Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
World War I left nine million dead. (At times, England lost more men per month than
America lost during the entire Vietnam War.) The war also killed the optimism and faith
in humankind that had guided Europe since the Renaissance.
Expressionism
Cynicism and decadence settled over postwar Europe. Artists such as Grosz, Beckmann,
and Kokoschka “expressed” their disgust by showing a distorted reality that emphasized
the ugly. Using the lurid colors and simplified figures of the Fauves, they slapped paint on
in thick brushstrokes, depicting a hypocritical, hard-edged, dog-eat-dog world—a civiliz-
ation watching its Victorian moral foundations collapse.
Dada
When they could grieve no longer, artists turned to grief's giddy twin, laughter. The war
made all old values a joke, including artistic ones. The Dada movement, choosing a pur-
posely childish name, made art that was intentionally outrageous: a moustache on the
Mona Lisa,
a shovel hung on the wall, or a modern version of a Renaissance “fountain”—a
urinal (by Marcel Duchamp...or was it I. P. Freeley?).
It was a dig at all the pompous prewar artistic theories based on the noble intellect
of Rational Women and Men. While the experts ranted on, Dadaists sat in the back of the
class and made cultural fart noises.
Hey, I love this stuff. My mind says it's sophomoric, but my heart belongs to Dada.
In the Jazz Age, the world turned upside down. Genteel ladies smoked cigarettes. Gang-
sters laid down the law. You could make a fortune in the stock market one day and lose
it the next. You could dance the Charleston with the opposite sex, and even say the word
“sex” while talking about Freud over cocktails. It was almost...surreal.
Surrealism
Artists caught the jumble of images on a canvas. A telephone made from a lobster, an ele-
phant with a heating-duct trunk, Venus sleepwalking among skeletons. Take one mixed
bag of reality, jumble it in a blender, and serve on a canvas—Surrealism.
Abstract Art
