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Figure 30.1 HONORÉ DAUMIER, The Third-Class Carriage, ca. 1862. Oil on canvas, 253⁄4 � 351⁄2 in. A lower-class family, consisting of a grandmother, her daughter, and two children, are depicted with the candor and immediacy that typifies Daumier’s on-the-spot visual records of Parisian life.
“Show me an angel and I’ll paint one.” Courbet
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The Global Dominion of the West
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miles of railway track crisscrossed Europe, linking the sources of raw materials—such as the coal mines of north- ern Germany’s Ruhr valley—to factories and markets. The second half of the nineteenth century saw the unification of both Italy and Germany, the modernization of Russia, and the transformation of the United States into an eco- nomic powerhouse, fueled by abundant resources of iron ore and coal. Across the vast continent of North America railroads facilitated rapid economic and political expan- sion. As Western nations colonized other parts of the globe, they took with them the railroad and other agents of indus- trialization.
Before the end of the nineteenth century, Western tech- nology included the internal combustion engine, the tele- graph, the telephone, the camera, and—perhaps most significant for the everyday life of human beings—electricity. Processed steel, aluminum, the steam turbine, and the pneu- matic tire—all products of the 1880s—further altered the texture of life in the industrialized world. These technologies, along with such lethal instruments of war as the fully auto- matic “machine gun,” gave Europe clear advantages over other parts of the globe and facilitated Western imperialism in less industrially developed areas. In the enterprise of empire building, the industrialized nations of Britain, France, Belgium, Germany, Italy, and the United States took the lead.
Colonialism and the New Imperialism The history of European expansion into Asia, Africa, and other parts of the globe dates back at least to the Renaissance. Between approximately 1500 and 1800, Euro- peans established trading outposts in Africa, China, and India. But not until after 1800, in the wake of the Industrial Revolution, did European imperialism transform the terri- tories of foreign peoples into outright colonial possessions. Driven by the need for raw materials and markets for their manufactured goods, and aided immeasurably by their advanced military technology, the industrial nations quick- ly colonized or controlled vast parts of Asia, Africa, and Latin America. So massive was this effort that, by the end of the nineteenth century, the West had established economic, political, and cultural dominion over much of the world.
European imperialists defended the economic exploita- tion of weaker countries with the view, inspired by social Darwinism, that in politics, as in nature, the strongest or “most fit” prevailed in the “struggle for survival.” Since Caucasians had proved themselves the “most fit,” they argued, it was the white population’s “burden” to care for, protect, and rule over the “less fit” nonwhite peoples of the earth. Britain, the leader in European industrialization, spearheaded the thrust of colonization.
The self-appointed mission of Western rule in less tech- nologically developed countries is best expressed in a poem by one of the most popular British writers of his time, Rudyard Kipling (1864–1936). Three verses of his poem “The White Man’s Burden” sum up two of the key imperi- alist notions: racial superiority and the spirit of paternal and heroic deliverance.
Nations have long drawn their strength and identity from their
economic and military superiority over other nations. But during
the late nineteenth century, nationalism and the quest for
economic supremacy took on a more aggressive form. Fueled by
advancing industrialization, Western nations not only competed
among themselves for economic and political pre-eminence, but
also sought control of markets throughout the world. The
combined effects of nationalism, industrialization, and the conse-
quent phenomena of imperialism and colonialism influenced the
materialist direction of modern Western history and that of the
world beyond the West as well.
It was in this climate that Realism emerged. As a cultural
movement, Realism reflected popular demands for greater access
to material wealth and well-being. In place of nostalgia and the
sentimental embrace of the Romantic past, Realists manifested a
renewed sense of social consciousness and a commitment to
contemporary issues of class and gender. Unlike the Romantics,
whose passionate subjectivity often alienated them from society,
Realists regarded themselves as men and woman “of their time.”
As a style, Realism called for an objective and unidealized
assessment of everyday life. Artists, writers, and composers
attacked the reigning stereotypes and pursued scientifically
based fidelity to nature. Lithography and photography encouraged
the Realist sensibility. Advances in science and technology
facilitated increased mobility and transformed urban life. The city,
with its monumental skyscrapers and its bustling mix of people,
became the site of new ideas and cultural norms that propelled
the West toward Modernism.
Advancing Industrialization Industrialization provided the economic and military basis for the West’s rise to dominion over the rest of the world. This process is well illustrated in the history of the railroad, the most important technological phenomenon of the early nineteenth century because it facilitated economic and political expansion. It was made possible by the combined technologies of steam power, coal, and iron.
The first all-iron rails were forged in Britain in 1789, but it was not until 1804 that the British built their first steam railway locomotive, and several more decades until “iron horses” became a major mode of transportation. The drive to build national railways spread, encompassing Europe and the vast continent of North America. By 1850, 23,000
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READING 30.1
Q To whom might the terms “half-devil” and “half-child” apply?
Q How is the “White Man” in this poem described?
ALASKA (U.S.)
C A N A D A
U N I T E D S TAT E S
GREENLAND (DENMARK)
ICELAND (DENMARK)
DENMARK GERMAN EMPIRE
AUSTRIA- HUNGARY
GREAT BRITAIN
SW ED
EN
NETH.
BEL.
ITALY
GREECE OTTOMAN EMPIRE
PORTUGAL
MOROCCO
LIBERIA
ANGOLA
TRIPOLI
EGYPT
ARABIA
C H I N A
R U S S I A N E M P I R E
INDIA BURMA
SIAM
PERSIA
AFGHANISTAN KOREA
JAPAN
TAIWAN (JAPAN)
FRENCH INDOCHINA PHILIPPINE ISLANDS
PACIFIC ISLANDS (MULTIPLE COLONIAL
POWERS; see inset)
DUTCH EAST INDIES
A U S T R A L I A
NEW ZEALAND
ETHIOPIA
BRITISH EAST AFRICA GERMAN
EAST AFRICA
MADAGASCAR
M OZ
AM BI
QU E
GERMAN SOUTH-WEST
AFRICA
FRANCE
FRENCH
WEST AFRICA ANGLO-
EGYPTIAN SUDAN
UNION OF SOUTH AFRICA
BELGIAN CONGO
SPAIN
MEXICO CUBA
VENEZUELA
COLOMBIA
ECUADOR
PERU
CHILE
BOLIVIA
PARAGUAY
URUGUAY
BRAZIL
A R
G E N
TIN A
PUERTO RICO
E QU
AT O R
IA L
A FR
IC A
MANCHURIA
SENEGAL
FR EN
CH
CONGO
M E L A N E S I A
M I C R O N E S I A
P O
L Y
N E
S I
A
PA C I F I C I S L A N D S
P A C I F I C
O C E A N
P A C I F I C
O C E A N
AT L A N T I C
O C E A N
AT L A N T I C
O C E A N
I N D I A N O C E A N
ARABIAN SEA
CASPIAN SEA BLACK
SEA
RED SEA
HUDSON BAY
GULF OF MEXICO
CARIBBEAN SEA BAY OF BENGAL
SOUTH CHINA SEA
MEDITERRANEAN SEA
Equator Equator
Key
Belgium
France
German Empire
Great Britain
Italy
The Netherlands
Portugal
Russian Empire
Spain
United States
Other independent states
280 CHAPTER 30 Industry, Empire, and the Realist Style
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From Kipling’s “The White Man’s Burden” (1899)
Take up the White Man’s burden— 1 Send forth the best ye breed—
Go bind your sons to exile To serve your captive’s need;
To wait in heavy harness, 5 On fluttered folk and wide—
Your new-caught, sullen peoples, Half-devil and half-child.
. . . . . . . . . .
Take up the White Man’s Burden— Ye dare not stoop to less— 10
Nor call too loud on Freedom To cloak your weariness;
By all ye cry or whisper, By all ye leave to do,
The silent, sullen peoples 15 Shall weigh your Gods and you.
Take up the White Man’s burden— Have done with childish days—
The lightly proffered laurel, The easy, ungrudged praise. 20
Comes now, to search your manhood
Through all the thankless years, Cold, edged with dear-bought wisdom,
The judgment of your peers!
Kipling dedicated “The White Man’s Burden” to the United States to commemorate the American annexation of the Philippines in 1899, but the pattern for colonialism had been fixed by the British. In the race for overseas colonies, Britain led the way. The first major landmass to be subjugated was India, where commercial imperialism led to conquest, and finally, to British rule in 1858. In less than a century, the nation had established control over so much territory across the globe that it could legitimately claim that “the sun never set” on the British Empire (Map 30.1).
The most dramatic example of the new imperialism was in Africa. In 1880, European nations controlled only 10 percent of the continent; but by 1900 all of Africa, save Ethiopia and Liberia, had been carved up by European powers, who introduced new models of political and economic authority, often with little regard for native
Map 30.1 European Colonies and Independent Nations in 1900. For many of the “independent states,” such as Persia and China, the political and economic influence of the West presented an often destabilizing threat.
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beverage. The Chinese had used narcotic opium for cen- turies, but as a result of the new arrangement large quan- tities of the drug—harvested in India—were exported directly to China. In exchange, the Chinese shipped tea to Britain. Opium addiction became an increasingly severe social problem in China. Following the opium-related death of the Chinese emperor’s son, the Chinese made every effort to restrict the importation of the drug and stem the activities of opium smugglers (Figure 30.2). British merchants refused to cooperate. The result was a series of wars between Britain and China (the Opium Wars, 1839– 1850) that brought China to its knees. In 1839, just prior to the first of these wars, the Chinese com- missioner Lin Zexu (1785–1850) sent a detailed communi- cation to the British queen pleading for Britain’s assistance in ending opium smuggling and trade. Whether or not Queen Victoria ever read Lin’s letter is unknown, but the document remains a literary tribute to the futile efforts of a great Asian civilization to achieve peace through diplo- macy in the age of imperialism.
From Lin Zexu’s Letter of Advice to Queen Victoria (1839)
. . .The kings of your honorable country by a tradition handed 1 down from generation to generation have always been noted for their politeness and submissiveness. We have read your successive tributary memorials saying, “In general our countrymen who go to trade in China have always received His Majesty the Emperor’s gracious treatment and equal justice,” and so on. Privately we are delighted with the way in which the honorable rulers of your country deeply understand the grand principles and are grateful for the Celestial grace. For this reason the Celestial Court in soothing those from afar has 10 redoubled its polite and kind treatment. The profit from trade has been enjoyed by them continuously for two hundred years. This is the source from which your country has become known for its wealth.
But after a long period of commercial intercourse, there appear among the crowd of barbarians both good persons and bad, unevenly. Consequently there are those who smuggle opium to seduce the Chinese people and so cause the spread of the poison to all provinces. Such persons who only care to profit themselves, and disregard their harm to others, are not 20
populations. The partitioning of Africa began in 1830 with the French conquest of Algeria (in the north). In the decades thereafter, Belgium laid claim to the Congo, and the Dutch and the British fought each other for control of South Africa—both nations savagely wresting land from the Zulu and other African peoples.
A century-long series of brutal wars with the Asante Empire in West Africa left the British in control of the Gold Coast, while the conquest of the Sudan in 1898 saw 11,000 Muslims killed by British machine guns (the British themselves lost twenty-eight men). Profit-seeking European companies leased large tracts of African land from which native goods such as rubber, diamonds, and gold might be extracted; and increasingly Africans were forced to work on white-owned plantations and mines. The seeds of racism and mutual contempt were sown in this troubled era, an era that predictably spawned modern liberation movements, such as those calling for pan- Islamic opposition to colonialism (see chapter 36).
By the mid nineteenth century, the United States (itself a colony of Britain until 1776) had joined the scramble for economic control. America forced Japan to open its doors to Western trade in 1853. This event, which marked the end of Japan’s seclusion, ushered in the overthrow of the Tokugawa regime (see chapter 21) and marked the beginning of Japanese modernization under Meiji rule (1858–1912). In the Western hemisphere, the United States established its own overseas empire.
North Americans used the phrase “manifest destiny” to describe and justify a policy of unlimited expansion into the American West, Mexico, and elsewhere. The end result was the United States’ acquisition of more than half of Mexico, control of the Philippines and Cuba, and a dominant posi- tion in the economies of the politically unstable nations of Latin America. Although Westerners rationalized their militant expansionism by contending that they were “civilizing” the backward peoples of the globe, in fact their diplomatic policies contributed to undermining cultural traditions, to humiliating and often enfeebling the civiliza- tions they dominated, and to creating conditions of eco- nomic dependency that would last well into the twentieth century (see chapter 36).
China and the West The nineteenth century marked the end of China’s long history as an independent civilization. The European powers, along with Russia and Japan, carved out
trade concessions in China. Subsequent trade policies, which took advantage of China’s traditionally negative view of profit-taking, delayed any potential Chinese initiative toward industrialization.
More devastating still was the triangular trade pattern in opium and tea between India, China, and Britain. Established by Britain in the early nineteenth century, trade policy worked to stem the tide of British gold and silver that flowed to China to buy tea, a favorite British
1844 Samuel Morse (American) transmits the first telegraph message
1866 the first successful transatlantic telegraph cable is laid
1869 the first American transcontinental railroad is completed
1875 Alexander Graham Bell (Scottish) produces the first func- tional telephone in America
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Q What “balance of trade” is described in this letter?
Q To what extent is Lin’s letter an appeal to conscience?
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tolerated by the laws of heaven and are unanimously hated by human beings. His Majesty the Emperor, upon hearing of this, is in a towering rage. He has especially sent me, his commissioner, to come to Kwangtung, and together with the governor-general and governor jointly to investigate and settle this matter. . . .
We find that your country is [some 20,000 miles] from China. Yet there are barbarian ships that strive to come here for trade for the purpose of making a great profit. The wealth of China is used to profit the barbarians. That is to say, the great profit 30 made by barbarians is all taken from the rightful share of China. By what right do they then in return use the poisonous drug to injure the Chinese people? Even though the barbarians may not necessarily intend to do us harm, yet in coveting profit to an extreme, they have no regard for injuring others. Let us ask, where is your conscience? I have heard that the smoking of opium is very strictly forbidden by your country; that is because the harm caused by opium is clearly understood. Since it is not permitted to do harm to your own country, then even less should you let it be passed on to the harm of other 40 countries—how much less to China! Of all that China exports to foreign countries, there is not a single thing which is not beneficial to people: they are of benefit when eaten, or of benefit when used, or of benefit when resold: all are beneficial. Is there a single article from China which has done any harm to foreign countries? Take tea and rhubarb, for example; the foreign countries cannot get along for a single day without them. If China cuts off these benefits with no sympathy for those who are to suffer, then what can the
barbarians rely upon to keep themselves alive? Moreover the 50 [textiles] of foreign countries cannot be woven unless they obtain Chinese silk. If China, again, cuts off this beneficial export, what profit can the barbarians expect to make? As for other foodstuffs, beginning with candy, ginger, cinnamon, and so forth, and articles for use, beginning with silk, satin, chinaware, and so on, all the things that must be had by foreign countries are innumerable. On the other hand, articles coming from the outside to China can only be used as toys. We can take them or get along without them. Since they are not needed by China, what difficulty would there be if we closed 60
the frontier and stopped the trade? Nevertheless our Celestial Court lets tea, silk, and other goods be shipped without limit and circulated everywhere without begrudging it in the slightest. This is for no other reason but to share the benefit with the people of the whole world.
The goods from China carried away by your country not only supply your own consumption and use, but also can be divided up and sold to other countries, producing a triple profit. Even if you do not sell opium, you still have this threefold profit. How can you bear to go further, selling products injurious to others 70
in order to fulfil your insatiable desire? Suppose there were people from another country who
carried opium for sale to England and seduced your people into buying and smoking it; certainly your honorable ruler would deeply hate it and be bitterly aroused. We have heard heretofore that your honorable ruler is kind and benevolent. Naturally you would not wish to give unto others what you yourself do not want. We have also heard that the ships coming to Canton have all had regulations promulgated and given to them in which it is stated that it is not permitted to carry contraband 80
goods. This indicates that the administrative orders of your honorable rule have been originally strict and clear. Only because the trading ships are numerous, heretofore perhaps they have not been examined with care. Now after this communication has been dispatched and you have clearly understood the strictness of the prohibitory laws of the Celestial Court, certainly you will not let your subjects dare again to violate the law. . . .
Now we have set up regulations governing the Chinese people. He who sells opium shall receive the death penalty and 90
he who smokes it also the death penalty. Now consider this: if the barbarians do not bring opium, then how can the Chinese people resell it, and how can they smoke it? The fact is that the wicked barbarians beguile the Chinese people into a death trap. How then can we grant life only to these barbarians? He who takes the life of even one person still has to atone for it with his own life; yet is the harm done by opium limited to the taking of one life only? Therefore in the new regulations, in regard to those barbarians who bring opium to China, the penalty is fixed at decapitation or strangulation. This is what is 100 called getting rid of a harmful thing on behalf of mankind. . . .
Figure 30.2 Cartoon from a Paris newspaper, date unknown. The inscription reads: “I tell you that you have to buy this opium immediately so that you can poison yourself; and then you will buy a lot of tea to digest our beefsteaks in a comfortable manner.”
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To the European mind, the benefits of Western science, technology, and religion far outweighed the negative impact of colonialism. But the “gift” of progress was received in China with extreme caution and increasing isolationism. No dramatically new developments took place in the arts of China (nor, for that matter, in India) during the nineteenth century; in general, there was a marked decline in both productivity and originality. The full consequences of Western colonialism in Asia and elsewhere, however, would not become clear until the twentieth century.
Social and Economic Realities In global terms, advancing industrialization polarized the nations of the world into the technologically advanced— the “haves”—and the technologically backward—the “have-nots.” But industrialization had an equally profound impact within the industrialized nations themselves: it changed the nature and character of human work, altered relationships between human beings, and affected the nat- ural environment.
Prior to 1800, the practice of accumulating capital for industrial production and commercial profit played only a limited role in European societies. But after this date, indus- trial production, enhanced by advances in machine tech- nology, came to be controlled by a relatively small group of middle-class entrepreneurs (those who organize, manage, and assume the risks of a business) and by an even smaller number of capitalists (those who provide money to finance business).
Industrialization created wealth, but that wealth was con- centrated in the hands of a small minority of the population.
The vast majority of men and women lived hard lives sup- ported by meager wages—the only thing they had to sell was their labor. Factory laborers, including women and children, worked under dirty and dangerous conditions for long hours—sometimes up to sixteen hours per day (Figure 30.3). In the 1830s almost half of London’s funerals were for children under ten years old. Mass production brought more (and cheaper) goods to more people more rapidly, ultimate- ly raising the standard of living for industrialized nations. But European industrialization and the unequal distribution of wealth contributed to a widening gap between capitalist entrepreneurs—the “haves” of society—and the working classes—the “have-nots.” In 1846, the British statesman Benjamin Disraeli (1804–1881) described Britain under the rule of Queen Victoria (1819–1901) as two nations: the nation of the poor and the nation of the rich.
Beginning in 1848, the lower classes protested against these conditions with sporadic revolts. Economic unrest prevailed not only in the cities but in rural areas as well. The French population was two-thirds rural, largely poor, and often reduced to backbreaking labor (see Figure 30.11). Wealthy landowners in some parts of Europe treated their agricultural laborers as slaves. In America, until after the Civil War (1861–1865), most of those who worked the great Southern plantations were, in fact, African-American slaves. Between 1855 and 1861, there were almost 500 peasant uprisings across Europe (Figure 30.4). Reform, however, was slow in coming. Outside of England—in Germany, for instance—trade unions and social legislation to benefit the working classes did not appear until 1880 or later, while in Russia economic reform would require noth- ing less than a full-scale revolution (see chapter 34).
The process of colonization had dramatic effects on the Islamic world. Muslims in the Middle East, India, Arabia, Malaya, and much of Africa regarded the European efforts at colonization as an assault on their cultures and their religious faith. Europeans, who tended to see premodern agrarian societies as backward, looked upon “Orientals” (a term that lumped together all Eastern people) as inherently inferior. Unlike Japan or China, which had never been colonized, and were therefore able to retain many of their economic and political traditions, Islamic states were often debilitated and humiliated by dependency on the West.
European colonization of the Islamic world began in the late eighteenth-century. Napoleon had invaded the Near East in 1798, bringing with him a corpus of European literature and a printing press with Arabic type. Despite the failure of Napoleon’s campaign in Egypt, the country made ambitious efforts to modernize. The failure of these efforts, however, which left Egypt bankrupt, led ultimately to British occupation.
A second instance of the Western presence in Islamic lands occurred in Persia (renamed Iran in 1935). Strategically located in the Middle East, Persia was forced into wars with Britain and Russia, whose rival interests in Middle Eastern territory threatened the autonomy of the Qajar dynasty (1794–1925). In the late nineteenth century the Persian reformer Aqa Khan Kirmani (1853–1896) urged Muslims to adopt a program of Western-style modernization, to replace the sharia with a modern secular code of law and to institute parliamentary representation. Iran’s first modern college system would emerge in 1848. Others throughout the Islamic world, however, opposed the intrusion of the West and Western ways of life as a threat to Muslim traditions and religious ideals (see chapter 36). One of the most significant differences involved the political gulf between time-honored Islamic theocracy and Western representative democracy. Such issues have continued to trouble the world well into our own time.
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Among nineteenth-century Euro- pean intellectuals there developed a serious debate over how to address the social results of indus- trial capitalism. Matters of social reform were central to the devel-
opment of ideologies that dictated specific policies of polit- ical and economic action. Traditional conservatives stressed the importance of maintaining order and perpetuating conventional power structures and religious authority. Liberals, on the other hand, whose ideas were rooted in Enlightenment theories of human progress and perfectibil-
ity (see chapter 24), supported gradual reform through enlightened legal systems, constitutional guarantees, and a generally equitable distribution of material benefits. The British liber- al Jeremy Bentham (1748–1832) advanced the doctrine of utilitarianism, which held that governments should work to secure “the greatest happiness for the greatest number of people”; while Bentham’s student, John Stuart Mill (1806–1873), expounded the ideology of social liberalism.
Mill emphasized freedom of thought over equality and personal happiness. He held that individuals must be free to direct their own lives,
Figure 30.3 ADOLPH FRIEDRICH ERDMANN VON MENZEL, Iron Mill (Das Eisenwalzwerk—Moderne Zyklopen), 1875. Oil on canvas, 5 ft. 1⁄4 in. � 8 ft. 35⁄8 in.
Figure 30.4 KATHE KOLLWITZ, March of the Weavers, from “The Weavers Cycle,” 1897. Etching, 83⁄8 � 115⁄8 in. Kollwitz (1867–1945) was a German social realist, a pacifist, and a feminist. The series of prints known as “The Weavers” illustrates a play by Gerhart Hauptmann that dramatized the failed revolt of Silesian weavers in 1842. A sculptor as well as a printmaker, Kollwitz went on to create searing protest images of the two world wars.
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but, recognizing the disadvantages that might result from free competition, he argued that the state must protect its weaker members by acting to regulate the economy where private initiative failed to do so. Mill feared that the gener- al will—the will of unenlightened, propertyless masses— might itself prove tyrannical and oppressive. In his classic statement of the liberal creed, On Liberty (1859), he con- cluded that “as soon as any part of a person’s conduct affects prejudicially the interests of others, society has jurisdiction over it.” For Mill, as for most nineteenth-century liberals, government was obliged to intervene to safeguard and pro- tect the wider interests of society.
Such theories met with strenuous opposition from European socialists. For the latter, neither conservatism nor liberalism responded adequately to current social and eco- nomic inequities. Socialists attacked capitalism as unjust; they called for the common ownership and administration of the means of production and distribution in the interest of a public good. Society, according to the socialists, should operate entirely in the interest of the needs of the people, communally and cooperatively, rather than competitively. The utopian socialist Pierre Joseph Proudhon (1809–1865) envisioned a society free of state control, while the more extreme anarchists favored the complete dissolution of the state and the elimination of the force of law.
The Radical Views of Marx and Engels The German theorist Karl Marx (1818–1883) agreed with the socialists that bourgeois capitalism corrupted humanity, but his theory of social reform was even more radical, for it preached violent revolution that would both destroy the old order and usher in a new society. Marx began his career by studying law and philosophy at the university of Berlin. Moving to Paris, he became a lifelong friend of the social
scientist and journalist Friedrich Engels (1820–1895). Marx and Engels shared a similar critical attitude in respect of the effects of European industrial capitalism. By 1848 they completed the Communist Manifesto, a short treatise published as the platform of a workers’ association called the Communist League. The Manifesto, which still remains the “guidebook” of Marxist socialism, demanded the “forcible overthrow of all existing social conditions” and the liberation of the proletariat, or working class. Marx offered an even more detailed criticism of the free enter- prise system in Das Kapital, a work on which he toiled for thirty years.
The Communist Manifesto is a sweeping condemnation of the effects of capitalism on the individual and society at large. It opens with a dramatic claim: “The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles.” It further contends that capitalism concentrates wealth in the hands of the few, providing great luxuries for some, while creating an oppressed and impoverished proletariat. The psychological effects of such circumstances, it holds, are devastating: bourgeois capitalism alienates workers from their own productive efforts and robs individuals of their basic humanity. Finally, the Manifesto calls for revolu- tion by which workers will seize the instruments of capital- istic production and abolish private ownership.
The social theories of Marx and Engels had enormous practical and theoretical influence. They not only supplied a justification for lower-class revolt, but they brought atten- tion to the role of economics in the larger life of a society. Marx perceived human history in exclusively materialistic terms, arguing that the conditions under which one earned a living determined all other aspects of life: social, political, and cultural. A student of Hegel (see chapter 27), he viewed history as a struggle between “haves” (thesis) and
In On Liberty, John Stuart Mill examined the nature of freedom, advocating individual rights over those of the state. He argued, however, that it was the legitimate duty of government to limit the exercise of any freedom that might harm other members of the community. Wrestling with key issues concerning limits to the authority of the state with regard to the individual, he asked, “What, then, is the rightful limit to the sovereignty of the individual over himself? Where does the authority of society begin? How much of human life should be assigned to individuality, and how much to society?”
Enlarging more generally on these questions, Mill’s American contemporary Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865) observed, “The legitimate object of government is to do for a community of people whatever they need to have done, but can not do at all, or can not
so well do for themselves in their separate and individual capacities.” Is providing for the needs of the community—much like providing protection for its citizens—the function of the government? Suppose the political process of providing for these needs (like the obligation to protect the individual) comes at the cost of limiting the absolute freedom of others?
To one degree or another, most of the great political divisions emerging from nineteenth-century social thought proceeded from these questions. They are still debated today, mainly in the opposing political ideologies of liberalism and conservatism. Contemporary liberals would incline toward a relatively greater use of government authority in serving the needs of society. Conservatives would incline toward a relatively lesser exercise of such control.
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“have-nots” (antithesis) that would resolve in the synthesis of a classless society. From Hegel, Marx also derived the utopian idea of the perfectibility of the state. The end prod- uct of dialectical change, argued Marx, was a society free of class antagonisms and the ultimate dissolution of the state itself.
Although Marx and Engels failed to anticipate capital- ism’s potential to spread rather than to limit wealth, their manifesto gave sharp focus to prevailing class differences and to the actual condition of the European economy of their time. Despite the fact that they provided no explana- tion of how their classless society might function, their apocalyptic call to revolution would be heeded in the decades to come. Oddly enough, communist revolutions would occur in some of the least industrialized countries of the world, such as Russia and China, rather than in the most industrialized countries, as Marx and Engels expect- ed. Elsewhere, communists would operate largely through nonrevolutionary vehicles, such as labor unions and politi- cal organizations, to initiate better working conditions, higher wages, and greater social equality. But the anticom- munist revolutions and the collapse of the communist gov- ernment in the Soviet Union in the late twentieth century reveal mounting frustration with the failure of most Communist regimes to raise economic standards among the masses. Although the Manifesto did not accurately predict the economic destiny of the modern world, the treatise remains a classic expression of nineteenth-century social consciousness.
From Marx’s and Engels’ Communist Manifesto (1848)
I Bourgeois and Proletarians1
The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class 1 struggles.
Freeman and slave, patrician and plebeian, lord and serf, guild-master2 and journeyman, in a word, oppressor and oppressed, stood in constant opposition to one another, carried on an uninterrupted, now hidden, now open fight, a fight that each time ended either in a revolutionary reconstitution of society at large or in the common ruin of the contending classes.
In the earlier epochs of history we find almost everywhere a complicated arrangement of society into various orders, a 10
manifold gradation of social rank. In ancient Rome we have patricians, knights, plebeians, slaves; in the Middle Ages, feudal lords, vassals, guild-masters, journeymen, apprentices, serfs; in almost all of these classes, again, subordinate gradations.
The modern bourgeois society that has sprouted from the ruins of feudal society has not done away with class antagonisms. It has but established new classes, new conditions of oppression, new forms of struggle in place of the old ones. 20
Our epoch, the epoch of the bourgeoisie, possesses, however, this distinctive feature: it has simplified the class antagonisms. Society as a whole is splitting up more and more into two great hostile camps, into two great classes directly facing each other: Bourgeoisie and Proletariat.
From the serfs of the Middle Ages sprang the chartered burghers of the earliest towns. From these burgesses the first elements of the bourgeoisie were developed.
The discovery of America, the rounding of the Cape, opened up fresh ground for the rising bourgeoisie. The East Indian and 30 Chinese markets, the colonization of America, trade with the colonies, the increase in the means of exchange and in commodities generally, gave to commerce, to navigation, to industry, an impulse never before known, and thereby, to the revolutionary element in the tottering feudal society, a rapid development.
The feudal system of industry, under which industrial production was monopolized by closed guilds, now no longer sufficed for the growing wants of the new markets. The manufacturing system took its place. The guild-masters were 40 pushed on one side by the manufacturing middle class; division of labor between the different corporate guilds vanished in the face of division of labor in each single workshop.
Meantime the markets kept ever growing, the demand ever rising. Even manufacture no longer sufficed. Thereupon, steam and machinery revolutionized industrial production. The place of manufacture was taken by the giant, Modern Industry, the place of the industrial middle class by industrial millionaires—the leaders of whole industrial armies, the modern bourgeois.
Modern industry has established the world market, for which 50 the discovery of America paved the way. This market has given an immense development to commerce, to navigation, to communication by land. This development has, in its turn, reacted on the extension of industry; and in proportion as industry, commerce, navigation, railways extended, in the same proportion the bourgeoisie developed, increased its capital, and pushed into the background every class handed down from the Middle Ages.
1839 Charles Goodyear (American) produces industrial- strength rubber
1846 Elias Howe (American) patents an interlocking-stitch sewing machine
1866 the first dynamo, capable of generating massive quantities of electricity, is produced
1876 Nikolaus Otto (German) produces a workable internal-combustion engine
1 By bourgeoisie is meant the class of modern capitalists, owners of the means of social production and employers of wage labor. By proletariat, the class of modern wage-laborers who, having no means of production of their own, are reduced to selling their labor power in order to live. [1888.]
2 Guild-master, that is, a full member of a guild, a master within, not a head of a guild. [1888.]
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We see, therefore, how the modern bourgeoisie is itself the product of a long course of development, of a series of 60 revolutions in the modes of production and of exchange.
Each step in the development of the bourgeoisie was accompanied by a corresponding political advance of that class. An oppressed class under the sway of the feudal nobility, an armed and self-governing association in the medieval commune,3 here independent urban republic (as in Italy and Germany), there taxable “third estate” of the monarchy (as in France), afterward, in the period of manufacture proper, serving either the semi-feudal or the absolute monarchy as a counterpoise against the nobility, and, in fact, cornerstone of 70
the great monarchies in general, the bourgeoisie has at last, since the establishment of Modern Industry and of the world market, conquered for itself, in the modern representative State, exclusive political sway. The executive of the modern State is but a committee for managing the common affairs of the whole bourgeoisie.
The bourgeoisie, historically, has played a most revolutionary part.
The bourgeoisie, wherever it has got the upper hand, has put an end to all feudal, patriarchal, idyllic relations. It has 80 pitilessly torn asunder the motley feudal ties that bound man to his “natural superiors,” and has left remaining no other nexus between man and man than naked self-interest, than callous “cash payment.” It has drowned the most heavenly ecstasies of religious fervor, of chivalrous enthusiasm, of philistine sentimentalism, in the icy water of egotistical calculation. It has resolved personal worth into exchange value, and in place of the numberless indefeasible chartered freedoms has set up that single, unconscionable freedom— Free Trade. In one word, for exploitation, veiled by religious 90 and political illusions, it has substituted naked, shameless, direct, brutal exploitation.
The bourgeoisie has stripped of its halo every occupation hitherto honored and looked up to with reverent awe. It has converted the physician, the lawyer, the priest, the poet, the man of science, into its paid wage-laborers.
The bourgeoisie has torn away from the family its sentimental veil, and has reduced the family relation to a mere money relation. . . .
The bourgeoisie, by the rapid improvement of all instruments 100 of production, by the immensely facilitated means of communication, draws all, even the most barbarian, nations into civilization. The cheap prices of its commodities are the heavy artillery with which it batters down all Chinese walls, with which it forces the barbarians’ intensely obstinate hatred of foreigners to capitulate. It compels all nations, on pain of extinction, to adopt the bourgeois mode of production; it compels them to introduce what it calls civilization into their midst, i.e., to become bourgeois themselves. In a word, it
creates a world after its own image. 110 The bourgeoisie has subjected the country to the rule of the
towns. It has created enormous cities, has greatly increased the urban population as compared with the rural, and has thus rescued a considerable part of the population from the idiocy of rural life. Just as it has made the country dependent on the towns, so it has made barbarian and semi-barbarian countries dependent on the civilized ones, nations of peasants on nations of bourgeois, the East on the West.
The bourgeoisie keeps doing away more and more with the scattered state of the population, of the means of production, 120 and of property. It has agglomerated population, centralized means of production, and has concentrated property in a few hands. The necessary consequence of this was political centralization. Independent or but loosely connected provinces with separate interests, laws, governments and systems of taxation became lumped together into one nation, with one government, one code of laws, one national class interest, one frontier and one customs tariff.
The bourgeoisie during its rule of scarce one hundred years has created more massive and more colossal productive forces 130 than have all preceding generations together. Subjection of nature’s forces to man, machinery, application of chemistry to industry and agriculture, steam navigation, railways, electric telegraphs, clearing of whole continents for cultivation, canalization of rivers, whole populations conjured out of the ground—what earlier century had even a presentiment that such productive forces slumbered in the lap of social labor? . . .
But not only has the bourgeoisie forged the weapons that bring death to itself; it has also called into existence the men who are to wield those weapons—the modern working class, 140 the proletarians.
In proportion as the bourgeoisie, i.e., capital, is developed, in the same proportion is the proletariat, the modern working class, developed—a class of laborers who live only as long as they find work, and who find work only as long as their labor increases capital. These laborers, who must sell themselves piecemeal, are a commodity like every other article of commerce, and are consequently exposed to all the vicissitudes of competition, to all the fluctuations of the market.
Owing to the extensive use of machinery and to division of 150 labor, the work of the proletarians has lost all individual character and, consequently, all charm for the workman. He becomes an appendage of the machine, and it is only the most simple, most monotonous, and most easily acquired knack that is required of him. . . .
Modern industry has converted the little workshop of the patriarchal master into the great factory of the industrial capitalist. Masses of laborers, crowded into the factory, are organized like soldiers. As privates of the industrial army they are placed under the command of a perfect hierarchy of 160 officers and sergeants. Not only are they slaves of the bourgeois class and of the bourgeois State; they are daily and hourly enslaved by the machine, by the overseer and, above all, by the individual bourgeois manufacturer himself. The more openly this despotism proclaims gain to be its end and aim, the more petty, the more hateful and the more embittering it is.
The less the skill and exertion of strength implied in manual
3 “Commune” was the name taken in France by the nascent towns even before they had conquered from their feudal lords and masters local self-government and political rights as the “Third Estate.” Generally speaking, for the economic development of the bourgeoisie, England is here taken as the typical country; for its political development, France. [1888.]
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labor, in other words, the more modern industry becomes developed, the more is the labor of men superseded by that of women. Differences of age and sex no longer have any 170 distinctive social validity for the working class. All are instruments of labor, more or less expensive to use, according to their age and sex.
No sooner is the exploitation of the laborer by the manufacturer so far at an end that he receives his wages in cash, than he is set upon by the other portions of the bourgeoisie, the landlord, and shopkeeper, the pawnkeeper, etc. . .
II Proletarians and Communists . . . The Communist revolution is the most radical rupture with traditional property relations; no wonder that its development 180 involves the most radical rupture with traditional ideas.
But let us have done with the bourgeois objections to Communism.
We have seen above that the first step in the revolution by the working class is to raise the proletariat to the position of ruling class, to win the battle of democracy.
The proletariat will use its political supremacy to wrest, by degrees, all capital from the bourgeoisie, to centralize all instruments of production in the hands of the State, i.e., of the proletariat organized as the ruling class; and to increase the 190 total of productive forces as rapidly as possible. . . .
III Position of the Communists . . . The Communists disdain to conceal their views and aims. They openly declare that their ends can be attained only by the forcible overthrow of all existing social conditions. Let the ruling classes tremble at a Communistic revolution. The proletarians have nothing to lose but their chains. They have a world to win.
WORKING MEN OF ALL COUNTRIES, UNITE!
Mill and Women’s Rights While Marx and Engels criticized a society that made middle-class women “mere instrument[s] of production,” Mill described women of all classes as the unwilling subjects of more powerful males. In the treatise The Subjection of Women, Mill condemned the legal subordina- tion of one sex to the other as objectively “wrong in itself, and . . . one of the chief hindrances to human improve- ment.” Mill’s optimism concerning the unbounded poten- tial for social change—a hallmark of liberalism—may have been shortsighted, for women would not obtain voting rights in Britain until 1928.
In the United States, the first women’s college—Mount Holyoke—was founded at South Hadley, Massachusetts, in 1836; and in 1848, at Seneca Falls in upstate New York, American feminists, led by Elizabeth Cady Stanton (1815– 1902) and Susan B. Anthony (1820–1906), issued the first of many declarations that demanded female equality in all areas of life.
The rights of women had been an issue addressed in the literature of feminists from Christine de Pisan to Condorcet and Mary Wollstonecraft (see chapter 24), but nowhere was the plight of women more eloquently treated than in Mill’s essay. Mill compared the subjection of women to that of other subject classes in the history of culture. But his most original contribution was his analysis of the male/female relationship and his explanation of how that relationship differed from that of master and slave.
From Mill’s The Subjection of Women (1869)
All causes, social and natural, combine to make it unlikely that 1 women should be collectively rebellious to the power of men. They are so far in a position different from all other subject classes that their masters require something more from them than actual service. Men do not want solely the obedience of women, they want their sentiments. All men, except the most brutish, desire to have, in the woman most nearly connected with them, not a forced slave but a willing one, not a slave merely, but a favorite. They have therefore put everything in
practice to enslave their minds. The masters of all other slaves 10 rely, for maintaining obedience, on fear, either fear of themselves, or religious fears. The masters of women wanted more than simple obedience, and they turned the whole force of education to effect their purpose. All women are brought up from the very earliest years in the belief that their ideal of character is the very opposite to that of men; not self-will and government by self-control, but submission and yielding to the control of others. All the moralities tell them that it is the duty of women and all the current sentimentalities that it is their nature to live for others, to make complete abnegation of 20 themselves, and to have no life but in their affections. And by their affections are meant the only ones they are allowed to have—those to the men with whom they are connected, or to the children who constitute an additional and indefeasible tie between them and a man. When we put together three things—first, the natural attraction between opposite sexes; secondly, the wife’s entire dependence on the husband, every privilege or pleasure she has being either his gift, or depending entirely on his will; and lastly, that the principal object of human pursuit, consideration, and all objects of social ambition 30
can in general be sought or obtained by her only through him, it would be a miracle if the object of being attractive to men had not become the polar star of feminine education and formation of character. And this great means of influence over the minds of women having been acquired, an instinct of selfishness made men avail themselves of it to the utmost as a means of holding women in subjection, by representing to them meekness, submissiveness, and resignation of all individual will into the hands of a man, as an essential part of sexual attractiveness. . . . 40
The preceding considerations are amply sufficient to show that custom, however universal it may be, affords in this case no presumption and ought not to create any prejudice in favor of the arrangements which place women in social and political subjection to men. But I may go further, and maintain that the
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between male and female differ from that of master and slave?
Q What does Mill consider to be the “peculiar character” of modernism?
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course of history, and the tendencies of progressive human society afford not only no presumption in favor of this system of inequality of rights, but a strong one against it; and that, so far as the whole course of human improvement up to this time, the whole stream of modern tendencies warrants any 50 inference on the subject, it is that this relic of the past is discordant with the future and must necessarily disappear.
For, what is the peculiar character of the modern world—the difference which chiefly distinguishes modern institutions, modern social ideas, modern life itself, from those of times long past? It is, that human beings are no longer born to their place in life and chained down by an inexorable bond to the place they are born to, but are free to employ their faculties and such favorable chances as offer, to achieve the lot which may appear to them most desirable. Human society of old was 60 constituted on a very different principle. All were born to a fixed social position and were mostly kept in it by law or interdicted from any means by which they could emerge from it. As some men are born white and others black, so some were born slaves and others freemen and citizens; some were born patricians, others plebeians; some were born feudal nobles, others commoners. . . .
The old theory was that the least possible should be left to the choice of the individual agent; that all he had to do should, as far as practicable, be laid down for him by superior wisdom. 70 Left to himself he was sure to go wrong. The modern conviction, the fruit of a thousand years of experience, is that things in which the individual is the person directly interested never go right but as they are left to his own discretion; and that any regulation of them by authority, except to protect the rights of others, is sure to be mischievous. . . .
The New Historicism While issues of class and gender preoccupied some of the finest minds of the nineteenth century, so too did matters surrounding the interpretation of the historical past. For many centuries, history was regarded as a branch of literature rather than a social science. The Romantic his- tories, such as those of Thomas Carlyle (see chapter 28), served to emphasize the role of great men in shaping the destinies of nations. At the same time, the spirit of high patriotism inspired nineteenth-century historians such as Thomas Babington Macaulay (1800–1859) in Britain and Fustel de Coulanges (1830–1889) in France to write nationalistic histories that brought attention to the great- ness of their own people and culture.
Patriotism, however, also led historians to renew their efforts to retrieve the evidence of the past. Scholars com- piled vast collections of primary source materials; and, enamored of the new, positivist zeal for objective measure- ment and recording, they applied scientific methods to the
writing of history. The result was an effort to recreate his- tory “as it actually was,” a movement later called histori- cism. Led by the German historian Leopold von Ranke (1795–1886), historians produced historical works that depended on the objective interpretation of eyewitness reports and authentic documents. Von Ranke himself wrote sixty volumes on modern European history that rest- ed on the critical study of sources that he had gleaned from numerous archives. This method of writing history came to dominate modern-day historiography.
The new historicism that scholars brought to the critical study of religious history stirred great controversy. Rejecting all forms of supernaturalism, some nineteenth- century scholars disputed the literal interpretation of the Bible, especially where its contents conflicted with scien- tific evidence (as in the case of the Virgin Birth). Since the facts of Jesus’ life are so few, some also questioned the his- toricity of Jesus (that is, whether or not he had ever actu- ally lived), while still others—such as the eminent French scholar Ernest Renan, author of the Life of Jesus (1863)— questioned his divinity. Renan and his followers offered a rationalist reconstruction of religious history that worked to separate personal belief and moral conduct from con- ventional religious history and dogma. As universal educa- tion spread throughout the literate world, Church and state moved further apart, and education became increas- ingly secularized.
The Novels of Dickens and Twain Inequities of class and gender had existed throughout the course of history, but in an age that pitted the progressive effects of industrial capitalism against the realities of poverty and inequality, social criticism was inevitable. Many writers pointed to these conditions and described them with unembellished objectivity. This unblinking attention to contemporary life and experience was the basis for the style known as literary realism.
More than any other genre, the nineteenth-century novel—by its capacity to detail characters and condi- tions—fulfilled the Realist credo of depicting life with complete candor. In place of heroic and exotic subjects, the Realist novel portrayed men and women in actual, every- day, and often demoralizing situations. It examined the social consequences of middle-class materialism, the plight of the working class, and the subjugation of women, among other matters.
While Realism did not totally displace Romanticism as the dominant literary mode of the nineteenth century, it often appeared alongside the Romantic—indeed, Romantic and sentimental elements can be found in gen- erally realistic narratives. Such is the case in the novels of Charles Dickens (1812–1870) in England and Mark Twain, the pseudonym of Samuel Langhorne Clemens (1835–1910), in America. Twain’s writings, including his greatest achievement, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, reveal a blend of humor and irony that is not generally
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characteristic of Dickens. But both writers employ a masterful use of dialect, sensitivity to pictorial detail, and a humanitarian sympathy in their descriptions of nineteenth-century life in specific locales—for Twain, the rural farm- lands along the Mississippi River, and for Dickens, the streets of England’s industrial cities.
