Monday, February 12, 2018

HUM 112 Week 7 Winter 2018

The presentation may contain content that is deemed objectionable to a particular viewer because of the view expressed or the conduct depicted. The views expressed are provided for learning purposes only, and do not necessarily express the views, or opinions, of Strayer University, your professor, or those participating in videos or other media.

We will have a break at 8:00, we will do our in-class discussion before you are dismissed.


  • Complete and submit Week 7 Quiz 6 covering Chapters 31 and 32 - 40 Points
  • Read the following from your textbook:
  • Chapter 33: The Fin de Siècle: Toward the Modern – Europe and Africa
  • Chapter 34: The Era of Invention: Paris and the Modern World
  • Explore the Week 7 Music Folder
  • View the Week 7 Lecture videos
  • Do the Week 7 Explore Activities
  • Participate in the Week 7 Discussion (choose only one (1) of the discussion options) - 20 Points
Pre-Built Course Content
https://blackboard.strayer.edu/bbcswebdav/institution/HUM/112/1146/Week7/Lecture/lecture.html


Week 7 Discussion

"Great Composers and Color Analysis" Please respond to one (1) of the following, using sources under the Explore heading as the basis of your response:
  • Determine whether you prefer Debussy or Mahler after listening to works by each at the Websites below or in this week's Music Folder and after reading about them. Explain the reasons for your preference. Here we find musical composers inspired by poetry and by philosophy. Identify one (1) element within a work that you find interesting or intriguing by either composer, with regard to the manner in which the work is performed or conducted. Describe the types of things that inspire you to creativity.

  • Describe two (2) color paintings by different artists (selected from the list or sources in the Explore section below) that you believe represent the following quote by Kandinsky on the subject of color in art. Justify your response. From Concerning the Spiritual in Art: “If you let your eye stray over a palette of colors, you experience two things. In the first place you receive a purely physical effect, namely the eye itself is enchanted by the beauty and other qualities of color. […] These are physical sensations, limited in duration. They are superficial, too, and leave no lasting impression behind if the soul remains closed. And so we come to the second result of looking at colors: their psychological effect. They produce a correspondent spiritual vibration, and it is only as a step towards this spiritual vibration that the physical impression is of importance. ... Generally speaking, color directly influences the soul." – Wassily Kandinsky. Discuss these ideas for the use of color and its impact in our own times, such as its effect for advertising and sales, or its impact in the workplace and home.
Explore:
Debussy and Mahler
Kandinsky on Color

HUM112 Music Clips for Week 7

  
This week's music clips relate to chapters 33 and 34. 
Debussy's "Prélude à l'après-midi d'un faune": An Introduction, 3:42

In Carnegie Hall's continuing "A Golden Age of Music" series, our Director of Artistic Planning Jeremy Geffen and Sir Simon Rattle of the Berliner Philharmoniker introduce Debussy's sensual "Prélude à l'après-midi d'un faune"—arguably the French composer's most beloved and influential score. Composed to precede a stage reading of a poem titled "The Afternoon of a Faun" by Debussy's Symbolist colleague Stéphane Mallarmé, Geffen calls it "a velvet revolution" and describes it as "about the 11 most perfect minutes you can spend listening to anything in a concert hall." More information about Debussy's "Prélude à l'après-midi d'un faune" is available at http://www.carnegiehall.org/Golden_Ag... More information about "A Golden Age of Music" is available at http://www.carnegieghall.org/goldenage

Symbolist
Literature.
  1. a writer who seeks to express or evoke emotions, ideas, etc., by stressing the symbolic value of language, to which is ascribed a capacity for communicating otherwise inexpressible visions of reality.
  2. (usually initial capital letter) a member of a group of chiefly French and Belgian poets of the latter part of the 19th century who sought to evoke aesthetic emotions by emphasizing the associative character of verbal, often private, images or by using synesthetic devices, as vowel sounds, presumably evocative of color.

Fine Arts.
  1. an artist who seeks to symbolize or suggest ideas or emotions by the objects represented, the colors used, etc.
  2. (usually initial capital letter) a member of a group of late 19th-century artists who rejected realism and sought to express subjective visions rather than objective reality through the use of evocative images.

https://youtu.be/MDvrQznO-n4


  1. Claude Debussy, Prélude à l'après-midi d'un faune (="Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun")  (chap. 33, pp. 1093-1094)
Read pp. 1092-1094 (in chap. 33) and then read the paragraphs below.  Once you do that, imagine yourself as a faun in a meadow on a sunny day; click on the YouTube above, close your eyes and listen.  
A faun (not to be confused with "fawn", which is a young deer) is a creature from ancient Greek and Roman mythology.  A faun is part goat and part human; it usually has the horns of a goat but otherwise is human from head to waist, and is goat from waist to feet.  The ancients considered fauns as one type of forest deity among many.  They were associated with lustful impulses, not having the constraints of formal urban society.  Debussy's musical composition was inspired by a major poem by his friend Stéphane Mallarmé, a poem composed in French (1865; final version in 1876) originally and going by the title  L'Après-midi d'un faune (="The Afternoon of a Faun").  Edwards (http://history.hanover.edu/courses/excerpts/111mall.html) describes Mallarme's poem this way:   


"....a monologue told by the Faun himself, is loosely based on the myth of the god Pan's attempt to seduce the beautiful nymph Syrinx. (Fauns and nymphs are minor forest deities in ancient mythology.) In the myth, just as Pan had caught and embraced Syrinx, fellow nymphs came to her rescue and magically turned her into a sheaf of reeds. In his sigh of regret at losing Syrinx, Pan breathes air into the reeds and discovers the beauty of music. Mallarme's poem does not follow the same story-line as the original myth, but his faun does attempt to seduce nymphs, he does play music, and he is frustrated from realizing his goal (though this is left ambiguous). The poem begins with the faun waking up from a dream and ends with him falling asleep, wine by his side, to return to his dreams. In between he tells of his efforts to seduce fauns, though it is never entirely clear whether and when he is describing real events, memories, or dreams."
See this major SYMBOLIST poem in English translation on p. 1093 (in chap. 33), but for a more complete translation see http://web.fscj.edu/Joy.Kairies/tutorials_2012/chapter32_tut/Impressionism/Mallarme/mallarme.html . [404 Not Found]

For French text with translation, see http://www.ancientsites.com/aw/Article/1262762. On symbolist poetry, see pp. 1091-1093, and also http://www.bc.edu/bc_org/avp/cas/fnart/symbolist/symbolist_intro.html.
Back to Debussy's work,  Prélude à l'après-midi d'un faune: As you listen to Debussy's work, think of it illustrating the moods and lustful fantasies of a faun on a hot afternoon. Debussy's composition later inspired a ballet based on this same poem.


Debussy Prélude à l'après-midi d'un faune - Leonard Bernstein, 12:49

Leonard Bernstein conducts Claude Debussy's Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun - extract from "The Unanswered Question", Boston Symphony Orchestra Check my channel for more music http://www.youtube.com/user/ofirgal

https://youtu.be/EvnRC7tSX50


  
1.b.  Claude Debussy, La Mer  (="The Sea")  (chap. 33, p. 1094) 
Read carefully in 1094 (in chap. 33) about the three sections of this work; consider the book's description of this as "Impressionist" music (the analogy being to Impressionist paintings); but also consider the suggestion the it might be "Symbolist" and reflect on the differences described between the two.   The book describes the three parts of this--light on the surface of the water, movement of waves, and sound of wind on the water.  Feel free to listen to a few minutes and then fast forward to the different parts.


Debussy-La Mer,Orchestre de Paris-Salonen, 26:20

https://youtu.be/IBBpqEMRaZU



 1.c.  Claude Debussy, Clair de lune  (not mentioned in book; Debussy is on pp. 1093-1094, 1179)
Claude Debussy composed this famous work as the third movement of a piano suite entitled Suite Bergamasque.  "Clair de lune" is French for "moonlight".  It was completed in 1905. For some it evokes the image and mood of moonlight shining through the leaves of a tree.  It seems to have been inspired by a symbolist French poem (also entitled Claire de lune) by Paul Verlaine, penned in 1869.  For the French text and translation of the poem, see  http://www.press.uchicago.edu/Misc/Chicago/853446.html ; scroll down to the second poem .  For one person's experience playing  Debussy's composition, see http://blog.thecurrent.org/2012/08/debussys-150th-birthday-spirit-his-clair-de-lune-lives/. 

Nevermore Allons, mon pauvre coeur, allons, mon vieux complice,
Redresse et peins à neuf tous tes arcs triomphaux;
Brûle un encens ranci sur tes autels d'or faux;
Sème de fleurs les bords béants du précipice;
Allons, mon pauvre coeur, allons, mon vieux complice!
Pousse à Dieu ton cantique, ô chantre rajeuni;
Entonne, orgue enroué, des Te Deum splendides;
Vieillard prématuré, mets du fard sur tes rides;
Couvre-toi de tapis mordorés, mur jauni;
Pousse à Dieu ton cantique, ô chantre rajeuni.
Sonnez, grelots; sonnez, clochettes; sonnez, cloches!
Car mon rêve impossible a pris corps, et je l'ai
Entre mes bras pressé: le Bonheur, cet ailé
Voyageur qui de l'Homme évite les approches,
--Sonnez, grelots; sonnez, clochettes; sonnez, cloches!
Le Bonheur a marché côte à côte avec moi;
Mais la FATALITÉ ne connaît point de trêve:
Le ver est dans le fruit, le réveil dans le rêve,
Et le remords est dans l'amour: telle est la loi.
--Le Bonheur a marché côte à côte avec moi.
From Poèmes saturniens (1866) 		Nevermore Come, my poor heart, come, old friend true and tried,
Repaint your triumph's arches, raised anew;
Smoke tinsel altars with stale incense; strew
Flowers before the chasm, gaping wide;
Come, my poor heart, come, old friend true and tried.

Cantor revivified, sing God your hymn;
Hoarse organ-pipes, intone Te Deums proud;
Make up your aging face, youth wrinkle-browed;
Bedeck yourself in gold, wall yellow-dim;
Cantor revivified, sing God your hymn.

Ring, bells; peal, chimes; peal, ring, bells large and small!
My hopeless dream takes shape: for Happiness--
Here, now--lies clutched, embraced in my caress;
Winged Voyager, who shuns Man's every call;
--Ring, bells; peal, chimes; peal, ring, bells large and small!

Happiness once walked side by side with me;
But DOOM knows no reprieve, there's no mistaking:
The worm is in the fruit; in dreaming, waking;
In loving, mourning. And so must it be.
--Happiness once walked side by side with me.


Today marks the 150th birthday of influential impressionist composer Claude Debussy. Despite my strong affinity for his work, both as a listener and as a hobbyist piano player, it’s a date I probably wouldn’t have been aware of if I hadn’t started working in the Minnesota Public Radio building this year and sharing cube space with employees of MPR’s Classical station.

But I’m glad to know about Debussy’s birthday today and reflect on some of his most notable works. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the year I started working in such close proximity to all these classical music experts has also been a time of great rediscovery between me and my favorite instrument; after years away from it, I purchased a used piano over the winter and have slowly been re-learning some of the old songs I loved to play.

Debussy’s “Clair de Lune” has always been my favorite piece, and when I think back on my years of classical training it was easily the piece I knew how to play the best. There were certainly more technically challenging pieces in my repoirtoire—Beethoven’s Sonata Pathétique and Mozart’s Fantasias were among some of the flashiest—but I loved “Clair de Lune” for its colors, tones, and space.

