Culture, Science, and Technology, 1900 to Present Flashcards
~Modern period
● Considiered in cultural and intelletual terms to have lasted roughly from the 1870s through the 1940s
~Contemporary era/postmodern era
● Characterized by even more unpredictability, relativism, and unconventionality than before
● The notion of an artistic and literary canon (a universally agreed-upon body of great works) has been called into doubt by postmodern thinking, in keeping with its rejection fo the notion that objective truth exists
~Multiculturalism
● The interaction and fusion of hte world’s various ethnic, artistic, and intellectual traditions
~Mass media technology
● Their exuberancea nd energy contrasted with the anxiety and uncertainty expressed by most high art
● Radio, film, teleision and the inexpensive production of books brought music, drama, literature and information into the lives of a greater variety of people
~Information/digital revolution
● Caused by computer
● Has vastly altered life in the 1990s and beyond
~High art (West)
● Characterized by bold experimentation and the distortion, even abandonment, of traditional norms and conventions
~Western art (first half of the 1900s)
● Marked by uncertainty and pessimism
● Despair caused by WWI brought an ever greater sense of anxiety tot he cultural forefront
● Europe’s political and economic comedown and the unsettling philosophical implications of recent scientific insights deepened the gloom during the interwar period
~All Quiet on the Western Front
● Eloquent accounts of the wartime experience
● By Erich Maria Remarque
● Describes the dehumanizing effects of hte trench warfare
~War poets
● Siegfried Sassoon, Robert Owen, and others
● Questioned traditional patriotism as an adequate justification for the midless butchery caused by the war
~Dada movement
● Avant-garde artists
● Exhibited in Europe and New York during the war
● Used shock and abusurdism, both to push the boundaires of what should be considered art and to highlight the irrationality of WWI, which they opposed
● “Fountain”: the bowl of a urinal irrevenrently turned into a sculpture by Frenchman Marcel Duchamp
~Sigmund Freud
● Called into question whether anything was fully knowable or whether any objective truths or standards existed
~The Decline of hte West
● Nonfiction book in interwar Europe
● By philospher Oswald Spengler
~T.S. Elliot and Franz Kafka
● Their prose and poetry dealt with dehumanization in an industrialized, bureaucratized era
~Stream-of-consciousness prose
● Virginia Woolfe, Marcel Proust and James Joyce
● Attempted to capture, almost in Freudian style, the workings of the human mind on the witten page
~Abstract painters
● Such as Pablo Picasso
● Distorted reality to demonstrate that things could be seen from a variety of perspective
~Surrealists
● Like Salvador Dali
● Placed realistic objects in unrealistic situations to confuse the viewer’s sense of reality
~Existentialism
● Rose to prominence after WWII
● Championed by the Irish playwright Samuel Beckett and hte French philosophers Albert Camus and Jean-Paul Sartre
● Proposed that humanity was not guided by any deity, special destiny, or objective morality
● Alone in the universe, the individual must learn to create a worthwhile, ethical existence for themselves without the benfit of religion or hte hope of any life beyong hte earthly one
~Art in non-Western world
● In addition to maintiaining their own styles, non-Western authors and artists hae adopted Western forms of writing, paiting, and composing, often modigfying them with elements from their own culture
~Rabindranath Tagore
● Prior to WWII, the Indian poet was the first non-Westerner to win the Nobel Price for literature
● Dazzled readers worlwide with lyrical verses inspried by Hindu mysticism
~Lu Xun/Hsun
● China’s author wrote hard-hitting stories about his country’s economic domination by outside powers, and also the governemnt’s lack of concern for lower-class commoners
~Negritude movement
● Stating int he 1930s
● Inspired by the African-Ameircan poets of the Harlem Renaissance nad hte Marxism percoloating in interwar Paris
● United African and Caribbean writer from French colonies in their opposition to European imperialism an din htier pride in being black
~Diego Rivera
● The Mexican artist who created powerful murals expressing the plight of the working poor, as well as of Mayans and other indigenous peoples
~Frida Kahlo
● Rivera’s wife
● Remains famous in her own right for her feminist themes and her bold use of colors
~Chinua Achebe
● Looks backward to the impact of British imperialism and missionary activity on Nigeria’s Ibo (Igbo) people in (1958)
● One of the first African novels to gain an international audience
~Anita Desai
● Deals with women’s lives in (1963)
~Yukio Mishima
● Japan’s prolific novelist and traditional nationalist
● Opposed what he saw as the destruction of Japan’s cultural values
● His ritual, samurai-style suicide in 1970 elevated him to cult status
~Gabriel Garcia Marquez and Isabel Allend
● Latin American authos who pioneered magical realism
● A richly textured style featuring intricately detailed storytelling
~Naguib Mahfouz
● Islamic novelist who won the nobel Prize for his , a vibrant portrait of postwar Egypt
● Stabbed by an Islamic extremist in 1984