The most popular English novelist of his time, Dickens came from a poor family who provided him with little formal education. His early experiences supplied some of the themes for his most famous novels: Oliver Twist (1838) vividly portrays the slums, orphanages, and boarding schools of London; Nicholas Nickleby (1839) is a bitter indictment of England’s bru- tal rural schools; and David Copperfield (1850) condemns debtors’ prisons and the conditions that produced them.
Dickens’ novels are frequently theatrical, his characters may be drawn to the point of caricature, and his themes often suggest a sen- timental faith in kindness and good cheer as the best antidotes to the bitterness of contem- porary life. But, as the following excerpt illus- trates, Dickens’ evocation of realistic detail was acute, and his portrayal of physical ugliness was unflinching. In this passage from The Old Curiosity Shop, he painted an unforgettable pic- ture of the horrifying urban conditions that gave rise to the despair of the laboring classes and inspired their cries for social reform (Figure 30.5). His description of the English mill town of Birmingham, as first viewed by the novel’s heroine, little Nell, and her grandfather, finds striking parallels in nineteenth-century visual representations of Europe’s laboring poor; it also calls to mind the popular conceptions of Hell found in medieval art and literature (see chapter 12).
From Dickens’ The Old Curiosity Shop (1841)
. . . A long suburb of red-brick houses—some with patches of 1 garden-ground, where coal-dust and factory smoke darkened the shrinking leaves and coarse, rank flowers; and where the struggling vegetation sickened and sank under the hot breath of kiln and furnace, making them by its presence seem yet more blighting and unwholesome than in the town itself—a long, flat, straggling suburb passed, they came by slow degrees upon a cheerless region, where not a blade of grass was seen to grow; where not a bud put forth its promise in the spring; where nothing green could live but on the surface of 10 the stagnant pools, which here and there lay idly sweltering by the black roadside.
Advancing more and more into the shadow of this mournful place, its dark depressing influence stole upon their spirits, and filled them with a dismal gloom. On every side, as far as the eye could see into the heavy distance, tall chimneys, crowding on
each other, and presenting that endless repetition of the same dull, ugly form, which is the horror of oppressive dreams, poured out their plague of smoke, obscured the light, and made foul the melancholy air. On mounds of ashes by the wayside, 20 sheltered only by a few rough boards, or rotten pent-house roofs, strange engines spun and writhed like tortured creatures; clanking their iron chains, shrieking in their rapid whirl from time to time as though in torment unendurable, and making the ground tremble with their agonies. Dismantled houses here and there appeared, tottering to the earth, propped up by fragments of others that had fallen down, unroofed, windowless, blackened, desolate, but yet inhabited. Men, women, children, wan in their looks and ragged in attire, tended the engines, fed their tributary fires, begged upon the road, or scowled half 30 naked from the doorless houses. Then came more of the wrathful monsters, whose like they almost seemed to be in their wildness and their untamed air, screeching and turning round and round again; and still, before, behind, and to the right and left, was the same interminable perspective of brick towers, never ceasing in their black vomit, blasting all things living or inanimate, shutting out the face of day, and closing in on all these horrors with a dense dark cloud.
But night-time in this dreadful spot!—night, when the smoke was changed to fire; when every chimney spirited up its flame; 40
Figure 30.5 THOMAS ANNAN, Close No. 193 High Street, 1868–1877, print ca. 1877. Carbon print, 27.3 � 23 cm. While Annan spent most of his life in Glasgow, Scotland, his photographs of disease-ridden slums are representative of similar circumstances in late nineteenth-century industrial centers. Annan’s photographs were instrumental in the eventual demolition of Glasgow’s slum areas.
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and places, that had been dark vaults all day, now shone red- hot, with figures moving to and fro within their blazing jaws, and calling to one another with hoarse cries—night, when the noise of every strange machine was aggravated by the darkness; when the people near them looked wilder and more savage; when bands of unemployed laborers paraded in the roads, or clustered by torch-light round their leaders, who told them in stern language of their wrongs, and urged them on to frightful cries and threats; when maddened men, armed with sword and firebrand, spurning the tears and prayers of women 50
who would restrain them, rushed forth on errands of terror and destruction, to work no ruin half so surely as their own—night, when carts came rumbling by, filled with rude coffins (for contagious disease and death had been busy with the living crops); when orphans cried, and distracted women shrieked and followed in their wake—night, when some called for bread, and some for drink to drown their cares; and some with tears, and some with staggering feet, and some with bloodshot eyes, went brooding home—night, which, unlike the night that Heaven sends on earth, brought with it no peace, nor quiet, nor signs of 60
blessed sleep—who shall tell the terrors of the night to that young wandering child!
Mark Twain’s literary classic, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, is the most widely taught book in American literature. Published as a sequel to the popular “boys’ book” The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1876), which, like Dickens’ novels, appeared in serial format, the book recounts the exploits of the young narrator, Huck Finn, and the runaway slave, Jim, as the two make their way down the Mississippi River on a ramshackle raft. As humorist, journalist, and social critic, Twain offered his contemporaries a blend of entertainment and vivid insight into the dynamics of a unique time and place: the American South just prior to the Civil War. More general- ly, he conveys the innocence of youthful boyhood as it wrestles with the realities of greed, hypocrisy, and the moral issues arising from the troubled relations between black and white Americans in the mid nineteenth century. These he captures in an exotic blend of dialects—the ver- nacular rhythms and idioms of local, untutored speech.
In the excerpt that follows, Huck, a poor, ignorant, but good-hearted Southern boy, experiences a crisis of con- science when he must choose between aiding and abetting a fugitive slave—a felony offense in the slave states of the South—and obeying the law, by turning over his older companion and friend to the local authorities. Huck’s moral dilemma, the theme of this excerpt, was central to the whole system of chattel slavery. Historically, slaves were considered property (chattel), that is, goods that could be bought, sold, or stolen. Clearly, however, they were also human beings. In opting to help Jim escape, Huck is, in effect, an accomplice to a crime. Nevertheless, Huck chooses to aid Jim the man, even as he violates the law in harboring Jim the slave.
From Twain’s The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884)
Chapter 16
We slept most all day, and started out at night, a little ways 1 behind a monstrous long raft that was as long going by as a procession. She had four long sweeps1 at each end, so we judged she carried as many as thirty men, likely. She had five big wigwams aboard, wide apart, and an open camp fire in the middle, and a tall flag-pole at each end. There was a power of style about her. It amounted to something being a raftsman on such a craft as that.
We went drifting down into a big bend, and the night clouded up and got hot. The river was very wide, and was walled with 10 solid timber on both sides; you couldn’t see a break in it hardly ever, or a light. We talked about Cairo,2 and wondered whether we would know it when we got to it. I said likely we wouldn’t, because I had heard say there warn’t but about a dozen houses there, and if they didn’t happen to have them lit up, how was we going to know we was passing a town? Jim said if the two big rivers joined together there, that would show. But I said maybe we might think we was passing the foot of an island and coming into the same old river again. That disturbed Jim—and me too. So the question was, what to do? I said, paddle ashore 20
the first time a light showed, and tell them pap was behind, coming along with a trading-scow, and was a green hand at the business, and wanted to know how far it was to Cairo. Jim thought it was a good idea, so we took a smoke on it and waited.
There warn’t nothing to do, now, but to look out sharp for the town, and not pass it without seeing it. He said he’d be mighty sure to see it, because he’d be a free man the minute he seen it, but if he missed it he’d be in the slave country again and no more show for freedom. Every little while he jumps up and says: 30
“Dah she is!” But it warn’t. It was Jack-o-lanterns, or lightning-bugs;3 so
he set down again, and went to watching, same as before. Jim said it made him all over trembly and feverish to be so close to freedom. Well, I can tell you it made me all over trembly and feverish, too, to hear him, because I begun to get it through my head that he was most free—and who was to blame for it? Why, me. I couldn’t get that out of my conscience, no how nor no way. It got to troubling me so I couldn’t rest; I couldn’t stay still in one place. It hadn’t ever come home to me before, what 40 this thing was that I was doing. But now it did; and it staid with me, and scorched me more and more. I tried to make out to myself that I warn’t to blame, because I didn’t run Jim off from his rightful owner; but it warn’t no use, conscience up and says, every time, “But you knowed he was running for his freedom, and you could a paddled ashore and told somebody.” That was so—I couldn’t get around that, noway. That was where it pinched. Conscience says to me, “What had poor Miss Watson done to you, that you could see her nigger go off right under your eyes and never say one single word? What did 50
1 Long oars. 2 A city in Illinois. 3 Fireflies.
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that poor old woman do to you, that you could treat her so mean? Why, she tried to learn you your book, she tried to learn you your manners, she tried to be good to you every way she knowed how. That’s what she done.”
I got to feeling so mean and so miserable I most wished I was dead. I fidgeted up and down the raft, abusing myself to myself, and Jim was fidgeting up and down past me. We neither of us could keep still. Every time he danced around and says, “Dah’s Cairo!” it went through me like a shot, and I thought if it was Cairo I reckoned I would die of miserableness. 60
Jim talked out loud all the time while I was talking to myself. He was saying how the first thing he would do when he got to a free State he would go to saving up money and never spend a single cent, and when he got enough he would buy his wife, which was owned on a farm close to where Miss Watson lived; and then they would both work to buy the two children, and if their master wouldn’t sell them, they’d get an Ab’litionist to go and steal them.
It most froze me to hear such talk. He wouldn’t ever dared to talk such talk in his life before. Just see what a difference it 70 made in him the minute he judged he was about free. It was according to the old saying, “give a nigger and inch and he’ll take an ell.”4 Thinks I, this is what comes of my not thinking. Here was this nigger which I had as good as helped to run away, coming right out flat-footed and saying he would steal his children—children that belonged to a man I didn’t even know; a man that hadn’t ever done me no harm.
I was sorry to hear Jim say that, it was such a lowering of him. My conscience got to stirring me up hotter than ever, until at last I says to it, “Let up on me—it ain’t too late, yet—I’ll 80 paddle ashore at the first light, and tell.” I felt easy, and happy, and light as a feather, right off. All my troubles was gone. I went to looking out sharp for a light, and sort of singing to myself. By-and-by one showed. Jim sings out:
“We’s safe, Huck, we’s safe! Jump up and crack yo’ heels, dat’s de good ole Cairo at las’, I jis knows it!”
I says: “I’ll take the canoe and go see, Jim. It mightn’t be, you
know.” He jumped and got the canoe ready, and put his old coat in 90
the bottom for me to set on, and give me the paddle; and as I shoved off, he says:
“Pooty soon I’ll be a-shout’n for joy, en I’ll say, it’s all on accounts o’ Huck; I’s a free man, en I couldn’t ever ben free ef it hadn’ ben for Huck; Huck done it. Jim won’t ever forgit you, Huck; you’s de bes’ fren’ Jim’s ever had; en you’s de only fren’ ole Jim’s got now.”
I was paddling off, all in a sweat to tell on him; but when he says this, it seemed to kind of take the tuck all out of me. I went along slow then, and I warn’t right down certain whether 100 I was glad I started or whether I warn’t. When I was fifty yards off, Jim says:
“Dah you goes, de ole true Huck; de on’y white genlman dat ever kep’ his promise to old Jim.”
Well, I just felt sick. But I says, I got to do it—I can’t get out of it. Right then, along comes a skiff with two men in it, with
guns, and they stopped and I stopped. One of them says: “What’s that, yonder?” “A piece of a raft,” I says. “Do you belong on it?” 110 “Yes, sir.” “Any men on it?” “Only one, sir.” “Well, there’s five niggers run off to-night, up yonder above
the head of the bend. Is you man white or black?” I didn’t answer up prompt. I tried to, but the words wouldn’t
come. I tried, for a second or two, to brace up and out with it, but I warn’t man enough—hadn’t the spunk of a rabbit. I see I was weakening; so I just give up trying, and up and says—
“He’s white.” 120 “I reckon we’ll go and see for ourselves.” “I wish you would,” says I, “because it’s pap that’s there,
and maybe you’d help me tow the raft ashore where the light is. He’s sick—and so is mam and Mary Ann.”
“Oh, the devil! we’re in a hurry, boy. But I s’pose we’ve got to. Come—buckle to your paddle, and let’s get along.”
I buckled to my paddle and they laid to their oars. When we had made a stroke or two, I says:
“Pap’ll be mighty much obleeged to you, I can tell you. Everybody goes away when I want them to help me tow the 130 raft ashore, and I can’t do it by myself.”
“Well, that’s infernal mean. Odd, too. Say, boy, what’s the matter with your father?“
“It’s the—a—the—well, it ain’t anything, much.” They stopped pulling. It warn’t but a mighty little ways to the
raft, now. One says: “Boy, that’s a lie. What is the matter with your pap? Answer
up square, now, and it’ll be the better for you.” “I will, sir, I will, honest—but don’t leave us, please. It’s
the—the—gentlemen, if you’ll only pull ahead, and let me 140 heave you the head-line, you won’t have to come a-near the raft—please do.”
“Set her back, John, set her back!” says one. They backed water. “Keep away, boy—keep to looard.5 Confound it, I just expect the wind has blowed it to us. Your pap’s got the smallpox, and you know it precious well. Why didn’t you come out and say so? Do you want to spread it all over?”
“Well,” says I, a-blubbering, “I’ve told everybody before, and then they just went away and left us.”
“Poor devil, there’s something in that. We are right down 150 sorry for you, but we—well, hang it, we don’t want the smallpox, you see. Look here, I’ll tell you what to do. Don’t you try to land by yourself, or you’ll smash everything to pieces. You float along down about twenty miles and you’ll come to a town on the left-hand side of the river. It will be long after sun-up, then, and when you ask for help, you tell them your folks are all down with chills and fever. Don’t be a fool again, and let people guess what is the matter. Now we’re trying to do you a kindness; so you just put twenty miles between us, that’s a good boy. It wouldn’t do any good to land yonder where the 160 light is—it’s only a wood-yard. Say—I reckon your father’s poor, and I’m bound to say he’s in pretty hard luck. Here—I’ll
4 An English measure equal to 45 inches. 5 Leeward; away from the wind.
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Q How does Huck resolve his moral dilemma?
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put a twenty dollar gold piece on this board, and you get it when it floats by. I feel mighty mean to leave you, but my kingdom! it won’t do to fool with small-pox, don’t you see?”
“Hold on, Parker,” says the other man, “here’s a twenty to put on the board for me. Good-bye, boy, you do as Mr. Parker told you, and you’ll be all right.”
“That’s so, my boy—good-bye, good-bye. If you see any runaway niggers, you get help and nab them, and you can 170 make some money by it.”
“Good-bye, sir,” says I, “I won’t let no runaway niggers get by me if I can help it.”
They went off, and I got aboard the raft, feeling bad and low, because I knowed very well I had done wrong, and I see it warn’t no use for me to try to learn to do right; a body that don’t get started right when he’s little, ain’t got no show6—when the pinch comes there ain’t nothing to back him up and keep him to his work, and so he gets beat. Then I thought a minute, and says to myself, hold on,—s’pose you’d a done right and give 180 Jim up; would you felt better than what you do now? No, says I, I’d feel bad—I’d feel just the same way I do now. Well, then, says I, what’s the use you learning to do right, when it’s troublesome to do right and ain’t no trouble to do wrong, and the wages is just the same? I was stuck. I couldn’t answer that. So I reckoned I wouldn’t bother no more about it, but after this always do whichever come handiest at the time. . . .
Russian Realism: Dostoevsky and Tolstoy More pessimistic than Dickens or Twain, and more pro- foundly analytic of the universal human condition, were the Russian novelists Fyodor Dostoevsky (1821–1881) and Leo Tolstoy (1828–1910). Both men were born and bred in wealth, but both turned against upper-class Russian socie- ty and sympathized with the plight of the lower classes.
Tolstoy ultimately renounced his wealth and property and went to live and work among the peasants. His histor- ical novel War and Peace (1869), often hailed as the great- est example of realistic Russian fiction, traces the progress of five families whose destinies unroll against the back- ground of Napoleon’s invasion of Russia in 1812. In this sprawling narrative, as in many of his other novels, Tolstoy exposes the privileged position of the nobility and the cruel exploitation of the great masses of Russian people. This task, along with sympathy for the cause of Russian nationalism in general, was shared by Tolstoy’s friend and admirer, Ilya Repin (1844–1930), whose portrait of Tolstoy brings the writer to life with skillful candor (Figure 30.6). Russia’s preeminent Realist painter, Repin rendered with detailed accuracy the miserable lives of ordinary Russians—peasants, laborers, and beggars—in genre paint- ings that might well serve as illustrations for the novels of Tolstoy and Dostoevsky.
Dostoevsky paid greater attention than Tolstoy to philosophical and psychological issues. His characters are often victims of a dual plight: poverty and conscience. Their energies are foiled by bitter efforts to resolve their own contradictory passions. Dostoesvsky’s personal life contributed to his bleak outlook: associated with a group of proletarian revolutionaries, he was arrested and deported to Siberia, where he spent five years at hard labor. The neces- sity of suffering is a central theme in his writing, as is the hope of salvation through suffering.
The novels Crime and Punishment (1866), The Possessed (1871), and The Brothers Karamazov (1880) feature protag- onists whose irrational behavior and its psychological con- sequences form the central theme of the novel. In Crime and Punishment, Raskolnikov, a young, poor student, murders an old woman and her younger sister; his crime goes undetected. Thereafter, he struggles with guilt—the self-punishment for his criminal act. He also explores the problems arising from one’s freedom to commit evil. In the following excerpt, the protagonist addresses the moral question of whether extraordinary individuals, by dint of their uniqueness, have the right to commit immoral acts. The conversation, which takes place between Raskolnikov and his friends, is spurred by an article on crime that Raskolnikov had published in a journal shortly after drop- ping out of university. This excerpt is typical of Dostoevsky’s fondness for developing character through monologue and dialogue, rather than through descriptive detail.
Figure 30.6 ILYA REPIN, Portrait of Leo Tolstoy, 1887. Oil on canvas. Repin was celebrated for his realistic depictions of contemporary Russian life and for the psychological insight he brought to his portraits of notable Russian writers and composers.
6 Has no chance.
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Dostoevsky’s Realism (and his genius) lie in the way in which he forces the reader to understand the character as that character tries to understand himself.
From Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment (1866)
“. . . the ‘extraordinary’ man has the right . . . I don’t mean a 1 formal, official right, but he has the right in himself, to permit his conscience to overstep . . . certain obstacles, but only in the event that his ideas (which may sometimes be salutary for all mankind) require it for their fulfilment. You are pleased to say that my article is not clear; I am ready to elucidate it for you, as far as possible. Perhaps I am not mistaken in supposing that is what you want. Well, then. In my opinion, if the discoveries of Kepler and Newton, by some combination of circumstances, could not have become known to the world in any other way than by sacrificing the lives of one, or ten, 10 or more people, who might have hampered or in some way been obstacles in the path of those discoveries, then Newton would have had the right, or might even have been under an obligation . . . to remove those ten or a hundred people, so that his discoveries might be revealed to all mankind. It does not follow from this, of course, that Newton had the right to kill any Tom, Dick, or Harry he fancied, or go out stealing from market-stalls every day. I remember further that in my article I developed the idea that all the . . . well, for example, the law-givers and 20 regulators of human society, beginning with the most ancient, and going on to Lycurgus, Solon, Mahomet, Napoleon and so on, were without exception transgressors,1 by the very fact that in making a new law they ipso facto broke an old one, handed down from their fathers and held sacred by society; and, of course, they did not stop short of shedding blood, provided only that the blood (however innocent and however heroically shed in defence of the ancient law) was shed to their advantage. It is remarkable that the greater part of these benefactors and law- givers of humanity were particularly blood-thirsty. In a word, I 30
deduce that all of them, not only the great ones, but also those who diverge ever so slightly from the beaten track, those, that is, who are just barely capable of saying something new, must, by their nature, inevitably be criminals—in a greater or less degree, naturally. Otherwise they would find it too hard to leave their rut, and they cannot, of course, consent to remain in the rut, again by the very fact of their nature; and in my opinion they ought not to consent. In short, you see that up to this point there is nothing specially new here. It has all been printed, and read, a thousand times before. As for my division of people into 40
ordinary and extraordinary, that I agree was a little arbitrary, but I do not insist on exact figures. Only I do believe in the main principle of my idea. That consists in people being, by the law of nature, divided in general into two categories: into a lower (of ordinary people), that is, into material serving only for the reproduction of its own kind, and into people properly speaking, that is, those who have the gift or talent of saying something new in their sphere. There are endless subdivisions, of course, but the distinctive characteristics of the two categories are fairly well marked: the first group, that is the material, are, 50 generally speaking, by nature staid and conservative, they live in obedience and like it. In my opinion they ought to obey because that is their destiny, and there is nothing at all degrading to them in it. The second group are all law-breakers and transgressors, or are inclined that way, in the measure of their capacities. The aims of these people are, of course, relative and very diverse; for the most part they require, in widely different contexts, the destruction of what exists in the name of better things. But if it is necessary for one of them, for the fulfilment of his ideas, to march over corpses, or wade 60 through blood, then in my opinion he may in all conscience authorize himself to wade through blood—in proportion, however, to his idea and the degree of its importance—mark that. It is in that sense only that I speak in my article of their right to commit crime. (You will remember that we really began with the question of legality.) There is, however, not much cause for alarm: the masses hardly ever recognize this right of theirs, and behead or hang them (more or less), and in this way, quite properly, fulfil their conservative function, although in following generations these same masses put their former 70 victims on a pedestal and worship them (more or less). The first category are always the masters of the present, but the second are the lords of the future. The first preserve the world and increase and multiply; the second move the world and guide it to its goal. Both have an absolutely equal right to exist. In short, for me all men have completely equivalent rights, and—vive la guerre éternelle—until we have built the New Jerusalem, of course!”2
“You do believe in the New Jerusalem, then?” “Yes, I do,” answered Raskolnikov firmly; he said this with 80
his eyes fixed on one spot on the carpet, as they had been all through his long tirade.
“A-and you believe in God? Forgive me for being so inquisitive.”
“Yes, I do,” repeated Raskolnikov, raising his eyes to Porfiry. “A-a-and do you believe in the raising of Lazarus?” “Y-yes. Why are you asking all this?” “You believe in it literally?” “Yes.” “Ah . . . I was curious to know. Forgive me. But, returning to 90
the previous subject—they are not always put to death. Some, on the contrary . . .”
1 Raskolnikov’s views are similar to those expressed by Napoleon III in his book Life of Julius Caesar. The newspaper Golos (Voice) had recently summarized the English Saturday Review’s analysis of Napoleon’s ideas about the right of exceptional individuals (such as Lycurgus, Mahomet, and Napoleon I) to transgress laws and even to shed blood. The book appeared in Paris in March 1865; the Russian translation in April! [Lycurgus: the founder of the military regime of ancient Sparta; Mahomet: Muhammad, the prophet of Allah and founder of the religion Islam; Solon: statesman and reformer in sixth-century B.C.E. Athens.]
2 New Jerusalem, symbolic of the ideal order, after the end of time, is a Heaven on Earth, a new paradise. See the description in Revelation 21 (the Apocalypse). The French phrase means, “Long live perpetual war.”
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Q How does he justify the transgressions of the “lords of the future”?
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“Triumph during their lifetime? Oh, yes, some achieve their ends while they still live, and then . . .”
“They begin to mete out capital punishment themselves?” “If necessary, and, you know, it is most usually so. Your
observation is very keen-witted.” “Thank you. But tell me: how do you distinguish these
extraordinary people from the ordinary? Do signs and portents appear when they are born? I mean to say that we could do 100 with rather greater accuracy here, with, so to speak, rather more outward signs: please excuse the natural anxiety of a practical and well-meaning man, but couldn’t there be, for example, some special clothing, couldn’t they carry some kind of brand or something? . . . Because, you will agree, if there should be some sort of mix-up, and somebody from one category imagined that he belonged to the other and began ‘to remove all obstacles,’ as you so happily put it, then really . . .”
“Oh, that very frequently happens! This observation of yours is even more penetrating than the last.” 110
“Thank you.” “Not at all. But you must please realize that the mistake is
possible only among the first group, that is, the ‘ordinary’ people (as I have called them, perhaps not altogether happily). In spite of their inborn inclination to obey, quite a number of them, by some freak of nature such as is not impossible even among cows, like to fancy that they are progressives, ‘destroyers,’ and propagators of the ‘new world,’ and all this quite sincerely. At the same time, they really take no heed of new people; they even despise them, as reactionary and 120 incapable of elevated thinking. But, in my opinion, they cannot constitute a real danger, and you really have nothing to worry about, because they never go far. They might sometimes be scourged for their zealotry, to remind them of their place; there is no need even for anyone to carry out the punishment: they will do it themselves, because they are very well conducted: some of them do one another this service, and others do it for themselves with their own hands . . . And they impose on themselves various public penances besides—the result is beautifully edifying, and in short, you have nothing to worry 130 about . . . This is a law of nature.”
“Well, at least you have allayed my anxieties on that score a little; but here is another worry: please tell me, are there many of these people who have the right to destroy others, of these ‘extraordinary’ people? I am, of course, prepared to bow down before them, but all the same you will agree that it would be terrible if there were very many of them, eh?”
“Oh, don’t let that trouble you either,” went on Raskolnikov in the same tone. “Generally speaking, there are extremely few people, strangely few, born, who have a new idea, or are even 140 capable of saying anything at all new. One thing only is clear, that the ordering of human births, all these categories and subdivisions, must be very carefully and exactly regulated by some law of nature. This law is, of course, unknown at present, but I believe that it exists, and consequently that it may be known. The great mass of men, the common stuff of humanity, exist on the earth only in order that at last, by some endeavour, some process, that remains as yet mysterious, some happy conjunction of race and breeding, there should struggle into life a being, one in a thousand, capable, in 150
however small a degree, of standing on his own feet. Perhaps one in ten thousand (I am speaking approximately, by way of illustration) is born with a slightly greater degree of independence, and one in a hundred thousand with even more. One genius may emerge among millions, and a really great genius, perhaps, as the crowning point of many thousands of millions of men. In short, I have not been able to look into the retort whence all this proceeds. But a definite law there must be, and is; it cannot be a matter of chance. . . .”
The Literary Heroines of Flaubert and Chopin Nineteenth-century novelists shared a special interest in examining conflicts between social conventions and per- sonal values, especially as they affected the everyday lives of women. Gustave Flaubert’s Madame Bovary (1857), Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina (1877), and Kate Chopin’s The Awakening (1899) are representative of the writer’s concern with the tragic consequences following from the defiance of established social and moral codes by passionate female fig- ures. The heroines in these novels do not create the world in their own image; rather, the world—or more specifically, the social and economic environment—molds them and governs their destinies.
Flaubert (1821–1880), whom critics have called “the inventor of the modern novel,” stripped his novels of senti- mentality and of all preconceived notions of behavior. He aimed at a precise description of not only the stuff of the physical world but also the motivations of his characters. A meticulous observer, he sought le mot juste (“the exact word”) to describe each concrete object and each psycho- logical state—a practice that often prevented him from writing more than one or two pages of prose per week. One contemporary critic wittily claimed that Flaubert, the son of a surgeon, wielded his pen like a scalpel.
Flaubert’s landmark novel, Madame Bovary, tells the story of a middle-class woman who desperately seeks to escape the boredom of her mundane existence. Educated in a convent and married to a dull, small-town physician, Emma Bovary tries to live out the fantasies that fill the pages of her favorite romance novels, but her efforts to do so prove disastrous and lead to her ultimate destruction. With a minimum of interpretation, Flaubert reconstructs the particulars of Emma’s provincial surroundings and her bleak marriage. Since the novel achieves its full effect through the gradual development of plot and character, no brief excerpt can possibly do it justice. Nevertheless, the following excerpt, which describes the deterioration of the adulterous affair between Emma Bovary and the young clerk Léon, illustrates Flaubert’s ability to characterize places and persons by means of the fastidious selection and accumulation of descriptive details.
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From Flaubert’s Madame Bovary (1857)
In the end Léon had promised never to see Emma again; and he 1 reproached himself for not having kept his word, especially considering all the trouble and reproaches she still probably held in store for him—not to mention the jokes his fellow clerks cracked every morning around the stove. Besides, he was about to be promoted to head clerk: this was the time to turn over a new leaf. So he gave up playing the flute and said good-bye to exalted sentiments and romantic dreams. There isn’t a bourgeois alive who in the ferment of his youth, if only for a day or for a minute, hasn’t thought himself capable of 10 boundless passions and noble exploits. The sorriest little woman-chaser has dreamed of Oriental queens; in a corner of every notary’s heart lie the moldy remains of a poet.
These days it only bored him when Emma suddenly burst out sobbing on his breast: like people who can stand only a certain amount of music, he was drowsy and apathetic amidst the shrillness of her love; his heart had grown deaf to its subtler overtones.
By now they knew each other too well: no longer did they experience, in their mutual possession, that wonder that 20 multiplies the joy a hundredfold. She was as surfeited with him as he was tired of her. Adultery, Emma was discovering, could be as banal as marriage.
But what way out was there? She felt humiliated by the degradation of such pleasures; but to no avail: she continued to cling to them, out of habit or out of depravity; and every day she pursued them more desperately, destroying all possible happiness by her excessive demands. She blamed Léon for her disappointed hopes, as though he had betrayed her; and she even longed for a catastrophe that would bring about their 30 separation, since she hadn’t the courage to bring it about herself.
Still, she continued to write him loving letters, faithful to the idea that a woman must always write to her lover.
But as her pen flew over the paper she was aware of the presence of another man, a phantom embodying her most ardent memories, the most beautiful things she had read and her strongest desires. In the end he became so real and accessible that she tingled with excitement, unable though she was to picture him clearly, so hidden was he, godlike, under his 40 manifold attributes. He dwelt in that enchanted realm where silken ladders swing from balconies moon-bright and flower- scented. She felt him near her: he was coming—coming to ravish her entirely in a kiss. And the next moment she would drop back to earth, shattered; for these rapturous love-dreams drained her more than the greatest orgies.
Almost immediately after Madame Bovary appeared (in the form of six installments in the Revue de Paris), the novel was denounced as an offense against public and religious morals, and Flaubert, as well as the publisher and the printer of the Revue, was brought to trial before a crim- inal court. All three men were ultimately acquitted, but
not before an eloquent lawyer had defended all the pas- sages (including those in Reading 30.8) that had been con- demned as wanton and immoral.
A similar situation befell the American writer Kate Chopin (1851–1904), whose novel The Awakening was banned in her native city of St. Louis shortly after its publication in 1899. The novel, a frank examination of female sexual passion and marital infidelity, violated the norms of the society in which Chopin had been reared. Unlike Flaubert, whose novels convey the staleness and inescapability of French provincial life, many of Chopin’s stories deliberately ignore the specifics of time and place. Some are set in Louisiana, where Chopin lived for twelve years with her husband and six children. Chopin was suc- cessful in selling her Louisiana dialect stories, many of which explore matters of class, race, and gender within the world of Creole society, but her novels fell into obscurity soon after her death. The Awakening, whose heroine defies convention by committing adultery, did not receive posi- tive critical attention until the 1950s.
While Chopin absorbed the Realist strategies and social concerns of Flaubert, she brought to her prose a sensitivity to the nuances of human (and especially female) behavior that challenged popular Romantic stereotypes (see chapter 28). Her work also reveals a remarkable talent for narrat- ing a story with jewel-like precision. Her taut descriptive style reaches unparalleled heights in the short prose piece known as “The Story of an Hour.” Here, the protagonist’s brief taste of liberation takes on an ironic fatal turn.
Kate Chopin’s “The Story of an Hour” (“The Dream of an Hour”) (1894)
Knowing that Mrs. Mallard was afflicted with a heart trouble, 1 great care was taken to break to her as gently as possible the news of her husband’s death.
It was her sister Josephine who told her, in broken sentences: veiled hints that revealed in half concealing. Her husband’s friend Richards was there, too, near her. It was he who had been in the newspaper office when intelligence of the railroad disaster was received, with Brently Mallard’s name leading the list of “killed.” He had only taken time to assure himself of its truth by a second telegram, and had hastened 10 to forestall any less careful, less tender friend in bearing the sad message.
She did not hear the story as many women have heard the same, with a paralysed inability to accept its significance. She wept at once, with a sudden, wild abandonment, in her sister’s arms. When the storm of grief had spent itself she went away to her room alone. She would have no one follow her.
There stood, facing the open window, a comfortable, roomy armchair. Into this she sank, pressed down by a physical exhaustion that haunted her body and seemed to reach into 20 her soul.
She could see in the open square before her house the tops of trees that were all aquiver with the new spring life. The delicious breath of rain was in the air. In the street below a
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Q Would the story be equally effective if the roles of Louise and Brently Mallard were reversed?
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peddler was crying his wares. The notes of a distant song which some one was singing reached her faintly, and countless sparrows were twittering in the eaves.
There were patches of blue sky showing here and there through the clouds that had met and piled one above the other in the west facing her window. 30
She sat with her head thrown back upon the cushion of the chair, quite motionless, except when a sob came into her throat and shook her, as a child who has cried itself to sleep continues to sob in its dreams.
She was young, with a fair, calm face, whose lines bespoke repression and even a certain strength. But now there was a dull stare in her eyes, whose gaze was fixed away off yonder on one of those patches of blue sky. It was not a glance of reflection, but rather a suspension of intelligent thought.
There was something coming to her and she was waiting for 40 it, fearfully. What was it? She did not know; it was too subtle and elusive to name. But she felt it, creeping out of the sky, reaching toward her through the sounds, the scents, the color that filled the air.
Now her bosom rose and fell tumultuously. She was beginning to recognize this thing that was approaching to possess her, and she was striving to beat it back with her will—as powerless as her white slender hands would have been.
When she abandoned herself a little whispered word 50 escaped her slight parted lips. She said it over and over under her breath: “free, free, free!” The vacant stare and the look of terror that had followed it went from her eyes. They stayed keen and bright. Her pulses beat fast, and the coursing blood warmed and relaxed every inch of her body.
She did not stop to ask if it were not a monstrous joy that held her. A clear and exalted perception enabled her to dismiss the suggestion as trivial.
She knew that she would weep again when she saw the kind, tender hands folded in death: fixed and grey and dead. 60 But she saw beyond that bitter moment a long procession of years to come that would belong to her absolutely. And she opened and spread her arms out to them in welcome.
There would be no one to live for her during those coming years; she would live for herself. There would be no powerful will bending hers in that blind persistence with which men and women believe they have a right to impose a private will upon a fellow-creature. A kind intention or a cruel intention made the act seem no less a crime as she looked upon it in that brief moment of illumination. 70
And yet she loved him—sometimes. Often she had not. What did it matter! What could love, the unsolved mystery, count for in the face of this possession of self-assertion which she suddenly recognized as the strongest impulse of her being!
“Free! Body and soul free!” she kept whispering. Josephine was kneeling before the keyhole, imploring for
admission. “Louise, open the door! I beg: open the door—you will make yourself ill. What are you doing, Louise? For heaven’s sake open the door.”
“Go away. I’m not making myself ill.” No: she was drinking 80 in a very elixir of life through that open window.
Her fancy was running riot along those days ahead of her.
Spring days, and summer days, and all sorts of days that would be her own. She breathed a quick prayer that life might be long. It was only yesterday she had thought with a shudder that life might be long.
She arose at length and opened the door to her sister’s importunities. There was a feverish triumph in her eyes, and she carried herself unwittingly like a goddess of Victory. She clasped her sister’s wrist, and together they descended the 90 stairs. Richards stood waiting for them at the bottom.
Some one was opening the front door with a latchkey. It was Brently Mallard who entered, a little travel-stained, composedly carrying his grip-sack and umbrella. He had been far from the scene of accident, and did not even know there had been one. He stood amazed at Josephine’s piercing cry; at Richards’ quick motion to screen him from the view of his wife.
But Richards was too late. When the doctors came they said she had died of heart 100
disease—of joy that kills.
Zola and the Naturalistic Novel Kate Chopin’s contemporary Emile Zola (1840–1902) initiated a variant form of literary Realism known as naturalism. Naturalist fiction was based on the premise that everyday life should be represented with scientific objectivity: faithfully and with detailed accuracy. Contrary to Romantic writers, naturalists refused to embellish or idealize experience. They went beyond the Realism of Flaubert and Dickens by conceiving their characters in accordance with psychological and sociological factors, and as products of the laws of heredity. This deterministic approach showed human beings as products of environ- mental or hereditary factors over which they had little or no control. Just as Marx held that economic life shaped all aspects of culture, so naturalists believed that material and social elements determined human conduct and behavior.
Zola (Figure 30.7) treated the novel as a carefully researched study of commonplace, material existence. In his passion to describe his time and place with absolute fidelity, he studied labor problems, police records, and industrial history, amassing notebooks of information on a wide variety of subjects, including coal mining, the rail- roads, the stock market, and the science of surgery. He pre- sented a slice of life that showed how social and material circumstances shaped the society of late nineteenth-centu- ry France. His twenty novels (known as the Rougon- Macquart series) exploring the lives of French farmers, miners, statesmen, prostitutes, scholars, and artists consti- tutes a psycho-socio-biological history of his time. The Grog Shop (1877) offers a terrifying picture of the effects of alcoholism on industrial workers. Nana (1880) is a
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their stomachs and thighs. When these pieces, caught by the planks, had heaped up beneath them, the cutters disappeared, walled up in the narrow crevice.
Maheu was the one who suffered most. The temperature at the top climbed as high as ninety-five degrees; the air did not circulate, and the suffocating heat eventually became unbearable. In order to see clearly, he had had to hang his lamp on a nail right next to his head, and this additional heat beating down on his skull made his blood sing in his ears. But the worst was the dampness. Water was continually dripping down from the rock only a few inches above his face, and there was a never-ending stream of drops falling, with a maddening rhythm, always on the same spot. It was no use twisting his neck or turning his head: the drops kept beating against his face, splattering and spreading without stop. At the end of a quarter of an hour he was soaked through, coated with his own sweat, and steaming like a tub of laundry. That morning a drop ceaselessly trickling into his eye made him swear, but he wouldn’t stop cutting, and his mighty blows jolted him so violently between the two layers of rock that he was like a plant-louse caught between two pages of a book—in constant danger of being completely crushed.
Not a word was said. They were all hammering away, and nothing could be heard except these irregular blows, muffled and seemingly far away. The sounds were harsh in the echoless, dead air, and it seemed as though the shadows had a strange blackness, thickened by the flying coal dust and made heavier by the gases that weighed down on their eyes. Behind metal screens, the wicks of their lamps gave off only reddish points of light, and it was hard to see anything. The stall opened out like a large, flat, oblique chimney in which the soot of ten winters had built up an unrelieved darkness. Phantom forms moved about, dull beams of light giving glimpses of a rounded haunch, a brawny arm, a distorted face blackened as if in preparation for a crime. Occasionally, as blocks of coal came loose, they would catch the light and shoot off crystal- like glitters from their suddenly illuminated facets. Then it would be dark again, the picks would beat out heavy dull blows, and there was nothing but the sound of panting breaths, grunts of discomfort and fatigue in the stifling air, and the dripping water from the underground streams.
scathing portrayal of a beautiful but unscrupulous prosti- tute. The most scandalous of his novels, it inspired charges of pornography and “gutter-sweeping.”
A later novel in the Rougon-Macquart series, Germinal (1885), exposes the bitter lives of coal miners in northern France. The excerpt that follows, which relates the hellish experience of the miner Maheu, reflects Zola’s talent for detailed description that transforms his writing from mere social history to powerful fiction.
From Zola’s Germinal (1885)
The four cutters [miners] had stretched themselves out, head to toe, over the whole surface of the sloping face. Separated by hooked planks that caught the loosened coal, each of them occupied about fifteen feet of the vein, which was so narrow— scarcely twenty inches at this point—that they were squashed in between the roof and the wall. They had to drag themselves along on their knees and elbows, and were unable to turn without bruising their shoulders. To get at the coal, they had to lie sideways, their necks twisted and their raised arms wielding the short- handled picks at an angle.
Zacharie was at the bottom. Levaque and Chaval above him, and Maheu at the very top. Each one was hacking away at the bed of shale with his pick, cutting two vertical grooves in the vein, then driving an iron wedge into the top of the block and freeing it. The coal was soft, and the block crumbled into pieces and rolled down
Figure 30.7 EDOUARD MANET, Zola, exhibited 1868. Oil on canvas, 57 � 45 in. Manet’s portrait has the quality of a snapshot. The writer is seen at his desk, which holds a copy of his short biography of the artist. Above the desk, he has posted a black-and-white reproduction of Manet’s Olympia, a Japanese print of a sumo wrestler, and Goya’s etching of a painting by Velázquez, favorite artists of both Manet and Zola.
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Elements of naturalism are found in the novels of many late nineteenth-century writers in both Europe and America. Thomas Hardy (1840–1928) in England, and Stephen Crane (1871–1900), Jack London (1876–1916) and Theodore Dreiser (1871–1945) in America are the most notable of the English-language literary naturalists.
Realist Drama: Ibsen The Norwegian dramatist Henrik Ibsen (1828–1906) brought to the late nineteenth-century stage concerns sim- ilar to those in the novels of the Realists. A moralist and a critic of human behavior, he attacked the artificial social conventions that led people to pursue self-deluding and hypocritical lives. Ibsen was deeply concerned with con- temporary issues and social problems. He shocked the pub- lic with prose dramas that addressed such controversial subjects as insanity, incest, and venereal disease. At the same time, he explored universal themes of conflict between the individual and society, between love and duty, and between husband and wife.
In 1879, Ibsen wrote the classic drama of female libera- tion, A Doll’s House. Threatened with blackmail over a debt she had incurred years earlier, Nora Helmer looks to her priggish husband Torvald for protection. But Torvald is a victim of the small-mindedness and middle-class social restraints of his time and place. When he fails to rally to his wife’s defense, Nora realizes the frailty of her dependent lifestyle. Awakened to the meaninglessness of her life as “a doll-wife” in “a doll’s house,” she comes to recognize that her first obligation is to herself and to her dignity as a human being.
Nora’s revelation brings to life, in the forceful language of everyday speech, the psychological tensions between male and female that Mill had analyzed only ten years ear- lier in his treatise on the subjection of women. Ibsen does not resolve the question of whether a woman’s duties to husband and children come before her duty to herself; yet, as is suggested in the following exchange between Nora and Torvald (excerpted from the last scene of A Doll’s House), Nora’s self-discovery precipitates the end of her marriage. She shuts the door on the illusions of the past as emphatically as Ibsen shut out the world of Romantic idealism.
From Ibsen’s A Doll’s House (1879)
Act III, Final Scene
[Late at night in the Helmers’ living room. Instead of retiring, Nora suddenly appears in street clothes.]
Helmer: . . . What’s all this? I thought you were going to 1 bed. You’ve changed your dress?
Nora: Yes, Torvald; I’ve changed my dress. Helmer: But what for? At this hour? Nora: I shan’t sleep tonight. Helmer: But, Nora dear— Nora [looking at her watch]: It’s not so very late—Sit down,
Torvald; we have a lot to talk about. [She sits at one side of the table.]
Helmer: Nora—what does this mean? Why that stern 10 expression?
Nora: Sit down. It’ll take some time. I have a lot to say to you. [Helmer sits at the other side of the table.]
Helmer: You frighten me, Nora. I don’t understand you. Nora: No, that’s just it. You don’t understand me; and I have
never understood you either—until tonight. No, don’t interrupt me. Just listen to what I have to say. This is to be a final settlement, Torvald.
Helmer: How do you mean? 20 Nora [after a short silence]: Doesn’t anything special strike
you as we sit here like this? Helmer: I don’t think so—why? Nora: It doesn’t occur to you, does it, that though we’ve
been married for eight years, this is the first time that we two—man and wife—have sat down for a serious talk?
Helmer: What do you mean by serious? Nora: During eight whole years, no—more than that—ever
since the first day we met—we have never exchanged so much as one serious word about serious things. 30
Helmer: Why should I perpetually burden you with all my cares and problems? How could you possibly help me to solve them?
Nora: I’m not talking about cares and problems. I’m simply saying we’ve never once sat down seriously and tried to get to the bottom of anything.
Helmer: But, Nora, darling—why should you be concerned with serious thoughts?
Nora: That’s the whole point! You’ve never understood me—A great injustice has been done me, Torvald; first by 40 Father, and then by you.
Helmer: What a thing to say! No two people on earth could ever have loved you more than we have!
Nora [shaking her head]: You never loved me. You just thought it was fun to be in love with me.