I have a few vivid memories of Debussy’s piano music that stick with me to this day, and when I think back on them I realize they still inform the way I listen to and experience music. The first happened when my piano teacher introduced me to the composer by playing me a few recordings of his songs, and instructed me to gaze up at a Degas painting of a pair of ballerinas that hung above her piano as we listened. “Do you see the edge of the skirt here, how it blends into the background so there is no way to tell where the ballerina ends and the background begins?” she instructed. “Debussy’s music is meant to be played this way, in this blurred space.”

Did I mention she was a very good teacher?

My second memory of Debussy comes a few years later, when I had progressed through a few different pieces and learned to play “Clair de Lune.” After months of learning the chords, figuring out the impossible key change mid-song, and practicing to blur measures of notes together with the pedal, I showed up to a lesson and played the piece not only accurately, but interpretively. For the first time in a decade-plus of learning the instrument, it was one of the first times I remember really playing with a song, toying with the tempo, swelling with the notes as they cascaded up and down instead of dutifully mimicking the rhythms and dynamics that were printed on the page. I poured a piece of myself into the song, and when I finished, I looked up to find that my teacher had tears in her eyes. It’s the proudest moment I’ve ever had as a performer, and that kind of musical expression is something I seek out in other performers to this day.
So in honor of Claude and what a sentimental sap he has made me, I’d like to tip my hat to “Clair de Lune” and offer up a brief history of its lasting impact on popular music.

One famous use in recent years is at the ending to the re-make of Ocean’s Eleven, as the cast stares out at the fountains of the Belaggio in Las Vegas:

Claire de Lune - Ocean's 11, 2:16

https://youtu.be/DLDFOzB2iHc



And it even appears as a bonus track on one of the Twilight soundtracks:

Twilight Soundtrack-Clair de Lune, 5:48

https://youtu.be/Q6KAm7TR8qU


Debussy: Clair de lune, 5:41

Thomas Labé, Piano

https://youtu.be/ZIsQPdC9YnY


                              --------------------
  1.  Gustav Mahler, Symphony No. 1, 3rd Movement   (chap. 33, p. 1104-1105) 
Read carefully the description of this piece on p. 1104 (in chap. 33).  Mahler was a prominent composer from Vienna in the late 1800s.

Mahler: Symphony No. 1 - 3rd Movement - Tito Muñoz/St. Olaf Orchestra, 10:56

https://youtu.be/kbRyttzUzjI


  
 2.b.  Gustav Mahler, Symphony No. 2 (=The Resurrection Symphony"), in full  (not mentioned in book) If truly ambitious, listen to this long but marvelous symphony.   

Gustav Mahler: Symphony No. 2 "Resurrection" (Lucerne Festival Orchestra, Claudio Abbado), 1:26:27
Recorded live at the Lucerne Festival, Summer 2003 Culture and Convention Centre Lucerne, 21 August 2003

Eteri Gvazava - soprano Anna Larsson - mezzo-soprano Orfeón Donostiarra José Antonio Sainz Alfaro - chorus master Lucerne Festival Orchestra Claudio Abbado - conductor 1:18 I.

Allegro maestoso (21:10) 22:26 II. Andante moderato (9:24) 32:18 III. [Scherzo] In ruhig fließender Bewegung (11:18) 43:48 IV. Urllicht. Sehr feierlich, aber schlicht (5:05) 48:42 V. Im Tempo des Scherzo. Wild herausfahrend - "Auferstehn" (37:25)

Resurrection in Lucerne Lucerne Festival. 21 August 2003, 7.30 pm.

The atmosphere in the large concert hall in the spectacular, steel and glass Culture and Convention Centre built on the shore of Lake Lucerne by the French star architect Jean Nouvel is electric.

The event was sold out months ago. Here and there a throat is softly cleared, people settle in their seats, their faces alert and expectant.

At last, doors open and the members of the newly founded Lucerne Festival Orchestra come on to the platform.

There are many very well-known faces: the clarinettist Sabine Meyer and Emmanuel Pahud, the fleet-fingered first flute from the Berliner Philharmoniker, Natalie Gutman among the cellists, members of the Hagen and Alban Berg Quartets among the rank and file of strings, and other players include Albrecht Mayer (oboe), Kolya Blacher (violin) and Wolfram Christ (viola). Lucerne en fête

What kind of orchestra is this, formed of the most famous instrumentalists, the most celebrated chamber-music players, the most experienced soloists from the world's best orchestras?

With Claudio Abbado to conduct it, chief conductor of the Berliner Philharmoniker up until the previous year, for whom the Lucerne Festival Orchestra is the realization of a wholly personal dream? One answer, at least, is obvious: lt is an orchestra of superlatives. "After this first appearance", the press agreed, "there can be no argument: orchestral cultivation of this calibre is scarcely to be heard anywhere else." The Lucerne Festival has a long tradition of generating its own orchestras. The best remembered is probably the Swiss Festival Orchestra, which assembled "the best orchestral musicians of Switzerland" (to quote the Original memorandum of association) to give the concerts that formed the festival's backbone every year from 1943 to 1993.

But the idea of an elite orchestra goes back further, to the summer of 1938. This was the year in which Arturo Toscanini dissociated himself from the Salzburg Festival for political reasons; a handpicked orchestra was formed for him to conduct in Lucerne (the members of the legendary Busch Quartet, banned frorn playing in Germany, sat at the first desks of the string section) and his "concert de gala" marked the moment when Lucerne was new-born as a festival city.

https://youtu.be/4MPuoOj5TIw


                 ------------------------------- 
  1. Johannes Brahms, Symphony No. 4, 4th Movement  (chap. 33, pp. 1104-1105) 
Read carefully pp. 1104-1105 (in chap. 33).  This was composed in 1885.  Our class text notes that it is marked allegro energico e passionato (energetically fast and passionate). 
Carlos Kleiber - Brahms Symphony No.4 (4th mov,), 10:00

Carlos Kleiber conducts Brahms Symphony No.4 (4th mov), with the Bavarian State Orchestra. The best performance.

https://youtu.be/WZGWB93-mmI


       ---------------------------------- 
  1. Igor Stravinsky, Le Sacre de printemps (=The Rite of Spring) (chap. 34, pp. 1129-1130) 
Read carefully  pp. 1129-1130 (in chap. 34) on this ballet, for which Stravinsky composed the music   and Nijinsky did the choreography.  (Compare Debussy's work--number 1 above; pp. 1093-4; note how this is another twist on Mallarme's poem--a ballet with new music).    It is very interesting to consider audience expectations for any performance.  It is a my guess that most of you will listen to this music and find it enjoyable and inventive with all the tempo changes, certainly nothing to complain about.  And the dance and choreography will seem good and tame (there are more erotic modern dance versions of this, but this is the more conservative original). Yet, in 1913, early in the performance there was so much hissing and booing--apparently directed at the music, not the dance--that  "police had to be called, as Stravinsky himself crawled to safety out a backstage window" (p. 1129)!!!!      I guess this is a different version of "Elvis has left the building"!
Stravinsky: Le sacre du printemps / The Rite of Spring - Jaap van Zweden - Full concert in HD, 36:39

Het Radio Filharmonisch Orkest o.l.v. Jaap van Zweden speelt tijdens Het Zondagochtend Concert in het Concertgebouw Stravinski's 'Le sacre du printemps'. Stravinski: Le sacre du printemps Radio Filharmonisch Orkest o.l.v. Jaap van Zweden Opgenomen/recorded: 14 november 2010 tijdens het Zondagochtend Concert in het Concertgebouw in Amsterdam. Het Zondagochtend Concert is een concertserie van NPO Radio 4. Kijk voor meer informatie over de reeks op www.radio4.nl/hetzondagochtendconcert.

https://youtu.be/5UJOaGIhG7A

                 -------------------------     



  1.  Arnold Schoenberg, "Madonna" , section 6 in Pierrot Lunaire   (chap. 34, p. 1133)
Read carefully p. 1133 (in chap. 34).  Schoenberg completed this work in 1912. Realize that this is deliberately atonal (He would say "pantonal"). 

Note the use of Sprechstimme (="speech song") instead of normal singing and Schoenberg's description of this. 

Pierrot is the name of the main character, who is a clown by profession.

"Pierrot Lunaire" can be translated "Moonstruck Pierrot" or "Pierrot in the Moonlight". 

Pierrot Lunaire is a work made up of 21 poems or songs, though actually they are put into three groups of 7 songs each. 

The subject matter of each 13-line poem is quite varied. 

This song called "Madonna" is a song to Mary when she is holding her son Jesus after he is taken down from the cross, the moment captured most famously in Michelangelo's sculpture called The Pietà. (There is no scriptural account of this event, though it cannot be discounted as a possibility.

It became a common motif in tradition and art.) There is an allusion to a figurative warning Mary received in Luke 2:35 that "a sword shall pierce your own soul". 

This song "Madonna" graphically captures the moment as Mary "the mother of sorrows" cradles her dead son in her arms. Read the text of the lyrics at the link above.
Steig, o Mutter aller Schmerzen, Rise, o mother of all sorrows Auf den Altar meiner Verse! The altar of my verses! Blut aus deinen magren Brusten Blood from your meager breasts Hat des Schwertes Wut vergossen. The sword's anger has spilled Deine ewig frischen Wunden Your eternally fresh wounds Gleichen Augen, rot und offen. Resemble eyes, red and open. Steig, o Mutter aller Schmerzen, Rise, o mother of all sorrows Auf den Altar meiner Verse! On the altar of my verses! In den abgezehrten Händen In emaciated hands Hältst du deines Sohnes Leiche. You hold your son's corpse Ihn zu zeigen aller Menschheit - To show all mankind-- Doch der Blick der Menschen meidet But the gaze of men shuns Dich, o Mutter aller Schmerzen! You, a mother of all sorrows.

Arnold Schönberg: Pierrot Lunaire - 6. Madonna, 1:53

Ildikó Iván - soprano István Matuz - flute

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=INMo2Tg8fqc


                              ------------------------------------  
  1. Giacomo Puccini, "Un bel di" from Madama Butterfly (chap. 34, p. 1133)

Puccini completed and first presented this opera in 1904.  The story in this opera was roughly based on stories that had appeared in a play and short story in the late 1800s.  Read carefully p. 1133 (in chap. 34) for a brief summary of the story of an irresponsible American sailor who abandoned his bride (Cio-Cio-San, meaning Butterfly) and returned to America.  It is a tragic, heart-wrenching story. Un bel  di (= "One Fine Day") is the play's most famous aria.  It is sung in Act 2.  It shows her longing for her husband's return one day, and she fantasizes about that event.  But, the audience suspects that, deep down, this is an attempt to convince herself of that.
English Translation of "Un bel di, vedremo"

One good day, we will see Arising a strand of smoke Over the far horizon on the sea And then the ship appears And then the ship is white It enters into the port, it rumbles its salute.

Do you see it? He is coming! I don't go down to meet him, not I. I stay upon the edge of the hill And I wait a long time but I do not grow weary of the long wait.

And leaving from the crowded city, A man, a little speck Climbing the hill. Who is it? Who is it? And as he arrives What will he say? What will he say? He will call Butterfly from the distance I without answering Stay hidden A little to tease him, A little as to not die. At the first meeting, And then a little troubled He will call, he will call "Little one, dear wife Blossom of orange" The names he called me at his last coming. All this will happen, I promise you this Hold back your fears - I with secure faith wait for him.

