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A Lost Generation?
Standard 10.6.3 Understand the widespread disillusionment with prewar institutions, authorities, and values that resulted in a void that was later filled by totalitarians.
Standard 10.6.4 Discuss the influence of World War I on literature, art, and intellectual life in the West (e.g., Pablo Picasso, the "lost generation" of Gertrude Stein, Ernest Hemingway).
What was the Lost Generation?
The lost generation was a term coined by Gertrude Stein to describe young American artists (mostly writers) who rejected American ideals in the 1920s and moved to Paris to live the bohemian lifestyle (party it up, live for today, because there may be no tomorrow). Famous members of the Lost Generation included Stein herself, Ernest Hemingway, Ezra Pound, and F. Scott Fitzgerald.
The Lost Generation thought
that Western Civilization was
coming to an End…
Why would intellectuals
have thought WWI was
the end of the superiority
of Western Civilization?
1918
The Lost Generation felt betrayed by
their leaders, their culture, and their
institutions.
They asked themselves “How could all this
death and destruction have been allowed to
happen?”
They felt helpless, and lost. They despaired
for the future. Where once they had trusted,
now they did not. It appeared that Good
had lost the battle against Evil.
Writers tried to capture the bleak
hopelessness of War T.S. Eliot- The Waste Land (1922)
JRR Tolkien- The Lord Of The Rings (1937-1954)
F. Scott Fitzgerald- The Great Gatsby (1925)
Ernest Hemingway-
An American novelist
Served in WWI
A Farewell to Arms (1929)
"I know the night is not the same as the day: that all
things are different, that the things of the night cannot
be explained in the day, because they do not then
exist, and the night can be a dreadful time for lonely
people once their loneliness has started."
Modern Art- Artists tried to capture new
perceptions of reality…
Old styles of art couldn’t express the deep distress caused by WWI.
In many cases, people did not want to remember the war too clearly or too exactly.
WWI changed the way people perceived the world and this was reflected in their art.
“Oppy Wood” – John Nash, 1917
“Gassed and Wounded”
Eric Kennington, 1918
“Those Who Have Lost Their Names”
Albin Eggar-Linz, 1914
Cubism- Reality broken into Pieces Cubism was born out of
the experience of the WWI battlefield.
At night, exploding bombs lit the sky in quick flashes, causing the world to look disjointed, distorted, disordered, and broken up into stark pieces.
In Cubism…
Objects are broken up and re-assembled in abstract form.
Picasso
Pre-WWI work
African masks
What do
you see?
Pablo
Picasso,
Three
Musicians,
1921
What do you see?
Pablo
Picasso,
Still Life,
1924
Surrealism- Trying
to show how things
Feel During WWI, the founder of
surrealism, André Breton, who had trained in medicine and psychiatry, served in a neurological hospital where he used the psychoanalytic methods of Sigmund Freud with soldiers who were shell-shocked.
He sought a way to express the inner workings of the mind, those feelings, experiences, urges and impressions that were separated from logic and reason.
Surrealism is an art movement that sought to link the world of dreams with real life.
Surreal—beyond or above reality
Yves Tanguy, Indefinite Divisibility 1942
How is this painting connected to the
idea of Perception?
Salvador
Dali, The
Persistence
of Memory,
1931
What do you see?
Salvador
Dali, The
Temptation
of St Anthony
What does
this painting
tell you
about how
the artist is
feeling?