Helmer: This is fantastic! Nora: Perhaps. But it’s true all the same. While I was still at
home I used to hear Father airing his opinions and they became my opinions; or if I didn’t happen to agree, I kept it to myself—
his doll-baby, and played with me as I played with my dolls. Then I came to live in your house—
Helmer: What an expression to use about our marriage! Nora [undisturbed]: I mean—from Father’s hands I passed
into yours. You arranged everything according to your tastes, and I acquired the same tastes, or I pretended to—I’m not sure which—a little of both, perhaps. Looking back on it all, it seems to me I’ve lived here like a beggar, from hand to mouth. I’ve lived by performing tricks for you, Torvald. But that’s the way you wanted it. You and Father have done me a great 60 wrong. You’ve prevented me from becoming a real person.
Helmer: Nora, how can you be so ungrateful and unreasonable! Haven’t you been happy here?
Nora: No, never. I thought I was; but I wasn’t really. Helmer: Not—not happy!
he would have been displeased otherwise. He used to call me 50
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Q What is Helmer’s perception of Nora?
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Nora: No, only merry. You’ve always been so kind to me. But our home has never been anything but a play-room. I’ve been your doll-wife, just as at home I was Papa’s doll-child. And the children, in turn, have been my dolls. I thought it fun when you played games with me, just as they thought it fun when I 70 played games with them. And that’s been our marriage, Torvald.
Helmer: There may be a grain of truth in what you say, even though it is distorted and exaggerated. From now on things will be different. Play-time is over now; tomorrow lessons begin!
Nora: Whose lessons? Mine, or the children’s? Helmer: Both, if you wish it, Nora, dear. Nora: Torvald, I’m afraid you’re not the man to teach me to
be a real wife to you. 80 Helmer: How can you say that? Nora: And I’m certainly not fit to teach the children. Helmer: Nora! Nora: Didn’t you just say, a moment ago, you didn’t dare
trust them to me? Helmer: That was in the excitement of the moment! You
mustn’t take it so seriously! Nora: But you were quite right, Torvald. That job is beyond
me; there’s another job I must do first: I must try and educate myself. You could never help me to do that; I must do it quite 90 alone. So, you see—that’s why I’m going to leave you.
Helmer: [jumping up]: What did you say—? Nora: I shall never get to know myself—I shall never learn
to face reality—unless I stand alone. So I can’t stay with you any longer.
Helmer: Nora! Nora! Nora: I am going at once. I’m sure Kristine will let me stay
with her tonight— Helmer: But, Nora—this is madness! I shan’t allow you to
do this. I shall forbid it! 100 Nora: You no longer have the power to forbid me anything.
I’ll only take a few things with me—those that belong to me. I shall never again accept anything from you.
Helmer: Have you lost your senses? Nora: Tomorrow I’ll go home—to what was my home, I
mean. It might be easier for me there, to find something to do. Helmer: You talk like an ignorant child, Nora—! Nora: Yes. That’s just why I must educate myself. Helmer: To leave your home—to leave your husband, and
your children! What do you suppose people would say to that? 110 Nora: It makes no difference. This is something I must do. Helmer: It’s inconceivable! Don’t you realize you’d be
betraying your most sacred duty? Nora: What do you consider that to be? Helmer: Your duty towards your husband and your
children—I surely don’t have to tell you that! Nora: I’ve another duty just as sacred. Helmer: Nonsense! What duty do you mean? Nora: My duty towards myself. Helmer: Remember—before all else you are a wife and 120
mother. Nora: I don’t believe that any more. I believe that before all
else I am a human being, just as you are—or at least that I
should try and become one. I know that most people would agree with you, Torvald—and that’s what they say in books. But I can no longer be satisfied with what most people say— or what they write in books. I must think things out for myself—get clear about them.
Helmer: Surely your position in your home is clear enough? Have you no sense of religion? Isn’t that an infallible guide to 130 you?
Nora: But don’t you see, Torvald—I don’t really know what religion is.
Helmer: Nora! How can you! Nora: All I know about it is what Pastor Hansen told me
when I was confirmed. He taught me what he thought religion was—said it was this and that. As soon as I get away by myself, I shall have to look into that matter too, try and decide whether what he taught me was right—or whether it’s right for me, at least. 140
Helmer: A nice way for a young woman to talk! It’s unheard of! If religion means nothing to you, I’ll appeal to your conscience; you must have some sense of ethics, I suppose? Answer me! Or have you none?
Nora: It’s hard for me to answer you, Torvald. I don’t think I know—all these things bewilder me. But I do know that I think quite differently from you about them. I’ve discovered that the law, for instance, is quite different from what I had imagined; but I find it hard to believe it can be right. It seems it’s criminal for a woman to try and spare her old, sick, father, or save her 150 husband’s life! I can’t agree with that.
Helmer: You talk like a child. You have no understanding of the society we live in.
Nora: No, I haven’t. But I’m going to try and learn. I want to find out which of us is right—society or I.
Helmer: You are ill, Nora; you have a touch of fever; you’re quite beside yourself.
Nora: I’ve never felt so sure—so clear-headed—as I do tonight.
Helmer: “Sure and clear-headed” enough to leave your 160 husband and your children?
Nora: Yes. Helmer: Then there is only one explanation possible. Nora: What? Helmer: You don’t love me any more. Nora: No; that is just it. Helmer: Nora!—What are you saying! Nora: It makes me so unhappy, Torvald; for you’ve always
been so kind to me. But I can’t help it. I don’t love you any more. 170
Helmer [mastering himself with difficulty]: You feel “sure and clear-headed” about this too?
Nora: Yes, utterly sure. That’s why I can’t stay here any longer. . . .
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The Birth of Photography One of the most significant factors in the development of the materialist mentality was the birth of photography. While a painting or an engraving might bring to life the content of the artist’s imagination, a photograph offered an authentic record of a moment vanished in time. Unlike the camera obscura, which only captured an image briefly (see chapter 23), the photograph fixed and pre- served reality.
Photography—literally “writing with light”—had its beginnings in 1835, when William Henry Fox Talbot (1800–1877) fixed negative images on paper coated with light-sensitive chemicals, a process by which multiple prints might be produced from a single exposure. Slightly earlier, Talbot’s French contemporary, Louis J. M. Daguerre (1787–1851), had developed a similar process that fixed the image on a polished metal plate. Unlike Talbot’s prints (produced from paper negatives), however, Daguerre’s images could not be reproduced—each was a one-of-a-kind object. Nevertheless, in the next decades, his more widely publicized and technically improved product, known as a daguerreotype, came into vogue throughout Europe and America, where it fulfilled a growing demand for portraits. Gradual improvements in camera lenses and in the chem- icals used to develop the visible image hastened the rise of photography as a popular way of recording the physical world with unprecedented accuracy.
Photography presented an obvious challenge to the authority of the artist, who, throughout history, had assumed the role of nature’s imitator. But artists were slow to realize the long-range impact of photography—that is, the camera’s potential to liberate artists from repro- ducing the physical “look” of nature. Critics proclaimed that photographs, as authentic facsimiles of the physical world, should serve artists as aids to achieving greater Realism in canvas painting; and many artists did indeed use photographs as factual resources for their compositions. Nevertheless, by mid-century, both Europeans and Americans were using the camera for a wide variety of other purposes: they made topographical studies of exotic geo- graphic sites, recorded architectural monuments, and produced thousands of portraits. Photography provided ordinary people with portrait images that had previously only been available to those who could afford painted like- nesses. In the production of portraits the daguerreotype proved most popular; by 1850, some 100,000 were sold each year in Paris. Such photographs were used as calling cards and to immortalize the faces of notable individuals (see Figure 28.4), as well as those of criminals, whose “mug shots” became a useful tool for the young science of crimi- nology.
Some photographers, such as the British pioneer Julia Margaret Cameron (1815–1879), used the camera to recre- ate the style of Romantic painting. Imitating the effects of the artist’s paintbrush, Cameron’s soft-focus portraits are Romantic in spirit and sentiment (Figure 30.8). Others
used the camera to document the factual realities of their time and place. The French photographer Gaspart-Félix Tournachon, known as Nadar (1820–1910), made vivid portrait studies of such celebrities as George Sand, Berlioz, and Sarah Bernhardt. Nadar was the first to experiment with aerial photography (see Figure 30.14). He also intro- duced the use of electric light for a series of extraordinary photographs that examined the sewers and catacombs beneath the city of Paris.
Inevitably, nineteenth-century photographs served as social documents: the black-and-white images of poverty- stricken families and ramshackle tenements (see Figure 30.5) produced by Thomas Annan (1829–1887), for
1835 William H. F. Talbot (English) invents the negative–positive photographic process
1837 Louis J. M. Daguerre (French) uses a copper plate coated with silver to produce the first daguerreotype
1860 production begins on the first Winchester repeating rifle (in America)
1866 explosive dynamite is first produced in Sweden 1888 George Eastman (American) perfects the “Kodak”
box camera
Figure 30.8 JULIA MARGARET CAMERON, Whisper of the Muse (G. F. Watts and Children), ca. 1865. Photograph.
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instance, record with gritty Realism the notorious slums of nineteenth-century Glasgow, Scotland. Such photographs could easily illustrate the novels of Charles Dickens. In a similar vein, the eyewitness photographs of the American Civil War (1861–1865) produced by Mathew B. Brady (1823–1896) and his staff testify to the importance of the professional photographer as a chronicler of human life. Brady’s 3500 Civil War photographs include mundane scenes of barracks and munitions as well as unflinching views of human carnage (Figure 30.9). By the end of the century, the Kodak “point and shoot” handheld camera gave vast numbers of ordinary people the freedom to take their own photographic images.
Courbet and French Realist Painting In painting no less than in literature and photography, Realism came to challenge the Romantic style. The Realist preference for concrete, matter-of-fact depictions of every- day life provided a sober alternative to both the remote, exotic, and heroic imagery of the Romantics and the noble and elevated themes of the Neoclassicists. Obedient to the credo that artists must confront the experiences and appearances of their own time, Realist painters abandoned the nostalgic landscapes and heroic themes of Romantic art in favor of compositions depicting the consequences of industrialization (see Figure 30.3) and the lives of ordinary men and women.
The leading Realist of nineteenth-century French painting was Gustave Courbet (1819–1877). A farmer’s son, he was a self-taught artist, an outspoken socialist, and a staunch defender of the Realist cause. “A painter,” he
protested, “should paint only what he can see.” Indeed, most of Courbet’s works—portraits, landscapes, and con- temporary scenes—remain true to the tangible facts of his immediate vision. With the challenge “Show me an angel and I’ll paint one,” he taunted both the Romantics and the Neoclassicists. Not angels but ordinary individuals in their actual settings and circumstances interested Courbet.
In The Stone-Breakers, Courbet depicted two rural labor- ers performing the most menial of physical tasks (Figure 30.10). The painting, which Courbet’s friend Proudhon called “the first socialist picture,” outraged the critics because its subject matter is mundane and its figures are crude, ragged, and totally unidealized. Moreover, the figures were positioned with their backs turned toward the viewer, thus violating, by nineteenth-century standards, the rules of propriety and decorum enshrined in French academic art (see chapter 21). But despite such “violations” Courbet’s painting appealed to the masses. In a country whose popu- lation was still two-thirds rural and largely poor, the stolid dignity of hard labor was a popular subject.
Courbet’s contemporary Jean-François Millet (1814– 1875) did not share his reformist zeal; he nevertheless devoted his career to painting the everyday lives of the rural proletariat. His depictions of hard-working farm laborers earned him the title “the peasant painter.” In Gleaners (Figure 30.11), three ordinary peasant women pursue the menial task of gathering the bits of grain left over after the harvest. Delineated with ennobling simplic- ity, these stoop-laborers are as ordinary and anonymous as Courbet’s stone-breakers, but, set against a broad and ennobling landscape, they appear dignified and graceful.
Figure 30.9 MATHEW B. BRADY or staff, Dead Confederate Soldier with Gun, Petersburg, Virginia, 1865. Photograph. The four-year-long American Civil War produced the largest number of casualties of any war in American history. Brady hired staff photographers to assist him in photographing the military campaigns and battles, a project that produced some 3500 photographs but left him bankrupt.
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Figure 30.10 GUSTAVE COURBET, The Stone-Breakers, 1849. Oil on canvas, 5 ft. 3 in. � 8 ft. 6 in.
Figure 30.11 JEAN-FRANÇOIS MILLET, Gleaners, ca. 1857. Oil on canvas, approx. 2 ft. 9 in. � 3 ft. 8 in. Millet’s portrayals of rural women at work—spinning, sewing, tending sheep, and feeding children—idealized the female as selfless and saintly, and offered a somewhat romanticized view of the laboring classes.
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While Courbet’s scene has the “random” look of a snap- shot, Millet’s composition, in which the distant haystacks subtly echo the curved backs of the workers, appears more formal and contrived. Against Courbet’s undiluted Realism, Millet’s perception seems Romanticized.
A landmark even in its own time, Gleaners became a symbol of the dignity of hard work, a nostalgic reminder of a way of life quickly disappearing before encroaching industrialization. As such, it was copied and mass-produced in numerous engraved editions.
Courbet, however, remained brutally loyal to nature and the mundane world; he knew that the carefree peasant was an idyllic stereotype that existed not in real life, but rather in the urban imagination. He would have agreed with his contemporary, the British novelist George Eliot (Mary Ann Evans), that “no one who is well acquainted with the English peasantry can pronounce them merry.”
Courbet’s most daring record of ordinary life was his monumental Burial at Ornans (Figure 30.12). The huge canvas (over 10 x 21 feet) consists of fifty-two life-sized
Figure 30.12 GUSTAVE COURBET, Burial at Ornans, 1849–1850. Oil on canvas, 10 ft. 3 in. � 21 ft. 9 in. For the introduction to the catalogue that accompanied his one-man show, Courbet wrote a Realist Manifesto that stated his aim “to translate the customs, the ideas, and the appearance” of his epoch according to his own estimation. A leading critic claimed that he had depicted “the modern bourgeois in all his ridiculousness, ugliness, and beauty.”
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Courbet’s recently deceased grandfather
limestone cliffs of Ornans
two lay church officials
self-portrait of Courbet smoking a pipe Courbet’s father, wearing a tall, silk hat
open grave gravedigger, Antoine-Joseph Cassard
local priest, the Abbé Benjamin Bonnet
pallbearers (friends of Courbet) Courbet’s three sisters
coffin covered with white shroud bearing crossbones
sacristan crucifix and bearer
Mayor of Ornans, Claude-Hélène-Prosper Teste
Hippolyte Proudhon, a prominent local lawyer
altar boys
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figures disposed informally around the edges of a freshly dug grave. Paintings of this size normally depicted historical or religious subjects. Here, however, inspired by the funeral of his great uncle, Courbet depicts the plain-looking (and even homely) townspeople of Ornans. He minimizes the display of pomp and ceremony traditional to Western rep- resentations of Christian burial, which emphasized the rit- ual aspects of death and disposal. The kneeling gravedigger and the attendant dog are as important to the picture as the priest and his retinue. And the mourners, while crowded together, play a more prominent role in the composition than the deceased. With the objectivity of a camera eye, Courbet banished from his view all sentimentality and arti- fice. When the painting was rejected by the Universal Exhibition of 1855, Courbet rented a space near the exhi- bition grounds, put up a tent, and displayed the Burial along with thirty-eight of his paintings. He called the space “The Pavilion of Realism.” For this, the first one-man show in history, Courbet charged a small admission fee.
Daumier’s Social Realism The French artist Honoré Daumier (1808–1879) left the world a detailed record of the social life of his time. He had no formal academic education, but his earliest training was in lithography—a printmaking process created by drawing on a stone plate (Figure 30.13). Lithography, a product of nineteenth-century print technology, was a cheap and popular means of providing illustrations for newspapers, magazines, and books.
Daumier produced over 4000 lithographs, often turning out two to three per week for various Paris newspapers and journals. For his subject matter, he turned directly to the
world around him: the streets of Paris, the theater, the law courts. The advancing (and often jarring) technology of modern life also attracted Daumier’s interest: pioneer experiments in aerial photography (Figure 30.14), the telegraph, the sewing machine, the repeating rifle, the rail- road, and urban renewal projects that included widening the streets of Paris. But Daumier did not simply depict the facts of modern life; he frequently ridiculed them. Skeptical as to whether new technology and social progress could radically alter the human condition, he drew atten- tion to characteristic human weaknesses, from the the all too familiar complacency and greed of self-serving political figures to the pretensions of the nouveaux riches.
One of the popular institutions mocked by Daumier was the French Salon (Figure 30.15). The Salon de Paris origi- nated with the Royal Academy of Painting and Sculpture,
Figure 30.13 Lithography is a method of making prints from a flat surface; it is also called planography. An image is first drawn or painted with an oil-based lithographic crayon or pencil on a smooth limestone surface. The surface is wiped with water, which will not stick to the applied areas of greasy lithographic ink because oil and water do not mix. The greasy areas resist the water and are thus exposed. The surface is then rolled with printing ink, which adheres only to the parts drawn in the oil-based medium. Dampened paper is placed over the stone, and a special flatbed press rubs the back of the paper, transferring the work from the stone to the covering sheet.
Figure 30.14 HONORÉ DAUMIER, Nadar Raising Photography to the Heights of Art, 1862. Lithograph. The balloonist, photographer, draftsman, and journalist Gaspard-Félix Tournachon, called Nadar, took his first photograph from a balloon. The aerial balloon, built in 1863, inspired some of the adventure novels of the science-fiction writer Jules Verne (see chapter 37). Nadar also pioneered the use of artificial lighting, by which he was able to photograph the catacombs of Paris.
1798 Aloys Senefelder (Bavarian) develops lithography 1822 William Church (American) patents an automatic
typesetting machine 1844 wood-pulp production provides cheap paper for
newspapers and periodicals
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founded in 1648 (see chapter 21). Exhibiting work at the Salon was a sign of royal favor and a sure path to success. Held annually during the eighteenth century at the palace of the Louvre, the juried exhibitions were public events that ran for weeks, attracting huge crowds, including newly minted art critics. Paintings were exhibited from floor to ceiling, taking up all the available space, and printed cata- logues accompanied the exhibition. By the mid-nine- teenth century these annual government-sponsored juried exhibitions, held in large commercial halls, had become symbols of entrenched, academic tastes. Daumier’s litho- graphs satirized the Salon as a “grand occasion” attended by hoards of gaping urbanites.
The ancestors of modern-day political cartoons, Daumier’s lithographs conveyed his bitter opposition to the monarchy, political corruption, and profiteering. Such crit- icism courted danger, especially since in mid nineteenth- century France it was illegal to caricature individuals publicly without first obtaining their permission. Following the publication of his 1831 lithograph, which depicted the French king Louis Philippe as an obese Gargantua atop a commode/throne from which he defecated bags of gold, Daumier spent six months in jail.
Primarily a graphic artist, Daumier completed fewer than three hundred paintings. In The Third-Class Carriage, he captured on canvas the shabby monotony of nineteenth-
Figure 30.15 HONORE DAUMIER, Free Admission Day—Twenty-Five Degrees of Heat from the series “Le Public du Salon,” published in Le Charivari (May 17, 1852), p.10. Lithograph. 111⁄8 � 85⁄8 in. The inscription reads “A day when one does not pay. Twenty-five degrees celsius.”
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century lower-class railway travel (see Figure 30.1). The part of the European train in which tickets were the least expensive was also, of course, the least comfortable: it lacked glass windows (hence was subject to more than aver- age amounts of smoke, cinders, and clatter) and was equipped with hard wooden benches rather than cushioned seats. Three generations of poor folk—an elderly woman, a younger woman, and her children—occupy the foreground of Daumier’s painting. Their lumpish bodies suggest weari- ness and futility, yet they convey a humble dignity reminis- cent of Rembrandt’s figures (see chapter 22). Dark and loosely sketched oil glazes underscore the mood of cheerless resignation. Daumier produced a forthright image of com- mon humanity in a contemporary urban setting.
The Scandalous Realism of Manet The French painter Edouard Manet (1832–1883) presented an unsettling challenge to the world of art. A native Parisian who chose painting over a career in law, Manet was an admirer of the art of the old masters. He was equally enthralled by the life of his own time—by Parisians and
their middle-class pleasures. In a large, brilliantly painted canvas entitled Déjeuner sur l’herbe (Luncheon on the Grass), he shocked public taste by taking a Classical theme and putting it in modern dress (Figure 30.16). Déjeuner shows a nude woman enjoying a picnic lunch with two fully clothed male companions; a second, partially clothed woman bathes in a nearby stream. The representation of the female nude was considered the ultimate subject in academic art. Her identity in ancient sculpture, as in Western art history since the Early Renaissance, was invariably that of a mytho- logical or allegorical figure, such as Venus or Charity. Manet’s nude, however, was nothing more than an ordinary, naked woman. By picturing the female nude—and one who brazenly stares out at the viewer—in a contemporary set- ting occupied by clothed men, Manet offended public morality and academic tradition. He also destroyed the barrier between fantasy and everyday reality.
Figure 30.16 EDOUARD MANET, Déjeuner sur l’herbe, 1863. Oil on canvas, 7 ft. � 8 ft. 10 in. The still life in the lower left testifies to Manet’s technical skills as a painter.
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From an historical perspective, Manet’s subject matter—the female nude in a landscape—was quite tra- ditional; the artist might have had reference to such works as Titian’s Pastoral Concert (Figure 30.17). Déjeuner’s three central figures are based directly on a sixteenth-century engraving based on a Renaissance tapestry, itself derived from a lost painting by Raphael (Figure 30.18). Nevertheless, the figures in the painting are neither woodland nymphs nor Olympian gods; rather, they are Manet’s favorite model (Victorine Meurent), and his future brother-in-law (the reclining male figure).
By “updating” traditional imagery with such off-handed, in-your-face immediacy, Manet was making a statement that—as with Madame Bovary—targeted the degeneracy of French society. Like Flaubert, who combined authenticity of detail and an impersonal narrative style, Manet took a neutral stance that presented the subject with cool objectivity. It is no surprise that the jury of the Royal Academy rejected Déjeuner, refusing to hang the painting in the Salon exhibition of 1863. Nevertheless, that same year it was displayed in an alternate venue: the Salon des Refusés, a landmark exhibition of rejected paintings, was authorized by the French head of state in response to public agitation against the tyranny of the Academy. No sooner was Manet’s painting hung than visitors tried to poke holes in the canvas and critics launched attacks on its coarse “impropri- eties.” Déjeuner was pronounced scandalous. “The nude does
not have a good figure,” wrote one journalist, “and one cannot imagine anything uglier than the man stretched out beside her, who has not even thought of removing, out of doors, his horrible padded cap.” While Manet’s paintings met with repeated criticism, they were defended by his good friend Emile Zola, who penned a short biography of the artist in 1867 (see Figure 30.7). Zola praised Manet’s works as “simple and direct translations of reality,” observ- ing with some acuity: “He treats figure paintings as the academic painter treats still lifes . . . He neither sings nor philosophizes. He paints, and that is all.”
In a second painting of 1863, Olympia, Manet again “debased” a traditional subject: the reclining nude (Figure 30.19). Lacking the subtle allure of a Titian Venus or an Ingres odalisque, the short, stocky nude (Victorine Meurent again) looks boldly at the viewer. Her satin slip- pers, the black ribbon at her throat, and other enticing details distinguish her as a courtesan—a high-class prosti- tute. Manet’s urban contemporaries were not blind to this fact, but the critics were unsparingly brutal. One journalist called Olympia “a sort of female gorilla” and warned, “Truly, young girls and women about to become mothers would do well, if they are wise, to run away from this spec- tacle.” Like Flaubert’s Madame Bovary or Zola’s Nana, Manet’s Olympia desentimentalized the female image. By rendering the ideal in commonplace terms, he not only offended public taste, but challenged the traditional view of art as the bearer of noble themes.
Manet also violated academic convention by employing new painting techniques. Imitating current photographic practice, he bathed his figures in bright light and, using a minimum of shading, flattened forms in a manner inspired by Japanese prints (see Figure 31.13). His practice of elim- inating halftones and laying on fresh, opaque colors
Figure 30.18 MARCANTONIO RAIMONDI detail from The Judgment of Paris, ca. 1520. Engraving after Raphael tapestry.
Figure 30.17 TITIAN (begun by Giorgione), Pastoral Concert, ca. 1505. Oil on canvas, 3 ft. 71⁄4 in. � 4 ft. 61⁄4 in.
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(instead of building up form by means of thin, trans- parent glazes) anticipated impressionism, a style he embraced later in his career.
Realism in American Painting Although most American artists received their train- ing in European art schools, their taste for Realism seems to have sprung from a
native affection for the factual and the material aspects of their immediate surroundings. In the late nineteenth century, an era of gross materialism known as the Gilded Age, America produced an extraordinary number of first-rate Realist painters. These individuals explored a wide variety of sub- jects, from still life and portraiture to landscape and genre painting. Like such literary giants as Mark Twain, American Realist painters fused keen obser- vation with remarkable descriptive skills.
One of the most talented of the American Realists was William M. Harnett (1848–1892), a still-life painter and a master of trompe l’oeil (“fools the eye”) illusionism. Working in the tradition of seventeenth-century Dutch masters, Harnett record- ed mundane objects with such hair-fine precision that some of them—letters, newspaper clippings, and calling cards—seem to be pasted on the canvas (Figure 30.20).
In the genre of portraiture, the Philadelphia artist Thomas Eakins (1844–1916) mastered the art of producing uncompromising likenesses such as that of
Figure 30.20 WILLIAM MICHAEL HARNETT, The Artist’s Letter Rack, 1879. Oil on canvas, 30 � 25 in.
Figure 30.19 EDOUARD MANET, Olympia, 1863. Oil on canvas, 4 ft. 31⁄4 in. � 6 ft. 23⁄4 in. A maid presents the courtesan with a bouquet of flowers from an admirer, who, based on the startled response of the black cat, may have just entered the room. Commenting on the unmodulated flatness of the figure, Courbet compared Olympia to the Queen of Spades in a deck of playing cards.
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the poet Walt Whitman (see Figure 27.12). Like most nineteenth-century American artists, Eakins received his training in European art schools, but he ultimately emerged as a painter of the American scene and as an influential art instructor. At the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, he received criticism for his insistence on work- ing from nude models and was forced to resign for remov- ing the loincloth of a male model in a class that included female students.
Eakins was among the first artists to choose subjects from the world of sports, such as boxing and boating. A photographer of some note, Eakins used the camera to col- lect visual data for his paintings. He was among the first
artists to use his own photographs as the basis for true-to- life pictorial compositions.
Eakins’ fascination with scientific anatomy—he dissect- ed cadavers at Jefferson Medical College in Philadelphia— led him to produce some unorthodox representations of medical training and practice. One of his most notable can- vases, The Agnew Clinic (see Figure 30.21), is a dispassion- ate view of a hospital amphitheater in which the surgeon P. Hayes Agnew lectures to students on the subject of the mastectomy that is being performed under his supervision.
Eakins’ student, Henry Ossawa Tanner (1859–1937)— like many other African-American artists—found Paris more receptive than America. A talented genre painter,
In 1889 Eakins accepted a commission offered by students at the University of Pennsylvania’s School of Medicine to paint a portrait commemorating the retirement of a one of their favorite professors. Eakins suggested a clinic scene that would include the surgeon’s collaborators and class members. In drafting the composition, he surely had in mind Rembrandt’s famous group portrait, The Anatomy Lesson of Dr. Nicolaes Tulp (Figure 30.22). Eakins’ painting (Figure 30.21) shares Rembrandt’s dramatic staging, use of light to illuminate figures in darkened space, and dedication to realistic detail. Both paintings communicate a fresh and stubbornly precise record of the natural world.
Figure 30.21 THOMAS EAKINS, The Agnew Clinic, 1889. Oil on canvas, 6 ft. 21⁄2 in. � 10 ft. 101⁄2 in. This wall-sized painting is the largest of Eakins’ canvases. At the far right is the likeness of Eakins himself, painted by his wife Susan.
Figure 30.22 REMBRANDT VAN RIJN, The Anatomy Lesson of Dr. Nicolaes Tulp,
1632. Oil on canvas, 5 ft. 33⁄8 in. � 7 ft. 11⁄4 in.
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landscape artist, and photographer, Tanner brought to his work a concern for simple, everyday events as practiced by working-class people. In The Banjo Lesson, he depicts an intimate domestic scene in which a young boy receives musical instruction from his grandfather (Figure 30.23). A fine technician and a fluent colorist, Tanner showed regu- larly in Paris. In 1909, he was elected to the National Academy of Design, New York.
American Realists were keenly aware of the new art of photography; some, like Tanner and Eakins, were themselves fine photographers. But they were also indebted to the world of journalism, which assumed increasing importance in trans- mitting literate culture. Winslow Homer (1836–1910) began his career as a newspaper illustrator and a reporter for the New York magazine Harper’s Weekly. The first professional artist to serve as a war correspondent, he produced
on-the-scene documentary paintings and drawings of the American Civil War, which Harper’s converted to wood- engraved illustrations (Figure 30.24). Although Homer often generalized the facts of the events he actually wit- nessed, he neither moralized nor allegorized his subjects (as did, for instance, Goya or Delacroix). His talent for graph- ic selectivity and dramatic concentration rivaled that of America’s first war photographer, Mathew Brady (see Figure 30.9).
Apart from two trips to Europe, Homer spent most of his life in New England, where he painted subjects that were both ordinary and typically American. Scenes of hunting and fishing reveal his deep affection for nature, while his many genre paintings reflect a fascination with the activities of American women and children.
Homer was interested in the role of African-Americans in contemporary culture, but critical of visual representa- tions that portrayed America’s slaves as merry and content. One of his most provocative paintings, The Gulf Stream, shows a black man adrift in a rudderless boat surrounded by shark-filled waters that are whipped by the winds of an impending tornado (Figure 30.25). While realistic in exe- cution, the painting may be interpreted as a metaphor for the isolation and plight of black Americans in the decades following the Civil War. Homer shared with earlier nine- teenth-century figures, including Turner, Melville, and Géricault, an almost obsessive interest in the individual’s life and death struggle with the sea. However, compared (for instance) with Géricault’s theatrical rendering of man against nature in The Raft of the “Medusa” (see Figure 29.4), which he probably saw in Paris, Homer’s painting is a matter-of-fact study of human resignation in the face of deadly peril. As with many publicly displayed nineteenth- century paintings, it provoked immediate critical response.
Figure 30.24 WINSLOW HOMER, The War for the Union: A Bayonet Charge, published in Harper’s Weekly, July 12, 1862. Wood engraving, 135⁄8 � 205⁄8 in.
Figure 30.23 HENRY OSSAWA TANNER, The Banjo Lesson, ca. 1893. Oil on canvas, 49 � 351⁄2 in.
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CHAPTER 30 Industry, Empire, and the Realist Style 313
Answering the critics, Eakins wryly replied: “The criticisms of The Gulf Stream by old women and others are noted. You may inform these people that the Negro did not starve to death, he was not eaten by the sharks, the water spout did not hit him, and he was rescued by a passing ship . . .”
American audiences loved their Realist painters, but, occasionally, critics voiced mixed feelings. The American novelist Henry James (1843–1916), whose novels probed the differences between European and American charac- ter, assessed what he called Homer’s “perfect realism” with these words:
He is almost barbarously simple, and, to our eye, he is horribly ugly; but there is nevertheless something one likes about him. What is it? For ourselves, it is not his subjects. We frankly confess that we detest his subjects—his barren plank fences, his glaring, bald, blue skies, his big, dreary, vacant lots of meadows, his freckled, straight-haired Yankee urchins, his flat-breasted maidens, suggestive of a dish of rural doughnuts and pie, his calico sun-bonnets, his flannel shirts, his cowhide boots. He has chosen the least pictorial features of the least pictorial range of scenery and civilization; he has resolutely treated them as if they were pictorial, as if they were every inch as good as Capri or Tangiers; and, to reward his audacity, he has incontestably succeeded. It . . . is a proof that if you will only be doggedly literal, though you may often be unpleasing, you will at least have a stamp of your own.
In the nineteenth century, the history of architecture was revolu- tionized by the use of an exciting new structural medium: cast iron. Providing strength without bulk,
cast iron allowed architects to span broader widths and raise structures to greater heights than achieved by tradi- tional stone masonry. Although cast iron would change the history of architecture more dramatically than any advance in technology since the Roman invention of concrete, European architects were slow to realize its potential. In England, where John Nash had used cast iron in 1815 as the structural frame for the Brighton Pavilion (see Figure 29.14), engineers did not begin construction on the first cast-iron suspension bridge until 1836; and not until mid- century was iron used as skeletal support for mills, ware- houses, and railroad stations.
The innovator in the use of iron for public buildings was, in fact, not an architect but a distinguished horticul- turalist and greenhouse designer, Joseph Paxton (1801–1865). Paxton’s Crystal Palace (Figure 30.26), erected for the Great Exhibition in London in 1851, was the world’s first prefabricated building and the forerunner of the “functional” steel and glass architecture of the twen- tieth century. Consisting entirely of cast- and wrought-iron girders and 18,000 panes of glass, and erected in only nine months, the 1851-foot-long structure—its length a
Figure 30.25 WINSLOW HOMER, The Gulf Stream, 1899. Oil on canvas, 281⁄8 in. � 4 ft. 11⁄8 in. Homer added the fully rigged sailing ship at the horizon on the left some time after the painting was exhibited.
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symbolic reference to the year of the exhibition— resembled a gigantic greenhouse. Light entered through its transparent walls and air filtered in through louvered windows. Thousands flocked to see the Crystal Palace; yet most European architects found the glass and iron structure bizarre. Although heroic in both size and conception, it had almost no immediate impact on European architec- ture. Dismantled after the Great Exhibition and moved to a new site, however, it was hailed as a masterpiece of pre- fabrication and portability decades before it burned to the ground in 1936.
314 CHAPTER 30 Industry, Empire, and the Realist Style
Figure 30.26 JOSEPH PAXTON, interior of Crystal Palace, 1851. Cast- and wrought-iron and glass, length 1851 ft. Assembled entirely on site from prefabricated components, the Crystal Palace housed some 14,000 exhibitions. The three-story structure, illuminated mainly by natural light, anticipated today’s modern shopping malls.
1773 the first cast-iron bridge is built in England 1851 the first international industrial exposition opens
in London 1856 Henry Bessemer (British) perfects the process for
producing inexpensive steel 1857 E. G. Otis (American) installs the first safety elevator 1863 the first “subway” (the London Underground) begins
operation
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Like the Crystal Palace, the Eiffel Tower (Figure 30.27) origi- nated as a novelty, but it soon became emblematic of early mod- ernism. The viewing tower con- structed by the engineer Gustave Eiffel (1832–1923) for the Paris World Exhibition of 1889 is, in essence, a tall (1064-foot-high) cast-iron skeleton equipped with elevators that offer visitors magnif- icent aerial views of Paris. Aesthetically, the tower linked the architectural traditions of the past with those of the future: its sweep- ing curves, delicate tracery, and dramatic verticality recall the glo- ries of the Gothic cathedral, while its majestic ironwork anticipates the austere abstractions of International Style architecture (see chapter 32). Condemned as a visual monstrosity when it was first erected, the Eiffel Tower emerged as a positive symbol of the soaring confidence of the industrial age. This landmark of heroic materialism remained for four decades (until the advent of the American skyscraper) the tallest structure in the world.
In an age of advancing industri- alization, ornamental structures such as the Crystal Palace and the Eiffel Tower gave way to functional ones. Inevitably, the skyscraper would become the prime architec- tural expression of modern corpo- rate power and the urban scene. By 1850, there were seven American cities with more than 100,000 inhabitants, and before 1900 the populations of at least three of
these—New York, Philadelphia, and Chicago—swelled as a result of the thousands of immigrants who came to live and work in the metropolitan community. The physical character of the premodern city, whose buildings were no more than four stories high, changed enormously with the construction of skyscrapers.
Multistoried vertical buildings were made possible by the advancing technology of steel, a medium that was perfected in 1856. Lighter, stronger, and more resilient than cast iron, steel used as a frame could carry the entire weight of a struc- ture, thus eliminating the need for solid weight-bearing masonry walls. Steel made possible a whole new concept of building design characterized by lighter materials, flat roofs, and large windows. In 1868, the six-story Equitable Life Insurance Building in New York City was the first office
structure to install an electric elevator. By the 1880s, archi- tects and engineers united the new steel frame with the ele- vator to raise structures more than ten stories. William Le Baron Jenney (1832–1907) built the first all-steel-frame skyscraper, the Home Insurance Building in Chicago, which, ironically, hides its metal skeleton beneath a tradi- tional-looking brick and masonry façade. It fell to his successor, Louis Henry Sullivan (1856–1924), to design multistory buildings, such as the Guaranty Building in Buffalo (Figure 30.28), whose exteriors proudly reflect the structural simplicity of their steel frames. “Form should
Figure 30.27 GUSTAVE EIFFEL, Eiffel Tower, Paris, 1889. Wrought iron on a reinforced concrete base, original height 984 ft.
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follow function,” he insisted. Within decades, the American skyscraper became an icon of modern urban culture.
Nineteenth-century steel and cast-iron technology also contributed to the construction of bridges. In 1870, work began on the first steel-wire suspension bridge in the United States: the Brooklyn Bridge (Figure 30.29). Designed by John Augustus Roebling (1806–1926), who had earlier engineered bridges in Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Texas, the Brooklyn Bridge (upon its completion in 1883) would be the largest suspension bridge in the world. Its main span, which crosses the East River between Manhattan and Brooklyn, measures some 1600 feet. This celebrated bridge reflects the marriage of modern steel technology and Neo-Gothic design, evident in the elegant granite and limestone arches.
In Italian opera of the late nineteenth century, a move- ment called verismo (literally, “truth-ism,” but more generally “Realism”) paralleled the Realist style in liter- ature and art. Realist composers rejected the heroic characters of Romantic grand opera and presented the problems and conflicts of people in familiar and every- day—if somewhat melodramatic—situations. The fore- most “verist” was the Italian composer Giacomo Puccini (1858–1924).
Puccini’s La Bohème, the tragic love story of young artists (called “bohemians” for their unconventional lifestyles) in the Latin Quarter of Paris, was based on a nineteenth-century novel called Scenes of Bohemian Life. The colorful orchestration and powerfully melodic arias of La Bohème evoke the joys and sorrows of
Figure 30.28 LOUIS HENRY SULLIVAN and DANKMAR ADLER, Guaranty Building, Buffalo, New York, 1894–1895. Steel frame.
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true-to-life characters. While this poignant musical drama was received coldly at its premiere in 1897, La Bohème has become one of the best loved of nineteenth-century operas.
Another of Puccini’s operas, Madame Butterfly, offered European audiences a timely, if moralizing, view of the Western presence in Asia and one that personalized the clash of radically different cultures. The story, which takes place in Nagasaki in the years following the reopening of Japanese ports to the West, begins with the wedding of a young United States navy lieutenant to a fifteen-year-old geisha (a Japanese girl trained as a social companion to men) known as “Butterfly.” The American is soon forced to leave with his fleet, while for three years Butterfly, now the mother of his son, faithfully awaits his return. When, finally, he arrives (accompanied by his new American bride) only to claim the child, the griefstricken Butterfly takes the only honorable path available to her: she commits suicide. This tragic tale, which had appeared as a novel, a play, and a magazine story, was based on a true incident. Set to some of Puccini’s most lyrical music for voice and orchestra, Madame Butterfly reflects the compos- er’s fascination with Japanese culture, a fascination most
evident in his poetic characterization of the delicate Butterfly. While neither the story nor the music of the opera is authentically Japanese, its verismo lies in its frank (though poignant) account of the bitter consequences that often accompanied the meeting of East and West.
Figure 30.29 JOHN AUGUSTUS and WASHINGTON AUGUSTUS ROEBLING, Brooklyn Bridge, New York, 1869–1883. Currier and Ives print, 1877.
1830 French conquest of Algeria 1839–1850 Opium Wars in China 1848 antigovernment revolutions in France and
Central Europe 1853 beginning of Meiji rule in Japan 1860 unification of Italy 1861–1865 United States Civil War 1869 completion of the U.S. transcontinental
railroad 1871 unification of Germany
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Realism in the Visual Arts • By the mid nineteenth century the camera was used to
document all aspects of contemporary life as well as to provide artists with detailed visual data.
• In painting, Courbet led the Realist movement with canvases depicting the activities of humble and commonplace men and women. Daumier employed the new technique of lithography to show his deep concern for political and social conditions in rapidly modernizing France.
• With the landmark paintings Déjeuner sur l’herbe and Olympia, Edouard Manet shocked public taste by modernizing Classical subjects and violating conventional painting techniques.
• American Realism is best represented by the trompe l’oeil paintings of William Harnett and the down-to-earth subjects of Thomas Eakins and Winslow Homer.
Late Nineteenth-Century Architecture • Paxton’s Crystal Palace, the world’s first prefabricated cast-iron
structure, offered a prophetic glimpse into the decades that would produce steel-framed skyscrapers.
• In an age of advancing industrialization, ornamental structures such as the Crystal Palace and the Eiffel Tower gave way to functional ones. Inevitably, the skyscraper would become the prime architectural expression of modern corporate power and the urban scene.
Realism in Music • Verismo opera departed from Romantic tradition by seeking
to capture the lives of men and women with a truth to nature comparable to that of Realist novels and paintings.
• In the opera Madame Butterfly, the Italian “verist” Giacomo Puccini presented a timely view of America’s imperialistic presence in Asia.
The Global Dominion of the West • During the second half of the nineteenth century, as Western
industrialization accelerated, Realism came to rival Romanticism both as a style and as an attitude of mind.
• Western industrialization and the materialistic values with which it was allied precipitated imperialism and colonialism, both of which had a shaping influence on the non-Western world. The heavy hand of Western imperialism in some parts of Africa, Asia, and in the Middle East had a crippling effect on independent growth and productivity.
Nineteenth-Century Social Theory • The ideologies of liberalism, conservatism, utilitarianism, and
socialism offered varying solutions to nineteenth-century social and economic inequities. Marxist communism called for violent proletarian revolution that would end private ownership of the means of economic production.
• The leading proponent of liberalism, John Stuart Mill, defended the exercise of individual liberty as protected by the state.
• Mill’s opposition to the subordination of women gave strong support to nineteenth-century movements for women’s rights.
Realism in Literature • In literature, Realism emerged as a style concerned with
recording contemporary subject matter in true-to-life terms. • Such novelists as Dickens in England, Dostoevsky and Tolstoy
in Russia, Flaubert and Zola in France, and Twain and Chopin in America described contemporary social conditions sympathetically and with fidelity to detail.
• Flaubert and Chopin provided alternatives to Romantic idealism in their realistic characterizations of female figures.
• Zola’s naturalistic novels pictured human beings as determined by hereditary and sociological factors, while Ibsen’s fearless portrayal of class and gender opened a new chapter in modern drama.
capitalist one who provides investment capital in economic ventures
entrepreneur one who organizes, manages, and assumes the risks of a business
lithography a printmaking process created by drawing on a stone plate; see Figure 30.13
proletariat a collective term describing industrial workers who lack their own means of production and hence sell their labor to live
verismo (Italian, “realism”) a type of late nineteenth-century opera that presents a realistic picture of life, instead of a story based in myth, legend, or ancient history
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Figure 31.1 CAMILLE PISSARRO, Le Boulevard Montmartre: Rainy Weather, Afternoon, 1897. Oil on canvas, 205⁄8 � 26 in. In his long career, Pissarro painted hundreds of rural and urban landscapes. His techniques in capturing the effects of light influenced the work of his fellow Impressionists. Nevertheless, he sold very few paintings in his lifetime.
“Is not the nineteenth century … a century of decadence?” Nietzsche
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Late Nineteenth-Century Thought
READING 31.1
320 CHAPTER 31 The Move Toward Modernism
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During the last quarter of the nineteenth century, France emerged
as the center of Western artistic production. Paris became the
melting pot for artists and intellectuals, composers and journal-
ists. London and Paris hosted World’s Fairs that brought the arts
and cultures of Japan, Africa, and Oceania to the attention of
astonished Westerners. In an era of relative world peace and
urban prosperity, Western artists were preoccupied with the
pleasures of life and the fleeting world of the senses. They initi-
ated styles—Symbolism, Impressionism, and Postimpressionism
—that neither idealized the world nor described it literally. Much
of their art was driven by aesthetic principles that—similar to
music—communicated no specific meaning, but rather, evoked
feeling by way of pure form and color. Their goals were described
by Walter Pater in 1868 with the slogan l’art pour l’art, or “art for
art’s sake.”
Late nineteenth-century science and technology helped to
drive this new approach in the arts. The last decades of the cen-
tury saw the invention of synthetic oil paints available in portable
tubes. In 1873, the British physicist James Clerk Maxwell
(1831–1879) published his Treatise on Electricity and Magnetism,
which explained that light waves consisting of electromagnetic
particles produced radiant energy. In 1879, after numerous fail-
ures, the American inventor Thomas Edison (1847–1931) moved
beyond scientific theory to create the first efficient incandescent
light bulb. Edison’s light bulb provided a sharper perception of
reality that—along with the camera—helped to shatter the world
of romantic illusion. By the year 1880, the telephone transported
the human voice over thousands of miles. In the late 1880s,
Edison developed the technique of moving pictures. The invention
of the internal combustion engine led to the production of auto-
mobiles in the 1890s, a decade that also witnessed the invention
of the X-ray and the genesis of radiotelegraphy. Such technolo-
gies accelerated the tempo of life and drew attention to the role
of the senses in defining experience.