Mika Mori - " UN BEL DI VEDREMO " ( da Madama Butterfly di G.Puccini ), 5:12

https://youtu.be/s_L0m1vYrmk


                              ---------------------------------   
6.b.  Giacomo Puccini, "Nessun dorma" from Turandot   (chap. 34, pp. 1133-1134)
This opera by Puccini was composed primarily by Puccini, though he died in 1924 before it was finished.  Alfano completed the work, and it was first performed in 1926. This opera was based on plays of the story that had appeared in various versions for several centuries before.   In the opera, the story is set in ancient Peking (now called Beijing, China) where the a cold-hearted and cruel princess named Turandot is dealing with a suitor named Prince Calàf. The story is nicely summarized on pp. 1133-1134 (in chap. 34).  She does not want to marry him, but he has answered her riddles and challenges. Realizing her dilemma, he offered to forfeit his life at dawn if she could discover his real name. Thus, by Act III, she is determined that no one is the town shall sleep until she gets the name (she preferred he die than that she marry him).  Thus, the aria, Nessun dorma ("Let No One Sleep"). 
No One Sleeps

English Version of "Nessun Dorma"


No one sleeps! No one sleeps! Even you, oh princess, in your cold room, look at the stars that tremble with love and hope!
But my mystery it is locked in me. And my name, no one will know! No, no!
On your mouth I will say it, when the light will shine!
And my kiss will break the silence, that makes you mine!
choir: His name no one will know... And we shall have, alas, to die, to die...!
Disperse, o night! Vanish, oh stars! Vanish, oh stars!
At daybreak, I will win! I will win! I will win!

Pavarotti - Nessun Dorma 1994 (High Quality With Lyrics),  3:19

https://youtu.be/rTFUM4Uh_6Y


                       ---------------------------------------------






























Week 7 Explore


Debussy and Mahler
Kandinsky on Color
N
Kandinsky's Effect: Reflections on Synesthetic Lesson in Abstraction, 7:22
When Wassily Kandinsky introduced his theory in art composition in the 1920s, his method of abstraction was perceived as objective and universal resulting in a learned language believed to be able to communicate universally. As historians have asserted that Kandinsky's theory was influenced by his genuine synesthesia experience, the method can also be viewed as subjective. Therefore, objective teaching and critique of abstraction often raises controversies due to the perceived universal quality. In this light, this paper proposes a quasi-experimental study based on a small cross-modality experiment conducted by Kandinsky in order to gain insight understanding in abstraction lesson design. In this study, 30 students are randomly divided into two groups, one with single-modality method of learning another with synesthetic or cross-modality method of learning based on Kandinsky's synesthetic paintings. In the cross-modality method, students immerse themselves into the paintings by creating sound samples from percussion instruments, which are then blindly assigned to other students in the same group to compose three dimensional models that best depict the sound samples. Findings are presented in a narrative amalgamation in order to provide an understanding in advantages and disadvantages of single-modality method (objective-based lesson) and cross-modality method (subjective-based, synesthetic lesson) in abstraction. (By: Chutarat Laomanacharoen, Assumption University)

https://youtu.be/Z0GtwbgaQXY




    Music: Jaunty Gumption, Running Fanfare, Gymnopedie no. 1 - Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) https://youtu.be/qv8TANh8djI



33 The Fin de Siècle

Fin de siècle (French pronunciation: ​[fɛ̃ də sjɛkl]) is French for end of the century, a term which typically encompasses both the meaning of the similar English idiom turn of the century and also makes reference to the closing of one era and onset of a new era. The term is typically used to refer to the end of the 19th century. This period was widely thought to be a period of degeneration, but at the same time a period of hope for a new beginning.[1] The "spirit" of fin de siècle often refers to the cultural hallmarks that were recognized as prominent in the 1880s and 1890s, including ennui, cynicism, pessimism, and "...a widespread belief that civilization leads to decadence."[2]

The term "fin de siècle" is commonly applied to French art and artists, as the traits of the culture first appeared there, but the movement affected many European countries.[3] The term becomes applicable to the sentiments and traits associated with the culture, as opposed to focusing solely on the movement's initial recognition in France. The ideas and concerns developed by fin de siècle artists provided the impetus for movements such as symbolism and modernism.[4]

The themes of fin de siècle political culture were very controversial and have been cited as a major influence on fascism[5][6] and as a generator of the science of geopolitics, including the theory of lebensraum.[7][8] The major political theme of the era was that of revolt against materialism, rationalism, positivism, bourgeois society, and liberal democracy.[5] The fin-de-siècle generation supported emotionalism, irrationalism, subjectivism, and vitalism,[6] while the mindset of the age saw civilization as being in a crisis that required a massive and total solution.[5]
  
Degeneration theory



  1. Arthur Schopenhauer, German philosopher, whose philosophy 
    influenced the culture of fin de siècle.
    B. A. Morel's Degeneration theory holds that although societies can progress, they can also remain static or even regress if influenced by a flawed environment, such as national conditions or outside cultural influences. This degeneration can be passed from generation to generation, resulting in imbecility and senility due to hereditary influence. Max Nordau's Degeneration holds that the two dominant traits of those degenerated in a society involve ego mania and mysticism. The former term was understood to mean a pathological degree of self-absorption and unreasonable attention to one's own sentiments and activities, as can be seen in the extremely descriptive nature of minute details; the latter referred to the impaired ability to translate primary perceptions into fully developed ideas, largely noted in symbolist works. Nordau's treatment of these traits as degenerative qualities lends to the perception of a world falling into decay through fin de siècle corruptions of thought, and influencing the pessimism growing in Europe's philosophical consciousness. 

  2. As fin de siècle citizens, attitudes tended toward science in an attempt to decipher the world in which they lived. The focus on psycho-physiology, now psychology, was a large part of fin de siècle society in that it studied a topic that could not be depicted through Romanticism, but relied on traits exhibited to suggest how the mind works, as does symbolism. The concept of genius returned to popular consciousness around this period through Max Nordau's work with degeneration, prompting study of artists supposedly affected by social degeneration and what separates imbecility from genius. The genius and the imbecile were determined to have largely similar character traits, including les delires des grandeurs and la folie du doute. The first, which means delusions of grandeur, begins with a disproportionate sense of importance in one's own activities and results in a sense of alienation, as Nordau describes in Baudelaire, as well as the second characteristic of madness of doubt, which involves intense indecision and extreme preoccupation to minute detail. The difference between degenerate genius and degenerate madman become the extensive knowledge held by the genius in a few areas paired with a belief in one's own superiority as a result. Together, these psychological traits lend to originality, eccentricity, and a sense of alienation, all symptoms of la mal du siècle that impacted French youth at the beginning of the 19th century until expanding outward and eventually influencing the rest of Europe approaching the turn of the century.



    The Belgian symbolist Fernand Khnopff's The Caress

    Pessimism



    Irish Aesthetic writer Oscar Wilde
    England's ideological space was affected by the philosophical waves of pessimism sweeping Europe, starting with philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer's work from before 1860 and gradually influencing artists internationally.[13] R. H. Goodale identified 235 essays by British and American authors concerning pessimism, ranging from 1871 to 1900, showing the prominence of pessimism in conjunction with English ideology.[13] Further, Oscar Wilde's references to pessimism in his works demonstrate the relevance of the ideology on the English. In An Ideal Husband, Wilde's protagonist asks another character whether "at heart, [she is] an optimist or a pessimist? Those seem to be the only two fashionable religions left to us nowadays."[13] Wilde's reflection on personal philosophy as more culturally significant than religion lends credence to the Degeneration Theory, as applied to Baudelaire's influence on other nations.[9] However, the optimistic Romanticism popular earlier in the century would also have had an impact on the shifting ideological landscape. The newly fashionable pessimism appears again in Wilde's The Importance of Being Earnest, written that same year:
    Algernon: I hope tomorrow will be a fine day, Lane.
    Lane: It never is, sir.
    Algernon: Lane, you're a perfect pessimist.
    Lane: I do my best to give satisfaction, sir.
    Lane is philosophically current as of 1895, reining in his master's optimism about the weather by reminding Algernon of how the world typically operates. His pessimism gives satisfaction to Algernon; the perfect servant of a gentleman is one who is philosophically aware.[13] Charles Baudelaire's work demonstrates some of the pessimism expected of the time, and his work with modernity exemplified the decadence and decay with which turn-of-the-century French art is associated, while his work with symbolism promoted the mysticism Nordau associated with fin de siècle artists. Baudelaire's pioneering translations of Edgar Allan Poe's verse supports the aesthetic role of translation in fin de siècle culture,[14] while his own works influenced French and English artists through the use of modernity and symbolism. Baudelaire influenced other French artists like Arthur Rimbaud, the author of René whose titular character displays the mal du siècle that European youths of the age displayed.[13] Baudelaire, Rimbaud, and their contemporaries became known as French decadents, a group that influenced its English counterpart, the aesthetes like Oscar Wilde. Both groups believed the purpose of art was to evoke an emotional response and demonstrate the beauty inherent in the unnatural as opposed to trying to teach its audience an infallible sense of morality.[15]

    Artistic conventions



    At the Moulin Rouge (1895), a painting by Henri Toulouse-Lautrec that captures the vibrant and decadent spirit of society during the fin de siècle
    The works of the Decadents and the Aesthetes contain the hallmarks typical of fin de siècle art. Holbrook Jackson's The Eighteen Nineties describes the characteristics of English decadence, which are: perversity, artificiality, egoism, and curiosity.[10]

    The first trait is the concern for the perverse, unclean, and unnatural.[9] Romanticism encouraged audiences to view physical traits as indicative of one's inner self, whereas the fin de siècle artists accepted beauty as the basis of life, and so valued that which was not conventionally beautiful.[10]



    The Scream (1893), an expressionist painting by Edvard Munch is a prominent cultural symbol of fin de siècle era.


    This belief in beauty in the abject leads to the obsession with artifice and symbolism, as artists rejected ineffable ideas of beauty in favour of the abstract. Through symbolism, aesthetes could evoke sentiments and ideas in their audience without relying on an infallible general understanding of the world.

    The third trait of the culture is egoism, a term similar to that of ego-mania, meaning disproportionate attention placed on one's own endeavours. This can result in a type of alienation and anguish, as in Baudelaire's case, and demonstrates how aesthetic artists chose cityscapes over country as a result of their aversion to the natural.

    Finally, curiosity is identifiable through diabolism and the exploration of the evil or immoral, focusing on the morbid and macabre, but without imposing any moral lessons on the audience.


 
Fin-de-siècle Vienna Top #7 Facts, 1:25

https://youtu.be/PtX4Sem3nYE



TOWARD THE MODERN 1085

    The Paris Exposition of 1889 1086

The Exposition Universelle of 1889 was a world's fair held in Paris, France, from 6 May to 31 October 1889.

It was held during the year of the 100th anniversary of the storming of the Bastille, an event considered symbolic of the beginning of the French Revolution. The fair included a reconstruction of the Bastille and its surrounding neighborhood, but with the interior courtyard covered with a blue ceiling decorated with fleur-de-lys and used as a ball room and gathering place.

The 1889 Exposition covered a total area of 0.96 km2, including the Champ de Mars, the Trocadéro, the quai d'Orsay, a part of the Seine and the Invalides esplanade. Transport around the Exposition was partly provided by a 3 kilometre (1.9 mi) 600 millimetre (2 ft 0 in) gauge railway by Decauville. It was claimed that the railway carried 6,342,446 visitors in just six months of operation. Some of the locomotives used on this line later saw service on the Chemins de Fer du Calvados.

