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| 3. Culture and Popular Culture |
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(See Culture and Popular Culture)| Corresponding to the increasing value placed on science, art, and literature after 1848, metaphysics was rejected as a means for the detailed examination of everyday life. Romanticism declined as a formal movement. Realists like Charles Dickens (1812–70), Gustave Flaubert (1821–80), and Gustave Courbet (1819–77) sought to depict the actual world. Émile Zola (1840–1902), Henrik Ibsen (1828–1906), and other naturalists went a step further, hoping to demonstrate a causal relationship between human character and social environment. | 1 |
| Whereas realism and naturalism reflected the attention placed on the external world by most observers during the middle of the 19th century, the development of modernism in the late 19th century reflected an intense introspection. Writers like Thomas Mann (1875–1955), Marcel Proust (1871–1922), and Franz Kafka (1883–1924) probed beneath the surface to uncover a profound reality in the human psyche. In music, modernism was reflected in the dissonance of Igor Stravinsky (1882–1971) and Arnold Schoenberg (1885–1935). | 2 |
| Modern art also revealed a challenge to existing cultural styles and a search for new forms of expression. The first challenge came in the 1860s and 1870s with the growth of impressionism. The followers of Edouard Manet (1832–83), Claude Monet (1840–1926), and Pierre-Auguste Renoir (1841–1919) took the observation of nature a step further by attempting to capture a single moment as the eye perceived it. Postimpressionists like Paul Cézanne (1839–1906), Paul Gauguin (1848–1903), and Vincent van Gogh (1853–90); expressionists like Ernst Ludwig Kirchner (1880–1938) and Edvard Munch (1863–1944); and French fauvists like Henri Matisse (1869–1954) moved farther away from convention by experimenting with space and color to produce an emotional experience dependent on personal impression, not photographic replication. Finally, Pablo Picasso (1881–1973) and Georges Braque (1882–1963) contributed to a new school, known as cubism, between 1909 and 1914. Cubists sought a deeper reality than what the eye first sees by using perspective to capture the experience of seeing in a space of time. By moving away from empiricism, all of these artists represented the growing power and appeal of the nonrational in European thought. | 3 |
| Architecture differed somewhat. Imitations of Gothic, classical, and Byzantine styles continued as European cities expanded. New materials (steel beams, concrete) permitted functional innovations, though none went as far as the skyscraper, developed in the United States. Antonio Gaudí (1856–1926) in Barcelona launched the imaginative modernista movement with his first building (1886), which linked more directly with other aspects of modern art. | 4 |
| Artistic pessimism departed from the dominant trends in popular culture, where the benefits of industrial life were just starting to be experienced. The belief that this was an age of progress was prevalent; people began to view change as a positive, normal occurrence. This belief derived from a faith in science, and, when combined with the popularization of Darwinism, contributed to the growing secularization of life in the latter half of the 19th century. | 5 |
| Religious practice declined in western and central Europe, though unevenly. While missionary activity abroad increased, religious leaders retreated still further from mainstream intellectual life. Conflicts with Darwinism, particularly in some Protestant sects, and with socialism weakened organized religion in some quarters. | 6 |
| Consumerism affected not only the middle classes but also the working classes. This was reflected in the growth of new forms of leisure, especially sports and music halls; by 1900 there were 50 music halls in London alone. As literacy increased because of public schools, readership also expanded. This resulted in the growth of cheap newspapers like London's Daily Mail, which, aimed especially for the newly educated masses, sold for only half a penny when it began distribution in 1896. Western Europe after 1870 saw the birth of modern leisure, with commercialized mass outlets, professional athletes and performers, and widespread spectatorship. | 7 |
| Despite such developments, including some improvements in living conditions, life for the working classes remained difficult. Even in industries regulated by the state, the workweek could be as long as 55 hours. States attempted to curb discontent not only through reform, but also through nationalism and imperialism. They hoped to attract workers away from unions and socialists by instilling in them an excitement at being part of a growing nation. (See Culture and Popular Culture) | 8 |
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