Nietzsche’s New Morality The most provocative thinker of the late nineteenth century was the German philosopher and poet Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche (1844–1900). Nietzsche was a Classical philologist, a professor of Greek at the university of Basle, and the author of such notable works as The Birth
of Tragedy (1872), Thus Spoke Zarathustra (1883–1892), and On the Genealogy of Morals (1887). In these, as in his shorter pieces, Nietzsche voiced the sentiments of the rad- ical moralist. Deeply critical of his own time, he called for a revision of traditional values. He rejected organized reli- gion, attacking Christianity and other institutionalized religions as contributors to the formation of a “slave moral- ity.” He was equally critical of democratic institutions, which he saw as rule by mass mediocrity. His goal for humanity was the emergence of a “superman” (Übermen- sch), whose singular vision and courage would, in his view, produce a “master” morality.
Nietzsche did not launch his ideas in the form of a well- reasoned philosophic system, but rather as aphorisms, max- ims, and expostulations whose visceral force bear out his claim that he wrote “with his blood.” Reflecting the spiri- tual cynicism of the late nineteenth century, he asked, “Is man merely a mistake of God’s? Or God merely a mistake of man’s?”
Nietzsche shared with Dostoevsky the view that European materialism had led inevitably to decadence and decline. In The Antichrist, published in 1888, shortly before Nietzsche became insane (possibly a result of syphilis), he wrote:
Mankind does not represent a development toward something better or stronger or higher in the sense accepted today. “Progress” is merely a modern idea, that is, a false ideal. The European of today is vastly inferior in value to the European of the Renaissance: further development is altogether not according to any necessity in the direction of elevation, enhancement, or strength.
The following readings demonstrate Nietzsche’s incisive imagination and caustic wit. The first, taken from The Gay Science (1882) and entitled “The Madman,” is a para- ble that harnesses Nietzsche’s iconoclasm to his gift for prophecy. The others, excerpted from Twilight of the Idols (or How One Philosophizes with a Hammer, 1888), address the fragile relationship between art and morality and the art for art’s sake spirit of the late nineteenth century.
From the Works of Nietzsche
The Gay Science (1882) The Madman. Have you not heard of that madman who lit a 1 lantern in the bright morning hours, ran to the market place, and cried incessantly, “I seek God! I seek God!” As many of those who do not believe in God were standing around just then, he provoked much laughter. Why, did he get lost? said one. Did he lose his way like a child? said another. Or is he hiding? Is he afraid of us? Has he gone on a voyage? or emigrated? Thus they yelled and laughed. The madman jumped into their midst and pierced them with his glances.
“Whither is God” he cried. “I shall tell you. We have killed 10 him—you and I. All of us are his murderers. But how have we done this? How were we able to drink up the sea? Who gave us the sponge to wipe away the entire horizon? What did we
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Q If art excludes moral purpose, what, according to Nietzsche, might be the purpose of art?
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life for us? And indeed there have been philosophers who attributed this sense to it: “liberation from the will” was what Schopenhauer taught as the over-all end of art; and with admiration he found the great utility of tragedy in its “evoking resignation.” But this, as I have already suggested, is the pessimist’s perspective and “evil eye.” We must appeal to the artists themselves. What does the tragic artist communicate of himself? Is it not precisely the state without fear in the face of the fearful and questionable that he is showing? This state itself is a great desideratum;1 whoever knows it, honors it with 30
the greatest honors. He communicates it—must communicate it, provided he is an artist, a genius of communication. Courage and freedom of feeling before a powerful enemy, before a sublime calamity, before a problem that arouses dread—this triumphant state is what the tragic artist chooses, what he glorifies. Before tragedy, what is warlike in our soul celebrates its Saturnalia;2 whoever is used to suffering, whoever seeks out suffering, the heroic man praises his own being through tragedy—to him alone the tragedian presents this drink of sweetest cruelty. 40
. . . . . . . . . .
One might say that in a certain sense the nineteenth century also strove for all that which Goethe as a person had striven for: universality in understanding and in welcoming, letting everything come close to oneself, an audacious realism, a reverence for everything factual. How is it that the over-all result is no Goethe, but chaos, a nihilistic sigh, an utter bewilderment, an instinct of weariness which in practice continually drives toward a recourse to the eighteenth century? (For example, as a romanticism of feeling, as altruism and hypersentimentality, as feminism in taste, as socialism in 50 politics.) Is not the nineteenth century, especially at its close, merely an intensified, brutalized eighteenth century, that is, a century of decadence? So that Goethe would have been—not merely for Germany, but for all of Europe—a mere interlude, a beautiful “in vain”? But one misunderstands great human beings if one views them from the miserable perspective of some public use. That one cannot put them to any use, that in itself may belong to greatness. . . .
Bergson: Intellect and Intuition While Nietzsche anticipated the darker side of modernism, Henri Bergson (1859–1941) presented a more positive point of view. Bergson, the most important French philoso- pher of his time, offered a picture of the world that paral- leled key developments in the arts and sciences and anticipated modern notions of time and space. Bergson viewed life as a vital impulse that evolved creatively, much like a work of art.
do when we unchained this earth from its sun? Whither is it moving now? Whither are we moving now? Away from all suns? Are we not plunging continually? Backward, sideward, forward, in all directions? Is there any up or down left? Are we not straying as through an infinite nothing? Do we not feel the breath of empty space? Has it not become colder? Is not night and more night coming on all the while? Must not lanterns be 20 lit in the morning? Do we not hear anything yet of the noise of the gravediggers who are burying God? Do we not smell anything yet of God’s decomposition? Gods too decompose. God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him. How shall we, the murderers of all murderers, comfort ourselves? What was holiest and most powerful of all that the world has yet owned has bled to death under our knives. Who will wipe this blood off us? What water is there for us to clean ourselves? What festivals of atonement, what sacred games shall we have to invent? Is not the greatness of this deed too 30 great for us? Must not we ourselves become gods simply to seem worthy of it? There has never been a greater deed; and whoever will be born after us—for the sake of this deed he will be part of a higher history than all history hitherto.”
Here the madman fell silent and looked again at his listeners; and they too were silent and stared at him in astonishment. At last he threw his lantern on the ground, and it broke and went out. “I come too early,” he said then; “my time has not come yet. This tremendous event is still on its way, still wandering—it has not yet reached the ears of man. 40 Lightning and thunder require time, the light of the stars requires time, deeds require time even after they are done, before they can be seen and heard. This deed is still more distant from them than the most distant stars—and yet they have done it themselves.”
It has been related further that on that same day the madman entered divers churches and there sang his requiem aeternam deo. Led out and called to account, he is said to have replied each time, “What are these churches now if they are not the tombs and sepulchers of God?” 50
Twilight of the Idols (1888) L’art pour l’art. The fight against purpose in art is always a fight 1
against the moralizing tendency in art, against its subordination to morality. L’art pour l’art means, “The devil take morality!” But even this hostility still betrays the overpowering force of the prejudice. When the purpose of moral preaching and of improving man has been excluded from art, it still does not follow by any means that art is altogether purposeless, aimless, senseless—in short, l’art pour l’art, a worm chewing its own tail. “Rather no purpose at all than a moral purpose!”—that is the talk of mere passion. A psychologist, on the other hand, 10 asks: what does all art do? does it not praise? glorify? choose? prefer? With all this it strengthens or weakens certain valuations. Is this merely a “moreover”? an accident? something in which the artist’s instinct had no share? Or is it not the very presupposition of the artist’s ability? Does his basic instinct aim at art, or rather at the sense of art, at life? at a desirability of life? Art is the great stimulus to life: how could one understand it as purposeless, as aimless, as l’art pour l’art?
One question remains: art also makes apparent much that is ugly, hard, and questionable in life; does it not thereby spoil 20
1 Something desired as essential. 2 An orgy, or unrestrained celebration.
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Poetry in the Late Nineteenth Century: The Symbolists
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fine rods of ruby surround the water rose.” The Symbolists tried to represent nature without effusive commentary, to “take eloquence and wring its neck,” as Verlaine put it. In order to imitate the indefiniteness of experience itself, they might string words together without logical connections. Hence, in Symbolist poetry, images seem to flow into one another, and “meaning” often lies between the lines.
Mallarmé For Stéphane Mallarmé, the “new art” of poetry was a religion, and the poet–artist was its oracle. Inclined to melancholy, he cultivated an intimate literary style based on the “music” of words. He held that art was “accessible only to the few” who nurtured “the inner life.” Mallarmé’s poems are tapestries of sensuous, dreamlike motifs that resist definition and analysis. To name a thing, Mallarmé insisted, was to destroy it, while to suggest experience was to create it.
Mallarmé’s pastoral poem, “L’après-midi d’un faune” (“The Afternoon of a Faun”) is a reverie of an erotic encounter between two mythological woodland creatures, a faun (part man, part beast) and a nymph (a beautiful for- est maiden). As the faun awakens, he tries to recapture the experiences of the previous afternoon. Whether his elusive memories belong to the world of dreams or to reality is uncertain; but, true to Bergson’s theory of duration, expe- rience becomes a stream of sensations in which past and present merge. As the following excerpt illustrates, Mallarmé’s verbal rhythms are free and hypnotic, and his images, which follow one another with few logical transi- tions, are intimately linked to the world of the senses.
From Mallarmé’s “The Afternoon of a Faun” (1876)
I would immortalize these nymphs: so bright 1 Their sunlit coloring, so airy light, It floats like drowsing down. Loved I a dream? My doubts, born of oblivious darkness, seem A subtle tracery of branches grown 5 The tree’s true self—proving that I have known, Thinking it love, the blushing of a rose. But think. These nymphs, their loveliness . . . suppose They bodied forth your senses’ fabulous thirst? Illusion! which the blue eyes of the first, 10 As cold and chaste as is the weeping spring, Beget: the other, sighing, passioning, Is she the wind, warm in your fleece at noon? No; through this quiet, when a weary swoon Crushes and chokes the latest faint essay 15 Of morning, cool against the encroaching day, There is no murmuring water, save the gush Of my clear fluted notes; and in the hush Blows never a wind, save that which through my reed1
Puffs out before the rain of notes can speed 20 Upon the air, with that calm breath of art
According to Bergson, two primary powers, intellect and intuition, governed the lives of human beings. While intellect perceives experience in individual and discrete terms, or as a series of separate and solid entities, intuition grasps experience as it really is: a perpetual stream of sen- sations. Intellect isolates and categorizes experience according to logic and geometry; intuition, on the other hand, fuses past and present into one organic whole. For Bergson, instinct (or intuition) is humankind’s noblest fac- ulty, and duration, or “perpetual becoming,” is the very stuff of reality—the essence of life.
In 1889, Bergson published his treatise Time and Freewill, in which he described true experience as dura- tional, a constant unfolding in time, and reality, which can only be apprehended intuitively, as a series of qualita- tive changes that merge into one another without precise definition.
Bergson’s poetical view of nature had much in common with the aesthetics of the movement known as symbolism, which flourished from roughly 1885 to 1910. The Symbolists held that the visible world does not constitute a true or universal reality. Realistic, objective representa- tion, according to the Symbolists, failed to convey the pleasures of sensory experience and the intuitive world of dreams and myth. The artist’s mission was to find a lan- guage that embraced the mystical, the erotic, and the inef- fable world of the senses. For the Symbolists, reality was a swarm of sensations that could never be described but only suggested by poetic symbols—images that elicited moods and feelings beyond literal meanings.
In literature, the leading Symbolists were the French poets Charles Baudelaire (1821–1867), Paul Verlaine (1844–1896), Arthur Rimbaud (1854–1891), and Stéphane Mallarmé (1842–1898), and the Belgian playwright Maurice Maeterlinck (1862–1949). Arthur Rimbaud, who wrote most of his poetry while in his teens, envisioned the poet as seer. Freeing language from its descriptive function, his prose poems shattered the rational sequence of words and phrases, detaching them from their traditional associ- ations and recombining them so as to create powerful sense impressions. In one of the prose poems from his Illuminations, for example, Rimbaud describes flowers as “Bits of yellow gold seeded in agate, pillars of mahogany supporting a dome of emeralds, bouquets of white satin and
1877 Thomas Edison (American) invents the phonograph 1892 Rudolf Diesel (German) patents his internal
combustion engine 1893 Henry Ford (American) test-drives the
“gasoline-buggy”
1 A pipe or flute.
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Q How does this poem compare with those of Wordsworth and Shelley (Readings 27.1 and 27.2)?
Q What aspects of Mallarmé’s poem do you detect in the music of Debussy and the paintings of Monet?
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to theexotic music of Bali in Indonesia, which he had heard performed at the World’s Fair of 1889. Debussy experiment- ed with nontraditional kinds of harmony, such as the five- tone scale found in East Asian music. He deviated from the traditional Western practice of returning harmonies to the tonic, or “home tone,” introducing shifting harmonies with no clearly defined tonal center. His rich harmonic palette, characterized by unusually constructed chords, reflects a fas- cination with tone color that may havebeen inspiredbythe writingsoftheGermanphysiologistHermannvonHelmholtz (1821–1894)—especially his treatise On the Sensations of Tone as a Physiological Basis for the Theory of Music (1863). But Debussy found his greatest inspiration in contemporary poetry and painting. A close friend of the Symbolist poets, he set a number of their texts to music. His first orchestral com- position, Prelude to “TheAfternoon of a Faun” (1894), was (in his words) a “very free illustration of Mallarmé’s beautiful poem,” which had been published eighteen years earlier. Debussy originally intended to write a dramatic piece based on the poem, but instead produced a ten-minuteorchestral prelude that shares its dreamlike quality.
In 1912, his score became the basis for a twelve-minute ballet choreographed by Vaslav Nijinsky (1888–1950; Figure 31.2). This brilliant Russian choreographer violated the formalities of classical dance by introducing sexually
2 A volcanic mountain in Sicily.
That mounts the unwrinkled zenith visibly, Where inspiration seeks its native sky. You fringes of a calm Sicilian lake, The sun’s own mirror which I love to take, 25 Silent beneath your starry flowers, tell How here I cut the hollow rushes, well Tamed by my skill, when on the glaucous gold Of distant lawns about their fountain cold A living whiteness stirs like a lazy wave; 30 And at the first slow notes my panpipes gave These flocking swans, these naiads, rather, fly Or dive.
. . . . . . . . . .
See how the ripe pomegranates bursting red To quench the thirst of the mumbling bees have bled; 35 So too our blood, kindled by some chance fire, Flows for the swarming legions of desire. At evening, when the woodland green turns gold And ashen grey, ’mid the quenched leaves, behold! Red Etna2 glows, by Venus visited, 40 Walking the lava with her snowy tread Whene’er the flames in thunderous slumber die. I hold the goddess!
Ah, sure penalty! But the unthinking soul and body swoon At last beneath the heavy hush of noon. 45 Forgetful let me lie where summer’s drouth Sifts fine the sand and then with gaping mouth Dream planet-struck by the grape’s round wine-red star. Nymphs, I shall see the shade that now you are.
It is no surprise that Symbolist poetry, itself a kind of music, found its counterpart in music. Like the poetry of Mallarmé, the music of Claude Debussy (1862–1918) engages the listener through nuance and atmosphere. Debussy’s compositions consist of broken fragments of melody, the outlines of which are blurred and indistinct. “I would like to see the creation . . . of a kind of music with- out themes and motives,” wrote Debussy, “formed on a sin- gle continuous theme, which is uninterrupted and which never returns on itself.”
Debussy owed much to Richard Wagner and the roman- tic composers who had abandoned the formal clarity of classical composition (see chapter 29). He was also indebted
Figure 31.2 Vaslav Nijinsky, “Afternoon of a Faun,” 1912. Photo: L. Roosen. Dancing the part of the faun, Nijinsky moved across the stage in profile in imitation of the frieze on an ancient Greek vase. While he performed professionally for only ten years, his provocative choreography ushered in modern dance.
See Music Listening Selections at end of chapter.��
��
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engulf the listener in a nebulous flood of sound that calls to mind the shimmering effects of light on water and the ebb and flow of ocean waves. Indeed, water—a favorite subject of Impressionist painters—is the subject of many of Debussy’s orchestral sketches, such as Gardens in the Rain (1903), Image: Reflections in the Water (1905), and The Sea (1905).
Symbolism In the visual arts, Symbolists gave emphasis to the simpli- fication of line, arbitrary color, and expressive, flattened form. The Chosen One (Figure 31.3) by the Swiss artist Ferdinand Hodler (1853–1918) employs these features in depicting a young male child surrounded by a circle of angelic figures. The painting does not represent a specific event; rather, it suggests a mysterious and unnamed rite of passage. Symbolist emphasis on suggestion rather than depiction constituted a move in the direction of Modernist Abstraction and Expressionism (see chapters 32 and 33 respectively).
Impressionism The nineteenth-century art style that captured most fully the intuitive realm of experience, and thus, closely paralleled the aesthetic ideals of Bergson, Mallarmé, and
charged gestures and by dancing portions of the ballet bare- foot. He outraged critics who attacked the ballet for its “vile movements of erotic bestiality and gestures of extreme shamelessness.”
Debussy had little use for the ponderous orchestras of the French and German romantics. He scored the Prelude for a small orchestra whose predominantly wind and brass instruments might recreate Mallarmé’s delicate mood of reverie. A sensuous melody for unaccompanied flute pro- vides the composition’s opening theme, which is then developed by flutes, oboes, and clarinets. Harp, triangle, muted horns, and lightly brushed cymbals contribute luminous tonal textures that—like the images of the poem itself—seem based in pure sensation. Transitions are subtle, and melodies seem to drift without resolution. Shifting harmonies with no clearly defined tonal center
Figure 31.3 FERDINAND HODLER, The Chosen One, 1893–1894. Tempera and oil on canvas, 7 ft. 31⁄2 in. � 9 ft. 101⁄2 in. Six angelic figures float above the ground on which a nude boy sits before a barren tree. While the images suggest renewal and rejuvenation, no clear narrative attaches to the scene.
1841 John G. Rand invents the collapsible metal paint tube
1879 Edison produces the incandescent light bulb 1889 Edison invents equipment to take and show moving
pictures 1898 Wilhelm C. Röntgen (German) discovers X-rays
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Debussy, was Impressionism. Luminosity, the interaction of light and form, subtlety of tone, and a preoccupation with sensation itself were the major features of Impressionist art.
Impressionist subject matter preserved the romantic fas- cination with nature and the Realist preoccupation with daily life. But Impressionism departed from both the romantic effort to idealize nature and the Realist will to record the natural world with unbiased objectivity. Often called an art of pure sensation, Impressionism was, in part, a response to nineteenth-century research into the physics of light, the chemistry of paint, and the laws of optics. The Principles of Harmony and the Contrast of Colors by the nine- teenth-century French chemist Michel Chevreul (1786–1889), along with treatises on the physical proper- ties of color and musical tone by Hermann von Helmholtz mentioned above, offered new insights into the psychology of perception. These complemented the earliest appearance of synthetic pigments, which replaced traditional earth pigments. Of particular importance were chrome yellow, synthetic ultramarine, viridian, and emerald green, all of which gave the impressionists a brighter range of color. Until the mid nineteenth century, paint was stored in a pig’s bladder, which was tapped and resealed as paint was needed. But the invention of the collapsible metal tube made it possible for artists to freely transport paint to out- door sites and store paint longer.
Monet: Pioneer Impressionist In 1874 the French artist Claude Monet (1840–1926) exhibited a canvas that some critics consider the first mod- ern painting. Impression: Sunrise (Figure 31.4) is patently a seascape; but the painting says more about how one sees than about what one sees. It transcribes the fleeting effects of light and the changing atmosphere of water and air into a tissue of small dabs and streaks of color—the elements of pure perception. To increase luminosity, Monet coated the raw canvas with gesso, a chalklike medium. Then, working in the open air and using the new synthet- ic paints, he applied brushstrokes of pure, occasionally unmixed, color. Monet ignored the brown underglazes artists traditionally used to build up form. Maintaining that there were no “lines” in nature, he avoided fixed contours. Instead of blending his colors to create a finished effect, he placed them side by side, building up a radiant impasto. In order to intensify visual effect, he juxtaposed complemen- tary colors, putting touches of orange (red and yellow) next to blue and adding bright tints of rose, pink, and vermilion. He rejected the use of browns and blacks to create shadows; instead, he applied colors complementary to the hue of the object casting the shadow, thus approximating the prismat- ic effects of light on the human eye. Monet’s canvases capture the external envelope: the instantaneous visual sensation of light itself.
Figure 31.4 CLAUDE MONET, Impression: Sunrise, 1873. Oil on canvas, 195⁄8 � 251⁄2 in.
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Monet was by no means the first painter to deviate from academic techniques. Constable had applied color in rough dots and dabs, Delacroix had occasionally juxtaposed complementary colors to increase brilliance, and Manet had often omitted halftones. But Monet went further by interpreting form as color itself—color so rapid- ly applied as to convey the immediacy of a sketch. Consequently, Impression: Sunrise struck the art world as a radically new approach. One critic dismissed the painting as “only an impression,” no better than “wallpaper in its embryonic state,” thus unwittingly giving the name “impressionism” to the movement that would dominate French art of the 1870s and 1880s.
Monet’s early subjects include street scenes, picnics, café life, and boating parties at the fashionable tourist resorts that dotted the banks of the River Seine near Paris. However, as Monet found the intangible and shifting play
of light more compelling than the pastimes of Parisian society, his paintings became more impersonal and abstract. Wishing to fix sensation, or as he put it, to “seize the intangible,” he painted the changing effects of light on such mundane objects as poplar trees and haystacks. Often working on a number of canvases at once, he might gener- ate a series that showed his subject in morning light, under the noon sun, and at sunset. After visiting London in the 1890s, during which time he studied the works of Constable and Turner, his canvases became even more formless and radiant. At his private estate in Giverny, he lovingly painted dozens of views of the lily ponds, and the lavish gardens that he himself designed and cultivated (Figure 31.5). These ravishing paintings brought him pleasure and fame at the end of his long career.
Monet may be considered an ultrarealist in his effort to reproduce with absolute fidelity the ever-changing effects
Figure 31.5 CLAUDE MONET, Water-Lily Pond, Symphony in Green (Japanese Bridge), 1899. Oil on canvas, 35 in. � 3 ft. 3⁄5 in. The reflections of dense foliage in the surface of the waterlily pond eliminate distinctions between foreground and background and suggest a shifting play of light. Such paintings inspired the Symbolist Charles Morice to call Monet “master and king of the ephemeral.”
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of light. His freedom from preconceived ideas of nature prompted his contemporary Paul Cézanne to exclaim that he was “only an eye,” but, he added admiringly, “what an eye!” Ironically, Monet’s devotion to the physical truth of nature paved the way for modern abstraction—the concern with the intrinsic qualities of the subject, rather than with its literal appearance.
Renoir Impressionism was never a single, uniform style. Nevertheless, it characterized the art of the group of Parisian artists who met regularly at the Café Guerbois and who showed their works together at no less than eight pub- lic exhibitions held between 1874 and 1886. To a greater or lesser extent, their paintings reflected Monet’s manner of rendering nature in short strokes of brilliant color. Above all, they brought painterly spontaneity to a celebra- tion of the leisure activities and diversions of urban life: dining, dancing, theater going, boating, and socializing.
In this sense, the most typical Impressionist painter might be Pierre-Auguste Renoir (1841–1919). Le Moulin de la Galette, a popular outdoor café and dance hall locat- ed in Montmartre (the bohemian section of nineteenth- century Paris), provided the setting for one of Renoir’s most seductive tributes to youth and informal pleasure (Figure
31.6). In the painting, elegantly dressed young men and women—artists, students, and working-class members of Parisian society—dance, drink, and flirt with one another in the flickering golden light of the late afternoon sun.
Pissarro Renoir’s colleague, Camille Pissarro (1830–1903), was born in the West Indies but settled in Paris in 1855. The oldest and one of the most prolific of the Impressionists, he exhibited in all eight of the Impressionist group shows. Like Monet and Renoir, Pissarro loved outdoor subjects: peasants working in the fields, the magical effects of fresh- ly fallen snow, and sunlit rural landscapes. Late in his career, however, as his eyesight began to fail, he gave up painting out-of-doors. Renting hotel rooms that looked out upon the streets of Paris, he produced engaging cityscapes (see Figure 31.1)—sixteen of Paris boulevards in 1897 alone.
Strikingly similar to popular panoramic photographs of turn-of-the-century Paris, Pissarro’s luminous scenes cap- ture the rhythms of urban life; throngs of horse-drawn car- riages and pedestrians are bathed in the misty atmosphere that envelops Paris after the rain. Asked by a young artist for advice on “how to paint,” Pissarro responded that one should record visual perceptions with immediacy, avoid
Figure 31.6 PIERRE-AUGUSTE RENOIR, Le Moulin de la Galette, 1876. Oil on canvas, 4 ft. 31⁄2 in. � 5 ft. 9 in. Montmartre, the semirural working-class district of Paris, was not incorporated into the city limits until 1860. The Moulin (“mill”) marked the spot of one of Montmartre’s famous old windmills. Galettes, that is, buckwheat pancakes, were a specialty of the house.
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defining the outlines of things, observe reflections of color and light, and honor only one teacher: nature.
Degas Edgar Degas (1834–1917) regularly exhibited with the Impressionists; but his style remained unique. classical- ly trained—he began copying Poussin at the Louvre when he was eighteen—he never sacrificed line and form to the beguiling qualities of color and light. He produced thou- sands of drawings and pastels, ranging from quick sketches to fully developed compositions. Whether depicting the urban world of cafés, racetracks, theaters, and shops, or the demimonde of laundresses and prostitutes, he concentrat- ed his attention on the fleeting moment. He rejected the traditional “posed” model, seeking instead to capture momentary and even awkward gestures, such as stretching and yawning. Degas was a consummate draftsman and a master designer. His innovative compositional techniques balance spontaneity and improvisation with artifice and calculation. In Two Dancers on a Stage (Figure 31.7), for example, he presents two ballerinas as if seen from above and at an angle that leaves “empty” the lower left portion of the painting. In this feat of breathtaking asymmetry, part
of the figure at the right seems to disappear off the edge of the canvas, while the body of a third figure at the left is cut off by the frame. The deliberately “random” view suggests the influence of photography, with its accidental “slice of life” potential, as well as the impact of Japanese woodcuts, which Degas enthusiastically collected after they entered Europe in the 1860s.
During the 1860s, Degas became interested in the sub- ject of horse racing, which, like the theater, had become a fashionable leisure activity and social event (Figure 31.8). His drawings and paintings of the races focused primarily on the anatomy and movement of the horses. In his studies of physical movement, he learned much from the British artist, photographer, and inventor Eadweard Muybridge (1830–1904), whose stop-action photographs of the 1870s and 1880s were revolutionary in their time (Figure 31.9).
Japanese Woodblock Prints and Western Art Japanese woodblock prints entered Europe along with Asian trade goods (often as the wrappings for those goods) in the late nineteenth century. Though they were new to Europeans, they represented the end of a long tradition in
Figure 31.7 EDGAR DEGAS, Two Dancers on a Stage, ca. 1874. Oil on canvas, 241⁄5 � 18 in. A comparison of this composition with that of the far left woodcut in Figure 31.10 reveals a similar treatment of negative space, a raked perspective, and the off-center arrangement of figures.
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Japanese art, one that began declining after Japan was forced to open its doors to the West in the 1860s. Produced in great numbers between 1660 and 1860, and sold as popular souvenirs, they recorded the pleasures of ukiyo, “the floating—or fleeting— world” of courtesans, actors, and dancers (see Figure 31.13) that enlivened the streets of bustling, urban Edo (now Tokyo). Like the magnificent folding screens commissioned by wealthy patrons (see chap- ter 21), the prints feature flat, unmodulated colors, undulating lines, and compositions that are cropped or include large areas of empty space. Their daring use of negative space and startling perspective were often the consequence of unusual vantage points, such as the bird’s-eye view seen in the prints of Kunisada (Figure 31.10). Such prints were mass- produced, most often by men, despite Kunisada’s rendering.
During the mid nineteenth century, Japanese woodblock artists added landscapes to their reperto- ry. The landscape prints, often produced as a series of views of local Japanese sites, resemble the topograph- ical studies of European artists. But they operated out of entirely different stylistic imperatives: unlike the
Figure 31.8 EDGAR DEGAS, The False Start, ca. 1870. Oil on canvas, 125⁄8 � 153⁄4 in. The English sport of horse racing took hold in France in the 1830s when a track was built at Chantilly. In 1857, a fashionable racetrack was established at Longchamp in the Bois de Boulogne on the outskirts of Paris.
Figure 31.9 EADWEARD MUYBRIDGE, Photo Sequence of Racehorse, 1884–1885. Photograph.
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Romantics, the Japanese had little interest in the pictur- esque; rather, they gave attention to bold contrasts and decorative arrangements of abstract shapes and colors. The absence of chiaroscuro and aerial perspective reduced the illusion of spatial depth and atmospheric continuity between near and far objects. All of these features are evi- dent in one of the most famous mid nineteenth-century Japanese landscape prints: Mount Fuji Seen Below a Wave at Kanagawa (Figure 31.11), from the series “Thirty-six Views of Mount Fuji” by Katsushika Hokusai (1760–1849).
When Japanese prints arrived in the West (see Figure 31.13), they exercised an immediate impact on fine and commercial art, including the art of the lithographic poster (see Figure 31.12). Monet and Degas bought them (along
with Chinese porcelains) in great numbers, and van Gogh, a great admirer of Hokusai, insisted that his own work was “founded on Japanese art.”
Théodore Duret, a French art critic of the time and an enthusiast of impressionist painting, was one of the first writers to observe the impact of Japanese prints on nineteenth-century artists. In a pamphlet called “The Impressionist Painters” (1878), Duret explained:
We had to wait until the arrival of Japanese albums before anyone dared to sit down on the bank of a river to juxtapose on canvas a boldly red roof, a white wall, a green poplar, a yellow road, and blue water. Before Japan it was impossible; the painter always lied. Nature with its frank colors was in plain sight, yet no one ever saw anything on canvas but attenuated colors, drowning in a general halftone.
As soon as people looked at Japanese pictures, where the most glaring, piercing colors were placed side by side, they finally understood that there were new methods for reproducing certain effects of nature.
Japonisme, the influence of Japan on European art of the late nineteenth century, proved to be multifaceted: the prints coincided with the Impressionist interest in casual urban subjects (especially those involving women) and
Figure 31.10 KUNISADA, triptych showing the different processes of printmaking, early nineteenth century. Japanese woodblock color print.
Left: the printer has just finished taking an impression by rubbing the baren (a round pad made of a coil of cord covered by a bamboo sheath) over the paper on the colored block; numerous brushes and bowls of color are visible. Kunisada has made the design more interesting by using women, though the craftsmen were almost always men (information from Julia Hutt, Understanding Far Eastern Art. New York: Dutton, 1987, 53).
Center: a woman (in the foreground) sizing paper sheets that are then hung up to dry; another is removing areas with no design from the block with a chisel.
Right: a woman with an original drawing pasted onto a block conversing with another who is sharpening blades on a whetstone.
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inspired a new way of reconciling the illusion of the three- dimensional world with the flatness of the two-dimension- al canvas. At the same time, the elegant naturalism and refined workmanship of Asian cloisonné enamels, ceramics, lacquerwares, ivories, silks, and other collectibles were widely imitated in the Arts and Crafts movements that flourished at the end of the century (see Figure 31.18).
Cassatt One of the most notable artists to come under the influ- ence of Japanese prints was the American painter Mary Cassatt (1844–1926). Cassatt spent most of her life in Paris, where she became a friend and colleague of Degas, Renoir, and other Impressionists, with whom she exhibited regular- ly. Like Degas, she painted mainly indoors, cultivating a style that combined forceful calligraphy, large areas of unmodulated color, and unusual perspectives—the major features of the Japanese woodcuts—with a taste for female subjects.
Cassatt brought a unique sensitivity to domestic themes that featured mothers and children enjoying everyday tasks and diversions (Figure 31.14). These gentle and optimistic images appealed to American collectors and did much to increase the popularity of Impressionist art in the United States. Yet the so-called “Madonna of American art” pre- ferred life in Paris to that in prefeminist America. “Women do not have to fight for recognition here if they do serious work,” wrote Cassatt.
Figure 31.11 KATSUSHIKA HOKUSAI, Mount Fuji Seen Below a Wave at Kanagawa, from “Thirty-six Views of Mount Fuji,” Tokugawa Period. Full-color woodblock print, width 143⁄4 in.
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Toulouse-Lautrec Cassatt’s gentle visions of domestic life stand in strong contrast to the paintings of Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec (1864–1901). Toulouse-Lautrec, the descendant of an aris- tocratic French family, practiced many of the stylistic prin- ciples of Impressionism, but his choice of subject matter was often so intimate that members of his own family con- demned his work as unacceptable to “well-bred people.”
The art of Toulouse-Lautrec captured the seamy side of Parisian life—the life of cabaret dancers and prostitutes who, like Zola’s Nana, lived on the margins of middle- class society. Toulouse-Lautrec self-consciously mocked
traditional ideas of beauty and propriety. He stylized fig- ures—almost to the point of caricature—in bold and force- ful silhouettes. Flesh tones might be distorted by artificial light or altered by the stark white make-up (borrowed from Japanese theater) that was current in European fashion. At The Moulin Rouge shows the patrons and entertainers of the famous Montmartre cabaret that opened in late 1889 (Figure 31.15). The unconventional perspective forces the eye into the space above the diagonal axis of a balustrade, where one encounters the jaded-looking assembly of styl- ishly hatted men and women.
Figure 31.12 HENRI DE TOULOUSE-LAUTREC, Jane Avril, 1899. Lithograph, printed in color, 22 � 14 in.
The lithographic technique made possible the late nineteenth- century art of the publicity poster. While he was not the first to produce these commercial artworks, Toulouse-Lautrec was among the pioneers of modern poster design. In the last ten years of his life he would create some thirty lithographic posters. Commissioned to design posters advertising the popular cabaret known as the Moulin Rouge (“Red Mill”), he produced some magnificent images of its famous can-can dancer Louise Weber, known as La Goulue (the “greedy one”), whose risqué high-kicking displays attracted enthusiastic audiences. A poster of the Parisian entertainer who replaced La Goulue, Jane Avril (Figure 31.12), shows the artist’s brilliant combination of bright, flat colors, sinuous lines, and the sensitive integration of positive and negative space— stylistic features that reflect the direct influence of Japanese kabuki prints (Figure 31.13).
Figure 31.13 TORII KIYONOBU, Actor as a Monkey Showman, ca. 1720. Woodblock print, 131⁄4 � 61⁄4 in.
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Figure 31.14 MARY CASSATT, The Bath, 1891–1892. Oil on canvas, 3 ft. 31⁄2 in. � 26 in. Cassatt offers a bird’s- eye view of all elements in the paint- ing with the exception of the pitcher in the lower right foreground and the chest of drawers in the background.
Figure 31.15 HENRI DE TOULOUSE-LAUTREC, At The Moulin-Rouge, 1893–1895. Oil on canvas, 4 ft. 3⁄8 in. � 4 ft. 71⁄4 in.
Toulouse- Lautrec
Toulouse-Lautrec’s cousin, Dr. Tapié de Céleyran
Jane Avril
La Goulue fixing her hair before a mirror
the performer May Milton
bentwood café chairs designed by Michael Thonet in 1830
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Art Nouveau
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The posters of Toulouse-Lautrec bear the seductive stamp of Art Nouveau (French for “new art”), an ornamental style that became enormously popular in the late nineteenth century. Art Nouveau artists shared with members of the English Arts and Crafts movement a high regard for the fine artisanship of the preindustrial Middle Ages, an era that achieved an ideal synthesis of the functional and the decorative in daily life. The proponents of the new style also prized the decorative arts of Asia and Islam, which
tended to favor bold, flat, organic patterns and semi- abstract linear designs. Acknowledging the impact of the Japanese woodcut style, one French critic insisted that Japanese blood had mixed with the blood of Art Nouveau artists.
Art Nouveau originated in Belgium among architects working in the medium of cast iron, but it quickly took on an international reach that affected painting, as well as the design of furniture, textiles, glass, ceramics, and jewelry. The Belgian founder of the style, Victor Horta (1861–1947), brought to his work the Arts and Crafts
Figure 31.16 VICTOR HORTA, Tassel House, Brussels, 1892–1893.
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veneration for fine craftsmanship and the Symbolist glori- fication of the sensuous and fleeting forms in nature. A distinguished architect and a great admirer of Eiffel’s 1064-foot-high tower (see Figure 30.27), Horta translated the serpentine lines and organic rhythms of flowers and plants into magnificent glass and cast-iron designs for public buildings and private residences (Figure 31.16).
“Art in nature, nature in art” was the motto of Art Nouveau. The sinuous curves of blos- soms, leaves, and tendrils, executed in iron, were immortalized in such notable monuments as the rapid transport sys- tem known as the Paris Métro. They also appear in wallpaper, poster design, book illustration, tableware, and jewelry. In Art Nouveau, as in late nineteenth-century literature and painting, women were a favorite subject: the female, often shown with long, luxuriant hair, might be pictured as
seductress or enchantress. She might appear as a fairy or water nymph (Figure 31.17), a poetic, sylphlike creature. In Art Nouveau pins, bracelets, and combs, she is the human counterpart of vines and flow- ers fashioned in delicately crafted metal
armatures and semiprecious stones. Such images suggest that Art
Nouveau, although modern in its effort to communicate meaning
by way of shapes, patterns, and decoration, was actually a waning expression of a centu- ry-long romantic infatuation with nature.
In America, Art Nouveau briefly attracted the attention of
such architects as Louis Sullivan (see chapter 30), who embellished some
of his otherwise austere office buildings and department stores with floral cast-iron ornamentation. It also inspired the magnificent glass designs of Louis Comfort Tiffany (1848–1933). The son of Charles L. Tiffany, founder of the famed New York jewelry house, Louis was a great admirer of Chinese cloisonnés and ancient glass techniques. His innovative studio methods included assembly-line produc- tion, the use of templates, and the employment of female artisans who received the same wages as males—a policy that caused great controversy in Tiffany’s time. Tiffany’s inventive art glass, which featured floral arabesques and graceful geometric patterns, made him one of the masters of the international Art Nouveau style (Figure 31.18).
Figure 31.18 TIFFANY GLASS AND DECORATING CO., Peacock vase, 1892–1902. Iridescent “favrile” glass, blues and greens with feather and eye decorations, height 141⁄8 in. A student of ancient and medieval glass practices, Tiffany patented in 1874 a way of mixing different colors of heated glass to produce the iridescent art glass he called “favrile” (a name derived from a Saxon word meaning “handmade”).
Figure 31.17 EUGÈNE GRASSET, Comb, ca. 1900. 1⁄4 � 23⁄4 in.
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Sculpture in the Late Nineteenth Century
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Degas and Rodin The two leading European sculptors of the late nineteenth century, Edgar Degas and Auguste Rodin (1840–1917), were masters at capturing the physical vitality of the human figure. Like the Impressionists, they were interested in lifelike movement and the sensory effects of light. To catch these fleeting qualities, they modeled their figures rapidly in wet clay or wax. The bronze casts made from these originals preserve the spontaneity of the additive process. Indeed, many of Degas’ bronze sculptures, cast posthumously, retain the imprints of his fingers and finger- nails.
Degas often executed sculptures as exercises preliminary to his paintings. Throughout his life, but especially as his vision began to decline, the artist turned to making three- dimensional “sketches” of racehorses, bathers, and balleri- nas—his favorite subjects. At his death, he left some 150 sculptures in his studio, some fully worked and others in various stages of completion. Only one of these sculptures, the Little Dancer Aged Fourteen, was exhibited as a finished artwork during Degas’ lifetime. The reddish-brown wax original, made eerily lifelike by the artist’s addition of a tutu, stockings, bodice, ballet shoes, a green satin ribbon, and hair from a horsehair wig (embedded strand by strand into the figure’s head), was the subject of some controver- sy in the Parisian art world of 1881 (a world that would not see such mixed-media innovations for another half- century). The bronze cast of Degas’ Dancer (Figure 31.19), whose dark surfaces contrast sensuously with the fabric additions, retains the supple grace of the artist’s finest drawings and paintings.
Like Degas, Rodin was keenly interested in movement and gesture. In hundreds of drawings, he recorded the dancelike rhythms of studio models whom he bid to move about freely rather than assume traditional, fixed poses (Figure 31.20). But it was in the three-dimensional media that Rodin made his greatest contribution. One of his earliest sculptures, The Age of Bronze (Figure 31.21), was so lifelike that critics accused him of forging the figure from plaster casts of a live model. In actuality,
Figure 31.19 EDGAR DEGAS, Little Dancer Aged Fourteen, ca. 1880–1881 (cast ca. 1919–32). Bronze with net tutu and hair ribbon, 3 ft. 21⁄2 � 141⁄2 in. � 141⁄4 in. In Degas’ time, young female dancers, called “little rats,” usually came from working-class families for whom they provided income.
Figure 31.20 AUGUSTE RODIN, Dancing Figure, 1905. Graphite with orange wash, 127⁄8 � 97⁄8 in.
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Rodin had captured a sense of organic movement by recre- ating the fleeting effects of light on form. He heightened the contrasts between polished and roughly textured sur- faces, deliberately leaving parts of the piece unfinished. “Sculpture,” declared Rodin, “is quite simply the art of depression and protuberance.”
But Rodin moved beyond naturalistic representation. Moving toward modernism, he used expressive distortion to convey a mood or mental disposition. He renounced formal idealization and gave his figures a nervous energy and an emotional intensity that he found lacking in both Classical and Renaissance sculpture. “The sculpture of antiquity,” he explained, “sought the logic of the human body; I seek its psychology.” In this quest, Rodin was joined by his close friend, the American dancer Isadora Duncan (1878–1927). Duncan introduced a language of physical expression char- acterized by personalized gestures and improvised move- ments that were often fierce, earthy, and passionate (Figure 31.22). Insisting that the rules of classical ballet produced
Figure 31.21 AUGUSTE RODIN, The Age of Bronze, 1876. Bronze, 251⁄2 � 95⁄16 � 71⁄2 in. The influence of Rodin’s teacher, Jean-Baptiste Carpeaux, can be detected in a comparison of this sculpture with Carpeaux’s The Dance, executed some eight years earlier (see Figure 29.20).
Figure 31.22 Isadora Duncan in La Marseillaise. Notorious for flouting the rules of academic dance as well as those of middle-class morality, the California-born Duncan achieved greater success in Europe than in the United States. She adopted the signature affectation of wearing scarves, one of which accidentally strangled her in a freak car mishap.
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Figure 31.23 AUGUSTE RODIN, The Gates of Hell, 1880–1917. Bronze, 20 ft. 8 in. � 13 ft. 1 in. Below the Three Shades, in the center of the lintel (where Jesus is usually found in a traditional Christian Judgment scene) sits the Thinker, the human Creator, contemplating humankind doomed by its passions.
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ugly choreography, Duncan danced barefoot, often wear- ing Greek-style tunics in reference to ancient dance. “I have discovered the art that has been lost for two thou- sand years,” claimed Duncan.
Rodin’s most ambitious project was a set of doors he was commissioned to design for the projected Museum of Decorative Arts in Paris. Loosely modeled after Ghiberti’s Gates of Paradise (see Figure 17.20), The Gates of Hell (Figure 31.23) consists of a swarm of figures inspired by the tortured souls of Dante’s “Inferno” (see chapter 12). Rodin worked on the project for eight years, making hundreds of drawings and sculptures based on Dante’s poem; but he never completed the doors, which were cast in bronze only years after his death. The figures that occupy The Gates, not all of which are identifiable, writhe and twist in postures of despair and yearning. Arrived at intuitively—like the images in a Mallarmé poem or a Monet landscape—they melt into each other without logical connection. Rodin admitted that he projected no fixed subject, “no scheme of illustrations or intended moral purpose.” “I followed my own imagination,” he explained, “my own sense of movement and composition.” Collectively, his figures evoke a world of flux and chaos; their postures capture the restless discontent voiced by Nietzsche and Gauguin, and their random arrangement gives sub- stance to Bergson’s view of reality as a perpetual stream of sensations.
Throughout his career, Rodin remained compelled by the con- tents of The Gates. He cast in bronze many of its individual fig- ures, and recreated others in mar- ble. The two most famous of these are The Kiss (Figure 31.24), based on the figures of the lovers Paola and Francesca (on the lower left door), and The Thinker. The lat- ter—one of the best known of Rodin’s works—originally repre- sented Dante contemplating his imagined underworld from atop its portals.