Paris 1889 World's Fair, 3:51

This video is a compilation of photographs from the U.S. Library of Congress archives of the 1889 Paris Exposition Universelle, or the Paris World's Fair.

https://youtu.be/A9BsHPqasak



    The Fin de Siècle: From Naturalism to Symbolism 1087

Realism
Realism in the arts is the attempt to represent subject matter truthfully, without artificiality and avoiding artistic conventions, implausible, exotic and supernatural elements.

Realism has been prevalent in the arts at many periods, and is in large part a matter of technique and training, and the avoidance of stylization. In the visual arts, illusionistic realism is the accurate depiction of lifeforms, perspective, and the details of light and colour. Realist works of art may emphasize the mundane, ugly or sordid, such as works of social realism, regionalism, or kitchen sink realism.

There have been various realism movements in the arts, such as the opera style of verismo, literary realism, theatrical realism and Italian neorealist cinema. The realism art movement in painting began in France in the 1850s, after the 1848 Revolution.[1] The realist painters rejected Romanticism, which had come to dominate French literature and art, with roots in the late 18th century.

 

Bonjour, Monsieur Courbet, 1854. A Realist painting by Gustave Courbet

What's the Difference Between Realism & Naturalism? #withcaptions | ARTiculations,

Betty explains the difference between the art movement realism and the art style naturalism. 4:32

https://youtu.be/ofxkDCSxDMU





Naturalism

Naturalism introduction, 5:14

https://youtu.be/M91epmOsMWU





Symbolism

Symbolism was a late nineteenth-century art movement of French, Russian and Belgian origin in poetry and other arts. In literature, the style originates with the 1857 publication of Charles Baudelaire's Les Fleurs du mal. The works of Edgar Allan Poe, which Baudelaire admired greatly and translated into French, were a significant influence and the source of many stock tropes and images. The aesthetic was developed by Stéphane Mallarmé and Paul Verlaine during the 1860s and 1870s. In the 1880s, the aesthetic was articulated by a series of manifestos and attracted a generation of writers. The name "symbolist" itself was first applied by the critic Jean Moréas, who invented the term to distinguish the symbolists from the related decadents of literature and of art.

Distinct from, but related to, the style of literature, symbolism of art is related to the gothic component of Romanticism.

Impressionism, Post Impressionism, Symbolism Movements in Art, 5:49

This is a video about three movements of art that changed the art world. This video is for educational purposes only.

https://youtu.be/hZ3SV86dNeU




        Art Nouveau 1087

Art Nouveau (French pronunciation: ​[aʁ nuvo], Anglicised to /ˈɑːrt nuːˈvoʊ/; Austria. Sezession or Secessionsstil, Catalan Modernisme, Czech Secese, English Modern Style, Germany Jugendstil or Reformstil, Italian also Stile Floreale or Liberty, Slovak Secesia, Russian Модерн [Modern]) or Jugendstil is an international philosophy[1] and style of art, architecture and applied art – especially the decorative arts – that was most popular during 1890–1910.[2] English uses the French name Art Nouveau ("new art"), but the style has many different names in other countries. A reaction to academic art of the 19th century, it was inspired by natural forms and structures, not only in flowers and plants, but also in curved lines. Architects tried to harmonize with the natural environment.[3]

Art Nouveau is considered a "total" art style, embracing architecture, graphic art, interior design, and most of the decorative arts including jewellery, furniture, textiles, household silver and other utensils and lighting, as well as the fine arts. According to the philosophy of the style, art should be a way of life. For many well-off Europeans, it was possible to live in an art nouveau-inspired house with art nouveau furniture, silverware, fabrics, ceramics including tableware, jewellery, cigarette cases, etc. Artists desired to combine the fine arts and applied arts, even for utilitarian objects.[3]

Although Art Nouveau was replaced by 20th-century Modernist styles,[4] it is now considered as an important transition between the eclectic historic revival styles of the 19th century and Modernism.[5]

Art Nouveau - Overview - Goodbye-Art Academy, 5:08

This is an overview of Art Nouveau a movement in Art History from 1890-1910.

https://youtu.be/P4luPnObQYo




        Exposing Society’s Secrets: The Plays of Henrik Ibsen 1089

Henrik Johan Ibsen (Norwegian: [ˈhɛnɾɪk ˈɪpsən]; 20 March 1828 – 23 May 1906) was a major 19th-century Norwegian playwright, theatre director, and poet. He is often referred to as "the father of realism" and is one of the founders of Modernism in theatre. His major works include Brand, Peer Gynt, An Enemy of the People, Emperor and Galilean, A Doll's House, Hedda Gabler, Ghosts, The Wild Duck, Rosmersholm, and The Master Builder. He is the most frequently performed dramatist in the world after Shakespeare, and A Doll's House became the world's most performed play by the early 20th century.

Several of his later dramas were considered scandalous to many of his era, when European theatre was expected to model strict morals of family life and propriety. Ibsen's later work examined the realities that lay behind many façades, revealing much that was disquieting to many contemporaries. It utilized a critical eye and free inquiry into the conditions of life and issues of morality. The poetic and cinematic early play Peer Gynt, however, has strong surreal elements.

Ibsen is often ranked as one of the most distinguished playwrights in the European tradition. Richard Hornby describes him as "a profound poetic dramatist—the best since Shakespeare". He is widely regarded as the most important playwright since Shakespeare. He influenced other playwrights and novelists such as George Bernard Shaw, Oscar Wilde, Arthur Miller, James Joyce, Eugene O'Neill and Miroslav Krleža. Ibsen was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1902, 1903 and 1904.

Ibsen wrote his plays in Danish (the common written language of Denmark and Norway) and they were published by the Danish publisher Gyldendal. Although most of his plays are set in Norway—often in places reminiscent of Skien, the port town where he grew up—Ibsen lived for 27 years in Italy and Germany, and rarely visited Norway during his most productive years. Born into a merchant family connected to the patriciate of Skien, Ibsen shaped his dramas according to his family background. He was the father of Prime Minister Sigurd Ibsen. Ibsen's dramas continue in their influence upon contemporary culture and film with notable film productions including A Doll's House featuring Jane Fonda and A Master Builder featuring Wallace Shawn.

A Short History Of Henrik Ibsen, 4:15

A more serious, yet slightly humerous video, featuring the history of a very important man to our world's history in writing, Henrik Ibsen.

https://youtu.be/CAxGNj83WQ0



        The Symbolist Imagination in the Arts 1090

Symbolism was a late nineteenth-century art movement of French, Russian and Belgian origin in poetry and other arts.


Symbolism and fin de siecle painting, 7:20

I close out the 19th century with a look at the symbolists and the Viennese Secession school as represented by Gustav Klimt.

https://youtu.be/OQLGYJ0zEoc



    Post-Impressionist Painting 1094

Post-Impressionism (also spelled Postimpressionism) is a predominantly French art movement that developed roughly between 1886 and 1905; from the last Impressionist exhibition to the birth of Fauvism. Post-Impressionism emerged as a reaction against Impressionists’ concern for the naturalistic depiction of light and colour. Due to its broad emphasis on abstract qualities or symbolic content, Post-Impressionism encompasses Neo-Impressionism, Symbolism, Cloisonnism, Pont-Aven School, and Synthetism, along with some later Impressionists' work. The movement was led by Paul Cézanne, Paul Gauguin, Vincent van Gogh, and Georges Seurat.

The term Post-Impressionism was first used by art critic Roger Fry in 1906. Critic Frank Rutter in a review of the Salon d'Automne published in Art News, 15 October 1910, described Othon Friesz as a "post-impressionist leader"; there was also an advert for the show The Post-Impressionists of France. Three weeks later, Roger Fry used the term again when he organized the 1910 exhibition, Manet and the Post-Impressionists, defining it as the development of French art since Manet.

Post-Impressionists extended Impressionism while rejecting its limitations: they continued using vivid colours, often thick application of paint, and real-life subject matter, but were more inclined to emphasize geometric forms, distort form for expressive effect, and use unnatural or arbitrary colour.

Post impressionist oil painting of apples. Art Demonstration by Mark Briscoe, 4:49

This video is a visual demonstration by artist Mark Briscoe that gives some insight into his painting technique. The subject is a branch laden with colourful apples and leaves in a swirling impasto background. The overall look is post impressionist reminiscent of the work of Van Gogh. Check out his FACEBOOK page https://www.facebook.com/markdrakebri... WEBSITE http://www.drakebriscoe.com




        Pointillism: Seurat and the Harmonies of Color 1095

Georges-Pierre Seurat (French: [ʒɔʁʒ pjɛʁ sœʁa];[1] 2 December 1859 – 29 March 1891) was a French post-Impressionist painter and draftsman. He is noted for his innovative use of drawing media and for devising the painting techniques known as chromoluminarism and pointillism. Seurat's artistic personality was compounded of qualities which are usually supposed to be opposed and incompatible. On the one hand, his extreme and delicate sensibility, on the other a passion for logical abstraction and an almost mathematical precision of mind.[2] His large-scale work, A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte (1884–1886), altered the direction of modern art by initiating Neo-impressionism, and is one of the icons of late 19th-century painting.[3]

Pointillism, 1:41

Can you guess the animal?

This is one of three short clips developed for a class taking part in International Dot Day promoting creativity around the world. It is celebrated on September 15 each year. The clip asks children to identify an animal. At first the large dots make it difficult but the dot size is gradually reduced until the image clears. Because of the rods and cones in our eyes, we really see dots. The more dots, the finer the picture.

https://youtu.be/QT5KtPoS-Tw

This is one of three short clips developed for a class taking part in International Dot Day promoting creativity around the world. It is celebrated on September 15 each year. The clip asks children to identify an animal. At first the large dots make it difficult but the dot size is gradually reduced until the image clears. Because of the rods and cones in our eyes, we really see dots. The more dots, the finer the picture.





Georges Seurat, 3:33

The works of the pointillist Georges Seurat set to the music of V . . . ?

https://youtu.be/orjJmLwbnR0



        Symbolic Color: Van Gogh 1096

Vincent Willem van Gogh Dutch: [ˈvɪnsɛnt ˈʋɪləm vɑn ˈɣɔx] ( listen);[note 1][1] (30 March 1853 – 29 July 1890) was a Dutch post-Impressionist painter whose work had far-reaching influence on 20th-century art. His output includes portraits, self portraits, landscapes, still lifes, olive trees and cypresses, wheat fields and sunflowers. Critics largely ignored his work until after his presumed suicide in 1890. His short life, expressive and spontaneous use of vivid colours, broad oil brushstrokes and emotive subject matter, mean he is recognisable in the public imagination as the quintessential misunderstood genius.

Van Gogh was born to religious upper middle class parents. He was driven as an adult by a strong sense of purpose, but was also thoughtful and intellectual; he was equally aware of modernist currents in art, music and literature. He was well travelled and spent several years in his 20s working for a firm of art dealers in The Hague, London and Paris, after which he taught in England at Isleworth and Ramsgate. He drew as a child, but spent years drifting in ill health and solitude, and did not paint until his late twenties. Most of his best-known works were completed during the last two years of his life. Deeply religious as a younger man, he worked from 1879 as a missionary in a mining region in Belgium where he sketched people from the local community. His first major work was 1885's The Potato Eaters, from a time when his palette mainly consisted of sombre earth tones and showed no sign of the vivid colouration that distinguished his later paintings. In March 1886, he moved to Paris and discovered the French Impressionists. Later, he moved to the south of France and was inspired by the region's strong sunlight. His paintings grew brighter in colour, and he developed the unique and highly recognisable style that became fully realised during his stay in Arles in 1888. In just over a decade, he produced more than 2,100 artworks, including around 860 oil paintings. After years of anxiety and frequent bouts of mental illness he died aged 37 from a self-inflicted gunshot wound. The extent to which his mental health affected his painting has been widely debated.

