Modernism at its Peak
History 104 / April 5, 2013

I. What is modernism?
          A. A world view, ca. 1910-1960
                   1. Secular embrace of human progress and potential
                   2. Truth is multi-faceted, but still knowable
          B. A diffuse movement in the arts & culture, ca. 1910-1960
                   1. Self-conscious effort to explore the meaning of new technologies and new lifestyles through art
                   2. Determination to embrace the present (and future) and break free of historical influences
II. Responses to the war
          A. The anti-art of "dada"
          B. Reconstructing the "front experience"
                   1. Otto Dix: landscapes of horror
                   2. Ernst Jünger: heroism and comradeship
          C. Utopian visions of the new machine age
                   1. Russian constructivists
                   2. Walter Gropius and the Bauhaus
III. Formal experimentation
          A. Music: Schoenberg and Stravinsky
          B. Painting: Kandinsky and Mondrian
          C. Theater: Bertolt Brecht and the "alienation effect"
          D. Stream-of-consciousness writing: Joyce and Woolf
IV. Trends in popular culture and lifestyles
          A. A taste for exuberance and exoticism
                   1. The cabarets of Berlin
                   2. Josephine Baker in Paris
                   3. Dance fads and hot jazz
          B. Explorations in gender roles
                   1. The bob haircut and the “garconne” persona
                   2. Woolf's room
          C. The cinema – the genre that captures mass attention
          D. Bauhaus: living in the 20th Century