner psychological reality or “interiority” is represented o Stream of consciousness—portraying the character’s inner monologue

25. Characteristic of Modernism in Literature  Perception of language changes: No longer seen as transparent, allowing us to “see through” to reality But now considered the way an individual constructs reality Language is “thick” with multiple meanings and varied connotative forces.

26. Characteristic of Modernism in Literature  Emphasis on the Experimental Art is artifact rather than reality Organized non-sequentially  Experience portrayed as layered, allusive, discontinuous, using fragmentation and juxtaposition Ambiguous endings—open endings which are seen as more representative of reality

27. Canonical Modernist Authors  T.S. Eliot  W.B. Yeats  James Joyce  Virginia Woolf  Ernest Hemingway  Franz Kafka  Gertrude Stein  F. Scott Fitzgerald  Ezra Pound

28. Modernism in Visual Arts

29. The Armory Show: International Exhibition of Modern Art, 1913  Watershed date in American art  Introduced astonished New Yorkers, accustomed to realistic art, to modern art;  Teddy Roosevelt said, “That’s not art!”

30. Matisse

31. Cubism  Cubism—1909-1911 Art in which multiple views are presented simultaneously in flattened, geometric way.

32. Cubism

33. Dadaism  Dadaism –deliberately irrational a protest against the barbarism of the War and oppressive intellectual rigidity Anti-art  Strives to have no meaning  Interpretation dependent entirely on the viewer  Intentionally offends.

34. Dadaism Duchamp

35. Surrealism  Surrealism Grew out of Dada and Automatism Reveals the unconscious mind in dream images, the irrational, and the fantastic Impossible combinations of objects depicted in realistic detail.

36. Surrealism Dali Magritte

37. Jackson Pollock

38. Futurism  Futurism—grew out of Cubism. Added implied motion to the shifting planes and multiple observation points of the Cubists Celebrated natural as well as mechanical motion and speed Glorified danger, war, and the machine

39. Futurism Giacomo Balla Kandinsky

40. Main points  Differences between Realism and Modernism  Modernism Timeline and Social Snaphots  Forces behind Modernism  Characteristics of Modernism in Literature  Canonical Literary Authors  Modernism in Visual Arts

41. The End