The widespread and popular realisation of his significance in the history of modern art began after his adoption by the early 20th-century German Expressionists and Fauves. Despite a widespread tendency to romanticise his ill health, art historians see an artist deeply frustrated by the inactivity and incoherence caused by frequent mental sickness. His posthumous reputation grew steadily; a romanticised version developed in the 20 years after his death when seen as an important but overlooked artist compared to other members of his generation. His reputation advanced with the emergence of the Fauvist movement in Europe and post WWII American respect for symbols of "heroic individualism" that was attractive to early US modernists and especially to the highly successful abstract expressionists of the 1950s; New York's MOMA launched major retrospectives early in the rehabilitation of his reputation, and made large acquisitions. By this stage his standing as a great artist and the romanticism of his life were firmly established.

The Sad Life of Vincent Van Gogh, 3:19

To all the people commenting that Vincent Van Gogh was shot by two kids is a proven fact, please don't - because it is only a theory. I understand that you're trying to help, but while I was researching for this video, I looked into it. Naifeh and Smith's theory has been met with a lot of skepticism and may even be a result of conclusion bias. So I decided to go along with the more accepted theory that he shot himself. In reality, no one knows what truly happened all those years ago. All we know is that a great painter was shot in the chest and it caused his death. On another note, I'm wearing a checkered tie and a pony shirt.

https://youtu.be/2RFcyAby4Nk

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2RFcyAby4Nk&feature=youtu.be






        The Structure of Color: Cézanne 1097

Paul Cézanne (US /seɪˈzæn/ or UK /sᵻˈzæn/; French: [pɔl sezan]; 19 January 1839 – 22 October 1906) was a French artist and Post-Impressionist painter whose work laid the foundations of the transition from the 19th-century conception of artistic endeavour to a new and radically different world of art in the 20th century. Cézanne's often repetitive, exploratory brushstrokes are highly characteristic and clearly recognizable. He used planes of colour and small brushstrokes that build up to form complex fields. The paintings convey Cézanne's intense study of his subjects.

Cézanne is said to have formed the bridge between late 19th-century Impressionism and the early 20th century's new line of artistic enquiry, Cubism. Both Matisse and Picasso are said to have remarked that Cézanne "is the father of us all."

Paul Cézanne's Approach to Watercolor, 2:43

Learn how watercolors are made and Paul Cézanne's unique approach to the medium.

https://youtu.be/-Bykx5cBKMI



        Escape to Far Tahiti: Gauguin 1099

Eugène Henri Paul Gauguin (French: [øʒɛn ɑ̃ʁi pɔl ɡoɡɛ̃]; 7 June 1848 – 8 May 1903) was a French post-Impressionist artist. Underappreciated until after his death, Gauguin is now recognized for his experimental use of color and synthetist style that were distinctly different from Impressionism. His work was influential to the French avant-garde and many modern artists, such as Pablo Picasso and Henri Matisse. Gauguin's art became popular after his death, partially from the efforts of art dealer Ambroise Vollard, who organized exhibitions of his work late in his career, as well as assisting in organizing two important posthumous exhibitions in Paris.[1][2] Many of his paintings were in the possession of Russian collector Sergei Shchukin[3] as well as other important collections.

He was an important figure in the Symbolist movement as a painter, sculptor, printmaker, ceramist, and writer. His bold experimentation with color led directly to the Synthetist style of modern art, while his expression of the inherent meaning of the subjects in his paintings, under the influence of the cloisonnist style, paved the way to Primitivism and the return to the pastoral. He was also an influential proponent of wood engraving and woodcuts as art forms.[4][5]

Paul Gauguin Paintings, 4:11

Paintings of the great master of painting Paul Gauguin. Paul Gauguin is a post-impressionist artists who was friend of Vincent Van Gogh. His paintings are from exotic places, painting landscapes and people, mostly of them Polynesian. http://www.allpaintings.org/v/Post-Im... This video is provided by www.allpaintings.org . Music: Polynesian Theme

https://youtu.be/h8OwzdRa2V0



        The Late Monet 1102



Last years Monet, right, in his garden at Giverny, 1922 Failing sight

Monet's second wife, Alice, died in 1911, and his oldest son Jean, who had married Alice's daughter Blanche, Monet's particular favourite, died in 1914.[10] After Alice died, Blanche looked after and cared for Monet. It was during this time that Monet began to develop the first signs of cataracts.[48]

During World War I, in which his younger son Michel served and his friend and admirer Clemenceau led the French nation, Monet painted a series of weeping willow trees as homage to the French fallen soldiers. In 1923, he underwent two operations to remove his cataracts. The paintings done while the cataracts affected his vision have a general reddish tone, which is characteristic of the vision of cataract victims. It may also be that after surgery he was able to see certain ultraviolet wavelengths of light that are normally excluded by the lens of the eye; this may have had an effect on the colors he perceived. After his operations he even repainted some of these paintings, with bluer water lilies than before.

Death

Monet died of lung cancer on 5 December 1926 at the age of 86 and is buried in the Giverny church cemetery. Monet had insisted that the occasion be simple; thus only about fifty people attended the ceremony.

His home, garden, and waterlily pond were bequeathed by his son Michel, his only heir, to the French Academy of Fine Arts (part of the Institut de France) in 1966. Through the Fondation Claude Monet, the house and gardens were opened for visits in 1980, following restoration. In addition to souvenirs of Monet and other objects of his life, the house contains his collection of Japanese woodcut prints. The house and garden, along with the Museum of Impressionism, are major attractions in Giverny, which hosts tourists from all over the world.

CLAUDE MONET: Late Work at Gagosian Gallery West 21st Street, 3:44

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B1hPjb19fqY

Embedding disabled by request

Installation video of: "CLAUDE MONET: Late Work" May 1 - June 26, 2010 Gagosian Gallery West 21st Street, New York Featuring walk through with Paul Hayes Tucker Video shot by Trebuchet Interactive www.trebuchetweb.com If you would like to use this video, please contact newyork@gagosian.com
https://youtu.be/B1hPjb19fqY


    Toward the Modern 1102


Existentialism is generally considered to be the philosophical and cultural movement which holds that the starting point of philosophical thinking must be the individual and the experiences of the individual. Building on that, existentialists hold that moral thinking and scientific thinking together do not suffice to understand human existence, and, therefore, a further set of categories, governed by the norm of authenticity, is necessary to understand human existence.[6][7][8]




Existential philosophers


Explain Like I'm Five: Existentialism and Friedrich Nietzsche, 3:34

https://youtu.be/Kvz0CjtwH2k



The New Moral World of Nietzsche 1103

N
Does SCIENCE = TRUTH? (Nietzsche) - 8-Bit Philosophy, 3:07

http://youtu.be/Y68mGbvZZZg



Nietzsche

Simon Critchley Examines Friedrich Nietzsche,

The philosopher takes a look at Nietzsche's approach to life and death.

Critchley: Yeah. Nietzsche describes a mad man who runs into a public square shouting, God is dead. 
God is dead and the people didn't believe him, and he's laughed at, and he leaves. He came too soon. He says, he came, I came too soon. But the thought here is deeper, more interesting. It's not that the Nietzsche said, God is dead. Something you can find on _____ worlds, the world over is that God is dead, we have killed him, and what Nietzsche means by that I think is that the outcome of history is the death of God. We no longer need or we no longer can believe in those sorts of assurances which theology gave us through let's say, let's say through the development of science and technology. We've got ourselves to a position where God is an accessory that we can do without. So, it's not that Nietzsche was celebrating the death of God. He thinks that God is a pretty bad idea. He makes us cringing, cowardly, submissive creatures but it doesn't mean the opposite is something to be celebrated. We shouldn't just celebrate our, you know, that would lead to sort of annihilism. What Nietzsche thought is that, you know, human history is led to a point where we are, we find the idea of God incredible. We can no longer believe it and at that point he says, there's a risk of us throwing up our hands, and saying, well, nothing means anything. That's what Nietzsche calls annihilism. Nietzsche's thought is not annihilistic. This is a key thing. Nietzsche is trying to think, a counter movement to annihilism and this is what he calls a re-evaluation of values, or an overcoming of annihilism. It's what Nietzsche wants us to do. Nietzsche is, you know, Nietzsche wants us to reject our usual ways of thinking morally in terms of a new way of conceding of value that would be in terms of life ultimately, the affirmation of life, something like that.

Nihilism - life is without objective meaning, purpose, or intrinsic value.

http://youtu.be/MrI5WQ4u7MY



What basis for moral values and behavioral codes do we have (if not religion)?

The Big Bang Theory - Nietzsche on Morality, 1:42

Sheldon e os conselhos de Nietzsche 

https://youtu.be/NasOuQgxFwk 







Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche (/ˈniːtʃə/;[3] German: [ˈfʁiːdʁɪç ˈvɪlhɛlm ˈniːt͡sʃə]; 15 October 1844 – 25 August 1900) was a German philosopher, cultural critic, poet, and Latin and Greek scholar whose work has exerted a profound influence on Western philosophy and modern intellectual history.[4][5][6][7] Beginning his career as a classical philologist before turning to philosophy, he became the youngest-ever occupant of the Chair of Classical Philology at the University of Basel in 1869, at age 24. He resigned in 1879 due to health problems that plagued him most of his life, and he completed much of his core writing in the following decade.[8] In 1889, at age 44, he suffered a collapse and a complete loss of his mental faculties.[9] He lived his remaining years in the care of his mother (until her death in 1897) and then with his sister Elisabeth Förster-Nietzsche, and died in 1900.[10]

Nietzsche's body of writing spanned philosophical polemics, poetry, cultural criticism, and fiction, and drew widely on art, philology, history, religion, and science. His writing displayed a fondness for aphorism and irony[11] while engaging with a wide range of subjects including morality, aesthetics, tragedy, epistemology, atheism, and consciousness. Some prominent elements of his philosophy include his radical critique of reason and truth in favor of perspectivism; his notion of the Apollonian and Dionysian; his genealogical critique of religion and Christian morality, and his related theory of master-slave morality;[4][12] his aesthetic affirmation of existence in response to the "death of God" and the profound crisis of nihilism;[4] and his characterization of the human subject as the expression of competing wills, collectively understood as the will to power.[13] In his later work, he developed influential concepts such as the Übermensch and the doctrine of eternal recurrence, and became increasingly preoccupied with the creative powers of the individual to overcome social, cultural, and moral contexts in pursuit of aesthetic health.[7]

After his death, Elisabeth Förster-Nietzsche became the curator and editor of her brother's manuscripts, reworking Nietzsche's unpublished writings to fit her own German nationalist ideology while often contradicting or obfuscating his stated opinions, which were explicitly opposed to antisemitism and nationalism. Through her published editions, Nietzsche's work became associated with fascism and Nazism;[14] 20th-century scholars contested this interpretation of his work and corrected editions of his writings were soon made available. His thought enjoyed renewed popularity in the 1960s, and his ideas have since had a profound impact on twentieth and early-twenty-first century thinkers across philosophy—especially in schools of continental philosophy such as existentialism, postmodernism, and post-structuralism—as well as art, literature, psychology, politics, and popular culture.




