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WC III Final Exam Review
World Cultures III (BIC 2334)
Baylor University
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World Cultures III Final Exam
The Romantics: Aesthetic Revolutions
- Romance= derived from Medieval times (magic, chivalry, knights, kings, courts,
damsels in distress, quests, Robin Hood, etc)
- Romanticism= emotion, instinct, medieval romances, supernatural, nature unbridled,
spontaneity, energetic upheaval of social institutions, often grotesque, fantastic
- The Romanticism movement was largely a reaction against the Enlightenment
- In political art: Satan=the ultimate rebel, Prometheus= defier of the gods who “stole”
fire
- Milton’s Paradise Lost: Satan became the emblematic of rebels against tyrants,
Milton himself encouraged rebellion against the monarchy
- Nature= the quintessence of Romanticism
- Rousseau’s theories on beneficent natural state greatly influenced Romantics
- Nature represented in the truest, purest expression of reality, the divine, the sublime
- Nature works on artists to produce artists to produce art
- Nature instructed morality and truth
- Female authors: Mary Shelley, Jane Austen, Mary Robinson
The Enlightenment and Romanticism
- Hume and Kant both were critical of the Enlightenment
- Reactions: Hegel= be more rational and it will work, Schopenhauer= agreed with Kant
- In Romanticism, reality is “known” through our heart, not our head, and we are
“infused” with it and “half create” it
- Enlightenment mode of communication= aims at transparency in communication,
objective, make the world your own, aims for clarity
- Romantic= expressing subjective experiences, awareness that is determining by the artist
“The Most Romantic of All Arts”: How Beethoven Invented Our
Musical World
The old hierarchy of the arts put music at the bottom
New hierarchy= music (not “plastic art”, speaks to the unspeakable), poetry (pliable, not subject to the constraints of older forms), painting and sculpture, and architecture (merely functional, “frozen music”)
Music isn't necessarily a personal expression or universal language but the reception of Beethoven's music spread these false views of music
The Sonata Form: exposition, development, and recapitulation
Coda= the ending of a piece, Beethoven made it more elaborate and dragged it out
Beethoven idealized the idea of Napoleon and originally dedicated the symphony to him
Many believe that his 5th symphony is autobiographical of his struggle with deafness
Impressionist art emerged during the 19th century (ex: George Seurat’s A Sunday Afternoon of the Island of La Grande Jatte, 1884)
Part Three: “the exotic beauty of the other”= Orientalism= an enthusiasm and incorporation of Oriental aesthetics in Western art, Japonisme= influence of Japanese art and culture
Commodore Matthew C. Perry= unintentionally changed European art via trade deals
Meiji Restoration: all feudal lands were nationalized in a formal ceremony, 4 estates social system abolished, 5 point “charter oath” (legal foundation for modernization), modernized empire, Western influence grew
Education: Ministry of Education was founded in 1871, terakoya (elementary) and hanakō (middle) made schools in new public systems
Yeshiva Seido became Tokyo’s imperial university
Imperial modernization: Meiji Constitution (1890, creates Imperial diet), governing houses didn't have much power
Japanese Art and Literature in the New Empire
Yoga= Westernization of Japanese art
Kuroda Seiki: returned from Paris, did the first public showing of a nude in Japan, hired at Tokyo Bitutsi Gaiko (fine arts university)
Fujishima Takej: hired by Seiki, travelled to Paris and Italy
Nihonga: Japanese style painting, traditional style
Uemura Shoen: Nigogna artist, known for Bijinga paintings (beautiful women), first woman to receive Order of Culture
Natsume Soseki: “I am a Cat”, satirical author
Existentialism
As a mode of inquiry, existentialism understands human existence through a framework of authenticity rather than traditional categories and/or morality
Authenticity in existentialism: transparency about my own situation, commitment to autonomy/self-definition, I am responsible for who I am, to be authentic=to be autonomous, transcends traditional roles etc
The rise of existentialism introduced a post-Cartesian concept that focuses on being in the world
Focuses on particularity (“who am I?”)