Figure 31.24 AUGUSTE RODIN, The Kiss, 1886–1898. Marble, over life-size.
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The Arts of Africa and Oceania
INDIA
MYANMAR
LAOS VIETNAM
THAILAND
M A L AY S I A
I N D O N E S I A
CAMBODIA NICOBAR ISLANDS
SINGAPORE
CHINA
TAIWAN
SUMATRA
JAVA
BRUNEI SARAWAK
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BALI TIMOR
IRIAN JAYA NEW
GUINEA
BORNEO
KALIMANTAN
PHILIPPINES
A U S T R A L I A
MARSHALL ISLANDS
SAIPAN
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SOLOMON ISLANDS
VANUATU
NEW CALEDONIA
TUAMOTU ARCHIPELAGO
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NIUE
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AUSTRAL ISLANDS
SOCIETY ISLANDS
NEW ZEALAND
MARQUESAS ISLANDS
EASTER ISLAND
HAWAIIAN ISLANDS
BAY OF BENGAL
GULF OF THAILAND
SOUTH CHINA SEA
PHILIPPINE SEA
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GULF OF
CARPENTARIA
P A C I F I C O C E A N
TASMAN SEAGREAT AUSTRALIAN
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TIMOR SEA
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M E L A N E S I A P O L Y N E S I A ISLAND
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During the late nineteenth century, expanding Western commercialism and colonialism brought Europeans in clos- er contact with Africa and Oceania (the islands of the South and Central Pacific, Map 31.1). Nineteenth- century Africa and Oceania were essentially preindustrial and preliterate. Their social organization was usually high- ly stratified with clear distinctions between and among var- ious classes: royalty, priests, and commoners held different ranks. Their economies were agricultural, and their gods and spirits were closely associated with nature and natural forces that were the object of communal and individual worship (see chapter 18). In some parts of Africa, kingdoms with long-standing traditions of royal authority were destroyed by colonial intrusion. But in other parts of Africa, ancient ways of life persisted. The royal traditions of Benin, Dahomey, Kongo, Yoruba, and other West African king- doms (Map 31.2) continued to flourish well into the mod- ern era. During the nineteenth century, the oral traditions of African literature came to be recorded in written lan- guages based on the Arabic and Western alphabets.
Africa and Oceania consisted of thousands of tightly knit communities in which reverence for the gods and the spirits of deceased ancestors was expressed by means of elaborate systems of worship. Reliquaries, masks, and other power objects were created by local artists to channel the
spirits, celebrate rites of passage, and ensure the continuity and well-being of the community. As vessels for powerful spirits, they functioned to transmit supernatural energy. While sharing with some Western styles (such as Symbolism) a disregard for objective representation, the arts of these indigenous peoples stood far apart from nineteenth-century Western academic tradition. On the other hand, they had their roots in long-established cultur- al traditions—some extending back over thousands of years. Much of the art created in these regions during the nineteenth (and twentieth) century had its origins in conventional forms handed down from generation to generation. So, for example, masks produced in the nine- teenth century by the Bambara people of Mali preserve the techniques and styles practiced almost without interrup- tion since the founding of Mali’s first empire in the thirteenth century (see chapter 18, Figure 18.8).
Although productivity from region to region in Africa and from island to island in Oceania varies dramatically, parts of Africa and Oceania generated some of their finest artwork during the nineteenth century. The classic period in Kenya-Kayan art, from the island of Borneo, for instance, dates from the mid nineteenth to the early twentieth cen- tury. And among the Maori peoples of New Zealand, the art of woodcarving, usually employed in the construction of elaborate wooden meeting houses, flourished during the
Map 31.1 The Islands of the South and Central Pacific.
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1800s. Teams of woodcarvers using European tools produced expressive totemic images embellished with elaborate patterns of tat- toos that—similar to African scarification— were popular throughout the South Pacific (see Figure 31.29).
In Africa, even as the incursions of the French disrupted the Yoruba kingdoms of Nigeria (Map 31.2), royal authority asserted itself in the increased production of magnifi- cent beaded objects, some of which served to identify and embellish the power and authority of the king. The beaded conical crown that belonged to King Glele (1858–1889) of Dahomey (the modern Republic of Benin) is surmounted by a bird that symbolizes potent supernatural powers and the all-surpassing majesty of the ruler (Figure 31.25). Beadwork had been practiced in West Africa since the sixteenth century, when the Portuguese introduced the first Venetian glass beads to that continent. However, the golden age of bead- work occurred in the late nineteenth century, when uniformly sized European “seed beads” in a wide variety of colors first became available. It is noteworthy that in West Africa beading was an activity reserved exclusively for men.
A second example of high artistic productivity in nineteenth-century Africa comes from the genre of freestand- ing sculpture: the image of the war god Gu, commissioned by King Glele as a symbol of his own military might, was carved from wood and covered with hammered brass (said to have come from spent bullet shells). Brandishing two scimitars, the figure served to guard the gate that led into the city of Abhomey. Its fierce, scarified face with its jutting jaw, the wide flat feet, and taut, stylized physique reflect a powerful synthesis of naturalism and abstraction that typifies nineteenth-century African art, but, at the same time, adheres to a long tradition of West African sculpture (Figure 31.26). The figure failed, however, in its protective mission: shortly after the death of King Glele in 1889, his kingdom fell to French colonial forces.
Primitivism Europe had been involved in Africa and Oceania since the six- teenth century. By the nineteenth century, trade in goods, guns, and slaves had transformed African culture. In some areas, the availability of guns had led to violence and mayhem. Apart from imperialistic ambition, the Western penetration of the so-called “Dark Continent” was the product of intellectu- al curiosity, which had been stirred by Napoleon’s Egyptian campaign (see chapter 29). Following the French invasion of Nigeria in 1830, and especially after medical science had rec- ognized that quinine was effective against the dreaded malar- ia, Africa began to attract Western travelers and adventurers. Delacroix visited Morocco in 1831, bringing back to Europe seven sketchbooks of drawings and numerous watercolors. The British explorers David Livingstone (1813–1873) and Henry M. Stanley (1841–1904) spent years investigating Africa’s vast terrain. Journalistic records of such expeditions drew attention
Figure 31.25 Yoruba headdress, nineteenth century. Beads and mixed media. This crown of a Yoruba tribal prince is ornamented with figures of birds, chameleons, lizards, and human faces.
Map 31.2 The Kingdoms of Yoruba and Dahomey.
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“primitive,” implying simplicity and lack of sophis- tication. The French word “primitif” carried as well a positive charge, implying a closeness to nature exalted by those who decried the damaging effects of proto-modern industrialized society.
Contributing to the European infatuation with non-Western culture was the Exposition Universelle
(World’s Fair) held in Paris in 1889, which brought to public view the arts of Asia, Africa, and Oceania.
Reconstructions of villages from the Congo and Senegal, Japan and China, Polynesia and other South Sea islands introduced the non-Western world to astonished Europeans. Non-Western societies and their artistic achievements quickly became objects of research for the new disciplines of anthropology (the science of humankind and its culture) and ethnography (the branch of anthropology that studies preliterate peoples or groups). In 1890, the Scottish anthropologist Sir James Frazer (1854–1941) published The Golden Bough, a pioneer study of magic and religion as reflected in ancient and traditional folk customs. Collections of non-Western art filled the galleries of ethnographic museums, such as the American Museum of Natural History, which opened in New York in 1869, and the Musée d’Ethnographie du Trocadero in Paris, founded in 1878. Tragically, however, it was often the case that even as these cultures were coming to be valued and their art collected and installed in Western museums, their bril- liance and originality began to wane. The French painter Paul Gauguin, who recorded his impressions of Tahiti in his romanticized journal Noa Noa (Fragrance), lamented:
The European invasion and monotheism have destroyed the vestiges of a civilization which had its own grandeur. . . . [The Tahitians] had been richly endowed with an instinctive feeling for the harmony necessary between human creations and the animal and plant life that formed the setting and decoration of their existence, but this has now been lost. In contact with us, with our school, they have truly become “savages” . . .
Gauguin objected to colonial efforts to impose French legal and economic policies on the Tahitians; he con- demned the eradication of local religious beliefs by Catholic and Protestant missionaries. The appeal of “the primitive” among late nineteenth-century figures such as Gauguin reflected a more than casual interest in the world beyond the West. It provoked protests against what Gauguin called the “reign of terror” imposed by the West upon native non-Western populations. It also constituted a rebellion against Western values and societal taboos—a rebellion that would become full-blown in the primitivism of early modern art.
The art that followed the last of the Impressionist group shows in 1886 is generally designated as “Postimpressionist.” Seeking a style that transcended the fleeting, momentary
Figure 31.26 GANHU HUNTONDJI (attributed), The war god Gu, nineteenth century. Brass and wood, height 411⁄2 in.
to cultural traditions that differed sharply from those of the West. What often emerged was an oversimplified (and often distorted) understanding of the differences between and among a multitude of cultures, some of which were perceived as exotic, violent, and fundamentally inferior. Many Westerners characterized indigenous peoples as
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Figure 31.27 VINCENT VAN GOGH, The Starry Night, 1889. Oil on canvas, 29 in. � 3 ft. 1⁄4 in. In 1889 Van Gogh began a year’s stay at the mental hospital in Saint-Rémy near Arles, an area of southern France renowned for its intermittent fierce winds, known as “the mistral.” Mistral winds and clear night skies filled with shooting stars may have provided inspiration for this painting.
impression, the Postimpressionists gave increased emphasis to color and compositional form. They embraced an art- for-art’s sake aestheticism that prized pictorial invention over pictorial illusion. Strongly individualistic, they were uninterested in satisfying the demands of public and pri- vate patrons; most of them made only sporadic efforts to sell what they produced. Like the Impressionists, the Postimpressionists looked to the natural world for inspira- tion. But unlike their predecessors, they brought a new sense of order to their compositions, following the incisive observation of the French Symbolist Maurice Denis (1870–1943) that a painting, before being a pictorial rep- resentation of reality, is “a flat surface covered with shapes, lines, and colors assembled in a particular order.” This credo, as realized in Postimpressionist art, would drive most of the major modern art movements of the early twentieth century (see chapter 32).
Van Gogh The Dutch artist Vincent van Gogh (1853–1890) was a passionate idealist whose life was marred by loneliness,
poverty, depression, and a hereditary mental illness that ultimately drove him to suicide. During his career he pro- duced over 700 paintings and thousands of drawings, of which he sold less than a half-dozen in his lifetime.
Van Gogh painted landscapes, still lifes, and portraits in a style that featured flat, bright colors, a throbbing, sinuous line, short, choppy brushstrokes, and bold compositions that betray his admiration for Japanese woodblock prints. His heavily pigmented surfaces were often manipulated with a palette knife or built up by applying paint directly from the tube. Deeply moved by music (especially the work of Wagner), he shared with the romantics an attitude toward nature that was both inspired and ecstatic. His emotional response to an object, rather than its physical appearance, influenced his choice of colors, which he likened to orchestrated sound. As he explained to his brother Theo, “I use color more arbitrarily so as to express myself more forcefully.”
Van Gogh’s painting The Starry Night (Figure 31.27), a view of the small French town of Saint-Rémy, is electrified by thickly painted strokes of white, yellow, orange, and
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Figure 31.29 Fragment of a Maori doorpost (poupou) in the style of Te Arawa, from New Zealand. Wood.
blue. Cypresses writhe like flames, stars explode, the moon seems to burn like the sun, and the heavens heave and roll like ocean waves. Here, van Gogh’s expressive use of color invests nature with visionary frenzy.
In his letters to Theo (an art dealer by profession), van Gogh pledged his undying faith in the power of artistic creativity. In 1888, just two years before he committed suicide, he wrote: “I can do without God both in my life and in my painting, but I cannot, ill as I am, do without something which is greater than I, which is my life—the power to create. And if, defrauded of the power to create physically, a man tries to create thoughts in place of chil- dren, he is still part of humanity.” Assessing his own cre- ativity, van Gogh claimed that making portraits allowed him to cultivate what was “best and deepest.” “Altogether,” he explained, “it is the only thing in painting which moves me to the depths, and which more than anything else makes me feel the infinite.” For van Gogh, the challenge of portraiture lay in capturing the heart and soul of the model. His many portraits of friends and neighbors, and the twenty-four self-portraits painted between 1886 and 1889, elevate romantic subjectivity to new levels of confes- sional intensity. In the Self-Portrait of 1889 (Figure 31.28), for instance, where the pale flesh tones of the head are set against an almost monochromatic blue field, the skull takes on a forbidding, even spectral presence—an effect enhanced by the lurid green facial shadows and the blue- green eyes, slanted (as he related to Theo) so as to make himself look Japanese. His brushstrokes, similar to those
that evoke the coiling heavens in The Starry Night, charge the surface with undulating rhythms that sharply contrast with the immobile figure. This visual strategy underscores the artist’s monkish alienation. Indeed, van Gogh con- fessed to his colleague Gauguin that he saw himself in this portrait as a simple Buddhist monk.
Gauguin Van Gogh’s friend and colleague, Paul Gauguin (1848–1903) shared his sense of alienation from middle- class European society. Part-Peruvian, his earliest child- hood was spent in South America; in his teens he joined the merchant marines before settling down in Paris. After ten years of marriage, he abandoned his wife, his five chil- dren, and his job as a Paris stockbroker to devote himself to painting. He traveled to Brittany in northwest France,
Figure 31.28 VINCENT VAN GOGH, Self-Portrait, 1889. Oil on canvas, 251⁄2 � 211⁄4 in.
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Figure 31.30 PAUL GAUGUIN, The Day of the God (Mahana no Atua), 1894. Oil on canvas, 273⁄8 � 355⁄8 in. The blues in the background are of the same intensity as those in the foreground, thereby flattening space to create a tapestrylike surface. Gauguin denied that his paintings carried specific meanings. “My dream is intangible,” he wrote a friend, “it comprises no allegory.”
foreground pool of water and the fetal positions of the figures lying on the shore are suggestive of birth and regen- eration. These and other figures in the painting seem spiri- tually related to the totemic guardian figure (pictured at top center of the canvas), who resembles the creator god and supreme deity of Maori culture (compare Figure 31.29).
Gauguin joined van Gogh at Arles in southeastern France in the fall of 1888, and for a brief time the two artists lived and worked side by side. Volatile and tempera- mental, they often engaged in violent quarrels, during one of which part of van Gogh’s ear was cut off, either by van Gogh himself, or (as some historians claim) by Gauguin. But despite their intense personal differences, the two artists were fraternal pioneers in the search for a provoca- tive language of form and color. Gauguin’s self-conscious effort to assume the role of “the civilized savage” was root- ed in the notion of the primitif, the condition of unspoiled nature celebrated by Rousseau, Thoreau, and others. His flight to the South Seas represents the search for a lost Eden, and reflects the fascination with exotic non-Western cultures that swept through late nineteenth-century Europe. As such, Gauguin’s bohemian nonconformity may have been the “last gasp” of Romanticism.
to Martinique in the West Indies, to Tahiti in the South Seas, and to southern France, returning for good to the islands of the South Pacific in 1895.
Gauguin took artistic inspiration from the folk culture of Brittany, the native arts of the South Sea islands, and from dozens of other nontraditional sources. What impressed him was the self-taught immediacy and authen- ticity of indigenous artforms, especially those that made use of powerful, totemic abstraction (Figure 31.29). His own style, nurtured in the Symbolist precepts (discussed earlier in this chapter) and influenced by Japanese wood- cuts and photographs of Japanese temple reliefs on view at the Exposition Universelle in 1889, featured flat, often dis- torted and brightly colored shapes that seem to float on the surface of the canvas.
In The Day of the God (Figure 31.30), bright blues, yellows, and pinks form tapestrylike patterns reminiscent of Japanese prints and Art Nouveau posters. Gauguin’s figures cast no shadows; his bold, unmodeled colors, like those of van Gogh, are more decorative than illusionistic. Like the verbal images of the Symbolist poets, Gauguin’s colored shapes carry an intuitive charge that lies beyond literal description. For example, the languid, organic shapes in the
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Seurat Rejecting the formlessness of Impressionism, George Seurat (1859–1891) introduced formal pictorial construction. Trained academically, Seurat brought a degree of balance and order to his compositions that rivaled the works of Poussin and David. The figures in a Seurat painting seem plotted along an invisible grid of vertical and horizontal lines that run parallel to the picture plane. Every form assumes a preordained place. A similar fervor for order may have inspired Seurat’s novel use of tiny dots of paint (in French, points). These he applied side by side (and some- times one inside another) to build up dense clusters that intensified color and gave the impression of solid form—a style known as pointillism. He arrived at the technique of dividing color into component parts after studying the writings of Chevreul and other pioneers in color theory, such as the American physicist Ogden N. Rood (1831–1902), whose Modern Chromatics, with Applications to Art and Industry (translated into French in 1880) showed that optical mixtures of color were more intense than pre- mixed colors. Leaving nothing to chance (Gauguin called him “the little green chemist”), Seurat applied each colored dot so that its juxtaposition with the next would produce the desired degree of vibration to the eye of the beholder.
Although Seurat shared the impressionists’ fascination with light and color, he shunned spontaneity, for while he made his sketches out-of-doors, he executed his paintings inside his studio, usually at night and under artificial light.
Seurat’s monumental Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte shows a holiday crowd of Parisians relaxing on a sunlit island in the River Seine (Figure 31.31). Although typically impressionistic in its subject matter— urban society at leisure—the painting (based on no less than twenty drawings and 200 oil studies) harbors little of the impressionist’s love for intimacy and fleeting sensation. Every figure is isolated from the next as if it were frozen in space and unaware of another’s existence. Seurat claimed that he wished to invest his subjects with the gravity of the figures in a Greek frieze. Nevertheless, one critic railed, “Strip his figures of the colored fleas that cover them; underneath you will find nothing, no thought, no soul.” Seurat’s universe, with its atomized particles of color and its self-contained figures, may seem devoid of human feeling, but its exquisite regularity provides a comforting alternative to the chaos of experience. Indeed, the lasting appeal of La Grande Jatte lies in its effectiveness as a symbolic retreat from the tumult of everyday life and the accidents of nature.
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Figure 31.31 GEORGES SEURAT, Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte, 1884–1886. Oil on canvas, 6 ft. 91⁄2 in. � 10 ft. 3⁄8 in. Nothing is left to chance in this highly formalized vision of the good life. Seurat died of diphtheria at the age of thirty-one, having completed barely a decade of mature work.
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Cézanne More so than Seurat, Paul Cézanne (1839–1906) served as a bridge between the art of the nineteenth century and that of the twentieth. Cézanne began his career as an Impressionist in Paris, but his traditional subjects—land- scapes, portraits, and still lifes—show a greater concern for the formal aspects of a painting than for its subject matter. His effort to “redo nature after Poussin,” that is, to find the enduring forms of nature that were basic to all great art, made Cézanne the first modernist painter.
Cézanne’s determination to invest his pictures with a strong sense of three-dimensionality (a feature often neg- lected by the Impressionists) led to a method of building up form by means of small, flat planes of color, larger than (but not entirely unlike) Seurat’s colored dots. Abandoning the intuitive and loosely organized compositions of the impres- sionists, Cézanne also sought to restore to painting the stur- dy formality of academic composition. His desire to
achieve pictorial unity inspired bold liberties of form and perspective: he might tilt and flatten surfaces; reduce (or abstract) familiar objects to basic geometric shapes— cylinders, cones, and spheres; or depict various objects in a single composition from different points of view. Cézanne’s still lifes are not so much tempting likenesses of apples, peaches, or pears as they are architectural arrange- ments of colored forms (Figure 31.32). In short, where narrative content often seems incidental, form itself takes on meaning.
Cézanne’s mature style developed when he left Paris and returned to live in his native area of southern France. Here he tirelessly studied the local landscape: dozens of times he painted the rugged, stony peak of Mont Sainte- Victoire near his hometown of Aix-en-Provence. Among his last versions of the subject is a landscape in which trees and houses have become an abstract network of
Figure 31.32 PAUL CÉZANNE, The Basket of Apples, ca. 1895. Oil on canvas, 253⁄4 � 32 in. The rear edge of the tabletop marks the horizon line at two different places; the top two lady-fingers are seen from above, while those below and the plate itself are seen straight on. Such deliberate deviations from optical Realism characterize many of Cézanne’s still lifes.
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colored facets of paint (Figure 31.33). By applying colors of the same intensity to different parts of the canvas— note the bright green and rich violet brushstrokes in both sky and landscape—Cézanne challenged traditional distinctions between foreground and background. In
Cézanne’s canvases, all parts of the composition, like the flat shapes of a Japanese print, have become equal in value. Cézanne’s methods, which transformed an ordinary mountain into an icon of stability, led the way to modern abstraction.
Figure 31.33 PAUL CÉZANNE, Mont Sainte-Victoire, 1902–1904. Oil on canvas, 271⁄2 � 351⁄4 in. Between 1880 and his death in 1906, the so-called Master of Aix produced no less than twenty-five oil paintings and watercolors of his favorite mountain as seen from the countryside around his native city. In this rendering, dense patches of color come close to pure abstraction.
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• The proponents of the style prized the arts of Asia and Islam, which featured bold, flat, organic patterns and semiabstract linear designs. In America, the style was advanced in the art glass of Louis Comfort Tiffany.
Sculpture in the Late Nineteenth Century • The works of Degas and Rodin reflect a common concern for
figural gesture and expressive movement. • Rodin’s efforts to translate inner states of feeling into
physical form were mirrored by Isadora Duncan’s innovations in modern dance.
The Arts of Africa and Oceania • The late nineteenth century was a time of high artistic productivity
in Africa and Oceania. Reliquaries, masks, and freestanding sculptures were among the power objects created to channel the spirits of ancestors, celebrate rites of passage, and ensure the well-being of the community.
• While sharing with some Western styles (such as Symbolism) a general disregard for objective representation, the visual arts of Africa and Oceania stood apart from nineteenth-century Western academic tradition.
Primitivism • Colonialism and travel to Africa and Oceania worked to introduce
the West to cultures that were perceived by some as exotic and violent, and by others as “primitive” and blissfully close to nature.
• The Paris Exposition Universelle of 1880 brought non-Western culture to public attention, encouraging the establishment of ethnographic collections and a broader interest in the world beyond the West.
Postimpressionism • Renouncing their predecessors’ infatuation with the fleeting
effects of light, the Postimpressionists explored new pictorial strategies.
• Van Gogh and Gauguin used color not as an atmospheric envelope but as a tool for personal, symbolic, and visionary expression.
• Seurat and Cézanne reacted against the formlessness of Impressionism by inventing styles that featured architectural stability.
Late Nineteenth-Century Thought • The provocative German thinker Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche,
who detected in European materialism a deepening decadence, called for a revision of traditional values.
• While Nietzsche anticipated the darker side of modernism, Henri Bergson presented a positive view of life as a vital impulse that evolved creatively and intuitively.
Poetry in the Late Nineteenth Century: The Symbolists • Symbolist poets, such as Paul Verlaine and Arthur Rimbaud,
devised a language of sensation that evoked rather than described feeling.
• In Stéphane Mallarmé’s L’après-midi d’un faune, sensuous images unfold as discontinuous literary fragments.
Music in the Late Nineteenth Century: Debussy • Symbolist poetry found its counterpart in music. The compositions
of Claude Debussy engage the listener through nuance and atmosphere.
• Inspired by Indonesian music, Wagnerian opera, and Symbolist poetry, Debussy created a mood of reverie in the shifting harmonies of his Prelude to “The Afternoon of a Faun.”
Painting in the Late Nineteenth Century • The Impressionists, led by Monet, were equally representative of
the late nineteenth-century interest in sensation and sensory experience. These artists tried to record an instantaneous vision of their world, sacrificing the details of perceived objects in order to capture the effects of light and atmosphere.
• Renoir, Degas, and Pissarro produced informal, painterly canvases that offer a glimpse into the pleasures of nineteenth-century urban life.
• Two major influences on late nineteenth-century artists were stop-action photography and Japanese woodblock prints. The latter, originally popularized as souvenirs, entered Europe along with Asian trade goods.
• In the domestic interiors of Cassatt and the cabarets of Toulouse-Lautrec, scenes of everyday life show the influence of Japanese prints.
Art Nouveau • Originating in Belgium, Art Nouveau (“new art”) was an
ornamental style that became enormously popular in the late nineteenth century.
CD Two Selection 16 Debussy, Prélude à “L’après-midi d’un faune,” 1894.
negative space the background or ground area seen in relation to the shape of the (positive) figure
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Modernism, Postmodernism, and the Global Perspective
32 The Modernist Assault 353
33 The Freudian Revolution 380
34 Total War, Totalitarianism, and the Arts 404
35 The Quest for Meaning 428
36 Liberation and Equality 449
37 The Information Age 478
38 Globalism: The Contemporary World 505
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The Modernist Assault ca. 1900–1950
Chapter
32
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Figure 32.1 GEORGES BRAQUE, Still Life on a Table, ca. 1914. Collage on paper, 187⁄8 � 243⁄8 in. Trained as a decorator, Braque introduced stenciled letters, sand, and sawdust into his artworks. His use of newspaper clippings, wallpaper, wine bottle labels, and wrappers gave his works greater density and challenged viewers to view everyday objects from different perspectives—conceptual and perceptual.
“What is real is not the external form, but the essence of things.” Constantin Brancusi
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L O O K I N G A H E A D
The New Physics
354 CHAPTER 32 The Modernist Assault
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Since the birth of civilization, no age has broken with tradition
more radically or more self-consciously than the twentieth
century. In its first decades, the spirit and the style of this new
direction came to be called “Modernism.” Modernism rejected
former cultural values and conventions in favor of innovation,
experimentation, and (at its most extreme) anarchy, the absolute
dissolution of established norms.
The Modernist revolution in the creative arts responded to
equally revolutionary changes in science and technology. The
transformation in technology began at the end of the nineteenth
century with the invention of the telephone (1876), wireless
telegraphy (1891), and the internal combustion engine (1897)
which made possible the first gasoline-powered automobiles. In
France and the United States, the mass production of automobiles
was underway by 1900. Among the swelling populations of
modern cities, the pace of living became faster than ever before.
By 1903, the airplane joined the string of enterprises that ushered
in an era of rapid travel and communication—a “shrinking” of
the planet that would produce the “global village” of the late
twentieth century. Advances in scientific theory proved equally
significant: atomic physics, which provided a new understanding
of the physical universe, was as momentous for the twentieth
century as metallurgy was for the fourth millennium B.C.E. But
while the latter contributed to the birth of civilization, the former,
which ushered in the nuclear age, threatened its survival.
The Modern Era—roughly the first half of the twentieth
century—is considered thematically in the next three chapters.
The first, chapter 32, deals with the Modernist assault on tradi-
tion in the arts. Chapter 33 examines the shaping influence of the
great Austrian psychiatrist Sigmund Freud, whose writings had a
shattering effect on every form of cultural expression. Chapter 34
considers the brutal impact of Totalitarianism and the two world
wars that put the potentially liberating tools of the new science
and technology to horrifically destructive ends.
At the turn of the twentieth century, atomic physicists advanced a model of the universe that challenged the one Isaac Newton had provided two centuries earlier. Newton’s universe operated according to smoothly func- tioning laws that generally corresponded with the world of
sense perception. Modern physicists found, however, that at the physical extremes of nature—the microcosmic (the very small or very fast) realm of atomic particles and the macrocosmic world of heavy astronomical bodies—the laws of Newton’s Principia did not apply. A more compre- hensive model of the universe began to emerge after 1880 when two American physicists, Albert Michelson and Edward Morley, determined that the speed of light is a uni- versal constant. In 1897, the English physicist, Joseph J. Thompson (1846–1940) identified the electron, the ele- mentary subatomic particle whose interaction between atoms is the main cause of chemical bonding. Three years later, the German physicist Max Planck (1858–1947) sug- gested that light waves sometimes behaved as quanta, that is, as separate and discontinuous bundles of energy.
Alongside this and other groundbreaking work in quan- tum physics (as the field came to be called), yet another German physicist, Albert Einstein (1879–1955), made public his special theory of relativity (1905), a radically new approach to the new concepts of time, space, motion, and light. While Newton had held that objects preserved prop- erties such as mass and length whether at rest or in motion, Einstein theorized that as an object’s speed approached the speed of light, its mass increased and its length contracted; no object could move faster than light, and light did not require any medium to carry it. In essence, Einstein’s theo- ry held that all measurable motion is relative to some other object, and that no universal coordinates, and no hypo- thetical ether, exist.
Building on Einstein’s theories, Werner Heisenberg (1901–1976) theorized that since the very act of measuring subatomic phenomena altered them, the position and the velocity of a subatomic particle could not be measured simultaneously with absolute accuracy. Heisenberg’s princi- ple of uncertainty (1927)—the more precisely the position of a particle is determined, the less precisely its momentum can be known—replaced the absolute and rationalist model of the universe with one whose exact mechanisms at the subatomic level are indeterminate.
Quantum physics gave humankind greater insight into the workings of the universe, but it also made the operation of that universe more remote from the average person’s understanding. The basic components of nature— subatomic particles—were inaccessible to both the human eye and the camera, hence beyond the realm of the senses. Nevertheless, the practical implications of the new physics were immense: radar technology, computers, and consumer electronics were only three of its numerous long- range consequences. Atomic fission, the splitting of atom- ic particles (begun only after 1920), and the atomic bomb itself (first tested in 1945) confirmed the validity of Einstein’s famous formula, E=mc2, which shows that mass and energy are different manifestations of the same thing; and therefore (in his words), “a very small amount of mass [matter] can be converted into a very large amount of energy.” The new physics paved the way for the atomic age. It also radically altered the way in which human beings understood the physical world.
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Early Twentieth-Century Poetry
READING 32.1
Q In what ways are these poems abstract? Q What effects are created by the
juxtaposition of the key images?
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Modern poets had little use for the self-indulgent senti- ments of the nineteenth-century romantics and the ideal- ism of the Symbolists. They found in nature neither ecstasy nor redemption. If nature was indeed both random and rel- ative, the job of these poets might be to find a new lan- guage for conveying its unique character, one that captured the disjunctive eccentricities of an indifferent cosmos. At the least, they would produce a style that was as conceptu- al and abstract as that of modern physics.
The Imagists The leaders in the search for a more concentrated style of expression were a group of poets who called themselves Imagists. For the imagist, the writer was like a sculptor, whose technique required that he carve away all extrane- ous matter in a process of abstraction that aimed to arrive at an intrinsic or essential form. Verbal compression, for- mal precision, and economy of expression were the goals of the Imagists. Renouncing traditional verse forms, fixed meter, and rhythm, their style of free verse became notori- ous for its abrupt and discontinuous juxtaposition of images. Essentially an English-language literary movement, Imagism attracted a number of talented American women, including Amy Lowell (1874–1925) and Hilda Doolittle (1886–1961), who signed her poems simply “H.D.”
Imagism’s most influential poet was the American expa- triate Ezra Pound (1885–1972). By the age of twenty-three, Pound had abandoned his study of language and literature at American universities for a career in writing that led him to Europe, where he wandered from England to France and Italy. A poet, critic, and translator, Pound was thor- oughly familiar with the literature of his contemporaries. But he cast his net wide: he studied the prose and poetry of ancient Greece and Rome, China and Japan, medieval France and Renaissance Italy—often reading the work of literature in its original language. As a student of East Asian calligraphy, he drew inspiration from the sparseness
and subtlety of Chinese characters. He was particularly fas- cinated by the fact that the Chinese poetic line, which pre- sented images without grammar or syntax, operated in the same intuitive manner that nature worked upon the human mind. It was this vitality that Pound wished to bring to poetry.
In Chinese and Japanese verse—especially in the Japanese poetic genre known as haiku (see chapter 21)— Pound found the key to his search for concentrated expres- sion. Two of his most famous haiku-like poems are found in the collection called Personae. He claimed that it took him a year and a half to write the first of these poems, cutting down the verse from thirty lines to two.
From Pound’s Personae (1926)
“In a Station of the Metro” The apparition of these faces in the crowd; Petals on a wet, black bough.
“The Bath Tub” As a bathtub lined with white porcelain, When the hot water gives out or goes tepid, So is the slow cooling of our chivalrous passion, O my much praised but-not-altogether-satisfactory lady.
Pound imitated the haiku-style succession of images to evoke subtle, metaphoric relationships between things. He conceived what he called the “rhythmical arrangement of words” to produce an emotional “shape.”
In the Imagist Manifesto (1913) and in various inter- views, Pound outlined the cardinal points of the Imagist doctrine: poets should use “absolutely no word that does not contribute to the presentation”; they should employ free verse rhythms “in sequence of the musical phrase.” Ultimately, Pound summoned his contemporaries to cast aside traditional modes of Western verse-making and “make it new”—a dictum allegedly scrawled on the bath- tub of an ancient Chinese emperor. “Day by day,” wrote Pound, “make it new/cut underbrush/pile the logs/keep it growing.” The injunction to “make it new” became the ral- lying cry of Modernism.
The Imagist search for an abstract language of expres- sion stood at the beginning of the Modernist revolution in poetry. It also opened the door to a more concealed and elusive style of poetry, one that drew freely on the cornu- copia of world literature and history. The poems that Pound wrote after 1920, particularly the Cantos (the unfinished opus on which Pound labored for fifty-five years), are filled with foreign language phrases, obscene jokes, and arcane literary and historical allusions juxta- posed without connective tissue. These poems contrast sharply with the terse precision and eloquent purity of Pound’s early Imagist efforts.
1900 Max Planck (German) announces his quantum theory
1903 Henry Ford (American) introduces the Model A automobile
1905 Albert Einstein (German) announces his special theory of relativity
1910 Bertrand Russell and Alfred North Whitehead (British) publish their Principia Mathematica, a systematic effort to base mathematics in logic
1913 Niels Bohr (Danish) applies quantum theory to atomic structure
1916 Einstein announces his general theory of relativity
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In the room the women come and go Talking of Michelangelo.
The yellow fog that rubs its back upon the window-panes, 15 The yellow smoke that rubs its muzzle on the window-panes Licked its tongue into the corners of the evening, Lingered upon the pools that stand in drains, Let fall upon its back the soot that falls from chimneys, Slipped by the terrace, made a sudden leap, 20 And seeing that it was a soft October night, Curled once about the house, and fell asleep.
And indeed there will be time For the yellow smoke that slides along the street, Rubbing its back upon the window-panes; 25 There will be time, there will be time To prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet; There will be time to murder and create, And time for all the works and days of hands2
That lift and drop a question on your plate; 30 Time for you and time for me, And time yet for a hundred indecisions, And for a hundred visions and revisions, Before the taking of a toast and tea.
In the room the women come and go 35 Talking of Michelangelo.
And indeed there will be time To wonder, “Do I dare?” and, “Do I dare?” Time to turn back and descend the stair, With a bald spot in the middle of my hair— 40 (They will say: “How his hair is growing thin!”) My morning coat, my collar mounting firmly to the chin, My necktie rich and modest, but asserted by a simple pin— (They will say: “But how his arms and legs are thin!”) Do I dare 45 Disturb the universe? In a minute there is time For decisions and revisions which a minute will reverse.
For I have known them all already, known them all— Have known the evenings, mornings, afternoons, 50 I have measured out my life with coffee spoons; I know the voices dying with a dying fall Beneath the music from a farther room.
So how should I presume?
And I have known the eyes already, known them all— 55 The eyes that fix you in a formulated phrase, And when I am formulated, sprawling on a pin, When I am pinned and wriggling on the wall, Then how should I begin To spit out all the butt-ends of my days and ways? 60
And how should I presume?
T. S. Eliot No English-speaking poet advanced the Modernist agenda more powerfully than the American-born writer T. S. (Thomas Stearns) Eliot (1888–1965). Meeting Pound in 1914, Eliot joined him in the effort to rid modern poetry of romantic sentiment. He held that poetry must seek the verbal formula or “objective correlative” (as he called it) that gives precise shape to feeling. Eliot’s style soon became notable for its inventive rhythms, irregular cadences, and startling images, many of which draw on personal reminis- cences and obscure literary resources.
Educated at Harvard University in philosophy and the classics, Eliot was studying at Oxford when World War I broke out. He remained in England after the war, becom- ing a British citizen in 1927 and converting to the Anglican faith in the same year. His intellectual grasp of modern philosophy, world religions, anthropology, and the
literature of Asia and the West made him the most erudite literary figure of his time.
Begun in 1910, Eliot’s poem, “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” (reproduced here in full), captures the waning idealism that pervaded the years leading up to World War I. The “love song” is actually the dramatic monologue of a timid, middle-aged man who has little faith in himself or his capacity for effective action. Prufrock’s cynicism anticipated the disillusion and the sense of impo- tence that marked the postwar generation (discussed in greater detail in chapter 34).
Eliot’s “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” (1915)
S’io credesse che mia risposta fosse A persona che mai tornasse al mondo, Questa fiamma staria senza piu scosse. Ma perciocche giammai di questo fondo Non torno vivo alcun s’i’odo il vero, Senza tema d’infamia ti rispondo.1
Let us go then, you and I, 1 When the evening is spread out against the sky Like a patient etherised upon a table; Let us go, through certain half-deserted streets, The muttering retreats 5 Of restless nights in one-night cheap hotels And sawdust restaurants with oyster-shells: Streets that follow like a tedious argument Of insidious intent To lead you to an overwhelming question . . . 10 Oh, do not ask, “What is it?” Let us go and make our visit.
1 Lines from Dante’s “Inferno,” Canto 27, 61–66, spoken by Guido da Montefeltro, who was condemned to Hell for the sin of false counseling. In explaining his punishment to Dante, Guido is still apprehensive of the judgment of society.
2 An ironic allusion to the poem “Works and Days” by the eighth-century B.C.E. poet Hesiod, which celebrates the virtues of hard labor on the land.
classical
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Q How would you describe the personality of Eliot’s Prufrock?
Q What do each of the literary allusions add to our understanding of the poem?
CHAPTER 32 The Modernist Assault 357
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And I have known the arms already, known them all— Arms that are braceleted and white and bare (But in the lamplight, downed with light brown hair!) Is it perfume from a dress 65 That makes me so digress? Arms that lie along a table, or wrap about a shawl.
And should I then presume? And how should I begin?
. . . . .
Shall I say, I have gone at dusk through narrow streets 70 And watched the smoke that rises from the pipes Of lonely men in shirt-sleeves, leaning out of windows? . . .
I should have been a pair of ragged claws Scuttling across the floors of silent seas.
. . . . .
And the afternoon, the evening, sleeps so peacefully! 75 Smoothed by long fingers, Asleep . . . tired . . . or it malingers, Stretched on the floor, here beside you and me. Should I, after tea and cakes and ices, Have the strength to force the moment to its crisis? 80 But though I have wept and fasted, wept and prayed, Though I have seen my head (grown slightly bald)
brought in upon a platter, I am no prophet—and here’s no great matter;3
I have seen the moment of my greatness flicker, And I have seen the eternal Footman hold my coat, and
snicker, 85 And in short, I was afraid.
And would it have been worth it, after all, After the cups, the marmalade, the tea, Among the porcelain, among some talk of you and me, Would it have been worth while, 90 To have bitten off the matter with a smile, To have squeezed the universe into a ball4
To roll it toward some overwhelming question, To say: “I am Lazarus, come from the dead,5
Come back to tell you all, I shall tell you all”— 95 If one, settling a pillow by her head,
Should say: “That is not what I meant at all, That is not it, at all.”
And would it have been worth it, after all, Would it have been worth while, 100 After the sunsets and the dooryards and the sprinkled streets, After the novels, after the teacups, after the skirts that
trail along the floor—
And this, and so much more?— It is impossible to say just what I mean! But as if a magic lantern threw the nerves in patterns on
a screen: 105 Would it have been worth while If one, settling a pillow or throwing off a shawl, And turning towards the window, should say:
“That is not it at all, That is not what I meant, at all.” 110
. . . . .
No! I am not Prince Hamlet, nor was meant to be; Am an attendant lord, one that will do To swell a progress, start a scene or two, Advise the prince; no doubt, an easy tool,6
Deferential, glad to be of use, 115 Politic, cautious, and meticulous; Full of high sentence, but a bit obtuse; At times, indeed, almost ridiculous— Almost, at times, the Fool.
I grow old . . . I grow old . . . 120 I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled.7
Shall I part my hair behind? Do I dare to eat a peach? I shall wear white flannel trousers, and walk upon the beach. I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each. I do not think that they will sing to me. 125 I have seen them riding seaward on the waves Combing the white hair of the waves blown back When the wind blows the water white and black.
We have lingered in the chambers of the sea By sea-girls wreathed with seaweed red and brown 130 Till human voices wake us, and we drown.
The tone of Eliot’s poem is established by way of powerful- ly compressed (and gloomy) images: “one-night cheap hotels,” “sawdust restaurants,” “soot that falls from chim- neys,” “narrow streets,” and “lonely men in shirt-sleeves.” Eliot’s literary vignettes, and allusions to biblical prophets and to the heroes of history and art (Hamlet and Michelangelo) work as foils to Prufrock’s bankrupt ideal- ism, underlining his self-conscious retreat from action, and his loss of faith in the conventional sources of wisdom. The voices of inspiration, concludes Prufrock, are submerged by all-too-human voices, including his own. Prufrock’s moral inertia made him an archetype of the condition of spiritu- al loss associated with Modernism.
3 A reference to John the Baptist, who was beheaded by Herod (Matthew 14: 3–11). Prufrock perceives himself as victim but as neither saint nor martyr.
4 A reference to the line “Let us roll all our strength and all our sweetness up into one ball,” from the poem “To his Coy Mistress,” by the seventeenth-century English poet Andrew Marvell, in which Marvell presses his lover to “seize the day.”
5 According to the Gospel of John (11: 1–44), Jesus raised Lazarus from the grave.
6 A reference to Polonius, the king’s adviser in Shakespeare’s Hamlet, as well as to Guido da Montefeltro—both of them false counselors.
7 In Eliot’s time, rolled or cuffed trousers were considered fashionable.
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READING 32.3
Q Why might Frost’s choice of roads have made “all the difference”?
Q How does the poem illustrate Frost’s fondness for direct language?
Early Twentieth-Century Art
358 CHAPTER 32 The Modernist Assault
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authentic, “stripped down” style that, much like imagist poetry, evoked rather than described experience. They pur- sued the intrinsic qualities and essential meanings of their subject matter to arrive at a concentrated emotional expe- rience. The language of pure form did not, however, rob modern art of its humanistic dimension; rather, it provided artists with a means by which to move beyond traditional ways of representing the visual world. Abstraction—one of the central tenets of Modernism—promised to purify nature so as to come closer to its true reality.
Early modern artists probed the tools and techniques of formal expression more fully than any artists since the Renaissance. Deliberately blurring the boundaries between painting and sculpture, they attached three-dimensional objects to two-dimensional surfaces, thereby violating tra- ditional categories of style and format. Like the Imagists, they found inspiration in non-Western cultures in which art shared the power of ritual. Innovation, abstraction, and experimentation became the hallmarks of the Modernist revolt against convention and tradition.
Picasso and the Birth of Cubism The giant of twentieth-century art was the Spanish-born Pablo Picasso (1881–1973). During his ninety-two-year life, Picasso worked in almost every major art style of the century, some of which he himself inaugurated. He pro- duced thousands of paintings, drawings, sculptures, and prints—a body of work that in its size, inventiveness, and influence is nothing short of phenomenal. As a child, he showed an extraordinary gift for drawing, and by the age of twenty his precise and lyrical line style rivaled that of Raphael and Ingres. In 1903, the young painter left his native Spain to settle in Paris. There, in the bustling capi- tal of the Western art world, he came under the influence of Impressionist and Postimpressionist painting, taking as his subjects café life, beggars, prostitutes, and circus folk. Much like the imagists, Picasso worked to refine form and color in the direction of concentrated expression, reducing the colors of his palette first to various shades of blue and then, after 1904, to tones of rose.
By 1906, the artist began to abandon traditional Western modes of pictorial representation. Adopting the credo that art must be subversive—that it must defy all that is conventional, literal, and trite—he initiated a bold new style. Picasso’s foremost assault on tradition was Les Demoiselles d’Avignon, a large painting of five nude women—the prostitutes of a Barcelona bordello (Figure 32.2). The subject matter of the work embraced the long, respectable tradition of the female nude group in a land- scape setting (see Figure 32.3). However, Les Demoiselles violated every shred of tradition, making even Manet’s Olympia (see Figure 30.19) look comfortably old-fashioned.