Life

Youth (1844–69)

Born on 15 October 1844, Nietzsche grew up in the small town of Röcken, near Leipzig, in the Prussian Province of Saxony. He was named after King Frederick William IV of Prussia, who turned forty-nine on the day of Nietzsche's birth. (Nietzsche later dropped his middle name "Wilhelm".[17]) Nietzsche's parents, Carl Ludwig Nietzsche (1813–49), a Lutheran pastor and former teacher, and Franziska Oehler (1826–97), married in 1843, the year before their son's birth. They had two other children: a daughter, Elisabeth Förster-Nietzsche, born in 1846, and a second son, Ludwig Joseph, born in 1848. Nietzsche's father died from a brain ailment in 1849; Ludwig Joseph died six months later, at age two.[18] The family then moved to Naumburg, where they lived with Nietzsche's maternal grandmother and his father's two unmarried sisters. After the death of Nietzsche's grandmother in 1856, the family moved into their own house, now Nietzsche-Haus, a museum and Nietzsche study centre.




Nietzsche in 1861
Nietzsche attended a boys' school and then, later, a private school, where he became friends with Gustav Krug, Rudolf Wagner, and Wilhelm Pinder, all of whom came from highly respected families.

In 1854, he began to attend Domgymnasium in Naumburg but since he showed particular talents in music and language, the internationally recognized Schulpforta admitted him as a pupil. He transferred and studied there from 1858 to 1864, becoming friends with Paul Deussen and Carl von Gersdorff. He also found time to work on poems and musical compositions. Nietzsche led "Germania," a music and literature club, during his summers in Naumburg.[19] At Schulpforta, Nietzsche received an important grounding in languages—Greek, Latin, Hebrew, and French—so as to be able to read important primary sources;[20] he also experienced for the first time being away from his family life in a small-town conservative environment. His end-of-semester exams in March 1864 showed a 1 in Religion and German; a 2a in Greek and Latin; a 2b in French, History, and Physics; and a "lackluster" 3 in Hebrew and Mathematics.[21]

While at Pforta, Nietzsche had a penchant for pursuing subjects that were considered unbecoming. He became acquainted with the work of the then almost-unknown poet Friedrich Hölderlin, calling him "my favorite poet" and composing an essay in which he said that the mad poet raised consciousness to "the most sublime ideality."[22] The teacher who corrected the essay gave it a good mark but commented that Nietzsche should concern himself in the future with healthier, more lucid, and more "German" writers. Additionally, he became acquainted with Ernst Ortlepp, an eccentric, blasphemous, and often drunken poet who was found dead in a ditch weeks after meeting the young Nietzsche but who may have introduced Nietzsche to the music and writing of Richard Wagner.[23] Perhaps under Ortlepp's influence, he and a student named Richter returned to school drunk and encountered a teacher, resulting in Nietzsche's demotion from first in his class and the end of his status as a prefect.[24]



Nietzsche in his younger days
After graduation in September 1864,[25] Nietzsche commenced studies in theology and classical philology at the University of Bonn with hope of becoming a minister. For a short time he and Deussen became members of the Burschenschaft Frankonia. After one semester (and to the anger of his mother), he stopped his theological studies and lost his faith.[26] As early as his 1862 essay "Fate and History", Nietzsche had argued that historical research had discredited the central teachings of Christianity,[27] but David Strauss's Life of Jesus also seems to have had a profound effect on the young man.[26] In 1865, at the age of 20, Nietzsche wrote to his sister Elisabeth, who was deeply religious, a letter regarding his loss of faith. This letter ended with the following sentence:
"Hence the ways of men part: if you wish to strive for peace of soul and pleasure, then believe; if you wish to be a devotee of truth, then inquire..."[28]


Schopenhauer's philosophy strongly influenced Nietzsche's earliest philosophical thought.
Nietzsche subsequently concentrated on studying philology under Professor Friedrich Wilhelm Ritschl, whom he followed to the University of Leipzig in 1865.[29] There, he became close friends with his fellow student Erwin Rohde. Nietzsche's first philological publications appeared soon after.
In 1865, Nietzsche thoroughly studied the works of Arthur Schopenhauer. He owed the awakening of his philosophical interest to reading Schopenhauer's The World as Will and Representation and later admitted that Schopenhauer was one of the few thinkers whom he respected, dedicating to him the essay "Schopenhauer as Educator" in the Untimely Meditations.

In 1866, he read Friedrich Albert Lange's History of Materialism. Lange's descriptions of Kant's anti-materialistic philosophy, the rise of European Materialism, Europe's increased concern with science, Charles Darwin's theory of evolution, and the general rebellion against tradition and authority intrigued Nietzsche greatly. The cultural environment encouraged him to expand his horizons beyond philology and continue his study of philosophy, although Nietzsche would ultimately argue the impossibility of an evolutionary explanation of the human aesthetic sense.[30]
In 1867, Nietzsche signed up for one year of voluntary service with the Prussian artillery division in Naumburg. He was regarded as one of the finest riders among his fellow recruits, and his officers predicted that he would soon reach the rank of captain. However, in March 1868, while jumping into the saddle of his horse, Nietzsche struck his chest against the pommel and tore two muscles in his left side, leaving him exhausted and unable to walk for months.[31][32] Consequently, Nietzsche turned his attention to his studies again, completing them and meeting with Richard Wagner for the first time later that year.[33]

Professor at Basel (1869–78)



Mid-October 1871. From left: Erwin Rohde, Karl von Gersdorff, Nietzsche.
In part because of Ritschl's support, Nietzsche received a remarkable offer to become professor of classical philology at the University of Basel in Switzerland. He was only 24 years old and had neither completed his doctorate nor received a teaching certificate ("habilitation"). He was awarded an honorary doctorate by the University of Leipzig again with Ritschl's support.[34]
Despite the fact that the offer came at a time when he was considering giving up philology for science, he accepted.[35] To this day, Nietzsche is still among the youngest of the tenured Classics professors on record.[36]
Nietzsche's 1870 projected doctoral thesis, Contribution toward the Study and the Critique of the Sources of Diogenes Laertius (Beitrage zur Quellenkunde und Kritik des Laertius Diogenes), examined the origins of the ideas of Diogenes Laertius.[37] Though never submitted, it was later published as a Gratulationsschrift (congratulatory publication) at Basel.[38][39]
Before moving to Basel, Nietzsche renounced his Prussian citizenship: for the rest of his life he remained officially stateless.[40][41]
Nevertheless, Nietzsche served in the Prussian forces during the Franco-Prussian War (1870–1871) as a medical orderly. In his short time in the military, he experienced much and witnessed the traumatic effects of battle. He also contracted diphtheria and dysentery.[citation needed] Walter Kaufmann speculates that he might also have contracted syphilis at a brothel along with his other infections at this time.[42][43] On returning to Basel in 1870, Nietzsche observed the establishment of the German Empire and Otto von Bismarck's subsequent policies as an outsider and with a degree of skepticism regarding their genuineness. His inaugural lecture at the university was "Homer and Classical Philology". Nietzsche also met Franz Overbeck, a professor of theology who remained his friend throughout his life. Afrikan Spir, a little-known Russian philosopher responsible for the 1873 Thought and Reality, and Nietzsche's colleague the famed historian Jacob Burckhardt, whose lectures Nietzsche frequently attended, began to exercise significant influence on him during this time.[44]
Nietzsche had already met Richard Wagner in Leipzig in 1868 and later Wagner's wife, Cosima. Nietzsche admired both greatly and, during his time at Basel, he frequently visited Wagner's house in Tribschen in Lucerne. The Wagners brought Nietzsche into their most intimate circle and enjoyed the attention he gave to the beginning of the Bayreuth Festival. In 1870, he gave Cosima Wagner the manuscript of "The Genesis of the Tragic Idea" as a birthday gift. In 1872, Nietzsche published his first book, The Birth of Tragedy. However, his colleagues within his field, including Ritschl, expressed little enthusiasm for the work, in which Nietzsche eschewed the classical philologic method in favor of a more speculative approach. In his polemic Philology of the Future, Ulrich von Wilamowitz-Moellendorff dampened the book's reception and increased its notoriety. In response, Rohde (then a professor in Kiel) and Wagner came to Nietzsche's defense. Nietzsche remarked freely about the isolation he felt within the philological community and attempted unsuccessfully to transfer to a position in philosophy at Basel instead.

Nietzsche in c. 1872.
In 1873, Nietzsche began to accumulate notes that would be posthumously published as Philosophy in the Tragic Age of the Greeks. Between 1873 and 1876, he published four separate long essays: "David Strauss: the Confessor and the Writer", "On the Use and Abuse of History for Life", "Schopenhauer as Educator" and "Richard Wagner in Bayreuth". These four later appeared in a collected edition under the title Untimely Meditations. The essays shared the orientation of a cultural critique, challenging the developing German culture along lines suggested by Schopenhauer and Wagner. During this time, in the circle of the Wagners, Nietzsche met Malwida von Meysenbug and Hans von Bülow, and also began a friendship with Paul Rée, who in 1876 influenced him into dismissing the pessimism in his early writings. However, he was deeply disappointed by the Bayreuth Festival of 1876, where the banality of the shows and baseness of the public repelled him. He was also alienated by Wagner's championing of "German culture", which Nietzsche felt a contradiction in terms, as well as by Wagner's celebration of his fame among the German public. All this contributed to Nietzsche's subsequent decision to distance himself from Wagner.
With the publication in 1878 of Human, All Too Human (a book of aphorisms ranging from metaphysics to morality to religion to gender studies), a new style of Nietzsche's work became clear, highly influenced by Afrikan Spir's Thought and Reality[45] and reacting against the pessimistic philosophy of Wagner and Schopenhauer. Nietzsche's friendship with Deussen and Rohde cooled as well. In 1879, after a significant decline in health, Nietzsche had to resign his position at Basel. (Since his childhood, various disruptive illnesses had plagued him, including moments of shortsightedness that left him nearly blind, migraine headaches, and violent indigestion. The 1868 riding accident and diseases in 1870 may have aggravated these persistent conditions, which continued to affect him through his years at Basel, forcing him to take longer and longer holidays until regular work became impractical.)

Independent philosopher (1879–88)

Living off his pension from Basel and aid from friends, Nietzsche travelled frequently to find climates more conducive to his health and lived until 1889 as an independent author in different cities. He spent many summers in Sils Maria near St. Moritz in Switzerland. He spent his winters in the Italian cities of Genoa, Rapallo, and Turin and the French city of Nice. In 1881, when France occupied Tunisia, he planned to travel to Tunis to view Europe from the outside but later abandoned that idea, probably for health reasons.[46] Nietzsche occasionally returned to Naumburg to visit his family, and, especially during this time, he and his sister had repeated periods of conflict and reconciliation.
While in Genoa, Nietzsche's failing eyesight prompted him to explore the use of typewriters as a means of continuing to write. He is known to have tried using the Hansen Writing Ball, a contemporary typewriter device. In the end, a past student of his, Heinrich Köselitz or Peter Gast, became a sort of private secretary to Nietzsche. In 1876, Gast transcribed the crabbed, nearly illegible handwriting of Nietzsche for the first time with Richard Wagner in Bayreuth.[47] He subsequently transcribed and proofread the galleys for almost all of Nietzsche's work from then on. On at least one occasion on February 23, 1880, the usually broke Gast received 200 marks from their mutual friend, Paul Rée.[48] Gast was one of the very few friends Nietzsche allowed to criticize him. In responding most enthusiastically to Zarathustra, Gast did feel it necessary to point out that what were described as "superfluous" people were in fact quite necessary. He went on to list the number of people Epicurus, for example, had to rely on even to supply his simple diet of goat cheese.[49]
To the end of his life, Gast and Overbeck remained consistently faithful friends. Malwida von Meysenbug remained like a motherly patron even outside the Wagner circle. Soon Nietzsche made contact with the music-critic Carl Fuchs. Nietzsche stood at the beginning of his most productive period. Beginning with Human, All Too Human in 1878, Nietzsche would publish one book or major section of a book each year until 1888, his last year of writing; that year, he completed five.

