questions 1: This week, we look at several examples of early modernist* art such as post-impressionism*, cubism*, fauvism*, futurism*, and expressionism*. Let's discuss the relationships between these aesthetic categories and the sociopolitical* climate of the period, always (as we did for Rubens) describing and analyzing specific examples of these categories, as well as (as we did last week for romanticism to impressionism) questioning whether such categories express the wishes of the artists involved and/or if such terms have stuck with critics and scholars.
How did the sociopolitical climate of the time period, including especially the First World War, influence artists? As always, your posts need to meet multiple rubrics to get quality-points (one rubric means one point, up to four). Comparison with present-day examples are always welcome as added ornament, but the meat and potatoes of your point-getting posts will need to focus on the years between 1904 and 1939.
Which artistic and philosophical sub-cultures (circles of friends, enemies, and patrons) were among the most influential in this period, and which works caused the most adoration and debate, then and now?
question 2:As it's Black History Month (when is white history month? Every other one?) and you may have seen that African-American singing was my Ph.D. topic and scholarly primary-area within music history, I'd like to invite everyone to consider the particular presence of continued "race" inequities in early-20th-century arts and politics over the globe (as we discussed slaves in Greece and the portrayal of lower classes in the realist strain within romanticism). In the U.S. what used to be referred to as "the black problem" has been particularly thorny.
Through most of the 19th century, by far the most-popular multimedia performance-form (music, dance, jokes, costumes) in the U.S. (with some popularity in England and elsewhere) was blackface minstrelsy, where both white and some black performers (mostly male) "blacked up" using burnt-cork and oil over their faces, while exaggerating and reddening their lips, wearing white gloves, etc., a disgusting but fascinating deep strain at the root of American popular culture.
But this thread is about roughly 1890-1939; what are some ways that African-Americans began to develop their own subcultures both in the South (where the vast majority of African-Americans lived in earlier, slave years) but also growing in the North (particularly business and industrial centers). What are some artistic, political, and philosophical sub-cultures (circles of friends, enemies, and patrons) under cultivation in these years, and what are some leading products of these circles? (For instance, were the patrons of most black art also black, and how did differences of class and ethnicity tend to affect the terms of this patronage?)
As always, be specific and avoid clichés, triteness, and hyperbole/exaggeration. Consider also the emergence of the arts connected to political developments in India (pre-independence, so remember everyone was a colonial holding, so to speak, even as they were also British citizens), Sierra Leone, Brazil, and Japan in these years, especially when a marginalized community begins to encounter some of modernism's features.
question 3 :Let's connect the themes of the three readings and the lecture for this week to talk about how the ways literature by women in this period has influenced contemporary thinking. Is it always correct to call literature by women feminist*?
In your first post, share what you see the main themes or issues that were important the writer of at least one of the following works:
The Outside (short play) by Susan Glaspell (audio available in the lecture)
"A Society" by Virginia Woolf
"The Solitude of Self" by Elizabeth Cady Stanton
Be sure to reference the specific elements of at least one of the readings or audio in your response. We'll follow up as a class to connect these historical issues to present-day discussions of women and society, although as always make sure the main focus is on the topic of Women and Literature, roughly in the years 1890 to 1929; as always, comparison/contrast between examples (including from other humanities-areas and genders, see below) get points also. Take care this week to use the rubric of differing, one we tend to see very rarely in the course.
Further thought on Virginia Wolff, "A Society":
According to Edward A. Hungerford (1983), the dialogic* form of the story, as well as the critical consideration of a serious topic, point to a form of experimental writing which is closely related to some of Woolf's essays.