The manner in which Picasso “made new” a traditional subject in Western art is worth examining: in the early sketches for the painting, originally called The Philosophical Brothel, Picasso included two male figures, one of whom resembled the artist himself. However, in the summer of 1907, Picasso fell deeply under the spell of African art on
Frost and Lyric Poetry Robert Frost (1874–1963), the best known and one of the most popular of American poets, offered an alternative to the abstract style of the Modernists. While Frost rejected the romantic sentimentality of much nineteenth-century verse, he embraced the older tradition of Western lyric poetry. He wrote in metered verse and jokingly compared the Modernist use of free verse to playing tennis without a net. Frost avoided dense allusions and learned references. In plain speech he expressed deep affection for the natural landscape and an abiding sympathy with the frailties of the human condition. He described American rural life as uncertain and enigmatic—at times, notably dark. “My poems,” explained Frost, “are all set to trip the reader head foremost into the boundless.” Frost’s “The Road Not Taken” is written in the rugged and direct language that became the hallmark of his mature style. The poem exalts a pro- found individualism as well as a sparseness of expression in line with the Modernist injunction to “make it new.”
Frost’s “The Road Not Taken”(1916) Two roads diverged in a yellow wood, 1 And sorry I could not travel both And be one traveler, long I stood And looked down one as far as I could To where it bent in the undergrowth; 5
Then took the other, as just as fair, And having perhaps the better claim, Because it was grassy and wanted wear, Though as for that the passing there Had worn them really about the same, 10
And both that morning equally lay In leaves no step had trodden black. Oh, I kept the first for another day! Yet knowing how way leads on to way, I doubted if I should ever come back. 15
I shall be telling this with a sigh Somewhere ages and ages hence: Two roads diverged in a wood, and I— I took the one less traveled by, And that has made all the difference. 20
As with Modernist poetry, the art of the early twentieth century came to challenge all that preced- ed it. Liberated by the camera from the necessity of imitating
nature, avant-garde artists questioned the value of art as a faithful recreation of the visible world. They pioneered an
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display at the Musée d’Ethnographie du Trocadéro in Paris. Reworking the canvas, he transformed the five prostitutes into a group of fierce iconic images. For what he would later call his “first exorcism picture,” he seems to have taken apart and reassembled the figures as if to test the physics of disjunction and discontinuity. At least three of the figures are rendered not from a single vantage point but from multiple viewpoints, as if one’s eye could travel freely in time and space. The body of the crouching female on the far right is seen from the back, while her face, savagely striated like the scarified surface of an African sculpture, is seen from the front. The noses of the two central females appear in profile, while their eyes are frontal—a conven- tion Picasso may have borrowed from ancient Egyptian frescoes. The relationship between the figures and the shal- low space they occupy is equally disjunctive, a condition compounded by brutally fractured planes of color—brick reds and vivid blues—that resemble shards of glass. Picasso stripped the female of all sensuous appeal. In one disquiet-
ing stroke, he banished the alluring female nude from the domain of Western art.
Les Demoiselles was the precursor of an audacious new style known as Cubism, a bold and distinctive formal language that came to challenge the principles of Renaissance painting as dramatically as Einstein’s theory of relativity had challenged Newtonian physics. In the Cubist canvas, the recognizable world of the senses disappears beneath a scaffold of semitrans- parent planes and short, angular lines; ordinary objects are made to look as if they have exploded and been reassembled somewhat arbitrarily in geometric bits and pieces that rest on the surface of the picture plane (Figure 32.5).
With Analytic Cubism, as the style came to be called, a multiplicity of viewpoints replaced one-point perspective. The Cubist image, conceived as if one were moving around, above, and below the subject and even perceiving it from within, appropriates the fourth dimension—time itself. Abrupt shifts in direction and an ambiguous spatial field call up the uncertainties of the new physics. As Picasso and
Figure 32.2 PABLO PICASSO, Les Demoiselles d’Avignon, Paris, 1907. Oil on canvas, 8 ft. � 7 ft. 8 in.
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Picasso’s pre-Cubist style was shaped by two major forces: Cézanne’s paintings, which had been the focus of two large Paris exhibitions; and the arts of Africa, Iberia, and Oceania, examples of which were appearing regularly in Paris galleries and museums (see chapters 18 and 31). In Cézanne’s canvases, with their flattened planes and arbitrary colors (Figure 32.3), Picasso recognized a rigorous new language of form that seemed to define nature’s underlying structure. And in African and Oceanic sculpture he discovered the power of art as the palpable embodiment of potent supernatural forces.
Scholars continue to debate exactly which works of tribal art Picasso encountered on his visits to the Ethnographic Museum in Paris. The artist would also have been familiar with African imports sold by Paris art dealers in the early twentieth century. These were purchased by artists (including Picasso himself) and collectors, such as Picasso’s expatriate American friends, Gertrude Stein and her brother. It is indisputable that Picasso knew the copper-clad Kota statues that functioned originally as African guardian figures (Figure 32.4). Installed above a container holding the bones of an ancestor, such reliquary icons were not representations of the deceased, but power-objects that protected the deceased from evil. Of the tribal masks and sculptures with which he was familiar, Picasso later explained: “For me, [they] were not just sculptures; they were magical objects . . . intercessors against unknown, threatening
Figure 32.4 Kota reliquary figure, from Gabon. Wood covered with strips of copper and brass, 303⁄4 in.
Figure 32.3 PAUL CÉZANNE, The Large Bathers, 1906. Oil on canvas, 6 ft. 107⁄8 in. � 8 ft. 23⁄4 in.
Figure 32.2A PABLO PICASSO, Les Demoiselles d’Avignon, Paris, 1907. Oil on canvas, 8 ft. � 7 ft. 8 in.
spirits.” The union of expressive abstraction and dynamic distortion clearly characterizes both the Kota image and the treatment of the two figures on the right in Les Demoiselles d’Avignon (Figure 32.2A).
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his French colleague Georges Braque (1882–1963) collabo- rated in a search for an ever more pared down language of form, their compositions became increasingly abstract and colors became cool and controlled: Cubism came to offer a new formal language, one wholly unconcerned with narra- tive content. Years later, Picasso defended the viability of
this new language: “The fact that for a long time Cubism has not been understood . . . means nothing. I do not read English, an English book is a blank book to me. This does not mean that the English language does not exist.”
Around 1912, a second phase of Cubism, namely Synthetic Cubism, emerged, when Braque first included
Figure 32.5 PABLO PICASSO, Man with a Violin, 1911. Oil on canvas, 3 ft. 31⁄2 in. � 297⁄8 in. A comparison of this painting with Les Demoiselles d’Avignon shows how far toward abstraction Picasso had moved in less than four years. Knit by a lively arrangement of flat shaded planes, monochromatic in color, figure and ground are almost indistinguishable.
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three pieces of wallpaper in a still-life composition. Picasso and Braque, who thought of themselves as space pioneers (much like the Wright brothers), pasted mundane objects such as wine labels, playing cards, and scraps of newspaper onto the surface of the canvas—a technique known as collage (from the French coller, “to paste”). The result was a kind of art that was neither a painting nor a sculpture, but both at the same time. The two artists filled their canvases with puns, hidden messages, and subtle references to contemporary events; but the prevailing strategy in all of these artworks was to test the notion of art as illusion.
In Braque’s Still Life on a Table (see Figure 32.1), strips of imitation wood graining, a razor blade wrap- per, and newspaper clippings serve the double func- tion of “presenting” and “representing.” Words and images wrenched out of context here play off one another like some cryptographic billboard. Prophetic of twentieth-century art in general, Braque would pro- claim, “The subject is not the object of the painting, but a new unity, the lyricism that results from method.”
Assemblage In these same years, Picasso created the first assemblages—artworks that were built up, or pieced together, from miscellaneous or com- monplace materials. Like the collage, the three- dimensional assemblage depended on the inventive combination of found objects and materials. As such, it constituted a radical alternative to traditional techniques of carv- ing in stone, metal casting, and modeling in clay or plaster. The art of assemblage clearly drew inspiration from African and Oceanic traditions of combining natural materials (such as cowrie beads and raffia) for masks and costumes; it also took heed of the expressive simplifications that typify power objects, reliquaries, and other tribal artforms (Figure 32.6). Picasso’s Guitar of 1912–1913 achieves its powerful effect by means of fragmented planes, deliberate spatial inversions (note the projecting soundhole), and the wedding of sheet-metal and wire (Figure 32.7).
Within a decade, Western sculptors were employing the strategies of Synthetic Cubism in ways that reflected abstract models of time and space. The Russian-born cubist Alexander Archipenko (1887–1964), for instance, fash- ioned the female form so that an area of negative space actually constitutes the head (Figure 32.8).
Futurism Intrigued by the dynamism of modern technology, the avant-garde movement known as Futurism emerged in Italy. Originally a literary movement, it soon came to embrace all of the arts, including architecture and film. Its founder, the poet and iconoclast Filippo Tommaso Marinetti (1876–1944), issued a series of manifestoes
Figure 32.6 Ceremonial mask, from Wobé or Grebo, Ivory Coast, late nineteenth century. Painted wood, feathers, and fibers, height 11 in.
Figure 32.7 PABLO PICASSO, Guitar, 1912–1913. Construction of sheet metal and wire, 301⁄2 � 133⁄4 � 75⁄8 in.
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attacking literary formalism, museum art, and academic culture. He called for a style that linked contemporary expression to industry, technology, and urban life. Marinetti, who held that “war was the only healthgiver of the world,” demanded an art of “burning violence” that would free Italy from its “fetid gangrene of professors, archeologists, antiquarians, and rhetoricians.” “We declare,” he wrote in his Futurist Manifesto of 1909, “that there can be no modern painting except from the starting point of an absolutely modern sensation. . . . A roaring motorcar is more beautiful than the winged Victory of Samothrace” (the famous Hellenistic sculpture illustrated as Figure 5.32). “The gesture that we would reproduce on canvas shall no longer be a fixed moment in universal dynamism. It shall simply be the dynamic sensation itself.”
The futuristic alternative to static academicism was pro- duced by Umberto Boccioni (1882–1916). His near life- sized bronze sculpture captures the sensation of motion as it pushes forward like a automated robot (Figure 32.9). The striding figure, which consists of an aggressive series of dynamic, jagged lines, is clearly human in form, despite Boccioni’s assertion (in his 1912 Technical Manifesto of Futurist Sculpture) that artists should “abolish . . . the tradi- tionally exalted place of subject matter.”
The Futurists were enthralled by the speed and dynamism of automobiles, trains, and airplanes, and by such new forms of technology as the machine gun and the electric light. In the painting Street Light (Figure 32.10), the Italian Futurist Giacomo Balla (1871–1958) paid homage to the electric Brunt Arc lamps that were installed in the streets of Rome during the first decade of the century. Balla wittily claimed that this painting, in which electric light outshines moon- light, hailed the demise of romantic art in the West.
Futurists were also inspired by the time-lapse photo- graphy of Eadweard Muybridge (see Figure 31.9), the magical properties of X-rays (not in wide use until 1910), and by pioneer efforts in the new industry of motion pictures, in which “multiple profiles” gave the appearance of movement in time and space. These modern phenome- na shaped the early career of the French artist Marcel Duchamp (1887–1968). When Duchamp’s Nude Descending a Staircase, No. 2 (Figure 32.11) was exhibited
Figure 32.8 ALEXANDER ARCHIPENKO, Woman Combing Her Hair, 1915. Bronze, 133⁄4 � 31⁄4 � 31⁄8 in. (including base).
1901 the first international radio broadcast is made by Guglielmo Marconi (Italian)
1903 Orville and Wilbur Wright (American) make the first successful airplane flight
1927 the first motion picture with synchronized sound (The Jazz Singer) is released
1927 Werner Heisenberg (German) announces his “uncertainty principle”
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at the International Exhibition of Modern Art (known as the Armory Show) in New York City, one critic mocking- ly called it “an explosion in a shingle factory.” Yet, from the time of its first showing in 1913, the painting (and much of the art in the Armory exhibition) had a formative influ- ence on the rise of American Modernism. Futurism did not last beyond the end of World War I, but its impact was felt in both the United States and Russia, where Futurist efforts
Figure 32.10 GIACOMO BALLA, Street Light, 1909. Oil on canvas, 5 ft. 81⁄2 in. � 3 ft. 84⁄5 in.
Figure 32.9 UMBERTO BOCCIONI, Unique Forms of Continuity in Space, 1913. Bronze (cast 1931), 3 ft. 77⁄8 in. � 347⁄8 in. � 153⁄4 in.
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Figure 32.11 MARCEL DUCHAMP, Nude Descending a Staircase, No. 2, 1912. Oil on canvas, 4 ft. 10 in. � 35 in. Movement is suggested by the successive superimposition of figures, a technique that mimics the motion of a stroboscope, a device invented in 1832.
to capture the sense of form in motion would coincide with the first developments in the technology of cinematogra- phy (see “The Birth of Motion Pictures”).
Matisse and Fauvism While Cubists and Futurists were principally concerned with matters of space and motion, other Modernists, led by the French artist Henri Matisse (1869–1954), made color the principal feature of their canvases. This group, brand- ed as “Fauves” (from the French fauve, “wild beast”) by a critic who saw their work at a 1905 exhibition in Paris, employed flat, bright colors in the arbitrary manner of van Gogh and Gauguin. But whereas the latter had used color to evoke a mood or a symbolic image, the younger artists
It is no coincidence that the art of motion pictures was born at a time when artists and scientists were obsessed with matters of space and time. Indeed, as an artform that captures rapidly changing experience, cinema is the quintessentially modern medium. The earliest public film presentations took place in Europe and the United States in the mid-1890s: in 1895, Thomas Edison (1867–1931) was the first American to project moving images on a screen. In France the brothers Auguste and Louis Lumière (1862–1954; 1864–1948) perfected the process by which cellulose film ran smoothly in a commercial projector. They pioneered the first cinematic projection in an auditorium equipped with seats and piano accompaniment. These first experiments delighted audiences with moving pictures of everyday subjects.
It was not until 1902, however, that film was used to create a reality all its own: in that year the French filmmaker Georges Méliès (1861–1938) completed a fourteen-minute theatrical sequence called A Trip to the Moon, an engaging fantasty based on a Jules Verne novel. One year later, the American director Edwin S. Porter (1869–1941) produced the twelve-minute silent film The Great Train Robbery, which treated the myth of American frontier life in its story of a sensational holdup, followed by the pursuit and capture of the bandits. These pioneer narrative films established the idiom for two of the most popular genres in cinematic history: the science fiction film and the “western.”
Between 1908 and 1912, Hollywood became the center of American cinema. D. W. Griffith (1875–1948), the leading director of his time, made major innovations in cinematic technique. He introduced the use of multiple cameras and camera angles, as well as such new techniques as close-ups, fade-outs, and flashbacks, which, when joined together in an edited sequence, greatly expanded the potential of film narrative. Griffith’s three-hour-long silent film, The Birth of a Nation (1915), was an epic account of the American Civil War and the Reconstruction Era that followed in the South. Unfortunately, despite the film’s technical excellence, its negative portrayal of African-Americans contributed to stereotyping them as violent and ignorant savages.
Until the late 1920s, all movies were silent—filmmakers used captions to designate the spoken word wherever appropriate and live musical accompaniment was often provided in the theater. Well before the era of the “talkies,” cinematographers began to use the camera not simply as a disinterested observer, but as a medium for conveying the emotional states of the characters. In the absence of sound, they were forced to develop the affective structure of the film by essentially visual means. According to some film critics, the aesthetics of film as a medium were compromised when sound was added. Nevertheless, by 1925 it was apparent that film was destined to become one of the major artforms of the Modern Era.
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were concerned with color only as it served pictorial struc- ture; their style featured bold spontaneity and the direct and instinctive application of pigment. Critics who called these artists “wild beasts” were in fact responding to the use of color in ways that seemed both crude and savage. They attacked the new style as “color madness” and “the sport of a child.” For Matisse, however, color was the font of pure and sensuous pleasure. In his portrait of Madame Matisse (which he subtitled The Green Line), broad flat swaths of paint give definition to a visage that is bisected vertically by an acid-green stripe (Figure 32.12).
Matisse brought daring to Cézanne’s flat color patches, using them to simplify form that achieved the visual impact of the tribal artworks he collected. At the same time, he invested the canvas with a thrilling color radi- ance, that, like smell (as Matisse himself observed), subtly but intensely suffuses the senses. In contrast with Picasso, who held that art was a weapon with which to jar the
senses, Matisse sought “an art of balance, of purity and serenity, devoid of troubling or depressing subject matter . . . something like a good armchair in which to rest from physical fatigue.”
Matisse was among the first to articulate the Modernist scorn for representational art: “Exactitude is not truth,” he insisted. In Notes of a Painter, published in 1908, he described colors and shapes as the equivalents of feelings rather than the counterparts of forms in nature. Gradually, as he came to be influenced by Islamic miniatures and Russian icons, his style moved in the direction of linear simplicity and color sensuousness. A quintessential exam- ple of his facility for color abstraction is Dance I (Figure 32.13). In its lyrical arabesques and unmodeled fields of color, the painting calls to mind the figural grace of ancient Greek vase paintings. At the same time, it captures the exhilaration of the primordial round—the traditional dance of almost all Mediterranean cultures.
Figure 32.12 HENRI MATISSE, Madame Matisse (The Green Line), 1905. Oil on canvas, 16 � 123⁄4 in.
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and materials. The sculpture is of no particular species of feathered creature, but it captures perfectly the concept of “birdness.” It is, as Brancusi explained, “the essence of flight.” “What is real,” he insisted, “is not the external form, but the essence of things.” The elegant form, curved like a feather, unites birdlike qualities of grace and poise with the dynamic sense of soaring levitation characteristic of mechanical flying machines, such as rockets and air- planes. Indeed, when Brancusi’s bronze Bird first arrived in America, United States customs officials mistook it for a piece of industrial machinery.
Abstraction and Photography Photography enthusiastically embraced the Modernist aesthetic. The American photographer Edward Weston (1886–1953) was among the pioneers of photographic abstraction. His close-up photograph of two nautilus shells evokes the twin ideas of flower (a magnolia blossom, accord- ing to Weston himself) and female (Figure 32.15). Weston took photography beyond the realm of the representational: he used the camera not simply to record the natural world, but to explore new avenues of visual experience.
Brancusi and Abstraction Although Cubists, Futurists, and Fauves pursued their indi- vidual directions, they all shared the credo of abstract art: the artist must evoke the essential and intrinsic qualities of the subject rather than describe its physical properties. In early modern sculpture, the guardian of this credo was Constantin Brancusi (1876–1957). Born in Romania and trained in Bucharest, Vienna, and Munich, Brancusi came to Paris in 1904. There, after a brief stay in Rodin’s studio, he fell under the spell of ancient fertility figures and the sculpture of Africa and Polynesia. Inspired by these objects, whose spiritual power lay in their visual immedia- cy and their truth to materials, Brancusi proceeded to create an art of radically simple, organic forms. While he began by closely observing the living object—whether human or animal—he progressively eliminated all natura- listic details until he arrived at a form that captured the essence of the subject. Like his good friend Ezra Pound, Brancusi achieved a concentrated expression in forms so elemental that they seem to speak a universal language.
A case in point is Bird in Space (Figure 32.14), of which Brancusi made more than thirty versions in various sizes
Figure 32.13 HENRI MATISSE, Dance 1, 1909. Oil on canvas, 8 ft. 61⁄2 in. � 12 ft. 91⁄2 in. Matisse painted a second version of The Dance for the home of his patron, the Russian art collector Sergei Shchukin. It is now in Saint Petersburg’s Hermitage Museum.
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Nonobjective Art Between 1909 and 1914, three artists working independ- ently of one another in different parts of Europe moved to purge art of all recognizable subject matter. The Russians Wassily Kandinsky (1866–1944) and Kasimir Malevich (1878–1935) and the Dutchman Piet Mondrian (1872– 1944), pioneers of Nonobjective Art, had all come into contact with the principal art movements of the early twentieth century: Cubism, Futurism, and Fauvism. They acknowledged the Postimpressionist premise that a paint- ing was, first and foremost, a flat surface covered with col- ors assembled in a particular order. But their quest for subjectless form had a unique goal: that of achieving an art whose purity would offer a spiritual remedy for the soulless- ness of modern life.
Kandinsky Kandinsky, whose career in art only began at the age of forty, was deeply influenced by the Fauves, the Symbolists (see chapter 31), and by Russian folk art. While he filled his early paintings with vibrant hues, he observed
Figure 32.15 EDWARD WESTON, Two Shells, 1927. Photograph. Print by Cole Weston.
Figure 32.14 CONSTANTIN BRANCUSI, Bird in Space, 1928. Polished bronze, height 4 ft. 6 in.
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with some dismay that the subject matter in his canvases tended to “dissolve” into his colors. One evening, upon returning to his studio in Munich, Kandinsky experienced a “revelation” that led him to abandon pictorial subject matter. The incident is described in his Reminiscences of 1913:
I saw an indescribably beautiful picture drenched with an inner glowing. At first I hesitated, then I rushed toward this mysterious picture, of which I saw nothing but forms and colors, and whose content was incomprehensible. Immediately I found the key to the puzzle: it was a picture I had painted, leaning against the wall, standing on its side. . . . Now I knew for certain that the [pictorial] object harmed my paintings.
From this point on, Kandinsky began to assemble colors, lines, and shapes without regard to recog- nizable objects (Figure 32.16). He called his nonrepresentational paintings “improvisations” or “abstract compositions” and numbered them in series. In his treatise Concerning the Spiritual in Art (1910), he argued that form and color gener- ate meaning without reference to the natural world. “Color can exercise enormous influence upon the body,” wrote Kandinsky; it functions to influence mood. Such insights anticipated mod- ern research in chromotherapy, that is, the use of colors and colored light to affect body states. According to Kandinsky, painting was a spiritu- ally liberating force akin to music—he himself was an amateur cellist and friend of many avant- garde composers. “Painting,” he proclaimed, “is a thundering collision of different worlds, intend- ed to create a new world.”
Malevich Kandinsky’s Russian contemporary Kasimir Malevich arrived at nonrepresentational art not by way of Fauvism but through the influence of Analytic Cubism, which asserted the value of line over color. Seeking to “free art from the burden of the object” and to rediscover “pure feeling in creative art,” Malevich created an austere style limited to the strict geometry of the square, the circle, and the rectangle (Figure 32.17). Malevich called these shapes “suprematist elements” and his style Suprematism. “To the suprematist,” wrote Malevich, “the visual phenomena of the objective world are, in themselves, meaningless; the significant thing is feeling . . . quite apart from the environment in which it is called forth.” By restricting his art to the arrangement of ideal geometric shapes on the two-dimensional picture plane, Malevich replaced the world of appearance with a language of form as abstract and exacting as that of modern physics.
Figure 32.16 WASSILY KANDINSKY, Panel for Edwin Campbell No. 1, 1914. Oil on canvas, 5 ft. 4 in. � 3 ft. 1⁄4 in. Kandinsky was among the first of the Modernists to confess indebtness to atomic theory. He urged young artists to study the new physics.
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Mondrian The early works of the third pioneer of Nonobjective Art, Piet Mondrian, reveal this Dutch artist’s inclination to discover geometric order in the landscape of his native country (Figure 32.18). By 1910, however, he began to strip his canvases of references to recognizable subject matter. Eventually, he limited his visual vocabulary to “pure” forms: rectangles laid out on a grid of horizontal and vertical lines, the three primary colors (red, yellow, and blue), and three values—white, gray, and black (Figure 32.19). The paring-down process achieved a compositional balance of geometric elements, an “equivalence of opposites” similar to the dynamic equilibrium of an algebraic equation.
Although Mondrian would eventually emigrate to America, the movement he helped to create would contin- ue to flourish. Taking its name from a magazine founded in 1917, it was called simply De Stijl (“the Style”). Its Dutch adherents were devoted to the evolution of pure, abstract art: “a direct expression of the universal.” Despite differ- ences of opinion among its members—Mondrian resigned in 1925 in opposition to a colleague’s use of diagonals—De Stijl was to have worldwide impact, especially in the areas of architecture and furniture design (Figure 32.20).
The disappearance of the object in early twentieth-centu- ry art is often mistakenly associated with the dehumaniza- tion of modern life. However, one of the great ironies of the birth of Nonobjective Art is its indebtedness to the mysti- cal and transcendental philosophies that were current in the early Modern Era. One of the most influential of these was
Figure 32.18 PIET MONDRIAN, Tree, 1912. Oil on canvas, 291⁄4 � 437⁄8 in. In this early study of a tree, the transition from a realistic depiction to an abstraction is evident. Mondrian finally stripped away all representational associations to arrive at his signature grid patterns. © 2009 Mondrian/Holtzman Trust c/o HCR International Warrenton, Virginia, USA.
Figure 32.17 KASIMIR MALEVICH, Suprematist Composition: White on White, 1918. Oil on canvas, 311⁄4 � 311⁄4 in.
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theosophy, a blend of Eastern and Western religions that empha- sizes communion with nature by purely spiritual means. Mondrian, a member of the Dutch Theosophical Society, equated spiritual progress with geometric clarity. In his view, the law of equivalence reflected “the true content of reality.” “Not only science,” wrote Mondrian, “but art also, shows us that reali- ty, at first incomprehensible, gradually reveals itself by the mutual relations that are inherent in things. Pure science and pure art, disinterested and free, can lead the advance in the recognition of the laws which are based on these relationships.” The commitment to pure abstraction as the language of spirituality—a commitment central to the careers of Kandinsky, Malevich, and Mondrian—reflects the utopian humanism of those Modernists who perceived their art as a wellspring of social harmony and order.
Russian Constructivism While utopian Modernism swept across Europe, one of the most utilitarian of the movements for “pure art” flourished in prerevolutionary Russia. Constructivism, which had its roots in both Futurism and the purist teachings of Malevich, advocat- ed the application of geometric abstraction to all forms of social enterprise. Russian Constructivists, who called themselves
Figure 32.19 PIET MONDRIAN, Composition with Large Red Plane, Yellow, Black, Gray, and Blue, 1921. Oil on canvas, 233⁄8 � 233⁄8 in. © 2009 Mondrian/Holtzman Trust c/o HCR International Warrenton, Virginia, USA.
Figure 32.20 GERRIT RIETVELD, Red Blue Chair, 1923. Painted wood, 341⁄8 � 26 � 33 in; seat height 13 in.
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“artist–engineers,” worked to improve the everyday lives of the masses by applying the new abstraction to the industrial arts, theater, film, typography, textile design, and architecture. Liubov Popova (1889–1924), one of the many talented female advocates of this movement, designed stage sets and costumes for the Russian theater (Figure 32.21), thus putting into practice the Constructivist motto “Art into production.” Like other Modernists, the Constructivists worked to break down the barriers between fine and applied art, but unlike any other modern art movement, Constructivism received official state sanction. Following the Russian Revolution, howev- er, the Soviet Union would bring about its demise, almost obliterating Russia’s most innovative contribution to twentieth-century Modernism (see chapter 34).
The revolution in visual abstraction found monumental expression in architecture. Early modern architects made energetic use of two new materials—structural steel and ferroconcrete—in combination with cantilever construction.
The cantilever, a horizontal beam supported at only one end and projecting well beyond the point of support, had first appeared in the timber buildings of China (see chapter 14); but the manufacture of the structural steel cantilever ushered in a style whose austere simplicity had no precedents. That style was inaugurated by Frank Lloyd Wright (1869–1959), the leading figure in the history of early modern architecture.
The Architecture of Wright Frank Lloyd Wright, the first American architect of world significance, was the foremost student of the Chicago archi- tect Louis Sullivan (see chapter 30). Wright’s style com- bined the new technology of steel and glass with the aesthetic principles of Asian architecture. Wright visited Japan when he was in his thirties and was impressed by the grace and purity of Japanese art. He especially admired the respect for natural materials and the sensitivity to the relationship between setting and structure that characterized traditional Japanese architecture (see chapter 14). In his earliest domestic commissions, Wright embraced the East Asian principle of horizontality, by which the building might hug the earth. He imitated the low, steeply pitched
Figure 32.21 LIUBOV POPOVA, set design for Fernand Crommelynk, Le Cocu magnifique, State Institute of Theatrical Art, Moscow, 1922. Gouache on paper, 191⁄2 � 27 in.
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roofs of Japanese pavilions and temples. From Japanese inte- riors, where walls often consist of movable screens, Wright borrowed the idea of interconnecting interior and exterior space. He used the structural steel frame and the cantilever to create large areas of uninterrupted space. In every one of Wright’s designs, the exterior of the structure reflects the major divisions of its interior space. Wright refined this formula in a series of innovative homes in the American Midwest, pioneering the so-called “Prairie School” of archi- tecture that lasted from roughly 1900 until World War I.
The classic creation of Wright’s early career was the Robie House in Chicago, completed in 1909 (Figure 32.22). The three-story house marks the first use of weld- ed steel beams in residential construction. Making the fire- place the center of the architectural plan, Wright crossed the long main axis of the house with counteraxes of low cantilevered roofs that push out into space over terraces
and verandas. He subordinated decorative details to the overall design, allowing his materials—brick, glass, and natural rock—to assume major roles in establishing the unique character of the structure. As Wright insisted, “To use any material wrongly is to abuse the integrity of the whole design.” The result was a style consisting of crisp, interlocking planes, contrasting textures, and interpene- trating solids and voids—a domestic architecture that was as abstract and dynamic as an Analytic Cubist painting. Wright’s use of the cantilever and his integration of land- scape and house reached new imaginative heights in Fallingwater, the residence he designed in 1936 for the American businessman Edgar J. Kaufmann at Bear Run, Pennsylvania (Figure 32.23). Embracing a natural water- fall, the ferroconcrete and stone structure seems to grow organically out of the natural wooded setting, yet domi- nates that setting by its pristine equilibrium.
Figure 32.22 FRANK LLOYD WRIGHT, Robie House, Chicago, Illinois, 1909. Brick, glass, natural rock.
Figure 32.23 FRANK LLOYD WRIGHT, Fallingwater, Kaufmann House, Bear Run, Pennsylvania, 1936–1939. Reinforced concrete, stone, masonry, steel-framed doors and windows, enclosed area 5800 sq. ft. Wright rejected the machinelike qualities of International Style architecture. At Fallingwater, he made use of the local stone, integrating the cascading waters and local stream into the design.
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The Bauhaus and the International Style Wright’s synthesis of art and technology anticipated the establishment of the Bauhaus, Modernism’s most influen- tial school of architecture and applied art. Founded in 1919 by the German architect and visionary Walter Gropius (1883–1969), the Bauhaus pioneered an instructional pro- gram that united the technology of the Machine Age with the purest principles of functional design. Throughout its brief history (1919–1933), and despite its frequent reloca- tion (from Weimar to Dessau, and finally Berlin), the Bauhaus advocated a close relationship between the func- tion of an object and its formal design, whether in furni- ture, lighting fixtures, typography, photography, industrial products, or architecture.
Bauhaus instructors had little regard for traditional academic styles; they endorsed the new synthetic materials of modern technology, a stark simplicity of design, and the standardization of parts for affordable, mass-produced merchandise, as well as for large-scale housing. Some of Europe’s leading artists, including Kandinsky and Mondrian, taught at the Bauhaus. Like Gropius, these artists envisioned a new industrial society liberated by the principle of abstraction. They shared with the Russian Constructivists the utopian belief in the power of the arts to transform society. When the Nazis closed down the school in 1933, many of its finest instructors, such as the photographer László Moholy-Nagy, architect and designer Marcel Breuer, and artist Josef Albers, emigrated to the
United States, where they exercised tremendous influence on the development of American architecture and indus- trial art. (In 1929, a group of wealthy Americans had already established the first international collection of modern art: New York City’s Museum of Modern Art.)
Under the direction of Gropius, the Bauhaus launched the International Style in architecture, which brought to the marriage of structural steel, ferroconcrete, and sheet glass a formal precision and geometric austerity resembling a Mondrian painting (see Figure 32.19). In the four-story glass building Gropius designed to serve as the Bauhaus craft shops in Dessau, unadorned curtain walls of glass (which meet uninterrupted at the corners of the structure) were freely suspended on structural steel cantilevers (Figure 32.24). This fusion of functional space and mini- mal structure produced a purist style that paralleled the abstract trends in poetry, painting, and sculpture discussed earlier in this chapter.
Le Corbusier The revolutionary Swiss architect and town planner Charles-Edouard Jeanneret (1887–1965), who called himself Le Corbusier (a pun on the word “raven”), was not directly affiliated with the Bauhaus, but he shared Gropius’ fundamental concern for efficiency of design, standardization of building techniques, and the promotion of low-cost housing. In 1923, Le Corbusier wrote the trea- tise Towards a New Architecture, in which he proposed that
Figure 32.24 WALTER GROPIUS, workshop wing, Bauhaus Building, Dessau, Germany, 1925–1926. Steel and glass.
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modern architectural principles should imitate the effi- ciency of the machine. “Machines,” he predicted, “will lead to a new order both of work and of leisure.” Just as form follows function in the design of airplanes, automo- biles, and machinery in general, so it must in modern domestic architecture. Le Corbusier was fond of insisting that “the house is a machine for living [in].” With utopian fervor he urged,
We must create the mass-production spirit. The spirit of constructing mass-production houses. The spirit of living in mass-production houses. The spirit of conceiving mass-production houses.
If we eliminate from our hearts and minds all dead concepts in regard to the house, and look at the question from a critical and objective point of view, we shall arrive at the “House-Machine,” the mass-production house, healthy (and morally so too) and beautiful in the same way that the working tools and instruments that accompany our existence are beautiful.
In the Villa Savoye, a residence located outside of Paris at Poissy, Le Corbusier put these revolutionary concepts to work (Figure 32.25). The residence, now considered a “classic” of the International Style, consists of simple and unadorned masses of ferroconcrete punctured by ribbon windows. It is raised above the ground on pilotis, pillars that free the ground area of the site. (More recently, architects have abused the pilotis principle to create parking space for automobiles.) The Villa Savoye features a number of favorite Le Corbusier devices, such as the roof garden, the open floor plan that allows one to close off or open up space according to varying needs, and the free façade that consists of large areas of glass—so-called “curtain walls.”
Le Corbusier’s genius for fitting form to function led, during the 1930s, to his creation of the first high-rise urban apartment buildings—structures that housed more than a thousand people and consolidated facilities for shopping, recreation, and child care under a single roof (Figure 32.26). These “vertical cities,” as stripped of decorative details as the sculptures of Brancusi, have become hall- marks of urban Modernism.
Figure 32.25 LE CORBUSIER, Villa Savoye, Poissy, France, 1928–1929. Ferroconcrete and glass. The house illustrates the five principles for domestic architecture laid out by Le Corbusier in 1923: 1) elevation above the ground, 2) the flat roof, 3) the open floor plan, 4) exterior curtain walls, and 5) horizontal bands of windows.
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The music of the early twentieth century shared the Modernist assault on tradition, and most dramatically so in the areas of tonality and meter. Until the late nineteenth century, most music was tonal; that is, structured on a single key or tonal center. However, by the second decade of the twentieth century, musical compositions might be polyton- al (having several tonal centers) or atonal (without a tonal center). Further, instead of following a single meter, a mod- ern composition might be polyrhythmic (having two or more different meters at the same time), or (as with Imagist poems) it might obey no fixed or regular metrical pattern.
Modern composers tended to reject conventional modes of expression, including traditional harmonies and instrumentation. Melody—like recognizable subject mat- ter in painting—became of secondary importance to for- mal composition. Modernists invented no new forms comparable to the fugue or the sonata; rather, they explored innovative effects based on dissonance, the free use of meter, and the inventive combination of musical instruments, some of which they borrowed from non- Western cultures. They employed unorthodox sources of sound, such as sirens, bullhorns, and doorbells. Some incorporated silence in their compositions, much as Cubist sculptors introduced negative space into mass. The results were as startling to the ear as Cubism was to the eye.
Schoenberg The most radical figure in early twentieth-century music was the Austrian composer Arnold Schoenberg (1874– 1951). Schoenberg was born in Vienna, the city of Mozart and Beethoven. He learned to play the violin at the age of eight and began composing music in his late teens. Schoenberg’s first compositions were conceived in the romantic tradition, but by 1909 he began to develop a new
musical language punctuated by dissonant and unfamiliar chords. Instead of organizing tones around a home key (the tonal center) in the time-honored tradition of Western musical composition, he treated all twelve notes of the chromatic scale equally. Schoenberg’s atonal works use abrupt changes in rhythm, tone color, and dynamics— features evidenced in his expressionistic song cycle Pierrot Lunaire (Moonstruck Pierrot; see also chapter 33) and in his Five Pieces for Orchestra, Opus 16, both written in 1912. In the former work, which one critic described as “incompre- hensible as a Tibetan poem,” the instruments produce a succession of individual, contrasting tones that, like the Nonobjective canvases of his good friend Kandinsky, resist harmony and resolution.
During the 1920s, Schoenberg went on to formulate a unifying system for atonal composition based on serial technique. His type of serialism, called the “twelve-tone system,” demanded that the composer use all twelve tones of the chromatic scale either melodically or in chords before any one of the other eleven notes might be repeat- ed. The twelve-tone row might be inverted or played upside down or backwards—there are actually forty-eight possible musical combinations for each tone row. Serialism, like quantum theory or Mondrian’s “equivalence of opposites,” involved the strategic use of a sparse and elemental language of form. It engaged the composer in a rigidly formulaic (even mathematical) disposition of musical elements. In theory, the serial technique invited creative invention rather than mechanical application. Nevertheless, to the average listener, who could no longer leave the concert hall humming a melody, Schoenberg’s atonal compositions seemed forbidding and obscure.
Figure 32.26 LE CORBUSIER, Unité d’Habitation apartment block, Marseilles, France, 1946–1952.
See Music Listening Selections at end of chapter.��
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Stravinsky In 1913, the same year Ezra Pound issued his Imagist Manifesto and Malevich and Kandinsky painted their first Nonobjective canvases—a Paris audience witnessed the premiere of the ballet Le Sacre du printemps (The Rite of Spring). The piece was per- formed by the Ballets Russes, a com- pany of expatriate Russian dancers led by Sergei Diaghilev (1872–1929), and the music was written by the Russian composer Igor Stravinsky (1882– 1971; Figure 32.27). Shortly after the music began, catcalls, hissing, and booing disrupted the performance, as members of the audience protested the “shocking” sounds that were coming from the orches- tra. By the time the police arrived, Stravinsky had dis- appeared through a backstage window. What offended this otherwise sophisticated audience was Stravinsky’s bold combination of throbbing rhythms and dissonant har- monies, which, along with the jarring effects of a new style in choreography, ushered in the birth of modern music.
Stravinsky was one of the most influential figures in the history of twentieth-century music. Like Schoenberg, he began to study music at a young age. His family pressed him to pursue a career in law, but Stravinsky was intent on becoming a composer. At the age of twenty-eight, he left Russia for Paris, where he joined the Ballets Russes. Allied with some of the greatest artists of the time, including Picasso, the writer Jean Cocteau, and the choreographer Vaslav Nijinsky (1888–1950), Stravinsky was instrumental in making the Ballets Russes a leading force in modern dance theater. His influence on American music was equally great, especially after 1939, when he moved perma- nently to the United States.
Russian folk tales and songs provided inspiration for many of Stravinsky’s early compositions, including The Rite of Spring. Subtitled Pictures from Pagan Russia, this landmark piece was based on an ancient Slavonic ceremony that invoked the birth of spring with the ritual sacrifice of a young girl. The themes of death and resurrection associated with traditional pagan celebrations of seasonal change pro- vided the structure of the suite, which was divided into two parts: “The Fertility of the Earth” and “The Sacrifice.” Like Picasso and Gauguin, Stravinsky was captivated by primi- tivism; he shared the fascination with ancient rituals and tribal culture that had gripped late nineteenth-century Europe (see chapter 31). These subjects were popularized by Sir James Frazer in his widely acclaimed book, The Golden Bough (1890), which had been reissued in twelve volumes between 1911 and 1915.
The Rite of Spring is a pastoral piece, but its music lacks the calm grace traditionally associated with that genre. Its harsh chordal combinations and jarring shifts of meter set it apart from earlier pastorals, such as Debussy’s Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun. While Debussy’s tonal shifts are
as subtle and nuanced as a Monet seascape, Stravinsky’s are as abrupt and disjunctive as Picasso’s Demoiselles, so disjunctive, in fact, that critics questioned whether the composer was capable of writing conventional musical transitions. Although not atonal, portions of the composition are polytonal, while other passages are ambiguous in tonality, especially in the opening sections. If the shifting tonal-
ities and pounding rhythms of the piece were “savage,” as critics claimed, so too were its orchestral effects: Stravinsky’s unorthodox scoring calls for eighteen wood- wind instruments, eighteen brass instruments, and a quiro (a Latin American gourd that is scraped with a wooden stick). The Rite had an impact on twentieth-century music comparable to that of Les Demoiselles d’Avignon on the visual arts. It shattered the syntax of traditional musical language with a force similar to that which this painting had attacked traditional pictorial norms. It rewrote the rules of musical composition as they had been practiced for centuries. No greater assault on tradition could have been imagined at the time.
Nijinsky Only a year after his daring performance in Debussy’s Afternoon of a Faun (see chapter 31), Vaslav Nijinsky aroused even greater controversy with his choreography for The Rite of Spring. He took the raw, rhythmic complexity of Stravinsky’s score as inspiration for a series of frenzied leaps and wild, wheeling rounds that shocked the audience— and even disturbed Stravinsky. “They paw the ground, they stamp, they stamp, they stamp, and they stamp,” com- plained one French critic. Like The Rite itself, such chore- ography seemed to express what the critics called “the hidden primitive in man.” Interestingly enough, some of Nijinsky’s body movements—angular, disjunctive, and interrupted by frozen stillness (see Figure 31.2)—were rem- iniscent of Cubist paintings. Tragically, Nijinsky’s career came to an end in 1917, when he became incurably insane. In his ten years as the West’s first dance superstar, Nijinsky choreographed only four ballets; and not until 1987 was his most famous ballet, The Rite of Spring, revived for the American stage.
Graham The innovative character of early modern dance owed much to the pioneer American choreographer Martha Graham (1894–1991). Following Isadora Duncan (see
Figure 32.27 PABLO PICASSO, Igor Stravinsky, 1920. Drawing. Picasso, a master draftsman, was capable of switching from one style to another with great ease. Even as he executed drawings like this one, he was painting abstract canvases in the Synthetic Cubist style.
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The New Physics • During the first decades of the twentieth century, quantum
physicists provided a new model of the universe. Albert Einstein theorized that matter is a form of energy, and time and space are relative to the position of the observer. Werner Heisenberg concluded that the operations of the universe cannot be measured with absolute certainty.
• Revolutionary changes in science and technology provided the context for the Modernist assault on traditional modes of expression.
Early Twentieth-Century Poetry • Modern poets moved away from Romanticism to adopt a
conceptual and abstract literary style. The poems of the Imagists demonstrated a reduction of form that overtook naturalism and realistic representation.
• Led by Ezra Pound, the Imagists used free verse in the concentrated style of the Japanese haiku. Pound called on writers to “make it new” by eliminating all extraneous expression from their poems.
• T. S. Eliot’s Prufrock conveys the spiritual condition of the modern urban antihero in erudite free verse. Robert Frost’s straightforward, metered lyrics provided an alternative to the Modernist taste for dense literary allusions.
Early Twentieth-Century Art • Picasso assaulted tradition with the landmark painting Les
Demoiselles d’Avignon, which led the way to Cubism. Inspired by the works of Cézanne and by African art, Picasso, Braque, and Brancusi pursued the concentrated reduction of form.
• In Italy Futurists linked artistic expression to the machine technology of speed, electric lighting, and the new phenomenon of moving pictures.
chapter 31) and Nijinsky, Graham rejected the rules and conventions of classical ballet, preferring to explore the expressive power of natural movement. Drawing on the dance traditions of Asia, Africa, and Native America, she sought a direct correspondence between intangible emo- tions and physical gesture. Much of her choreography, such as that produced for Aaron Copland’s 1944 ballet suite, Appalachian Spring, was the visual narrative for a specific story (see chapter 34). Just as the Imagists arranged words to convey an emotional “shape” or sensation, so Graham found definitive gestures to express ineffable states of mind. Her dancers were trained to expose the process and tech- niques of dancing, rather than to conceal displays of physi- cal effort, as was expected in classical dance.
Balanchine In contrast with Graham, George Balanchine (1904– 1983) developed a dance idiom that was storyless, abstract, and highly structured. Balanchine was a Russian choreog- rapher who spent his early career in Paris with Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes. He was deeply influenced by the musical innovations of his friend and compatriot, Igor Stravinsky, with whom he often collaborated—Stravinsky wrote the scores for at least four of his ballets.
Balanchine prized musically driven dance and pure artistic form. Loyal to the 350-year-old idiom of classical
ballet, he insisted on rigorous academic dance training and the use of traditional toe-shoes. However, he rejected the dance-drama vocabulary of former centuries, preferring a Modernist energy that emphasized speed and verve. His choreography, according to one critic, “pushed dance into the space age.” In 1934, Balanchine was persuaded to come to the United States, where he helped to found the School of American Ballet.