Lou Salomé, Paul Rée and Nietzsche, 1882.
In 1882, Nietzsche published the first part of The Gay Science. That year he also met Lou Andreas Salomé,[50] through Malwida von Meysenbug and Paul Rée. Nietzsche and Salomé spent the summer together in Tautenburg in Thuringia, often with Nietzsche's sister Elisabeth as a chaperone. Nietzsche, however, regarded Salomé less as an equal partner than as a gifted student. Salomé reports that he asked her to marry him on three separate occasions and that she refused, though the reliability of her reports of events has come into question.[51] Nietzsche's relationship with Rée and Salomé broke up in the winter of 1882–83, partially because of intrigues conducted by Elisabeth. The trio had had plans to establish a educational commune in an abandoned monastery, but the idea was abandoned. Amidst renewed bouts of illness, living in near-isolation after a falling out with his mother and sister regarding Salomé, Nietzsche fled to Rapallo, where he wrote the first part of Thus Spoke Zarathustra in only ten days.
By 1882 Nietzsche was taking huge doses of opium but was still having trouble sleeping.[52] In 1883, while staying in Nice, he was writing out his own prescriptions for the sedative chloral hydrate, signing them "Dr. Nietzsche".[53]
After severing his philosophical ties with Schopenhauer (who was long dead and never met Nietzsche) and his social ties with Wagner, Nietzsche had few remaining friends. Now, with the new style of Zarathustra, his work became even more alienating and the market received it only to the degree required by politeness. Nietzsche recognized this and maintained his solitude, though he often complained about it. His books remained largely unsold. In 1885, he printed only 40 copies of the fourth part of Zarathustra and distributed only a fraction of these among close friends, including Helene von Druskowitz.
In 1883 he tried and failed to obtain a lecturing post at the University of Leipzig. It was made clear to him that, in view of his attitude towards Christianity and his concept of God, he had become effectively unemployable by any German university. The subsequent "feelings of revenge and resentment" embittered him: "And hence my rage since I have grasped in the broadest possible sense what wretched means (the depreciation of my good name, my character, and my aims) suffice to take from me the trust of, and therewith the possibility of obtaining, pupils."[54]
In 1886 Nietzsche broke with his publisher Ernst Schmeitzner, disgusted by his antisemitic opinions. Nietzsche saw his own writings as "completely buried and unexhumeable in this anti-Semitic dump" of Schmeitzner—associating the publisher with a movement that should be "utterly rejected with cold contempt by every sensible mind".[55] He then printed Beyond Good and Evil at his own expense. He also acquired the publication rights for his earlier works and over the next year issued second editions of The Birth of Tragedy, Human, All Too Human, Daybreak, and The Gay Science with new prefaces placing the body of his work in a more coherent perspective. Thereafter, he saw his work as completed for a time and hoped that soon a readership would develop. In fact, interest in Nietzsche's thought did increase at this time, if rather slowly and hardly perceptibly to him. During these years Nietzsche met Meta von Salis, Carl Spitteler, and Gottfried Keller.
In 1886, his sister Elisabeth also married the antisemite Bernhard Förster and travelled to Paraguay to found Nueva Germania, a "Germanic" colony—a plan Nietzsche responded to with mocking laughter.[56][not in citation given] Through correspondence, Nietzsche's relationship with Elisabeth continued through cycles of conflict and reconciliation, but they met again only after his collapse. He continued to have frequent and painful attacks of illness, which made prolonged work impossible.
In 1887 Nietzsche wrote the polemic On the Genealogy of Morals. During the same year, he encountered the work of Fyodor Dostoevsky, to whom he felt an immediate kinship.[57] He also exchanged letters with Hippolyte Taine and Georg Brandes. Brandes, who had started to teach the philosophy of Søren Kierkegaard in the 1870s, wrote to Nietzsche asking him to read Kierkegaard, to which Nietzsche replied that he would come to Copenhagen and read Kierkegaard with him. However, before fulfilling this promise, he slipped too far into illness. In the beginning of 1888, Brandes delivered in Copenhagen one of the first lectures on Nietzsche's philosophy.
Although Nietzsche had previously announced at the end of On The Genealogy of Morals a new work with the title The Will to Power: Attempt at a Revaluation of All Values, he eventually seems to have abandoned this idea and instead used some of the draft passages to compose Twilight of the Idols and The Antichrist in 1888.[58]
His health seemed to improve, and he spent the summer in high spirits. In the fall of 1888, his writings and letters began to reveal a higher estimation of his own status and "fate". He overestimated the increasing response to his writings, however, especially to the recent polemic, "The Case of Wagner". On his 44th birthday, after completing Twilight of the Idols and The Antichrist, he decided to write the autobiography Ecce Homo. In its preface—which suggests Nietzsche was well aware of the interpretive difficulties his work would generate—he declares, "Hear me! For I am such and such a person. Above all, do not mistake me for someone else".[59] In December, Nietzsche began a correspondence with August Strindberg and thought that, short of an international breakthrough, he would attempt to buy back his older writings from the publisher and have them translated into other European languages. Moreover, he planned the publication of the compilation Nietzsche Contra Wagner and of the poems that made up his collection Dionysian Dithyrambs.

Psychological illness and death (1889–1900)



Drawing by Hans Olde from the photographic series, The Ill Nietzsche, late-1899.
On 3 January 1889, Nietzsche suffered a mental collapse. Two policemen approached him after he caused a public disturbance in the streets of Turin. What happened remains unknown, but an often-repeated tale from shortly after his death states that Nietzsche witnessed the flogging of a horse at the other end of the Piazza Carlo Alberto, ran to the horse, threw his arms up around its neck to protect it, and then collapsed to the ground.[60][61]
In the following few days, Nietzsche sent short writings—known as the Wahnzettel ("Madness Letters")—to a number of friends including Cosima Wagner and Jacob Burckhardt. Most of them were signed "Dionysos", though some were also signed "der Gekreuzigte" meaning "the crucified one". To his former colleague Burckhardt, Nietzsche wrote: "I have had Caiaphas put in fetters. Also, last year I was crucified by the German doctors in a very drawn-out manner. Wilhelm, Bismarck, and all anti-Semites abolished."[62] Additionally, he commanded the German emperor to go to Rome to be shot and summoned the European powers to take military action against Germany.[63]

The house Nietzsche stayed in while in Turin (background, right), as seen from across Piazza Carlo Alberto, where he is said to have had his breakdown. To the left is the rear façade of the Palazzo Carignano.
On 6 January 1889, Burckhardt showed the letter he had received from Nietzsche to Overbeck. The following day, Overbeck received a similar letter and decided that Nietzsche's friends had to bring him back to Basel. Overbeck travelled to Turin and brought Nietzsche to a psychiatric clinic in Basel. By that time Nietzsche appeared fully in the grip of a serious mental illness, and his mother Franziska decided to transfer him to a clinic in Jena under the direction of Otto Binswanger. In January 1889, they proceeded with the planned release of Twilight of the Idols, by that time already printed and bound. From November 1889 to February 1890, the art historian Julius Langbehn attempted to cure Nietzsche, claiming that the methods of the medical doctors were ineffective in treating Nietzsche's condition. Langbehn assumed progressively greater control of Nietzsche until his secretiveness discredited him. In March 1890, Franziska removed Nietzsche from the clinic and, in May 1890, brought him to her home in Naumburg. During this process Overbeck and Gast contemplated what to do with Nietzsche's unpublished works. In February, they ordered a fifty-copy private edition of Nietzsche contra Wagner, but the publisher C. G. Naumann secretly printed one hundred. Overbeck and Gast decided to withhold publishing The Antichrist and Ecce Homo because of their more radical content. Nietzsche's reception and recognition enjoyed their first surge.[chronology citation needed]
In 1893, Nietzsche's sister Elisabeth returned from Nueva Germania in Paraguay following the suicide of her husband. She read and studied Nietzsche's works and, piece by piece, took control of them and their publication. Overbeck eventually suffered dismissal and Gast finally co-operated. After the death of Franziska in 1897, Nietzsche lived in Weimar, where Elisabeth cared for him and allowed visitors, including Rudolf Steiner (who in 1895 had written one of the first books praising Nietzsche),[64][page needed] to meet her uncommunicative brother. Elisabeth at one point went so far as to employ Steiner as a tutor to help her to understand her brother's philosophy. Steiner abandoned the attempt after only a few months, declaring that it was impossible to teach her anything about philosophy.[65]

Peter Gast would "correct" Nietzsche's writings after the philosopher's breakdown and did so without his approval.
Nietzsche's mental illness was originally diagnosed as tertiary syphilis, in accordance with a prevailing medical paradigm of the time. Although most commentators regard his breakdown as unrelated to his philosophy, Georges Bataille dropped dark hints ("'Man incarnate' must also go mad")[66] and René Girard's postmortem psychoanalysis posits a worshipful rivalry with Richard Wagner.[67] Nietzsche had previously written, "all superior men who were irresistibly drawn to throw off the yoke of any kind of morality and to frame new laws had, if they were not actually mad, no alternative but to make themselves or pretend to be mad" (Daybreak,14). The diagnosis of syphilis has since been challenged and a diagnosis of "manic-depressive illness with periodic psychosis followed by vascular dementia" was put forward by Cybulska prior to Schain's study.[68][69] Leonard Sax suggested the slow growth of a right-sided retro-orbital meningioma as an explanation of Nietzsche's dementia;[70] Orth and Trimble postulated frontotemporal dementia[71] while other researchers have proposed a hereditary stroke disorder called CADASIL.[72][73] Poisoning by mercury, a treatment for syphilis at the time of Nietzsche's death,[74] has also been suggested.[75]
In 1898 and 1899 Nietzsche suffered at least two strokes. This partially paralyzed him, leaving him unable to speak or walk. He likely suffered from clinical hemiparesis/hemiplegia on the left side of his body by 1899. After contracting pneumonia in mid-August 1900, he had another stroke during the night of 24–25 August and died at about noon on 25 August.[76] Elisabeth had him buried beside his father at the church in Röcken bei Lützen. His friend and secretary Gast gave his funeral oration, proclaiming: "Holy be your name to all future generations!"[77] Nietzsche had written in Ecce Homo (at that point still unpublished) of his fear that one day his name would be regarded as "holy".
Elisabeth Förster-Nietzsche compiled The Will to Power from Nietzsche's unpublished notebooks and published it posthumously. Because his sister arranged the book based on her own conflation of several of Nietzsche's early outlines and took great liberties with the material, the scholarly consensus has been that it does not reflect Nietzsche's intent. (For example, Elisabeth removed aphorism 35 of The Antichrist, where Nietzsche rewrote a passage of the Bible.) Indeed, Mazzino Montinari, the editor of Nietzsche's Nachlass, called it a forgery.[78]

