Art & Literature at the Turn of the Century: Breaking the Mold

      At the turn of the century the world was set on a cliff, poised to embrace a new chapter in history. The turn of the century offered a closure to old world ideals and beliefs, opening a new door to industrial expansion and life apart from restriction, expectations, and oppression. All of life was thrown off that cliff, or perhaps jumped with open arms, and likewise art and literature led the way.

      At the end of the Victorian era, thought had changed. This was the end of agricultural life and a shift to a more industrious society. There was a rapid change in what was consider moral and appropriate, as well as a shift in religious thought and practices. It would seem that the repressive and restrictive Victorian idealism had driven some to the brink, and now they were braking free.
      Starting in the 1870s, writers began to refuse moral representation, preferring their new brand of light. This often took the shape of a rebirth in prose fantasy. Such works as Robert Lewis Stevenson's The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde in 1886 and Lewis Carroll's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland in 1865 display this return to the imaginative and fantastic.

Charles Darwin

      Along with the attack on morals and tradition, marriage and the roles of women also came under scrutiny. The Victorian woman was quite oppressed, not
only in her roles as a wife and woman, but also in her way of dress, speech, and manner. All of this was considered invalid during the braking away from tradition. During this time, more and more female writers receive attention, and the idea of women in society was altered completely.
      With the publication of Charles Darwin's Origin of the Species in 1859, the religious world was turned on its head. Some writers took aim on religious subject-mater and attacked old-world ideals. Thomas Hardy was particularly influenced by this schism.

      Along with writers, artists too began to rebel against old-world idealism and

1905 "Open Window, Collioure" By Henri Matisse

tradition, adjusting to this new and industrious society. Ever since the development of the camera in the 1800s, art had been shifting. With the creation of photography, art was forced to preserve itself by adapting new styles and techniques to cope with the shift in fast paced growth of society. Photography threatened to extinguish art as it grew more advanced; the camera could capture an image much quicker and cheaper than could an artist capture the same image. This put many portraitists out of business, replaced by portrait studios. This inspired artists to revert to a more dreamy state of mind.
      Since the camera could now capture images quickly and accurately, art decided to capture images in fuzzy and fogy representations of life. We see this change with Expressionism and Impressionism. These differing styles took images and contorted them into hazy visions that seemed "out of focus" to some.

1907 "Les Demoiselles d'Avignon" By: Pablo Picasso

      The art world continued to shift as time went on, especially in the art capital of world, Paris. The Salon in France is a showing based on traditional ideals. But when Henri Matisse entered the scene, all this changed. Matisse led a short-lived movement known as Fauvism in the early 1900s. This movement would span a whole new generation of abstract artists and movements. Fauvism, labeling the movement as the art of "wild beasts," took shape as a while and passionate use of color in unpredictable and new ways. This wild use of color broke down all expectations of what art is and what it can accomplish. The Fauvism movement would later in inspire such artists and movements as Picasso and Cubism, Duchamp and Dadaism, and Dali and Surrealism.
      With new technologies also came new mediums of art. When the camera hit the scene, some artists began to ponder the artistic potential of the new device. It would take several decades for photography to become recognized as a legitimate form of art however. Very few people - very few artists - acknowledged photography as an art form, but with the rapidly
changing state of the world, photography eventually became a recognized medium of artistic expression in the twentieth century. This new medium was embraced by such artists as Alfred Stieglitz, Holland Day, Julia Margaret Cameron, Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, and Oscar Gustave Rejlande.

1931 "The Persistence of Memory" By: Salvador Dali

      With the changing world at the turn of the century, art and literature team up once again to focus the ideals of a society in change, giving a new voice for all to hear.