Dunham The development of modern dance owes much to the genius of Katharine Dunham (1909–2006). The “Mother of Black Dance,” Dunham was both a choreographer and a trained anthropologist. Her doctoral work at the universi- ty of Chicago investigated the vast resources of the black heritage, ranging from African-American slave dances to the dance histories of the Caribbean. Her choreography drew on the dance styles of the late nineteenth century, when all-black theatrical companies and minstrel shows toured the United States. Freely improvising on tap-dance styles and on popular American dances such as the high- stepping cakewalk, she would, in her later career (see chapter 36) give serious attention to the dance idioms of native societies in Haiti and Trinidad. In the 1930s, she formed her own company—the first, and for some thirty years, the only black dance company in America.
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abstraction the process by which subject matter is pared down or simplified in order to capture intrinsic or essential qualities; also, any work of art that reflects this process
assemblage an artwork composed of three-dimensional objects, either natural or manufactured; the sculptural counterpart of collage
atonality in music, the absence of a tonal center or definite key
avant-garde (French, “vanguard”) those who create or produce styles and ideas ahead
of their time; also, an unconventional movement or style
cantilever a projecting beam firmly anchored at one end and unsupported at the other
collage (French, coller, “to paste”) a composition created by pasting materials such as newspaper, wallpaper, photographs, or cloth on a flat surface or canvas
ferroconcrete a cement building material reinforced by embedding wire or iron rods; also called “reinforced concrete”
haiku a Japanese light verse form consisting of seventeen syllables (three lines of five, seven, and five)
Nonobjective Art art that lacks recognizable subject matter; also called “nonrepresentational art”
polyrhythm in music, the device of using two or more different rhythms at the same time; also known as “polymeter”
polytonality in music, the simultaneous use of multiple tonal centers or keys; for compositions using only
two tonal centers, the word “bitonality” applies
serial technique in music, a technique that involves the use of a particular series of notes, rhythms, and other elements that are repeated over and over throughout the piece
twelve-tone system a kind of serial music that demands the use of all twelve notes of the chromatic scale (all twelve half- tones in an octave) in a particular order or series; no one note can be used again until all eleven have appeared
• Matisse led the Fauves in employing flat bright colors for canvases that critics condemned as “color madness.”
• With Kandinsky, Malevich, and Mondrian, painting freed itself entirely of recognizable objects. These artists shared a utopian faith in the reforming power of purist, Nonobjective Art.
• A more practical application of Nonobjective abstraction was undertaken by the Russian Constructivists, who applied purist design to functional products, including industrial arts, theater sets, textile design, typography, and architecture.
Early Twentieth-Century Architecture • Frank Lloyd Wright invested the techniques of glass and steel
technology and the functional principle of the cantilever with the aesthetics of Japanese art to create a modern style of domestic architecture.
• Gropius, founder of the Bauhaus in Germany, established a program of functional design that featured the use of new synthetic materials and the pursuit of geometric austerity in art and architecture. Bauhaus instructors provided the models for modern industrial design.
• Le Corbusier, pioneer of the vertical city, developed the International Style, which proclaimed the credo: form follows function. Insisting that “the house is a machine for living [in],” Le Corbusier introduced some of the classic elements of modern urban architecture, including the open floor plan, the flat roof, and the use of glass “curtain walls.”
Early Twentieth-Century Music • Arnold Schoenberg and Igor Stravinsky introduced atonality,
polytonality, and polyrhythm as formal alternatives to the time-honored Western traditions of pleasing harmonies and uniform meter.
• Schoenberg, who started working in traditional forms, turned to atonality with a serial technique known as the “twelve-tone system,” by which the composer makes use of all twelve tones on the chromatic scale before repeating any one of the other tones.
• As a powerful form of disjunctive expression, Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring had an effect on musical composition equivalent to that of Les Demoiselles d’Avignon on painting.
The Beginnings of Modern Dance • The Russian dancer Vaslav Nijinsky followed the call to “make it
new” with wild and frenzied choreography that broke with the traditions of academic dance.
• America’s Martha Graham, who studied the dance history of other cultures, emphasized expressive natural movement to reflect human emotions in her choreography.
• Working closely with Stravinsky, Balanchine created non-narrative ballets that invested Modernist abstraction with rigorous academic dance training.
• The first black dance company was founded by Katharine Dunham who was strongly influenced by popular American dance styles and by the dance traditions of Haiti and Trinidad.
CD Two Selection 17 Schoenberg, Pierrot Lunaire, Op. 21, Part 3, No. 15, “Heimweh,” 1912.
CD Two Selection 18 Stravinsky, The Rite of Spring, “Sacrificial Dance,” 1913, excerpt.
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The Freudian Revolution ca. 1900–1950
Chapter
33
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Figure 33.1 PAUL KLEE, Fish Magic, 1925. Oil on canvas, mounted on board, 303⁄8 � 3 ft. 21⁄2 in. This pictorial fairy tale may have been inspired by Klee’s visit to an aquarium in Naples, Italy. Describing his style, Klee wrote, “My aim is to create much spirituality out of little.”
“Only children, madmen, and savages truly understand the ‘in-between’ world of spiritual truth.” Paul Klee
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L O O K I N G A H E A D
Freud
CHAPTER 33 The Freudian Revolution 381
381Volume2
No figure in modern Western history has had more influence on
our perception of ourselves than Sigmund Freud. This brilliant
physician rocked the modern West with writings that opened the
subjects of human sexuality and behavior to public discourse and
debate. He was the first to map the geography of the psyche
(mind), making it the object of methodical, scientific research.
Freud’s theories suggested that the conscious self was only a
small part of one’s psychical life. He presented a radical model of
the human mind that would resonate through the arts of the twen-
tieth century, affecting literature and theater, music and the visu-
al arts, including the new medium of film.
While Freud himself believed as firmly as any Enlightenment
philosophe in the reforming power of reason, his model of the
unconscious challenged the supremacy of reason itself.
Copernicus had dislodged human beings from their central place
in the cosmos; Darwin had deposed Homo sapiens from his
privileged status as God’s ultimate creation; now Freud, uncover-
ing the mysterious realm of the unconscious, challenged the
long-standing belief that reason was the fundamental monitor of
human behavior.
Sigmund Freud (1856–1939) graduated in medicine from the university of Vienna in 1880. His early work with severely disturbed patients, followed by a period of intensive self-analysis, led him to develop a systematic procedure for treating emotional illnesses. The founder of psychoanalysis, a therapeutic method by which repressed desires are brought to the conscious level to reveal the sources of emotional disturbance, Freud pioneered its principal tools: dream analysis and “free association” (the spontaneous verbalization of thoughts). He favored these techniques over hypnosis, the procedure preferred by notable physicians with whom he had studied.
Freud theorized that instinctual drives, especially the libido, or sex drive, governed human behavior. Guilt from the repression of instinctual urges dominates the uncon- scious life of human beings and manifests itself in emotion- al illness. Most psychic disorders, he argued, were the result of sexual traumas stemming from the child’s unconscious attachment to the parent of the opposite sex and jealousy of the parent of the same sex, a phenomenon Freud called the Oedipus complex (in reference to the ancient Greek legend in which Oedipus, king of Thebes, unwittingly kills his father and marries his mother). Freud shocked the world with his analysis of infant sexuality and, more gener- ally, with his claim that the psychic lives of human beings were formed by the time they were five years old.
Of all his discoveries, Freud considered his research on dream analysis the most important. In 1900 he pub- lished The Interpretation of Dreams, in which he defended the significance of dreams in deciphering the unconscious life of the individual. In Totem and Taboo (1913), he exam- ined the function of the unconscious in the evolution of the earliest forms of religion and morality. And in “The Sexual Life of Human Beings,” a lecture presented to medical stu- dents at the university of Vienna in 1916, he examined the psychological roots of sadism, homosexuality, fetishism, and voyeurism—subjects still considered taboo in some social circles. Freud’s theories opened the door to the clinical appraisal of previously guarded types of human behavior. By bringing attention to the central place of erotic desire in human life, his writings irrevocably altered popular attitudes toward human sexuality. His work also had a major impact on the treatment of the mentally ill. Until at least the eighteenth century, people generally regarded psychotic behavior as evidence of possession by demonic or evil spirits, and the mentally ill were often locked up like animals. Freud’s studies argued that neuroses and psychoses were illnesses that required medical treatment.
The Tripartite Psyche In describing the activities of the human mind, Freud proposed a theoretical model, the terms of which (though often oversimplified and misunderstood) have become basic to psychology (the study of mind and behavior) and fundamental to our everyday vocabulary. This model pictures the psyche as consisting of three parts: the id, the ego, and the superego. The id, according to Freud, is the seat of human instincts and the source of all physical desires, including nourishment and sexual satisfaction. Seeking fulfillment in accordance with the pleasure principle, the id (and in particular the libido) is the compelling force of the unconscious realm.
Freud described the second part of the psyche, the ego, as the administrator of the id: the ego is the “manager” that attempts to adapt the needs of the id to the real world. Whether by dreams or by sublimation (the positive modi- fication and redirection of primal urges), the ego mediates between potentially destructive desires and social necessi- ties. In Freud’s view, civilization is the product of the ego’s effort to modify the primal urges of the id. The third agent in the psychic life of the human being, the superego, is the moral monitor commonly called the “conscience.” The superego monitors human behavior according to principles inculcated by parents, teachers, and other authority figures.
Civilization and Its Discontents By challenging reason as the governor of human action, Freud questioned the very nature of human morality. He described benevolent action and altruistic conduct as mere masks for self-gratification, and religion as a form of mass delusion. Such views were central to the essay Civilization and Its Discontents, in which Freud explored at length the relationship between psychic activity and human society. Enumerating the various ways in which all human beings
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attempt to escape the “pain and unpleasure” of life, Freud argued that civilization itself was the collective product of sublimated instincts. The greatest impediment to civiliza- tion, he claimed, was human aggression, which he defined as “an original, self-subsisting instinctual disposition in man.” The following excerpts offer some idea of Freud’s incisive analysis of the psychic life of human beings.
From Freud’s Civilization and Its Discontents (1930)
We will . . . turn to the less ambitious question of what men 1 themselves show by their behavior to be the purpose and intention of their lives. What do they demand of life and wish to achieve in it? The answer to this can hardly be in doubt. They strive after happiness; they want to become happy and to remain so. This endeavor has two sides, a positive and a negative aim. It aims, on the one hand, at an absence of pain and unpleasure, and, on the other, at the experiencing of strong feelings of pleasure. In its narrower sense the word “happiness” only relates to the last. In conformity with this 10 dichotomy in his aims, man’s activity develops in two directions, according as it seeks to realize—in the main, or even exclusively—the one or the other of these aims.
As we see, what decides the purpose of life is simply the programme of the pleasure principle. This principle dominates the operation of the mental apparatus from the start. There can be no doubt about its efficacy, and yet its programme is at loggerheads with the whole world, with the macrocosm as much as with the microcosm. There is no possibility at all of its being carried through; all the regulations of the universe 20 run counter to it. One feels inclined to say that the intention that man should be “happy” is not included in the plan of “Creation.” What we call happiness in the strictest sense comes from the (preferably sudden) satisfaction of needs which have been dammed up to a high degree, and it is from its nature only possible as an episodic phenomenon. When any situation that is desired by the pleasure principle is prolonged, it only produces a feeling of mild contentment. We are so made that we can derive intense enjoyment only from a contrast and very little from a state of things. Thus our 30 possibilities of happiness are already restricted by our constitution. Unhappiness is much less difficult to experience. We are threatened with suffering from three directions: from our own body, which is doomed to decay and dissolution and which cannot even do without pain and anxiety as warning signals; from the external world, which may rage against us with overwhelming and merciless forces of destruction; and finally from our relations to other men. The suffering which comes from this last source is perhaps more painful to us than any other. We tend to regard it as a kind of gratuitous 40 addition, although it cannot be any less fatefully inevitable than the suffering which comes from elsewhere. . . .
An unrestricted satisfaction of every need presents itself as the most enticing method of conducting one’s life, but it means putting enjoyment before caution, and soon brings its own punishment. The other methods in which avoidance of
unpleasure is the main purpose, are differentiated according to the source of unpleasure to which their attention is chiefly turned. Some of these methods are extreme and some moderate; some are one-sided and some attack the problem 50 simultaneously at several points. Against the suffering which may come upon one from human relationships the readiest safeguard is voluntary isolation, keeping oneself aloof from other people. The happiness which can be achieved along this path is, as we see, the happiness of quietness. Against the dreaded external world one can only defend oneself by some kind of turning away from it, if one intends to solve the task by oneself. There is, indeed, another and better path: that of becoming a member of the human community, and, with the help of a technique guided by science, going over to the attack 60 against nature and subjecting her to the human will. Then one is working with all for the good of all. But the most interesting methods of averting suffering are those which seek to influence our own organism. In the last analysis, all suffering is nothing else than sensation; it only exists in so far as we feel it, and we only feel it in consequence of certain ways in which our organism is regulated.
The crudest, but also the most effective among these methods of influence is the chemical one—intoxication. I do not think that anyone completely understands its mechanism, 70 but it is a fact that there are foreign substances which, when present in the blood or tissues, directly cause us pleasurable sensations; and they also so alter the conditions governing our sensibility that we become incapable of receiving unpleasurable impulses. The two effects not only occur simultaneously, but seem to be intimately bound up with each other. But there must be substances in the chemistry of our own bodies which have similar effects, for we know at least one pathological state, mania, in which a condition similar to intoxication arises without the administration of any 80 intoxicating drug. Besides this, our normal mental life exhibits oscillations between a comparatively easy liberation of pleasure and a comparatively difficult one, parallel with which there goes a diminished or an increased receptivity to unpleasure. It is greatly to be regretted that this toxic side of mental processes has so far escaped scientific examination. The service rendered by intoxicating media in the struggle for happiness and in keeping misery at a distance is so highly prized as a benefit that individuals and people alike have given them an established place in the economics of their 90 libido.1 We owe to such media not merely the immediate yield of pleasure, but also a greatly desired degree of independence from the external world. For one knows that, with the help of this “drowner of cares,” one can at any time withdraw from the pressure of reality and find refuge in a world of one’s own with better conditions of sensibility. As is well known, it is precisely this property of intoxicants which also determines their danger and their injuriousness. They are responsible, in certain circumstances, for the useless waste of a large quota of energy which might have been employed for the 100 improvement of the human lot. . . .
1 The instinctual desires of the id, most specifically, the sexual urge.
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people an individual neurosis. But hardly anything more. . . . 160 During the last few generations mankind has made an extraordinary advance in the natural sciences and in their technical application and has established his control over nature in a way never before imagined. The single steps of this advance are common knowledge and it is unnecessary to enumerate them. Men are proud of those achievements, and have a right to be. But they seem to have observed that this newly-won power over space and time, this subjugation of the forces of nature, which is the fulfillment of a longing that goes back thousands of years, has not increased the amount of 170 pleasurable satisfaction which they may expect from life and has not made them feel happier. From the recognition of this fact we ought to be content to conclude that power over nature is not the only precondition of human happiness, just as it is not the only goal of cultural endeavor; we ought not to infer from it that technical progress is without value for the economics of our happiness. One would like to ask: is there, then, no positive gain in pleasure, no unequivocal increase in my feeling of happiness, if I can, as often as I please, hear the voice of a child of mine who is living hundreds of miles away 180 or if I can learn in the shortest possible time after a friend has reached his destination that he has come through the long and difficult voyage unharmed? Does it mean nothing that medicine has succeeded in enormously reducing infant mortality and the danger of infection for women in childbirth and, indeed, in considerably lengthening the average life of a civilized man? And there is a long list that might be added to benefits of this kind which we owe to the much-despised era of scientific and technical advances. But here the voice of pessimistic criticism makes itself heard and warns us that 190 most of these satisfactions follow the model of the “cheap enjoyment” extolled in the anecdote—the enjoyment obtained by putting a bare leg from under the bedclothes on a cold winter night and drawing it in again. If there had been no railway to conquer distances, my child would never have left his native town and I should need no telephone to hear his voice; if travelling across the ocean by ship had not been introduced, my friend would not have embarked on his sea- voyage and I should not need a cable to relieve my anxiety about him. What is the use of reducing infantile mortality 200 when it is precisely that reduction which imposes the greatest restraint on us in the begetting of children, so that, taken all round, we nevertheless rear no more children than in the days before the reign of hygiene, while at the same time we have created difficult conditions for our sexual life in marriage, and have probably worked against the beneficial effects of natural selection? And, finally, what good to us is a long life if it is difficult and barren of joys, and if it is so full of misery that we can only welcome death as a deliverer? . . .
. . . men are not gentle creatures who want to be loved, and 210 who at the most can defend themselves if they are attacked; they are, on the contrary, creatures among whose instinctual endowments is to be reckoned a powerful share of aggressiveness. As a result, their neighbor is for them not only a potential helper or sexual object, but also someone who tempts them to satisfy their aggressiveness on him, to exploit his capacity for work without compensation, to use him
Another technique for fending off suffering is the employment of the displacements of libido which our mental apparatus permits of and through which its function gains so much in flexibility. The task here is that of shifting the instinctual aims in such a way that they cannot come up against frustration from the external world. In this, sublimation of the instincts lends its assistance. One gains the most if one can sufficiently heighten the yield of pleasure from the sources of psychical and intellectual work. When that is so, 110 fate can do little against one. A satisfaction of this kind, such as an artist’s joy in creating, in giving his phantasies body, or a scientist’s in solving problems or discovering truths, has a special quality which we shall certainly one day be able to characterize in metapsychological terms. At present we can only say figuratively that such satisfactions seem “finer and higher.” But their intensity is mild as compared with that derived from the sating of crude and primary instinctual impulses; it does not convulse our physical being. And the weak point of this method is that it is not applicable generally: 120 it is accessible to only a few people. It presupposes the possession of special dispositions and gifts which are far from being common to any practical degree. And even to the few who do possess them, this method cannot give complete protection from suffering. It creates no impenetrable armor against the arrows of fortune, and it habitually fails when the source of suffering is a person’s own body. . . .
Another procedure operates more energetically and more thoroughly. It regards reality as the sole enemy and as the source of all suffering, with which it is impossible to live, so 130 that one must break off all relations with it if one is to be in any way happy. The hermit turns his back on the world and will have no truck with it. But one can do more than that; one can try to re-create the world, to build up in its stead another world in which its most unbearable features are eliminated and replaced by others that are in conformity with one’s own wishes. But whoever, in desperate defiance, sets out upon this path to happiness will as a rule attain nothing. Reality is too strong for him. He becomes a madman, who for the most part finds no one to help him in carrying through his delusion. It is 140 asserted, however, that each one of us behaves in some one respect like a paranoiac, corrects some aspect of the world which is unbearable to him by the construction of a wish and introduces this delusion into reality. A special importance attaches to the case in which this attempt to procure a certainty of happiness and a protection against suffering through a delusional remoulding of reality is made by a considerable number of people in common. The religions of mankind must be classed among the mass-delusions of this kind. No one, needless to say, who shares a delusion ever 150 recognizes it as such. . . .
Religion restricts this play of choice and adaptation, since it imposes equally on everyone its own path to the acquisition of happiness and protection from suffering. Its technique consists in depressing the value of life and distorting the picture of the real world in a delusional manner—which presupposes an intimidation of the intelligence. At this price, by forcibly fixing them in a state of psychical infantilism and by drawing them into a mass-delusion, religion succeeds in sparing many
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Q What, according to Freud, are the three main sources of human suffering? By what means does one fend off suffering?
Q What does Freud see as the greatest threat to civilized society?
E X P L O R I N G I S S U E S Freud versus the Critics
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sexually without his consent, to seize his possessions, to humiliate him, to cause him pain, to torture and to kill him. . . .
The existence of this inclination to aggression, which we 220 can detect in ourselves and justly assume to be present in others, is the factor which disturbs our relations with our neighbor and which forces civilization into such a high expenditure [of energy]. In consequence of this primary mutual hostility of human beings, civilized society is perpetually threatened with disintegration. The interest of work in common would not hold it together; instinctual passions are stronger than reasonable interests. Civilization has to use its utmost efforts in order to set limits to man’s aggressive instincts and to hold the manifestations of them in check by 230 psychical reaction-formations. Hence, therefore, the use of methods intended to incite people into identifications and aim- inhibited relationships of love, hence the restriction upon sexual life, and hence too the [idealist] commandment to love one’s neighbor as oneself—a commandment which is really justified by the fact that nothing else runs so strongly counter to the original nature of man. In spite of every effort, these endeavors of civilization have not so far achieved very much. It hopes to prevent the crudest excesses of brutal violence by itself assuming the right to use violence against criminals, but 240 the law is not able to lay hold of the more cautious and refined manifestations of human aggressiveness. The time comes when each one of us has to give up as illusions the expectations which, in his youth, he pinned upon his fellowmen, and when he may learn how much difficulty and pain has been added to his life by their ill-will. . . .
Freud’s Followers Freud’s immediate followers recognized that they stood in the shadow of an intellectual giant. Although some theo- rists disagreed with his dogmatic assertion that all neuroses stemmed from the traumas of the id, most took his discov- eries as the starting point for their own inquiries into human behavior. For instance, Freud’s Viennese associate Alfred Adler (1870–1937), who pioneered the field of individual psychology, worked to explain the ego’s efforts to adapt to its environment. Coining the term “inferiority complex,” Adler concentrated on analyzing problems related to the ego’s failure to achieve its operational goals in everyday life.
Another of Freud’s colleagues, the Swiss physician Carl Gustav Jung (1875–1961), found Freud’s view of the psyche too narrow and overly deterministic. Jung argued that the personal, unconscious life of the individual rested on a deeper and more universal layer of the human psyche, which he called the collective unconscious. According to Jung, the collective unconscious belongs to humankind at large, that is, to the human family. It manifests itself throughout history in the form of dreams, myths, and fairy tales. The archetypes (primal patterns) of that realm reflect the deep psychic needs of humankind as a species. They reveal themselves as familiar motifs and characters, such as “the child-god,” “the hero,” and “the wise old man.” Jung’s investigations into the cultural history of humankind disclosed similarities between the symbols and myths of different religions and bodies of folklore. These he took to support his theory that the archetypes were the innate, inherited contents of the human mind.
Some of Jung’s most convincing observations concern- ing the life of the collective unconscious appear in his essay “Psychological Aspects of the Mother Archetype” (1938). Here, Jung discusses the manifestations of the female archetype in personal life, as mother, grandmother,
As with most great thinkers, Freud made some questionable judgments, many of which came under attack before the end of the twentieth century. Revisionists questioned his theories on repression, arguing that they were scientifically untestable. Feminists took issue with his analysis of female sexuality (which holds that “penis envy” afflicts women), and his patriarchal perception of womankind as passive, weak, and dependent (see chapter 36). Proponents of biomedical psychiatry and behavioral psychology questioned the effectiveness of psychoanalysis itself. Still in progress is the debate as to whether mental illnesses are biological dysfunctions (best treated pharmacologically), psychological
dysfunctions related to infant or early childhood trauma (best treated by some form of psychotherapy), or both.
While Freud may be less valued today as an empirical scientist, he remains celebrated as a monumental visionary. His writings anticipated many of the recent developments in neuropsychiatry, the branch of medicine dealing with diseases of the mind and the nervous system. His theories continue to be tested. In the long run, however, Freud’s most important contributions may be found to lie in modern intellectual history, specifically, in his thesis that the inner functions of the mind are valid and meaningful elements of the personality, and in his assertion that dreams and fantasies are as vital to human life as reason itself.
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In the first volume of A la recherche du temps perdu, enti- tled Swann’s Way, Proust employs the Freudian technique of “free association” to recapture from the recesses of memo- ry the intense moment of pleasure occasioned by the taste of a piece of cake soaked in tea. The following excerpt illustrates Proust’s ability to free experience from the rigid order of mechanical time and to invade the richly textured storehouse of the psyche. It also illustrates the modern notion of the mental process as a “stream of thought,” a concept that had appeared as early as 1884 in the writings of the American psychologist William James (1842–1910) and in the works of Henri Bergson (1859–1941), who described reality as a perpetual flux in which past and pres- ent are inseparable (see chapter 31).
From Proust’s Swann’s Way (1913)
The past is hidden somewhere outside the realm, beyond the 1 reach of intellect, in some material object (in the sensation which that material object will give us) which we do not suspect. And as for that object, it depends on chance whether we come upon it or not before we ourselves must die.
Many years had elapsed during which nothing of Combray, save what was comprised in the theatre and the drama of my going to bed there, had any existence for me, when one day in winter, as I came home, my mother, seeing that I was cold, offered me some tea, a thing I did not ordinarily take. I 10 declined at first, and then, for no particular reason, changed my mind. She sent out for one of those short, plump little cakes called “petites madeleines,” which look as though they had been moulded in the fluted scallop of a pilgrim’s shell. And soon, mechanically, weary after a dull day with the prospect of a depressing morrow, I raised to my lips a spoonful of the tea in which I had soaked a morsel of the cake. No sooner had the warm liquid, and the crumbs with it, touched my palate than a shudder ran through my whole body, and I stopped, intent upon the extraordinary changes that were 20 taking place. An exquisite pleasure had invaded my senses, but individual, detached, with no suggestion of its origin. And at once the vicissitudes of life had become indifferent to me, its disasters innocuous, its brevity illusory—this new sensation having had on me the effect which love has of filling me with a precious essence; or rather this essence was not in me, it was myself. I had ceased now to feel mediocre, accidental, mortal. Whence could it have come to me, this all- powerful joy? I was conscious that it was connected with the taste of tea and cake, but that it infinitely transcended those 30 savours, could not, indeed, be of the same nature as theirs. Whence did it come? What did it signify? How could I seize upon and define it?
I drink a second mouthful, in which I find nothing more than in the first, a third, which gives me rather less than the second. It is time to stop; the potion is losing its magic. It is plain that the object of my quest, the truth, lies not in the cup but in myself. The tea has called up in me, but does not itself understand, and can only repeat indefinitely with a gradual loss of strength, the same testimony; which I, too, cannot 40 interpret, though I hope at least to be able to call upon the tea
stepmother, nurse, or governess; in religion, as the redemp- tive Mother of God, the Virgin, Holy Wisdom, and the various nature deities of ancient myth and religion; and in the universal symbols associated with fertility and fruitful- ness, such as the cornucopia, the garden, the fountain, the cave, the rose, the lotus, the magic circle, and the uterus. The negative aspect of the female archetype, observed Jung, usually manifests itself as the witch in traditional fairy tales and legends.
Jung emphasized the role of the collective unconscious in reflecting the “psychic unity” of all cultures. He treated the personal psyche as part of the larger human family, and, unlike Freud, he insisted on the positive value of religion in satisfying humankind’s deepest psychic desires.
The impact of the new psychology was felt throughout Europe. Freud’s theories, and particularly his pessimistic view of human nature, intensified the mood of uncertain- ty produced by the startling revelations of atomic physics and the outbreak of World War I. The Freudian revolu- tion affected all aspects of artistic expression, not the least of which was literature. A great many figures in early twentieth-century fiction were profoundly influenced by Freud; three of the most famous of these are Marcel Proust, Franz Kafka, and James Joyce. In the works of these novelists, the most significant events are those that take place in the psychic life of dreams and memory. The narrative line of the story may be interrupted by unex- pected leaps of thought, intrusive recollections, self- reflections, and sudden dead ends. Fantasy may alternate freely with rational thought. The lives of the heroes—or, more exactly, antiheroes—in these stories are often inconsequential, while their concerns, though common- place or trivial, may be obsessive, bizarre, and charged with passion.
Proust’s Quest for Lost Time Born in Paris, Marcel Proust (1871–1922) spent his youth troubled by severe attacks of asthma and recurring insecu- rities over his sexual orientation. Devastated by the death of his mother in 1905, Proust withdrew completely from Parisian society. He retreated into the semidarkness of a cork- lined room, where, shielded from noise, light, and frivolous society, he pursued a life of introspection and literary endeavor. Between 1909 and 1922 Proust produced a sixteen- volume novel entitled A la recherche du temps perdu (liter- ally, “In Search of Lost Time,” but usually translated as Remembrance of Things Past). This lengthy masterpiece pro- vides a reflection of the society of turn-of-the-century France, but its perception of reality is wholly internal. Its central theme is the role of memory in retrieving past experience and in shaping the private life of the individual. Proust’s mission was to rediscover a sense of the past by reviving sensory experiences buried deep within his psyche, that is, to bring the unconscious life to the conscious level. “For me,” explained Proust, “the novel is . . . psychology in space and time.”
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Q What role does the madeleine play in these relationships?
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for it again and to find it there presently, intact and at my disposal, for my final enlightenment. I put down my cup and examine my own mind. It is for it to discover the truth. But how? What an abyss of uncertainty whenever the mind feels that some part of it has strayed beyond its own borders; when it, the seeker, is at once the dark region through which it must go seeking, where all its equipment will avail it nothing. Seek? More than that: create. It is face to face with something which does not so far exist, to which it alone can give reality and 50 substance, which it alone can bring into the light of day.
And I begin again to ask myself what it could have been, this unremembered state which brought with it no logical proof of its existence, but only the sense that it was a happy, that it was a real state in whose presence other states of consciousness melted and vanished. I decide to attempt to make it reappear. I retrace my thoughts to the moment at which I drank the first spoonful of tea. I find again the same state, illumined by no fresh light. I compel my mind to make one further effort, to follow and recapture once again the 60 fleeting sensation. And that nothing may interrupt it in its course I shut out every obstacle, every extraneous idea, I stop my ears and inhibit all attention to the sounds which come from the next room. And then, feeling that my mind is growing fatigued without having any success to report, I compel it for a change to enjoy that distraction which I have just denied it, to think of other things, to rest and refresh itself before the supreme attempt. And then for the second time I clear an empty space in front of it. I place in position before my mind’s eye the still recent taste of that first mouthful, and I feel 70 something start within me, something that leaves its resting- place and attempts to rise, something that has been embedded like an anchor at a great depth; I do not know yet what it is, but I can feel it mounting slowly; I can measure the resistance, I can hear the echo of great spaces traversed.
Undoubtedly what is thus palpitating in the depths of my being must be the image, the visual memory which, being linked to that taste, has tried to follow it into my conscious mind. But its struggles are too far off, too much confused; scarcely can I perceive the colorless reflection in which are 80 blended the uncapturable whirling medley of radiant hues, and I cannot distinguish its form, cannot invite it, as the one possible interpreter, to translate to me the evidence of its contemporary, its inseparable paramour, the taste of cake soaked in tea; cannot ask it to inform me what special circumstance is in question, of what period in my past life.
Will it ultimately reach the clear surface of my consciousness, this memory, this old, dead moment which the magnetism of an identical moment has travelled so far to importune, to disturb, to raise up out of the very depths of my being? I cannot tell. 90 Now that I feel nothing, it has stopped, has perhaps gone down again into its darkness, from which who can say whether it will ever rise? Ten times over I must essay the task, must lean down over the abyss. And each time the natural laziness which deters us from every difficult enterprise, every work of importance, has urged me to leave the thing alone, to drink my tea and to think merely of the worries of to-day and of my hopes for tomorrow, which let themselves be pondered over without effort or distress of mind.
And suddenly the memory returns. The taste was that of 100 the little crumb of madeleine which on Sunday mornings at Combray (because on those mornings I did not go out before church-time), when I went to say good day to her in her bedroom, my aunt Léonie used to give me, dipping it first in her own cup of real or of lime-flower tea. The sight of the little madeleine had recalled nothing to my mind before I tasted it; perhaps because I had so often seen such things in the interval, without tasting them, on the trays in pastry-cooks’ windows, that their image had dissociated itself from those Combray days to take its place among others more recent; 110 perhaps because of those memories, so long abandoned and put out of mind, nothing now survived, everything was scattered; the forms of things, including that of the little scallop-shell of pastry, so richly sensual under its severe, religious folds, were either obliterated or had been so long dormant as to have lost the power of expansion which would have allowed them to resume their place in my consciousness. But when from a long-distant past nothing subsists, after the people are dead, after the things are broken and scattered, still, alone, more fragile, but with more vitality, more 120 unsubstantial, more persistent, more faithful, the smell and taste of things remain poised a long time, like souls, ready to remind us, waiting and hoping for their moment, amid the ruins of all the rest; and bear unfaltering, in the tiny and almost impalpable drop of their essence, the vast structure of recollection.
And once I had recognized the taste of the crumb of madeleine soaked in her decoction of lime-flowers which my aunt used to give me (although I did not yet know and must long postpone the discovery of why this memory made me so 130 happy) immediately the old grey house upon the street, where her room was, rose up like the scenery of a theatre to attach itself to the little pavilion, opening on to the garden, which had been built out behind it for my parents (the isolated panel which until that moment had been all that I could see); and with the house the town, from morning to night and in all weathers, the Square where I was sent before luncheon, the streets along which I used to run errands, the country roads we took when it was fine. And just as the Japanese amuse themselves by filling a porcelain bowl with water and steeping 140 in it little crumbs of paper which until then are without character or form, but, the moment they become wet, stretch themselves and bend, take on color and distinctive shape, become flowers or houses or people, permanent and recognisable, so in that moment all the flowers in our garden and in M. Swann’s park, and the water-lilies on the Vivonne and the good folk of the village and their little dwellings and the parish church and the whole of Combray and of its surroundings, taking their proper shapes and growing solid, sprang into being, towns and gardens alike, from my cup of tea. . . . 150
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The Nightmare Reality of Kafka For Proust, memory was a life-enriching phenomenon, but for the German-Jewish novelist Franz Kafka (1883–1924), the subconscious life gave conscious experience bizarre and threatening gravity. Written in German, Kafka’s novels and short stories take on the reality of dreams in which characters are nameless, details are precise but grotesque, and events lack logical consistency. In the nightmarish world of his novels, the central characters become victims of unknown or imprecisely understood forces. They may be caught in absurd but commonplace circumstances involv- ing guilt and frustration, or they may be threatened by menacing events that appear to have neither meaning nor purpose. In The Trial (1925), for instance, the protagonist is arrested, convicted, and executed, without ever knowing the nature of his crime. In “The Metamorphosis,” one of the most disquieting short stories of the twentieth century, the central character, Gregor Samsa, wakes one morning to discover that he has turned into a large insect. The themes of insecurity and vulnerability that recur in Kafka’s novels reflect the mood that prevailed during the early decades of the century. Kafka himself was afflicted with this insecuri- ty: shortly before he died in 1924, he asked a close friend to burn all of his manuscripts; the friend disregarded the request and saw to it that Kafka’s works, even some that were unfinished, were published. Consequently, Kafka’s style, which builds on deliberate ambiguity and fearful con- tradiction, has had a major influence on modern fiction. Although “The Metamorphosis” is too long to reproduce here in full, the excerpt that follows conveys some idea of Kafka’s surreal narrative style.
From Kafka’s “The Metamorphosis” (1915)
As Gregor Samsa awoke one morning from uneasy dreams he 1 found himself transformed in his bed into a gigantic insect. He was lying on his hard, as it were armor-plated, back and when he lifted his head a little he could see his dome-like brown belly divided into stiff arched segments on top of which the bed quilt could hardly keep in position and was about to slide off completely. His numerous legs, which were pitifully thin compared to the rest of his bulk, waved helplessly before his eyes.
What has happened to me? he thought. It was no dream. 10 His room, a regular human bedroom, only rather too small, lay quiet between the four familiar walls. Above the table on which a collection of cloth samples was unpacked and spread out— Samsa was a commercial traveler—hung the picture, which he had recently cut out of an illustrated magazine and put into a pretty gilt frame. It showed a lady, with a fur cap on and a fur stole, sitting upright and holding out to the spectator a huge fur muff into which the whole of her forearm had vanished!
Gregor’s eyes turned next to the window, and the overcast 20 sky—one could hear raindrops beating on the window gutter— made him quite melancholy. What about sleeping a little longer and forgetting all this nonsense, he thought, but it could not be done, for he was accustomed to sleep on his right side and in
his present condition he could not turn himself over. However violently he forced himself towards his right side he always rolled on to his back again. He tried it at least a hundred times, shutting his eyes to keep from seeing his struggling legs, and only desisted when he began to feel in his side a faint dull ache he had never experienced before. 30
Oh God, he thought, what an exhausting job I’ve picked on! Traveling about day in, day out. It’s much more irritating work than doing the actual business in the office, and on top of that there’s the trouble of constant traveling, of worrying about train connections, the bed and irregular meals, casual acquaintances that are always new and never become intimate friends. The devil take it all! He felt a slight itching upon his belly; slowly pushed himself on his back nearer to the top of the bed so that he could lift his head more easily; identified the itching place which was surrounded by many 40 small white spots the nature of which he could not understand and made to touch it with a leg, but drew the leg back immediately, for the contact made a cold shiver run through him. . . .
He looked at the alarm clock ticking on the chest. Heavenly Father! he thought. It was half-past six o’clock and the hands were quietly moving on, it was even past the half-hour, it was getting on toward a quarter to seven. Had the alarm clock not gone off? From the bed one could see that it had been properly set for four o’clock; of course it must have gone off. Yes, but 50 was it possible to sleep quietly through that ear-splitting noise? Well, he had not slept quietly, yet apparently all the more soundly for that. But what was he to do now? The next train went at seven o’clock; to catch that he would need to hurry like mad and his samples weren’t even packed up, and he himself wasn’t feeling particularly fresh and active. And even if he did catch the train he wouldn’t avoid a row with the chief, since the firm’s porter would have been waiting for the five o’clock train and would have long since reported his failure to turn up. . . . 60
As all this was running through his mind at top speed without his being able to decide to leave his bed—the alarm clock had just struck a quarter to seven—there came a cautious tap at the door behind the head of his bed. “Gregor,” said a voice—it was his mother’s—“it’s a quarter to seven. Hadn’t you a train to catch?” That gentle voice! Gregor had a shock as he heard his own voice answering hers, unmistakably his own voice, it was true, but with a persistent horrible twittering squeak behind it like an undertone, that left the words in their clear shape only for the first moment and then rose up reverberating round 70 them to destroy their sense, so that one could not be sure one had heard them rightly. Gregor wanted to answer at length and explain everything, but in the circumstances he confined himself to saying: “Yes, yes, thank you, Mother, I’m getting up now.” The wooden door between them must have kept the change in his voice from being noticeable outside, for his mother contented herself with this statement and shuffled away. Yet this brief exchange of words had made the other members of the family aware that Gregor was still in the house, as they had not expected, and at one of the side doors his 80 father was already knocking, gently, yet with his fist. “Gregor, Gregor,” he called, “what’s the matter with you?” And after a
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Q How would you describe Gregor Samsa’s personality?
Q What details in this story establish a sense of reality? Of unreality? Of fear?
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little while he called again in a deeper voice: “Gregor! Gregor!” At the other side door his sister was saying in a low, plaintive tone: “Gregor? Aren’t you well? Are you needing anything?” He answered them both at once: “I’m just ready,” and did his best to make his voice sound as normal as possible by enunciating the words very clearly and leaving long pauses between them. So his father went back to his breakfast, but his sister whispered: “Gregor, open the door, do.”. . . 90 [Unexpectedly, the chief clerk arrives to find out why Gregor is not at work. He demands to see him.]
Slowly Gregor pushed the chair towards the door, then let go of it, caught hold of the door for support—the soles at the end of his little legs were somewhat sticky—and rested against it for a moment after his efforts. Then he set himself to turning the key in the lock with his mouth. It seemed, unhappily, that he hadn’t really any teeth—what could he grip the key with?—but on the other hand his jaws were certainly very strong; with their help he did manage to set the key in 100 motion, heedless of the fact that he was undoubtedly damaging them somewhere, since a brown fluid issued from his mouth, flowed over the key and dripped on the floor. “Just listen to that,” said the chief clerk next door; “he’s turning the key.” That was a great encouragement to Gregor; but they should all have shouted encouragement to him, his father and mother too: “Go on Gregor,” they should have called out, “keep going, hold on to that key!” And in the belief that they were all following his efforts intently, he clenched his jaws recklessly on the key with all the force at his command. As the turning of the key 110 progressed he circled round the lock, holding on now only with his mouth, pushing on the key, as required, or pulling it down again with all the weight of his body. The louder click of the finally yielding lock literally quickened Gregor. With a deep breath of relief he said to himself: “So I didn’t need the locksmith,” and laid his head on the handle to open the door wide.
Since he had to pull the door towards him, he was still invisible when it was really wide open. He had to edge himself slowly round the near half of the double door, and to 120 do it very carefully if he was not to fall plump upon his back just on the threshold. He was still carrying out this difficult manoeuvre, with no time to observe anything else, when he heard the chief clerk utter a loud “Oh!”—it sounded like a gust of wind—and now he could see the man, standing as he was nearest to the door, clapping one hand before his open mouth and slowly backing away as if driven by some invisible steady pressure. His mother—in spite of the chief clerk’s directions— first clasped her hands and looked at his father, then took two steps towards Gregor and fell on the floor among her 130 outspread skirts, her face quite hidden on her breast. His father knotted his fist with a fierce expression on his face as if he meant to knock Gregor back into his room, then looked uncertainly round the living room, covered his eyes with his hands and wept till his great chest heaved. . . .
Joyce and Stream of Consciousness Prose One of the most influential writers of the early twentieth century, and also one of the most challenging, was the Irish expatriate James Joyce (1882–1941). Born in Dublin and educated in Jesuit schools, Joyce abandoned Ireland in 1905 to live abroad. In Paris, he studied medicine and music but made his livelihood there and elsewhere by teaching foreign languages and writing short stories. Joyce’s prose reflects his genius as a linguist and his keen sensitivity to the musical potential of words. His treatment of plot and character is deeply indebted to Freud, whose earliest publications Joyce had consumed with interest. From Freud’s works, he drew inspiration for the interior mono- logue, a literary device consisting of the private musings of a character in the form of a “stream of consciousness”—a succession of images and ideas connected by free association rather than by logical argument or narrative sequence. The stream of consciousness device recalls the free association technique used by Freud in psychotherapy; it also recalls the discontinuous verse style of the Imagist poets (see chapter 32). In a stream of consciousness novel, the action is devel- oped through the mind of the principal character as he or she responds to the dual play of conscious and subconscious stimuli. The following passage from Joyce’s 600-page novel Ulysses (1922) provides a brief example:
He crossed to the bright side, avoiding the loose cellarflap of number seventy-five. The sun was nearing the steeple of George’s church. Be a warm day I fancy, Specially in these black clothes feel it more. Black conducts, reflects (refracts is it?), the heat. But I couldn’t go in that light suit. Make a picnic of it. His Boland’s breadvan delivering with trays our daily but she prefers yesterday’s loaves turnovers crisp crowns hot. Makes you feel young. Somewhere in the east: early morning: set off at dawn, travel round in front of the sun, steal a day’s march on him. Keep it up for ever never grow a day older technically. . . . Wander along all day. Meet a robber or two. Well, meet him. Getting on to sundown. The shadows of the mosques along the pillars: priest with a scroll rolled up. A shiver of the trees, signal, the evening wind. I pass on. Fading gold sky. A mother watches from her doorway. She calls her children home in their dark language. High wall: beyond strings twanged. Night sky moon, violet, colour of Molly’s new garters. Strings. Listen. A girl playing one of these instruments what do you call them: dulcimers. I pass. . . .
Joyce modeled his sprawling novel on the Homeric epic, the Odyssey. But Joyce’s modern version differs profoundly from Homer’s. Leopold Bloom, the main character of Ulysses, is as ordinary as Homer’s Odysseus was heroic; his adventures seem trivial and insignificant by comparison with those of his Classical counterpart. Bloom’s common- place experiences, as he wanders from home to office, pub, and brothel, and then home again—a one-day “voyage” through the streets of Dublin—constitute the plot of the
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novel. The real “action,” however, takes place in the minds of its principal characters: Bloom, his acquaintances, and his wife Molly. Their collective ruminations produce an overwhelming sense of desolation and a startling awareness that the human psyche can never extricate itself from the timeless blur of experience.
Joyce’s stream of consciousness technique and his dense accumulation of unfamiliar and oddly compounded words make this monumental novel difficult to grasp—yet it remains more accessible than his experimental, baffling prose work, Finnegans Wake (1939). Initially, however, it was cen- sorship that made Ulysses inaccessible to the public: since Joyce treated sexual matters as intimately as all other aspects of human experience, critics judged his language obscene. The novel was banned in the United States until 1933.
The combined influence of Freud and Joyce was visible in much of the first-ranking literature of the twentieth cen- tury. Writers such as Gertrude Stein (1874–1946) and the Nobel laureates Thomas Mann (1875–1955) and William Faulkner (1897–1962) extended the use of the stream of consciousness technique. In theater the American play- wright Eugene O’Neill (1888–1953) fused Greek myth with Freudian concepts of guilt and repression in the dra- matic trilogy Mourning Becomes Electra (1931). He devised dramatic techniques that revealed the characters’ buried emotions, such as two actors playing different aspects of a single individual, the use of masks, and the embellishment of dialogue with accompanying asides.
