Online Study Guide

Revolution and World War :: Expressionism in Early 20th-Century Europe :: Embracing Abstraction :: Challenging Artistic Conventions :: Transatlantic Artistic Dialogues :: European Art in the Wake of World War I :: New Art for A New Society-Utopian Ideals :: Emphasizing the Organic :: Art As Political Statement in the 1930s :: Émigrés and Exiles: Energizing American Art at Midcentury

REVOLUTION AND WORLD WAR

The Early 20^th Century

Developments in industrialization, urbanization, and the growth of nationalism and imperialism continued to affect countries throughout the twentieth century.

20th-Century Intellectual Developments

New discoveries and new ways of thinking in a variety of fields forced people to revise how they understood their worlds.

Challenging Newtonian physics:

Scientific activity in the early twentieth century challenged the Newtonian model of the universe.

Advances in technology:

Scientific developments were not limited to the realm of physics. Advances in chemistry, biology, biochemistry, microbiology, and medicine in the early twentieth century yielded knowledge of polymers, plastics, fertilizers, enzymes, viruses, vitamins, hormones, and antibiotics.

Mind over matter:

Significant changes and developments also occurred in philosophy, psychology, and economic theory

The Rise of Industrial Capitalism

As industrialization matured, the capitalist owners and managers of large-scale industries wielded considerable economic and political power. To counter this power and to protect themselves from exploitation, the working classes formed trade unions and socialist political parties.

World War I and the Russian Revolution

Imperialist expansion by mostly European countries was driven largely by the need of advanced industrial societies for raw-material sources and manufacturing markets.

The Great War:

Nationalism and imperialism led to countries forming alliances to protect their individual interests from competitors. A conflict between two of these alliances led to World War I (1914-1918). The devastation of World War I brought widespread misery, social disruption, and economic collapse.

The Tsar's demise:

The Russian Revolution, which erupted in 1917, was the result of dissatisfaction with the regime of Tsar Nicholas II. Russia was officially renamed the Soviet Union in 1923.

The Great Depression of the 1930s was largely due to the international scope of banking and industrial capitalism.

World war once again:

The Great Depression and the failure of postwar treaties and the League of Nations to keep the peace, led to the rise of totalitarian regimes in several European countries. The seizure of power by these regimes created conflicts that evolved into World War II (1939-1945). Besides territorial and nationalistic interests of the individual countries involved, Adolph Hitler's Nazis in Germany also wanted to build a racially exclusive Aryan state.

The Evolution of Modernism and the Avant-Garde

Artists also responded in various ways to the upheavals of the early twentieth century. Changes in the art world itself also influenced artistic developments. The avant-garde, which continued to challenge traditional notions about art and its relation to society, became a major force.