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-ModernismRoughly Late 19th to Early 20th Centuries
…and some questions to consider
• Ludwig Meidner
• German
Expressionist
Painter
• 1884-1966
German Expressionism
– A manifestation of subjective feeling
toward objective reality and the
world of imagination. With bold,
vigorous brushwork, emphatic lines,
and bright color, the German
painters produced splendid, almost
savagely powerful canvases,
particularly expressive of intense
human feeling.
- Art Through the Ages
Meidner experienced the first half of
the 20th Century as an apocalyptic
age. Ensconced in his humble
attic-studio in Berlin before the
outbreak of World War I, he
painted visions of the Last
Judgment and the end of the
world. “Sometimes I feel like
hopping out of the window, down
four storeys,” Meidner wrote in his
autobiography. “When I’m half
awake I die many terrible deaths,
but I know that I shall come into
divine bliss again
nevertheless…I’m going to throw
myself under a train, so its wheels
can run screaming into my serene
skull--! Into momentous, grand
death-!” Even down to the
punctuation, such statements are
suffused with an acceptance of the
“twilight of humankind”, “fall and
scream,” an apocalyptic mood, and
also a touch of self-pity, are
reflected in Meidner’s words.
- Art of the 20th Century
As a painter he stood under the
spell of van Gogh, and
affinities with the early
Kokoschka are also apparent.
Wildly sweeping lines, extreme
distortion of features in the
portraits, jumbled perspectives
in the cityscapes, where the
buildings seem shaken by an
earthquake and on the verge of
collapsing, where the ground is
pulled out from under our feet
and the sky goes up in flames
or disintegrates before our
eyes—and in the midst of this
chaos, man, alone and forlorn:
Meidner himself.
- Art of the 20th Century
Charles Darwin
1809-1882
• First published in 1859, On
the Origin of Species by
Means of Natural
Selection, or the
Preservation of Favoured
Races in the Struggle for
Life rocked the scientific
world.
•
The Descent of Man, and
Selection in Relation to Sex
is a book on evolutionary
theory by British naturalist
Charles Darwin, first
published in 1871. It was
Darwin's second large book on
evolutionary theory, following
his 1859 work, The Origin of
Species, and is concerned with
outlining the application of
Darwin's theory to human
evolution, and detailing the
theory of sexual selection. The
book touches on a number of
related issues, including
evolutionary psychology,
evolutionary ethics, differences
between human races,
differences between human
sexes, and the relevance of
evolutionary theory to society.
- Wikipedia
Issues that soon follow:
• Social Darwinism
• Class Struggle
• Eugenics
• The age-old Science vs. Religion
Debate
• Darwin questions well-established
beliefs of where we come from.
Gregor Johann Mendel (July
20[1], 1822 – January 6, 1884)
was an Augustinian abbot who
is often called the "father of
genetics" for his study of the
inheritance of traits in pea
plants. Mendel showed that
the inheritance of traits follows
particular laws, which were
later named after him. The
significance of Mendel's work
was not recognized until the
turn of the 20th century. Its
rediscovery prompted the
foundation of genetics.
-Wikipedia
• Mendel questions age-old beliefs of
what we are made of.
• Did God make us or are we the product
of an innate code? Mendel’s science
seems to work in concert with
Darwin’s.
•
•
Sir James George Frazer
1854-1941
A monumental study in
comparative folklore, magic
and religion, The Golden Bough
(1890) shows parallels between
the rites and beliefs,
superstitions and taboos of
early cultures and those of
Christianity. It had a great
impact on psychology and
literature and remains an early
classic anthropological
resource.
• Frazer questions whether there is only
one “correct” way to believe. Is it
possible that other belief systems
might also be connected and valid?
The late 1800s and early 1900s
see Russian Physiologist Ivan
Pavlov (top) and Austrian
Father of Modern Psychology,
Sigmund Freud (below), make
momentous breakthroughs in
understanding the human
mind. Pavlov unveils Classical
Conditioning and Freud
teaches us about our
“unconscious” selves and how
to access them.
• Pavlov and Freud question what truly
motivates us as human beings. They
reveal the complexities of the human
mind.
•
The late 1800s, early 1900s also see German-born Albert Einstein,
Niels Bohr (Danish), Max Planck and Werner Heisenberg (both
German) introduce a new (sub-atomic) physical world, one that does
not necessarily abide by the laws of classical, Newtonian Physics.
Quantum Physics will eventually lead to the invention and use of
the atom bomb in the 1940s.
• These scientists question established
beliefs of how our physical world
actually operates.
Philosophers like the English Herbert Spencer and Germans Ernst
Haeckel and Friedrich Nietzsche question belief in God during the late
1800s and early 1900s.
• These powerful thinkers question whether
we can feel comfortable in our notions of an
all-good, all-knowing, all-powerful God. Will
we really go to Heaven or Hell when we die?
Does existence make sense? Do we have a
foundation upon which to rest ethical and
moral behavior? Nietzsche famously states
that “God is dead,” for, he reasons, that we
would not act as abominably as we do if he
were alive.
•
Fallout from the age of Modernism:
-
The church starts to lose its following
In 1914, due to the struggle for colonies, an outof-control arms race, and a complex system of
treaties, World War I (“the war to end all wars”)
erupts.
In 1917, Czar Nicholas II and his family are
executed during the Bolshevik Revolution. Lenin
leads Russia, soon to be called the Soviet Union,
into a new evolution, one governed by a radical
new political and economic system.
-
• How does this brief intellectual history
of Modernism emerge in, inform,
and/or reflect literature like The
Metamorphosis?
• What central ideas do you see
emerging from the history that might
inform writers like Kafka and Conrad
(our next author)?
• In what ways is Gregor Samsa a
poster boy for Modernism?
• What do you think the word, Kafkaesque means?