4.09: Uncertainty in the Postwar World

Marcel Duchamp

A French Dada artist who created the Fountain, a porcelain urinal

André Breton

A French poet who coined the term surrealism

Paul Valéry

A French poet who said: "Almost all the affairs of men remain in a terrible uncertainty."

Igor Stravinsky

A Russian composer who wrote the music for a ballet called The Rite of Spring; the music strongly influenced other modern composers.

Pablo Picasso

A Spanish artist who was one of the pioneers of a style called Cubism, which rejected the longstanding idea that art should mirror nature

Arnold Schoenberg

A modern composer who developed a method of composition called twelve-tone music, which worked through a careful arrangement of notes in numerical patterns

Salvador Dalí

A surrealist painter who created Persistence of Memory, one of his best-known works

Who was Amelia Earhart?

Amelia Earhart was the first woman to fly across the Atlantic Ocean as a passenger. She made her first solo flight across the Atlantic in 1932.

T.S. Eliot

An American expatriate poet who published a poem called "The Waste Land;" the poem depicts a postwar world that is emotionally exhausted and spiritually desolate, lacking hope or faith.

James Joyce

An Irish novelist who published Ulysses, which uses the technique of stream of consciousness; he became one of the most influential writers of the twentieth century.

William Butler Yeats

An Irish poet who published "The Second Coming," which presents a dark vision of a chaotic world

Who was Charles Lindberg?

Charles Lindbergh was the American aviator who completed the first nonstop solo flight across the Atlantic Ocean in a small, single-engine plane called the Spirit of St. Louis.

Which genre represented a break away from conformity and mocked modern civilization?

Dadaism

Why were most Americans more prosperous than Europeans during the 1920s?

Europe was recovering from the destruction of World War I .

As war-torn European countries struggled to recover from the war, the United States prospered. What were the roots of the nation's prosperity?

In Europe, the Great War left behind death, destruction, and poverty. But the United States had been spared the physical ruin of the war. The roots of prosperity lay mainly in the preceding decades of industrialization and technological innovation.

The Roaring Twenties

Industrial Technology: - Mass Production - Electric Power technology in the home: - electric lighting and appliances - indoor plumbing entertainment - increase in radio use - motion pictures the jazz age - young women became flappers - jazz became the music choice for the young generation transportation - wide use of automobiles - more roads - advances in aviation

What was the postwar's effect on Christianity in Europe?

Many Europeans decided that they could lead their lives without the daily influence of Christianity. Church attendance in Europe declined as many people could no longer find in Christianity the answers they sought in a fragmented postwar world.

How did art, literature, and music reflect the uncertainty of the postwar years?

Many artists altered, questioned, or simply abandoned reality in their works. Pablo Picasso and other artists used a style called Cubism, which rejected the traditional idea that art should be realistic and lifelike. Dadaists produced a kind of anti-art, intended to mock modern civilization. Surrealist writers and artists such as André Breton and Salvador eir works. James Joyce broke from the traditional novel by using the technique of stream of consciousness in his novel, Ulysses. Igor Stravinsky's The Rite of Spring broke with traditional musical composition. Arnold Schoenberg's music was atonal, meaning it had no key, and was not centered on any specific musical tone.

How did the mass production of the automobile affect society and the economy in the United States?

The increase in the number of cars demanded the building of more roads. Industries that supplied the parts and materials for cars, including rubber, glass, and steel, boomed. Oil refineries worked overtime to meet the demand for gasoline. As more people traveled by car, new businesses opened to meet their needs. Cars allowed some people to move from the city to the suburbs.

What was Dada?

an artistic movement in which artists produced a kind of anti-art, intended to subvert and mock everything about modern civilization, including art itself

What was surrealism?

an artistic movement in which writers and artists tried to tap the unconscious mind for access to what they thought was a deeper, truer reality

What was the Lost Generation?

the name that characterizes the generation that had survived the war only to confront the terrible uncertainties that followed; the Lost Generation had been changed by the war.