The new psychology extended its influence to perform- ance style as well: Freud’s emphasis on the interior life inspired the development of method acting, a style of mod- ern theatrical performance that tried to harness “true emo- tion” and “affective memory” (from childhood experience) in the interpretation of dramatic roles. The pioneer in method acting was the Russian director and actor Konstantin Stanislavsky (1863–1938), whose innovative techniques as head of the Moscow Art Theater spread to the United States in the early 1930s. There, his method inspired some of America’s finest screen and stage actors, such as James Dean (1931–1955) and Marlon Brando (1924–2004).
The New Freedom in Poetry Modern poets avidly seized upon stream of consciousness techniques to emancipate poetry from syntactical and grammatical bonds—a mission that had been initiated by the Symbolists and refined by the Imagists. The French writer Guillaume Apollinaire (1880–1918), a close friend of Picasso and an admirer of Cubism, wrote poems that not only liberated words from their traditional placement in the sentence but also freed sentences from their traditional arrangement on the page. Inspired by the designs of ordi- nary handbills, billboards, and signs, Apollinaire created concrete poems, that is, poems produced in the shape of external objects, such as watches, neckties, and pigeons. He arranged the words in the poem “Il Pleut” (“It Rains”), for instance, as if they had fallen onto the page like raindrops from the heavens. Such word-pictures, which Apollinaire called “lyrical ideograms,” inspired the poet to exult, “I too am a painter!”
The American poet E. E. Cummings (1894–1962) arrived in France in 1917 as a volunteer ambulance driver for the Red Cross. Like Apollinaire, Cummings wrote poems that violated the traditional rules of verse composi- tion. To sharpen the focus of a poem, he subjected typog- raphy and syntax to acrobatic distortions that challenged the eye as well as the ear. Cummings poked fun at modern society by packing his verse with slang, jargon, and sexual innuendo. As the following poem suggests, his lyrics are often infused with large doses of playful humor.
Cummings’ [she being Brand] (1926)
she being Brand 1
-new;and you know consequently a little stiff i was careful of her and(having 5 thoroughly oiled the universal joint tested my gas felt of her radiator made sure her springs were O.
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again slo-wly;bare,ly nudg. ing(my 15
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the internalexpanding 30 & externalcontracting brakes Bothatonce and
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It was in the visual arts that the new psychology made its most dramatic and longlasting impact. As artists brought to their work their hidden emotions, repressed desires, and their dreams and fantasies, art became the vehicle of the subconscious. The irrational and antirational forces of the id was the subject and the inspiration for an assortment of styles. These include Expressionism, Metaphysical art, Dada, and Surrealism. Expressionism and Surrealism had particularly important effects on photography and film, as well as on the fields of commercial and applied arts. In every aspect of our daily life, from fashion designs to mag- azine and television advertisements, the evidence of the Freudian revolution is still visible.
Expressionism The pioneer Expressionist painter of the twentieth century was the Norwegian Edvard Munch (1863–1944). Munch was a great admirer of Henrik Ibsen, whose plays (see chap- ter 30) examine the inner conflicts and repressed desires of their characters. Obsessed with the traumas of puberty and frustrated sexuality, Munch was also deeply troubled by per- sonal associations with illness and death—tuberculosis had killed both his mother and sister. Such subjects provided the imagery for his paintings and woodcuts; but it was in his style—a haunting synthesis of distorted forms and savage colors—that he captured the anguished intensity of the neurosis that led to his mental collapse in 1908.
The Scream (Figure 33.2), a painting that has become a universal symbol of the modern condition, takes its mood of urgency and alarm from the combined effects of sinuous
Figure 33.2 EDVARD MUNCH, The Scream, 1893. Oil, pastel, and casein on cardboard, 353⁄4 � 29 in. The ghostly foreground figure (Munch himself) may have been inspired by an Inca mummy viewed by the artist in the Paris Exhibition of 1899. The blood-red sky may owe something to a volcanic eruption that took place in Indonesia in August 1883, the effects of which reached Munch’s hometown in Norway.
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clouds, writhing blue-black waters, and a dramatically receding pier (a popular meeting spot near Munch’s summer cottage). These visual rhythms suggest the resonating sound of the voiceless cry described by Munch in the notes to a prelim- inary drawing for the painting: “I walked with two friends. Then the sun sank. Suddenly the sky turned red as blood. . . . My friends walked on, and I was left alone, trembling with fear. I felt as if all nature were filled with one mighty unending shriek.”
Munch’s impassioned style foreshadowed German Expressionism. Like the Italian Futurists, young artists in Germany rebelled against the “old-established forces” of academic art. Influenced by Freud and by the arts of Africa and Oceania, two Modernist groups emerged: in Dresden, Die Brücke (The Bridge) was founded in 1905; the second, established in Munich in 1911, called itself Der Blaue Reiter (The Blue Rider). Though divided by strong personal dif- ferences, the artists of these two groups shared a style marked by pathos, violence, and emotional intensity. The German Expressionists inherited the brooding, romantic sensibility of Goethe, Nietzsche, and Wagner. They favored macabre and intimate subjects, which they ren- dered by means of distorted forms, harsh colors, and the bold and haunting use of black.
Led by Ernst Ludwig Kirchner (1880–1938), members of Die Brücke, including Erich Heckel (1883–1970), Karl Schmidt-Rottluff (1884–1976), and Emil Nolde (1867– 1956), envisioned their movement as a “bridge” to Modernism. They embraced art as an outpouring of “inner necessity,” emotion, and ecstasy. Seized by the prewar ten- sions of urban Germany, they painted probing self-por- traits, tempestuous landscapes, and ominous cityscapes. In Street, Berlin (Figure 33.3), Kirchner’s jagged lines and dis- sonant colors, accented by aggressive areas of black, evoke the image of urban life as crowded, impersonal, and threat- ening. His convulsive distortions of figural form reveal the influence of African sculpture, while the nervous intensity of his line style reflects his indebtedness to the German graphic tradition pioneered by Albrecht Dürer (see chap- ter 19). Like Dürer, Kirchner rendered many of his subjects (including portraits and cityscapes) in woodcut—the favorite medium of German Expressionism.
Figure 33.3 ERNST LUDWIG KIRCHNER, Street, Berlin, 1913. Oil on canvas, 3 ft. 111⁄2 in. � 357⁄8 in. Two stylishly dressed prostitutes press forward along a wildly tilted city street. Lurid pinks, acid blues, and charcoal blacks add to the claustrophobic atmosphere. Kirchner painted this and similar scenes after moving from Dresden to Berlin, during a time he described as being one of loneliness and depression.
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Metaphysical Art and Fantasy While the German Expressionists brought a new degree of subjective intensity to depictions of the visible world, other artists explored the life that lay beyond the senses. One of these artists was Giorgio de Chirico (1888–1978). Born in Greece, de Chirico moved to Italy in 1909. Rejecting the tenets of Italian Futurism (see chapter 32), he pioneered a style that he called “metaphysical,” that is, “beyond physical reality.” In canvases executed between
1910 and 1920, he introduced the landscape of the psyche into the realm of art. His sharply delineated images, con- tradictory perspectives, unnatural colors, and illogically cast shadows produced disturbing, dreamlike effects similar to those in Kafka’s prose.
In The Nostalgia of the Infinite (Figure 33.4) two figures, dwarfed by eerie shadows, stand in the empty courtyard; five flags flutter mysteriously in an airless, acid-green sky. The vanishing point established by the orthogonal lines of the portico on the right contradicts the low placement of the distant horizon. Of his disquieting cityscapes, de Chirico commented, “There are more enigmas in the shad- ow of a man who walks in the sun than in all the religions of past, present, and future.” De Chirico anticipated a mode of representation known as Magic Realism, in which commonplace objects and events are exaggerated or juxta- posed in unexpected ways that evoke a mood of mystery or fantasy.
The Russian-born artist Marc Chagall (1887–1985) arrived in Paris in 1910. Like his countryman and fellow expatriate Igor Stravinsky, Chagall infused his first compo- sitions with the folk tales and customs of his native land. His nostalgic recollection of rural Russia called I and the Village (Figure 33.5) owes much to the lessons of Cubism and Fauvism. However, the disjunctive sizes and positions of the figures and the variety of arbitrary colors obey the whimsy of the unconscious. Chagall freely superimposed images upon one another or showed them floating in space, defying the laws of gravity. Autobiographical motifs, such as fiddle players and levitating lovers, became Chagall’s hall- marks in the richly colored canvases, murals, and stained glass windows of his long and productive career.
The Dada Movement While Expressionism and fantasy investigated the Freudian unconscious, neither attacked nationalist tradition as aggressively as the movement known as Dada. Founded in 1916 in Zürich, Switzerland, the Dada movement consist- ed of a loosely knit group of European painters and poets who, perceiving World War I as evidence of a world gone mad, dedicated themselves to spreading the gospel of irra- tionality. The nonsensical name of the movement, “dada” (“hobbyhorse”), which was chosen by inserting a penknife at random into the pages of a dictionary, symbolized their irreverent stance. If the world had gone mad, should not its creative endeavors be equally mad? Dada answered with art that was the product of chance, accident, or outrageous behavior—with works that deliberately violated good taste, middle-class values, and artistic convention.
The Dadaists met regularly at the Café Voltaire in Zürich, where they orchestrated “noise concerts” and recit- ed poetry created by way of improvisation and free associ- ation. The Romanian poet Tristan Tzara (1896–1963) produced poems from words cut out of newspapers and ran- domly scattered on a table, while the French sculptor and poet Jean Arp (1887–1966) constructed collages and relief sculptures from shapes dropped at random on a canvas and left “according to the laws of chance.” Dada’s attacks on
Figure 33.4 GIORGIO DE CHIRICO, The Nostalgia of the Infinite, 1914; dated on painting 1911. Oil on canvas, 4 ft. 51⁄4 in. � 251⁄2 in.
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Figure 33.5 MARC CHAGALL, I and the Village, 1911. Oil on canvas, 6 ft. 35⁄8 in. � 4 ft. 115⁄8 in.
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rationalist tradition and on modern technocracy in gener- al reflected the spirit of nihilism (the denial of traditional and religious and moral principles) that flowered in the ashes of the war. In his “Lecture on Dada” in 1922, Tzara declared, “The acts of life have no beginning or end. Everything happens in a completely idiotic way. Simplicity is called dada. . . . Like everything in life, dada is useless.”
As with poetry and painting, Dada theater paid homage to Freud by liberating “everything obscure in the mind, buried deep, unrevealed,” as one French playwright explained. Narrative realism and traditional characteriza- tion gave way to improvisation and the performance of random and bizarre incidents. One form of Dada theater, the theater of cruelty, known for its violent and scatological themes, anticipated the theater of the absurd plays written during the 1950s and 1960s (see chapter 35).
The spirit of the Dadaists was most vividly realized in the work of the French artist Marcel Duchamp (1887– 1968). Early in his career, Duchamp had flirted with Cubism and Futurism, producing the influential Nude Descending a Staircase, No. 2 (see Figure 32.11); but after 1912, he abandoned professional painting and turned to making—or remaking—art objects. In 1913 he mounted a bicycle wheel atop a barstool, thus producing the first “ready-made,” as well as the first mobile (a sculpture with moving parts). Four years later, Duchamp would launch the landmark ready-made of the century: he placed a common factory-produced urinal on a pedestal, signed the piece with the fictitious name, “R. Mutt,” and submitted it for an exhibition held by the American Society of Independent Artists (Figure 33.6). The piece, which he called Fountain, was rejected, but its long-term impact was enormous. By calling the “found object” a work of art, Duchamp mocked conventional techniques of making art. Moreover, by
wrenching the object out of its functional context, he sug- gested that the image obeyed a logic of its own, a logic whose “rules” flouted traditional aesthetic norms. Fountain not only attacked the barrier between art and life, but called for art that exalted the nonsensical, the accidental, and the absurd.
Perhaps most important, however, Fountain introduced to modern art the revolutionary notion that a work of art was first and foremost about an artist’s idea. Fountain was not art because Duchamp had “made” it, but because he had chosen to remove it from the context of everyday life and had given it a whole new identity (as art). Pursuing this logic, the artist might also alter (or “remake”) existing art, as for example, when Duchamp drew a mustache on a reproduction of Leonardo da Vinci’s venerable Mona Lisa, adding a series of letters at the bottom that, when recited rapidly (in French), describe the sitter in lusty street slang (Figure 33.7). This “corrected ready-made,” as Duchamp called the piece, expressed the Dada disdain for Western high art. It established the modern artist as maverick—the self-appointed prophet and defiler of tradition.
Moving to New York City in 1918, Duchamp labored for ten years on his magnum opus, a large glass and wire assemblage filled with esoteric sexual symbolism. He called
Figure 33.6 MARCEL DUCHAMP, Fountain (Urinal), 1917. Ready-made, height 24 in. There are eight factory-made replicas of Fountain, “signed” by Duchamp in 1964. In 1993, an artist attacked the piece on display in Nîmes, France. Claiming the right to use it for its original purpose, he urinated in it.
Figure 33.7 MARCEL DUCHAMP, L.H.O.O.Q., 1919. Rectified ready-made, pencil on a reproduction of the Mona Lisa, 73⁄4 � 47⁄8 in.
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it The Bride Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors, Even. After 1920, Duchamp went “underground,” spending as much time perfecting his chess game (his favorite pastime) as making art. Nevertheless, his small, pioneering body of work and his irreverent view that art “has absolutely no existence as . . . truth” have had a powerful influence on scores of poets, painters, and composers even into the twenty-first century.
Surrealism and Abstract Surrealists: Picasso, Miró, and Klee One of Modernism’s most distinctive movements, Surrealism (the term coined by Guillaume Apollinaire in 1917), was devoted to giving physical expression to the workings of the unconscious mind. The Surrealists paid explicit homage to Freud and his writings, especially those on free association and dream analysis. In the first “Surrealist Manifesto” (1924), the French critic and spiritual godfather of Surrealism, André Breton (1896–1966) proclaimed the artist’s liberation from reason and from the demands of conventional society. Having visited Freud in Vienna in 1921, Breton described the Surrealist commitment to the irrational as follows:
We are still living under the reign of logic. . . . But in this day and age logical methods are applicable only to solving problems of secondary interest. The absolute rationalism that is still in vogue allows us to consider only facts relating directly to our experience. . . . [Experience] is protected by the sentinels of common sense. Under the pretense of civilization and progress, we have managed to banish from the mind everything that may rightly or wrongly be termed superstition, or fancy; forbidden is any kind of search for truth which is not in conformance with accepted practices. It was, apparently, by pure chance, that a part of our mental world which we pretended not to be concerned with any longer—and, in my opinion, by far the most important part— has been brought back to light. For this we must give thanks to the discoveries of Sigmund Freud. . . . The imagination is perhaps on the point of reasserting itself, of reclaiming its rights.
Breton defined Surrealism as “psychic automa- tism, in its pure state,” that is, creative effort guided by thought functions free of rational control and “exempt from any aesthetic or moral concern.” He emphasized the omnipo- tence of the dream state in guiding the Surrealist enterprise.
Just as writers developed new literary techniques to achieve freedom from rational
control, so visual artists devised new methods and process- es to liberate the visual imagination. Some explored psy- chic automatism, allowing the hand to move spontaneously and at random, as if casually doodling or improvising. Others tried to recover a sense of childlike spontaneity by filling their paintings with free-spirited, biomorphic shapes. Fundamentally, however, the paradox of Surrealist art rested on the artist’s conscious effort to cap- ture unconscious experience.
Breton recognized Picasso as one of the pioneers of Surrealist art. As early as 1907, in Les Demoiselles d’Avignon (see Figure 32.3), Picasso had begun to radicalize the image of the human figure; by the mid-1920s, brutal dissection and savage distortion dominated his art. In 1927, Picasso painted the Seated Woman (Figure 33.8), the image of a “split personality” that seemed to symbolize Freud’s three- part psyche. The head of the female consists of a frontal view, as well as at least two profile views, each of which
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Figure 33.8 PABLO PICASSO, Seated Woman, Paris, 1927. Oil on wood, 4 ft. 31⁄8 in. � 3 ft. 21⁄4 in.
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reveals a different aspect of her personality. The “split per- sonality” motif continued to preoccupy Picasso throughout his long artistic career. In scores of paintings and sculp- tures, as well as in the stream of consciousness prose he wrote during the 1930s, Picasso pursued double meanings and visual puns, thus securing his reputation as the master of metamorphosis in twentieth-century art.
In the paintings of the Spanish artist Joan Miró (1893–1983), the Surrealist’s search for subconscious expe- rience kindled the artist’s personal mythology. Miró’s simple, childlike figures, his biomorphic creatures and spiny, abstract organisms became the denizens of a fantas- tic universe. The creatures in The Harlequin’s Carnival— amoeba, snakes, and insects—cavort in unbounded space (Figure 33.9). A ladder leads to an eyelash; a window opens onto a pyramid. “In my pictures,” explained Miro, “there are tiny forms in vast, empty spaces. Empty space, empty horizons, empty plains, everything that is stripped has always impressed me.”
The Swiss-born painter Paul Klee (1879–1940) stood on the fringes of Surrealism. One of the most sophisticat- ed artists of the century, Klee was a brilliant draftsman who created physically small artworks that resemble
hieroglyphic puzzles. His abstractions, like the entries in his personal diaries, are characterized by gentle humor and exquisite finesse; they belong to the substratum of the mind—the subconscious repository of mysterious symbols. “Art does not represent the visible,” Klee insist- ed, “rather, it renders visible [the invisible].”
Klee’s Fish Magic (see Figure 33.1), painted during his tenure as a teacher at the Bauhaus, consists of a group of carefully arranged organic motifs that resemble sacred signs. Flowers, fish, and human figure, all executed with pictographic simplicity, share the ambient space of planets whose rhythms are measured by a mysteriously suspended clock. Klee was among the first artists to recognize the art of the untutored and the mentally ill. “Only children, mad- men, and savages,” he wrote, “truly understand the ‘in- between’ world of spiritual truth.”
Visionary Surrealists: Magritte and Dali While Picasso, Miró, and Klee favored abstract and bio- morphic images, other Surrealists juxtaposed meticulously painted objects in ways that were often shocking or unex- pected. The most notable of these visionary Surrealists were René Magritte and Salvador Dali. Both were superb
Figure 33.9 JOAN MIRÓ, The Harlequin’s Carnival, 1924. Oil on canvas, 26 � 361⁄2 in. Years after paint- ing this picture, Miró claimed that some of the imagery in his early art was inspired by hallucinations brought on by hunger and by staring at the cracks in the plaster walls of his shabby Paris apartment.
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draftsmen whose trompe l’oeil skills elicited a disquieting dream reality.
Profoundly influenced by de Chirico, the Belgian artist Magritte (1898–1967) combined realistically detailed objects in startling and irrational ways. In one of his paint- ings, a coffin takes the place of a reclining figure; in anoth- er, a bird cage is substituted for the head of the sitter; and in still another, human toes appear on a pair of leather shoes. In such discordant images, Magritte brought mystery to the objects of everyday experience. “I don’t paint visions,” Magritte wrote, “I describe objects—and the mutual relationships of objects—in such a way that none of our habitual concepts or feelings is necessarily linked with them.” The small piece entitled The Betrayal of Images (1928) depicts with crisp and faultless accuracy a briar pipe, beneath which appears the legend “This is not a pipe” (Figure 33.10). The painting addresses the age-old distinc- tion between the real world—the world of the actual pipe—and the painted image, whose reality is the virtual illusion of a pipe. At the same time, it anticipates Modernist efforts to determine how words and images dif- fer in conveying information.
The Spanish painter and impresario Salvador Dali (1904–1989) was as much a showman as an artist. Cultivating the bizarre as a lifestyle, Dali exhibited a per- verse desire to shock his audiences. Drawing motifs from his own erotic dreams and fantasies, he executed both nat- ural and unnatural images with meticulous precision, combining them in unusual settings or giving them grotesque attributes.
Dali’s infamous The Persistence of Memory (Figure 33.11) consists of a broad and barren landscape occupied by a leafless tree, three limp watches, and a watchcase crawling with ants. One of the timepieces plays host to a fly, while another rests upon a mass of brain matter resem- bling a profiled self-portrait—a motif that the artist frequently featured in his works. To seek an explicit mes- sage in this painting—even one addressing modern notions of time—would be to miss the point, for, as Dali himself warned, his “hand-painted dream photographs” were mere- ly designed to “stamp themselves indelibly upon the mind.”
Figure 33.11 SALVADOR DALI, The Persistence of Memory (Persistance de la Mémoire), 1931. Oil on canvas, 91⁄2 � 13 in. One of the most deceptive aspects of this painting is its size: while it appears to be a large canvas, it is actually not much larger than this page.
Figure 33.10 RENÉ MAGRITTE, The Betrayal of Images, ca. 1928–1929. Oil on canvas, 253⁄8 � 37 in. “People who look for symbolic meanings fail to grasp the inherent poetry and mystery of the image,” complained Magritte. “By asking, ‘What does this mean,’ they express a wish that everything be understandable.”
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The Women of Surrealism Perhaps more than any other movement in the history of early Modernism, Surrealism attracted a good many women artists. Arguably the most celebrated of these was Mexico’s Frida Kahlo (1907–1954). Kahlo’s paintings, of which more than one-third are self-portraits, reflect the determined effort (shared by many feminists) to present the female image as something other than the object of male desire. Her art bears testimony to what she called the “two great accidents” of her life: a bus crash that at the age of eighteen left her disabled, and her stormy marriage to the notorious Mexican mural painter Diego Rivera (see chapter 34). Like Rivera, Kahlo was a fervent Marxist and a nationalist who supported the revolutionary government that took control of Mexico in 1921. But the principal sub- ject matter of Kahlo’s art is Frida herself: “I am the subject I know best,” she explained. Her paintings bring to life the experience of chronic pain, both physical (her accident required some thirty surgeries and ultimately involved the
amputation of her right leg) and psychic (repeated miscar- riages, for example, left her incapable of bearing a child).
Kahlo’s canvases reveal her close identification with Mexican folk art, which traditionally features visceral and diabolical details. At the same time, her taste for realisti- cally conceived but shockingly juxtaposed images reflects her debt to de Chirico and the Magic Realist style. In The Broken Column (Figure 33.12), Kahlo pictures herself as sufferer and savior, an emblematic figure that recalls the devotional icons of Mexico’s religious shrines.
A pioneer Modernist on the American scene, Georgia O’Keeffe (1887–1986) is often classified with America’s regional painters. However, her treatment of haunting, biomorphic images abstracted from greatly enlarged flowers and bleached animal bones gives her early paintings a menacing presence (Figure 33.13). In a fluid line style that distills the essence of the subject, the so-called “high priestess” of early Modernism brought a visionary clarity to the most ordinary ingredients of the American landscape.
The unorthodox combination of commonplace objects—the hall- mark of the visionary Surrealists— was a particularly effective strategy for Surrealist sculptors; and in this domain as well, women made notable contributions. The fur-lined cup and saucer (Figure 33.14) conceived by the Swiss-German sculptor Meret Oppenheim (1913– 1985) is shocking in its union of familiar but disparate elements. Conceived in the irreverent spirit of Duchamp’s modified ready-mades, Oppenheim’s Object: Breakfast in Fur provokes a sequence of discomfiting narrative associations.
Figure 33.12 FRIDA KAHLO, The Broken Column, 1944. Oil on canvas, 153⁄4 � 121⁄4 in. Visiting Mexico, André Breton declared Kahlo to be a superb Surrealist; but Kahlo protested, “I never painted dreams. I painted my own reality.
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Dada and Surrealist Photography Photography was an ideal medium with which to explore the layers of the unconscious mind. Modernist photogra- phers experimented with double exposure and unorthodox darkroom techniques to create unusual new effects similar to those of visionary Surrealist painters and sculptors. Liberating photography from traditional pictorialism, a group of Berlin Dadaists invented a new kind of collage called photomontage. The photomontage consisted of “found” photographic images cut from books, magazines, and newspapers, and pasted on a flat surface. A champion of the technique, Raoul Hausmann (1886–1971), called photomontage “the ‘alienation’ of photography.” By this, he implied that photomontage destroyed the role of pho- tography as a medium for recreating physical reality. But the statement also suggests that by its dependence on frag- mentation and dislocation, photomontage offered “a visu- ally and conceptually new image of the chaos of an age of war and revolution.”
The only female member of the group, Hannah Höch (1889–1979), was schooled in the visual arts and advertis- ing. Her early training in Berlin, preparing advertising brochures directed at a female audience, opened her eyes to the way in which mass media targeted women. To her pho- tomontages she brought sensitivity to feminist issues and wary recognition of the growing corruption and militarism of Weimar Germany (the period between 1919 and Hitler’s seizure of power in 1933). Her disjunctive Cut with the Kitchen Knife through the Last Weimar Beer Belly Cultural Epoch of Germany consists of bits and pieces clipped from newspapers and magazines: the wheels and cogs of military technology, the faces of German celebrities, and androgy- nous figures that reference her own bisexuality (Figure 33.15). The series of “quick cuts” between the images anticipated experiments in cinematic montage that were to transform the history of film (see chapter 34).
Figure 33.14 MERET OPPENHEIM, Object: Breakfast in Fur (Object: Le Déjeuner en fourrure), 1936. Fur-covered cup, saucer, and spoon; cup 43⁄8 in. diameter; saucer 93⁄8 in. diameter; spoon 8 in. long; overall height 23⁄8 in.
Figure 33.13 GEORGIA O’KEEFFE, Cow’s Skull: with Calico Roses, 1931. Oil on canvas, 3 ft. 5⁄16 in. � 241⁄8 in. After an early career aided by the American photographer, Alfred Stieglitz (whom she later married), O’Keeffe left New York City, settling in New Mexico in 1934. Her earliest abstract drawings were inspired by her reading of Wassily Kandinsky’s On the Spiritual in Art.
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Figure 33.15 HANNAH HÖCH, Cut with the Kitchen Knife, 1919. Collage of pasted papers, 3 ft. 87⁄8 in. � 351⁄2 in. In this allegorical critique of Weimar culture, Höch irreverently assembles photographic images of political leaders, sports stars, Dada artists, and urban political events.
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”Ho, ho, young man, Dada is not an art movement”
Käthe Kollwitz
”Join Dada”
”Invest in Dada”
Raoul Hausmann in a diver’s suit
Höch’s head
map showing progress of women’s enfranchisement
female athletes and dancers with heads of male artists
the artist’s initials
Albert Einstein
giant roller bearings alluding to industrial
Germany
New National Assembly
Walter Rathenau, foreign minister
Elsa Lasker-Schüler, German-Jewish poet
Karl Marx
Niddy Impekoven, German ballet dancer
”The Great Dada World”
Field Marshall Paul von Hindenburg
Militarist Germany:
Friedrich Ebert, Chancellor of Germany
exotic dancer, Sent M’ahesa
Berlin unemployment line
urban Berlin ”The Anti-Dada Movement”
The pranksters of Dada looked to film as a vehicle of the nonsensical. Duchamp and the American photographer Man Ray (1890–1976) matched wits in New York City to make one of the earliest Dada films, the entire action of which showed a courtesan, who called herself the baroness Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven, shaving her pubic hair. In 1928, Salvador Dali teamed up with the Spanish filmmaker Luis Buñuel (1900–1983) to create the pioneer Surrealist film, Un Chien Andalou. Violence and eroticism are the dominant motifs of this film, whose more famous scenes include ants crawling out of a hole in a man’s palm
(an oblique reference to Christ’s stigmata), a man bleeding from the mouth as he fondles a woman, a woman poking a stick at an amputated hand that lies on the street, an eye- ball being sliced with a razor blade, and two pianos filled with the mutilated carcasses of donkeys. Such special techniques as slow motion, close-up, and quick cuts from scene to scene work to create jolting, dreamlike effects. It is no surprise that Surrealist film had a formative influence on some of the twentieth century’s most imaginative filmmakers, including Jean Cocteau, Jean Renoir, Ingmar Bergman, and Federico Fellini.
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The New Psychology and Music
402 CHAPTER 33 The Freudian Revolution
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During the 1920s, composers moved beyond the exotic instrumental forays of Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring to explore even more unorthodox experiments in sound. A group of six artists that included the French composer Eric Satie (1866–1925) incorporated into their music such “instru- ments” as doorbells, typewriters, and roulette wheels. Satie’s style, which is typically sparse, rhythmic, and witty, has much in common with the poetry of Apollinaire and E. E. Cummings. His compositions, to which he gave such titles as Flabby Preludes, Desiccated Embryos, and Three Pieces in the Form of a Pear, were, however, less eccentric than was his lifestyle—he ate nothing but white foods and wore only gray suits.
Strauss and Bartók The Freudian impact on music was most evident in the medium of musical drama, which, by the second decade of the century, incorporated themes of sexuality, eroticism, female hysteria, and the life of dreams. In the opera Salome (1905), a modern interpretation of the martyrdom of John the Baptist, the German composer Richard Strauss (1864–1949) dramatized the obsessive erotic attachment of King Herod’s beautiful niece to the Christian prophet. Revolutionary in sound (in some places the meter changes in every bar) and in its frank treatment of a biblical sub- ject, Salome shocked critics so deeply that a performance slated for Vienna in 1905 was cancelled; in America, the opera was banned for almost thirty years after its New York performance in 1907.
Bluebeard’s Castle (1918), a one-act opera by the leading Hungarian composer of the twentieth century, Béla Bartók (1881–1945), did not suffer so harsh a fate, despite the fact that the composer had boldly recast a popular fairy tale into a parable of repressed tensions and jealousy between the sexes.
Schoenberg The mood of anxiety and apprehension that characterized Expressionist and Surrealist art was, however, most power- fully realized in the compositions of Arnold Schoenberg, whose experiments in atonality were introduced in chapter 32. Schoenberg’s song cycles, or monodramas, were
dramatic pieces written for a single (usually deeply dis- turbed) character. In the monodrama Erwartung (Expectation), Schoenberg took as his subject a woman’s frenzied search for the lover who has deserted her. In Pierrot Lunaire (Moonstruck Pierrot) of 1912, a cycle of twenty-one songs for female voice and small instrumental ensemble, Schoenberg brought to life the dreamworld of a mad clown.
The texts of his atonal and harshly dissonant song cycles resemble stream of consciousness monologues. They are performed in Sprechstimme (or “speech-song”), a style in which words are spoken at different pitches. Neither exclusively song nor speech, Sprechstimme is a kind of oper- atic recitation in which pitches are approximated and the voice may glide in a wailing manner from note to note. Many of the critics found Pierrot Lunaire “depraved” and “ugly.” But despite the controversy ignited by his disquiet- ing music, Schoenberg attracted a large following. Even after he moved to the United States in 1933, young com- posers—including many associated with Hollywood films—flocked to study with him. And, modern movie audiences were quick to accept the jolting dissonances of scores that worked to lend emotional expressiveness to the cinematic narrative.
Berg Schoenberg’s foremost student, Alban Berg (1885–1935), produced two of the most powerful operas of the twentieth century. Though less strictly atonal than Schoenberg’s song cycles, Berg’s operas Wozzeck (1921) and Lulu (1935) make use of serial techniques and the Sprechstimme style. Thematically, they feature the highly charged motifs of sexual frustration, murder, and suicide.
The unfinished Lulu is the story of a sexually dominat- ed woman who both destroys and is destroyed by her lovers. Lulu has been called “sordid,” “psychotic,” and “shocking.” It explores such Freudian subjects as female hysteria and repressed sexuality, while at the same time it exploits the age-old image of woman-as-serpent. Both the music and the story of Lulu evoke a nightmarelike atmos- phere, which, in modern multimedia productions, has been enhanced by the use of onstage film and slide projections.
See Music Listening Selections at end of chapter.��
��
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archetype the primal patterns of the collective unconscious, which Carl Jung described as “mental forms whose presence cannot be explained by anything in the individual’s own life and which seem to be aboriginal, innate, and inherited shapes of the human mind” collective unconscious according to Jung, the universal realm of the unconscious life, which contains the archetypes
concrete poetry poetry produced in the shape of ordinary, external objects improvisation the invention of the work of art as it is being performed interior monologue a literary device by which the stream of consciousness of a character is presented; it records the internal, emotional experience of the character on one or more levels of consciousness method acting a modern style of theatrical performance
that tries to harness childhood emotions and memories in the service of interpreting a dramatic role mobile a sculpture constructed so that its parts move by natural or mechanical means monodrama in music, a dramatic piece written for only one character nihilism a viewpoint that denies objective moral truths and traditional religious and moral principles
photomontage the combination of freely juxtaposed and usually heterogeneous photographic images (see also Glossary, chapter 34, “montage”) Sprechstimme (German, “speech-song”) a style of operatic recitation in which words are spoken at different pitches sublimation the positive modification and redirection of primal urges that Freud identified as the work of the ego
Freud • Sigmund Freud’s theories concerning the nature of the human
psyche, the significance of dreams, and the dominating role of human sexuality had a revolutionary effect on modern society and on the arts.
• As the events of the two world wars would confirm Freud’s pessimistic analysis of human nature, so the arts of the twentieth century acknowledged his view that human reason was not the “keeper of the castle”; the castle itself was perilously vulnerable to the dark forces of the human mind.
The New Psychology and Literature • Proust, Kafka, and Joyce are representative of the modern
novelist’s preoccupation with the unconscious mind and with the role of memory and dreams in shaping reality.
• Stream of consciousness narrative and the interior monologue are among the modernist literary techniques used to develop plot and character.
• American playwrights responded to the stream of consciousness technique, even as modern theater and film investigated a new performance style based on method acting.
• The poetry of E. E. Cummings reveals the influence of free association in liberating words from the bounds of syntax and conventional transcription.
The New Psychology and the Visual Arts • In the visual arts, Freud’s impact generated styles that gave free
play to fantasy and dreams: the Expressionism of Munch and Kirchner, the Metaphysical art of de Chirico, and the colorful fantasies of Chagall.
• Marcel Duchamp, the most outrageous of the Dada artists,
championed a nihilistic, antibourgeois, anti-art spirit that had far-reaching effects in the second half of the century.
• In 1924, André Breton launched Surrealism, an international movement to liberate the life of the mind from the bonds of reason. Strongly influenced by Freud, the Surrealists viewed the unconscious realm as a battleground of conflicting forces dominated by the instincts.
• Picasso, Miró, and Klee explored the terrain of the interior life in abstract paintings filled with both playful and ominous images, while Dali and Magritte questioned illusion itself by way of realistically detailed, yet irrationally juxtaposed objects.
• Kahlo, O’Keeffe, Oppenheim, and Höch were among the female Surrealists who manipulated the stuff of the real world so as to evoke jolting dreamlike effects and disquieting personal truths.
The New Psychology and Music • In music, Eric Satie made use of mundane sounds with the same
enthusiasm that E. E. Cummings brought to slang and Duchamp exercised for “found objects.”
• Freud’s impact was most powerfully realized in the Expressionistic monodramas of Schoenberg and the sexually charged operas of Strauss, Bartók, and Berg.
CD Two Selection 17 Schoenberg, Pierrot Lunaire, Op. 21, Part 3, No. 15, “Heimweh,” 1912.
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For more information on creating PDF/X-1a compliant PDF documents, please refer to the Acrobat User Guide. Created PDF documents can be opened with Acrobat and Adobe Reader 4.0 and later.) >> /Namespace [ (Adobe) (Common) (1.0) ] /OtherNamespaces [ << /AsReaderSpreads false /CropImagesToFrames false /ErrorControl /WarnAndContinue /FlattenerIgnoreSpreadOverrides false /IncludeGuidesGrids false /IncludeNonPrinting false /IncludeSlug false /Namespace [ (Adobe) (InDesign) (4.0) ] /OmitPlacedBitmaps false /OmitPlacedEPS false /OmitPlacedPDF false /SimulateOverprint /Legacy >> << /AddBleedMarks false /AddColorBars false /AddCropMarks true /AddPageInfo true /AddRegMarks false /BleedOffset [ 9 9 9 9 ] /ConvertColors /NoConversion /DestinationProfileName () /DestinationProfileSelector /DocumentCMYK /Downsample16BitImages true /FlattenerPreset << /PresetSelector /HighResolution >> /FormElements false /GenerateStructure false /IncludeBookmarks false /IncludeHyperlinks false /IncludeInteractive false /IncludeLayers false /IncludeProfiles false /MarksOffset 9 /MarksWeight 0.250000 /MultimediaHandling /UseObjectSettings /Namespace [ (Adobe) (CreativeSuite) (2.0) ] /PDFXOutputIntentProfileSelector /DocumentCMYK /PageMarksFile /RomanDefault /PreserveEditing true /UntaggedCMYKHandling /LeaveUntagged /UntaggedRGBHandling /UseDocumentProfile /UseDocumentBleed false >> << /AllowImageBreaks true /AllowTableBreaks true /ExpandPage false /HonorBaseURL true /HonorRolloverEffect false /IgnoreHTMLPageBreaks false /IncludeHeaderFooter false /MarginOffset [ 0 0 0 0 ] /MetadataAuthor () /MetadataKeywords () /MetadataSubject () /MetadataTitle () /MetricPageSize [ 0 0 ] /MetricUnit /inch /MobileCompatible 0 /Namespace [ (Adobe) (GoLive) (8.0) ] /OpenZoomToHTMLFontSize false /PageOrientation /Portrait /RemoveBackground false /ShrinkContent true /TreatColorsAs /MainMonitorColors /UseEmbeddedProfiles false /UseHTMLTitleAsMetadata true >> ] >> setdistillerparams << /HWResolution [2400 2400] /PageSize [612.000 792.000] >> setpagedevice
<< /ASCII85EncodePages false /AllowTransparency false /AutoPositionEPSFiles true /AutoRotatePages /None /Binding /Left /CalGrayProfile (Dot Gain 20%) /CalRGBProfile (sRGB IEC61966-2.1) /CalCMYKProfile (U.S. Web Coated \050SWOP\051 v2) /sRGBProfile (sRGB IEC61966-2.1) /CannotEmbedFontPolicy /Warning /CompatibilityLevel 1.5 /CompressObjects /Off /CompressPages true /ConvertImagesToIndexed true /PassThroughJPEGImages true /CreateJobTicket false /DefaultRenderingIntent /Default /DetectBlends true /DetectCurves 0.0000 /ColorConversionStrategy /LeaveColorUnchanged /DoThumbnails false /EmbedAllFonts true /EmbedOpenType false /ParseICCProfilesInComments true /EmbedJobOptions true /DSCReportingLevel 0 /EmitDSCWarnings false /EndPage -1 /ImageMemory 1048576 /LockDistillerParams false /MaxSubsetPct 100 /Optimize false /OPM 1 /ParseDSCComments true /ParseDSCCommentsForDocInfo true /PreserveCopyPage true /PreserveDICMYKValues true /PreserveEPSInfo true /PreserveFlatness false /PreserveHalftoneInfo false /PreserveOPIComments false /PreserveOverprintSettings true /StartPage 1 /SubsetFonts true /TransferFunctionInfo /Apply /UCRandBGInfo /Preserve /UsePrologue false /ColorSettingsFile (None) /AlwaysEmbed [ true ] /NeverEmbed [ true ] /AntiAliasColorImages false /CropColorImages false /ColorImageMinResolution 300 /ColorImageMinResolutionPolicy /OK /DownsampleColorImages false /ColorImageDownsampleType /Average /ColorImageResolution 350 /ColorImageDepth 8 /ColorImageMinDownsampleDepth 1 /ColorImageDownsampleThreshold 1.50000 /EncodeColorImages true /ColorImageFilter /FlateEncode /AutoFilterColorImages false /ColorImageAutoFilterStrategy /JPEG /ColorACSImageDict << /QFactor 0.15 /HSamples [1 1 1 1] /VSamples [1 1 1 1] >> /ColorImageDict << /QFactor 0.15 /HSamples [1 1 1 1] /VSamples [1 1 1 1] >> /JPEG2000ColorACSImageDict << /TileWidth 256 /TileHeight 256 /Quality 30 >> /JPEG2000ColorImageDict << /TileWidth 256 /TileHeight 256 /Quality 30 >> /AntiAliasGrayImages false /CropGrayImages false /GrayImageMinResolution 300 /GrayImageMinResolutionPolicy /OK /DownsampleGrayImages false /GrayImageDownsampleType /Average /GrayImageResolution 350 /GrayImageDepth 8 /GrayImageMinDownsampleDepth 2 /GrayImageDownsampleThreshold 1.50000 /EncodeGrayImages true /GrayImageFilter /FlateEncode /AutoFilterGrayImages false /GrayImageAutoFilterStrategy /JPEG /GrayACSImageDict << /QFactor 0.15 /HSamples [1 1 1 1] /VSamples [1 1 1 1] >> /GrayImageDict << /QFactor 0.15 /HSamples [1 1 1 1] /VSamples [1 1 1 1] >> /JPEG2000GrayACSImageDict << /TileWidth 256 /TileHeight 256 /Quality 30 >> /JPEG2000GrayImageDict << /TileWidth 256 /TileHeight 256 /Quality 30 >> /AntiAliasMonoImages false /CropMonoImages false /MonoImageMinResolution 1200 /MonoImageMinResolutionPolicy /OK /DownsampleMonoImages false /MonoImageDownsampleType /Average /MonoImageResolution 1200 /MonoImageDepth -1 /MonoImageDownsampleThreshold 1.50000 /EncodeMonoImages true /MonoImageFilter /CCITTFaxEncode /MonoImageDict << /K -1 >> /AllowPSXObjects true /CheckCompliance [ /None ] /PDFX1aCheck false /PDFX3Check false /PDFXCompliantPDFOnly true /PDFXNoTrimBoxError false /PDFXTrimBoxToMediaBoxOffset [ 0.00000 0.00000 0.00000 0.00000 ] /PDFXSetBleedBoxToMediaBox true /PDFXBleedBoxToTrimBoxOffset [ 0.00000 0.00000 0.00000 0.00000 ] /PDFXOutputIntentProfile (None) /PDFXOutputConditionIdentifier (CGATS TR 001) /PDFXOutputCondition () /PDFXRegistryName (http://www.color.org) /PDFXTrapped /False /CreateJDFFile false /Description << /ENU ([Based on 'Regal PDF1.5'] [Based on '[PDF/X-1a:2001]'] Use these settings to create Adobe PDF documents that are to be checked or must conform to PDF/X-1a:2001, an ISO standard for graphic content exchange. For more information on creating PDF/X-1a compliant PDF documents, please refer to the Acrobat User Guide. Created PDF documents can be opened with Acrobat and Adobe Reader 4.0 and later.) >> /Namespace [ (Adobe) (Common) (1.0) ] /OtherNamespaces [ << /AsReaderSpreads false /CropImagesToFrames false /ErrorControl /WarnAndContinue /FlattenerIgnoreSpreadOverrides false /IncludeGuidesGrids false /IncludeNonPrinting false /IncludeSlug false /Namespace [ (Adobe) (InDesign) (4.0) ] /OmitPlacedBitmaps false /OmitPlacedEPS false /OmitPlacedPDF false /SimulateOverprint /Legacy >> << /AddBleedMarks false /AddColorBars false /AddCropMarks true /AddPageInfo true /AddRegMarks false /BleedOffset [ 9 9 9 9 ] /ConvertColors /NoConversion /DestinationProfileName () /DestinationProfileSelector /DocumentCMYK /Downsample16BitImages true /FlattenerPreset << /PresetSelector /HighResolution >> /FormElements false /GenerateStructure false /IncludeBookmarks false /IncludeHyperlinks false /IncludeInteractive false /IncludeLayers false /IncludeProfiles false /MarksOffset 9 /MarksWeight 0.250000 /MultimediaHandling /UseObjectSettings /Namespace [ (Adobe) (CreativeSuite) (2.0) ] /PDFXOutputIntentProfileSelector /DocumentCMYK /PageMarksFile /RomanDefault /PreserveEditing true /UntaggedCMYKHandling /LeaveUntagged /UntaggedRGBHandling /UseDocumentProfile /UseDocumentBleed false >> << /AllowImageBreaks true /AllowTableBreaks true /ExpandPage false /HonorBaseURL true /HonorRolloverEffect false /IgnoreHTMLPageBreaks false /IncludeHeaderFooter false /MarginOffset [ 0 0 0 0 ] /MetadataAuthor () /MetadataKeywords () /MetadataSubject () /MetadataTitle () /MetricPageSize [ 0 0 ] /MetricUnit /inch /MobileCompatible 0 /Namespace [ (Adobe) (GoLive) (8.0) ] /OpenZoomToHTMLFontSize false /PageOrientation /Portrait /RemoveBackground false /ShrinkContent true /TreatColorsAs /MainMonitorColors /UseEmbeddedProfiles false /UseHTMLTitleAsMetadata true >> ] >> setdistillerparams << /HWResolution [2400 2400] /PageSize [612.000 792.000] >> setpagedevice