Acknowledges the dark side of (absurdity) of life (pain, anxiety, nothingness, etc)
Challenges rationality and objectivity and emphasizes human freedom
School of Athens by Raphael (1483- 1520), metaphorical of Plato and Aristotle’s differing views (Aristotle points towards the Earth while Plato points towards the Heavens)
The Scream by Edward Munch (1863-1944)
Victorian/Edwardian view of masculinity: reasonable, active, aggressive, independent, self-interested
Ideology of “The Sex”: seen as reproductive creatures, separation of motherhood and sexuality, private, domestic
Why women suffrage was unpopular: seen as a threat to family values,”women's role”, threatened male’s privilege, women were seen as undeserving because they cant defend the county, no need to vote (father/ husbands could “vote for them”), fear of women pushing for lax birth control regulations
Middle and upper class women: chaperones required in public, forced to live with parents, limited to governess jobs
Lower class women: earned 60% of men’s wages, prostitution was rampant, could work in factories or in domestic service or agriculture
Marriage: her wages were his wages, no right to custody over their children, wives were the property of their husbands, divorce was his prerogative
Justification of marriage laws (pre-1882): female brain seen as grossly inferior (“just big enough for love”), deep thought was thought to be taxing on women delicate health, it was believed that blood supply failed parts of the female brain
Women's Social and Political Union: formed in 1903, President Christabel Pankhurst, advocate militant means for gaining suffrage, WSPU members became known as suffragettes (used as a derogatory nickname), Pankhurst and Annie Kenny were arrested in 1905
Events leading to hunger strikes: unwillingness of Parliament to respond to radical actions, frequent arrests of suffragettes, press coverage fading
Emmeline Pankhurst: arrested in 1908, endured 10 hunger strikes over 18 months, force-fed
Women who gave their lives for suffrage: Mary Clarke (beatings, force feedings, sudden death), Lady Constance Litton (force feedings, early death), Emily Davison (suicide)
Mixed results of the Suffrage Movement: by the 1920s 4/10 voters were female, women’s issues were still not regarded as vital concerns, women entered parliament in discreet numbers, women were 52% of the voting population, Equal Franchise
Bill of 1928 (no age limitation for women voters, all voters minimum of 21, qualifications not based on husband)
19th century feminism centered upon the extension of liberal ideals and democratic principles
Women's statuses were improved but they still lacked power (wage disparity, low political representations)
Important successes for women’s rights: suffrage, pay regulations, legal protections
The Russian Revolution and Stalinism
Europe (1900-1913) was seen as dull but prosperous
The values/worldview of monarchies caused their own downfall
Fascism emerged as an anti-socialist, anti-democratic product of war and Red fear
Defeat against Japan in 1905 brought the first revolution
1915 : year of great retreat, Tsar takes control of the army
Radical Social-Democratic Worker’s Party: pursued the most radical line in 1917 at Vladimir Lenin’s urging, grew in popularity
The First Red Mobilization (1918-1922): Bolsheviks came to power, Tsarist offers fought back, Bolsheviks ended was with Germany
1920s: Utopianism and experimentation possible, state resources focused on literacy/ shaping opinion via the media/explaining policies, repression was reserved for open opposition/clergy/monarchist/rebels
Joseph Stalin rose through the ranks and quickened the speed of change in Russia
Cultural shift from 1920’s-1920s: propaganda focused on mobilization not enlightenment, larger portion of population, focused on heroic acts of labor/athletics/technological breakthroughs
Two major policies that created shifts in the USSR’s economy and landscape: collectivization of agriculture (destroyed old way of life, prompted mass famine) and crash industrialization (managed by state planning organization to build war machines)
Guernica by Pablo Picasso
Pablo Picasso’s Guernica has been on display in the Reina Sofia Museum of Contemporary Art in Madrid since 1992
The painting was created as a response to the bombing of Guernica, Spain by Nazi Germany and Fascist Italian warplanes at the request of Spanish nationalists
The Spanish Civil War (1936- 1939): General Francisco Franco (fascist) won the war and ruled Spain until his death in 1975
The 3rd of May by Francisco Goya was painted to commemorate the Spanish resistance to Napoleon’s armies during the occupation of 1808 in the Peninsular War
Max Beckmann
Beckmann was a German painter, draftsman, printmaker, sculptor, and writer
He is
classified as an Expressionist artist even though he rejected the term and the movement
Beckmann is known for his gothic rose windows
Beckmann’ denied that there was any specific political meaning behind Departure (a reinvention of the classic religious triptych), many see the painting as a response to Hitler’s Germany
The painting demonstrates Beckmann’s belief that “life is torture” and then shows “The queen carries the greatest treasure- Freedom- as her child...”
“Have confidence in things.. not let yourself be intimidated by the horror of the world. Everything must fulfill its destiny in order to attain perfection. Seek this path and you will attain from your own Self ever deeper perception of the eternal beauty of creation.” (1938)
The Holocaust and Modern Europe
- Three Major Precedents for the Holocaust: United States displacement and destruction of Native American landholdings, British colonial policy, and Armenian Genocide (these factors help situate Nazism in European tradition, but do not explain transformation of anti-Semitism, German imperialism, or their mass popularity)
Postmodernism: Architecture, Art, and Afterwards
Defining postmodernism: late-20th-century style and concept in the arts, architecture, and criticism that represents a departure from modernism and has at its heart a general distrust of grand theories of ideologies as well as a problematic relationship with any notion of “art”
Typical features: deliberate mixing of styles and media, often incorporates images relating to the consumerism and mass communication of the late-20th-century postindustrial society
Philip Johnson (1906-2005): Glass House, Menial House (Houston), Kennedy Memorial (Dallas), Art Museum of South Texas, Sony Building
Robert Venturi (b. 1925): denies being a postmodernist, Vanna Venturi House, Learning from Las Vegas, Seattle Museum
Destructivism: an architectural movement or style influence by deconstruction that encourages radical freedom of form and the open manifestation of complexity is a building rather than strict attention to function concerns and conventional design elements
Jacques Derrida (1930-2004)
Frank Gehry (1906-2005): The Guggenheim Museum in Spain, The Museum of Pop Culture in Seattle, Walt Disney Concert Hall in LA
Damien Hirst: British contemporary artist
WC III Final Exam Review
Course: World Cultures III (BIC 2334)
University: Baylor University
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