Maps and Images for McKay 8e

A History of Western Society

Chapter 28

The Age of Anxiety

Cover Slide

Berthe Morisot, In the Dining Room

Berthe Morisot (1841-1895) 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.

Berthe Morisot, In the Dining Room

Monet, Impression: SunriseImpression: 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)

Monet, Impression: Sunrise

Pissarro, L'avenue de l'OpéraCamille 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.

Pissarro, L'avenue de l'Opéra

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 DrinnenGeorge 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 the uncertainty and anxiety of the 1920s. (akg-images)

Grosz, Draussen und Drinnen

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)

Anti-French poster "Hands off the Ruhr"

"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)

"Smokeless Chimneys/Anxious Mothers"

• 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.

Post War Uncertainty

"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)

"The War, As I Saw It"

• 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 Uncertainty

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

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)

Cartoon: Unlocking Power of Atom

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, GuernicaPablo 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.

Picasso, Guernica

• 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.

Literature and the Arts

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)

Josephine Baker in Paris

• 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.

Literature and the Arts

Virginia WoolfThis 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)

Virginia Woolf

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 (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.

Dorothea Lange depression photo

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"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)

"There's No Way like American Way"

A soup kitchen in 1931.

• Well educated technocrats (mostly male)

• Thomas Corcoran

• Jim Farley

• Frances Perkins

• Mary Bethune

• Jane Hoey

New Deal Brain Trust

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“

This Weimar Cinema poster advertises Metropolis, a film by the Austrian-American film director Fritz Lang (1890-1976). This film explored the dehumanization and exploitation of the modern city. (The Museum of Modern Art, New York. Gift of Universum Film Aktiengesellschaft.)

Weimar movie poster for "Metropolis"

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 posterScandinavian 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)

Scandinavian socialism poster

Soyer, Employment AgencyThe 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.

Soyer, Employment Agency

RISE OF FASCISM

AND NAZISM

World War I

Powerlessness of League of

Nations

German reparations

Redrawn national borders

Economic Problems

Worldwide depression

Unemployment

Inflation

Decline of trade

Many small political

parties and factions

Weak Government

Rising taxes in

Italy

In Germany, disapproval of government by

both liberals and conservatives

Promoting of extreme nationalism

Leadership

Exploitation of fears

Use of terror and

intimidation

Rise of Fascism

and Nazism

Still of NuremburgThis 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)

Still of Nuremburg

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 radios- grew 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.