Citizenship, nationality, ethnicity

General commentators and Nietzsche scholars, whether emphasizing his cultural background or his language, overwhelmingly label Nietzsche as a "German philosopher".[79][80][81][82] Others do not assign him a national category.[83][84][85] Germany had not yet been unified into a nation-state but Nietzsche was born a citizen of Prussia, which was then part of the German Confederation.[86] His birthplace, Röcken, is in the modern German state of Saxony-Anhalt. When he accepted his post at Basel, Nietzsche applied for the annulment of his Prussian citizenship.[87] The official response confirming the revocation of his citizenship came in a document dated April 17, 1869,[88] and for the rest of his life he remained officially stateless.
Nietzsche believed that his ancestors were Polish,[89] at least toward the end of his life. He wrote in 1888, "My ancestors were Polish noblemen (Nietzky); the type seems to have been well preserved despite three generations of German mothers."[90] At one point Nietzsche becomes even more adamant about his Polish identity. "I am a pure-blooded Polish nobleman, without a single drop of bad blood, certainly not German blood."[91] On yet another occasion Nietzsche stated "Germany is a great nation only because its people have so much Polish blood in their veins [...] I am proud of my Polish descent."[92] Nietzsche believed his name might have been Germanized, in one letter claiming, "I was taught to ascribe the origin of my blood and name to Polish noblemen who were called Niëtzky and left their home and nobleness about a hundred years ago, finally yielding to unbearable suppression: they were Protestants."[93]
Most scholars dispute Nietzsche's account of his family's origins. Hans von Müller debunked the genealogy put forward by Nietzsche's sister in favor of a Polish noble heritage.[94] Max Oehler, the curator of the Nietzsche Archive at Weimar, argued that all of Nietzsche's ancestors bore German names, even the wives' families.[90] Oehler claims that Nietzsche came from a long line of German Lutheran clergymen on both sides of his family, and modern scholars regard the claim of Nietzsche's Polish ancestry as a "pure invention".[95] Colli and Montinari, the editors of Nietzsche's assembled letters, gloss Nietzsche's claims as a "mistaken belief" and "without foundation."[96][97] The name Nietzsche itself is not a Polish name, but an exceptionally common one throughout central Germany, in this and cognate forms (such as Nitsche and Nitzke). The name derives from the forename Nikolaus, abbreviated to Nick; assimilated with the Slavic Nitz, it first became Nitsche and then Nietzsche.[90]
It is not known why Nietzsche wanted to be thought of as Polish nobility. According to biographer R. J. Hollingdale, Nietzsche's propagation of the Polish ancestry myth may have been part of the latter's "campaign against Germany".[90]

Relationships and sexuality

Nietzsche never married. Nietzsche proposed to Lou Salomé three times, but his proposal was rejected each time.[98] The Nietzsche scholar Joachim Köhler has attempted to explain Nietzsche's life history and philosophy by claiming that Nietzsche was homosexual. Köhler argues that Nietzsche's syphilis, which is "...usually considered to be the product of his encounter with a prostitute in a brothel in Cologne or Leipzig, is equally likely, it is now held, to have been contracted in a male brothel in Genoa."[99] Köhler also suggests Nietzsche may have had a romantic relationship as well as a friendship with Paul Rée. Köhler's views have not found wide acceptance among Nietzsche scholars and commentators. Allan Megill argues that while Köhler's claim that Nietzsche was in confrontation with homosexual desire cannot simply be dismissed, "the evidence is very weak," and Köhler may be projecting twentieth-century understandings of sexuality on nineteenth-century notions of friendship.[100] Other scholars have argued that Köhler's sexuality-based interpretation is not helpful in understanding Nietzsche's philosophy.[101][102] Some like Nigel Rodgers and Mel Thompson have argued that continuous sickness and headaches hindered Nietzsche from engaging much with women. Yet, they bring other examples in which Nietzsche expressed his affections to other women, including Wagner's wife Cosima Wagner.[103]
Nietzsche drank only pure water, carrying a canteen with him for this purpose, and a little strong tea in the morning. He stated that coffee "spreads darkness". Approaching middle age he experimented briefly with vegetarianism.[104]

Philosophy


Friedrich Nietzsche in 1869.
Main article: Philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche
Because of Nietzsche's evocative style and provocative ideas, his philosophy generates passionate reactions. His works remain controversial, due to varying interpretations and misinterpretations of his work. In the Western philosophy tradition, Nietzsche's writings have been described as the unique case of free revolutionary thought, that is, revolutionary in its structure and problems, although not tied to any revolutionary project.[105]

Apollonian and Dionysian

Main article: Apollonian and Dionysian
The Apollonian and Dionysian is a two-fold philosophical concept, based on certain features of ancient Greek mythology: Apollo and Dionysus. While the concept is famously related to The Birth of Tragedy, poet Hölderlin spoke of them before, and Winckelmann talked of Bacchus. One year before the publication of The Birth of Tragedy, Nietzsche wrote a fragment titled "On Music and Words".[106] In it he asserted the Schopenhauerian judgment that music is a primary expression of the essence of everything. Secondarily derivative are lyrical poetry and drama, which represent mere phenomenal appearances of objects. In this way, tragedy is born from music.
Nietzsche found in classical Athenian tragedy an art form that transcended the pessimism found in the so-called wisdom of Silenus. The Greek spectators, by looking into the abyss of human suffering depicted by characters on stage, passionately and joyously affirmed life, finding it worth living. A main theme in The Birth of Tragedy was that the fusion of Dionysian and Apollonian "Kunsttrieben" ("artistic impulses") forms dramatic arts, or tragedies. He goes on to argue that this fusion has not been achieved since the ancient Greek tragedians. Apollo represents harmony, progress, clarity and logic, whereas Dionysus represents disorder, intoxication, emotion and ecstasy. Nietzsche used these two forces because, for him, the world of mind and order on one side, and passion and chaos on the other formed principles that were fundamental to the Greek culture.[107][108] Apollonian side being a dreaming state, full of illusions; and Dionysian being the state of intoxication, representing the liberations of instinct and dissolution of boundaries. In this mold, man appears as the satyr. He is the horror of the annihilation of the principle of individuality and at the same time someone who delights in its destruction.[109] Both of these principles are meant to represent cognitive states that appear through art as the power of nature in man.[110]
The relationship between the Apollonian and Dionysian juxtapositions is apparent, in the interplay of tragedy: the tragic hero of the drama, the main protagonist, struggles to make order (in the Apollonian sense) of his unjust and chaotic (Dionysian) fate, though he dies unfulfilled in the end. Elaborating on the conception of Hamlet as an intellectual who cannot make up his mind, and therefore is a living antithesis to the man of action, Nietzsche argues that a Dionysian figure possesses knowledge to realize that his actions cannot change the eternal balance of things, and it disgusts him enough not to be able to make any act at all. Hamlet falls under this category – he has glimpsed the supernatural reality through the Ghost, he has gained true knowledge and knows that no action of his has the power to change this.[111][112] For the audience of such drama, this tragedy allows them to sense an underlying essence, what Nietzsche called the Primordial Unity, which revives Dionysian nature. He describes this primordial unity as the increase of strength, experience of fullness and plenitude bestowed by frenzy. Frenzy acts as an intoxication, and is crucial for the physiological condition that enables making of any art.[113] Stimulated by this state, person's artistic will is enhanced:
"In this state one enriches everything out of one's own fullness: whatever one sees, whatever wills is seen swelled, taut, strong, overloaded with strength. A man in this state transforms things until they mirror his power—until they are reflections of his perfection. This having to transform into perfection is—art."
Nietzsche is adamant that the works of Aeschylus and Sophocles represent the apex of artistic creation, the true realization of tragedy; it is with Euripides, he states, that tragedy begins its "Untergang" (literally "going under" or "downward-way," meaning decline, deterioration, downfall, death, etc.). Nietzsche objects to Euripides' use of Socratic rationalism and morality in his tragedies, claiming that the infusion of ethics and reason robs tragedy of its foundation, namely the fragile balance of the Dionysian and Apollonian. Socrates emphasized reason to such a degree that he diffused the value of myth and suffering to human knowledge. Plato continued with this path in his dialogues and modern world eventually inherited reason at the expense of artistic impulses that could be found only in the Apollonian and Dionysus dichotomy. This leads to his conclusion that European culture from the time of Socrates had always been only Apollonian and thus decadent and unhealthy.[114] He notes that whenever Apollonian culture dominates, the Dionysian lacks the structure to make a coherent art, and when Dionysian dominates, the Apollonian lacks the necessary passion. Only the beautiful middle, the interplay of these two forces, brought together as an art represented real Greek tragedy.[115]
An example of the impact of this idea can be seen in the book Patterns of Culture, where anthropologist Ruth Benedict uses Nietzschean opposites of "Apollonian" and "Dionysian" as the stimulus for her thoughts about Native American cultures.[116] Carl Jung has written extensively on the dichotomy in Psychological Types.[117] Michel Foucault has commented that his book Madness and Civilization should be read "under the sun of the great Nietzschean inquiry". Here Foucault references Nietzsche's description of the birth and death of tragedy and his explanation that the subsequent tragedy of the Western world was the refusal of tragic and, with that, refusal of the sacred.[118] Painter Mark Rothko was influenced by Nietzsche's view of tragedy, which were presented in The Birth of Tragedy.

Perspectivism

Main article: Perspectivism
Nietzsche claimed the death of God would eventually lead to the loss of any universal perspective on things, and along with it any coherent sense of objective truth.[119][120][page needed] Nietzsche himself rejected the idea of objective reality arguing that knowledge is contingent and conditional, relative to various fluid perspectives or interests.[121] This leads to constant reassessment of rules (i.e., those of philosophy, the scientific method, etc.) according to the circumstances of individual perspectives.[122] This view has acquired the name perspectivism.
In Thus Spoke Zarathustra, Nietzsche proclaims that a table of values hangs above every great person. He points out that what is common among different peoples is the act of esteeming, of creating values, even if the values are different from one people to the next. Nietzsche asserts that what made people great was not the content of their beliefs, but the act of valuing. Thus the values a community strives to articulate are not as important as the collective will to see those values come to pass. The willing is more essential than the intrinsic worth of the goal itself, according to Nietzsche. "A thousand goals have there been so far," says Zarathustra, "for there are a thousand peoples. Only the yoke for the thousand necks is still lacking: the one goal is lacking. Humanity still has no goal." Hence, the title of the aphorism, "On The Thousand And One Goals". The idea that one value-system is no more worthy than the next, although it may not be directly ascribed to Nietzsche, has become a common premise in modern social science. Max Weber and Martin Heidegger absorbed it and made it their own. It shaped their philosophical and cultural endeavor, as well as their political understanding. Weber for example, relies on Nietzsche's perspectivism by maintaining that objectivity is still possible—but only after a particular perspective, value, or end has been established.[123][124]
Among his critique of traditional philosophy of Kant, Descartes and Plato in Beyond Good and Evil, Nietzsche attacked thing in itself and cogito ergo sum (I think, therefore I am) as unfalsifiable beliefs based on naive acceptance of previous notions and fallacies.[125] Philosopher Alasdair MacIntyre puts Nietzsche in a high place in the history of philosophy. While criticizing nihilism and Nietzsche together as a sign of general decay,[126] he still commends him for recognizing psychological motives behind Kant and Hume's moral philosophy:[127]
For it was Nietzsche's historic achievement to understand more clearly than any other philosopher...not only that what purported to be appeals of objectivity were in fact expressions of subjective will, but also the nature of the problems that this posed for philosophy.[128]

The "slave revolt" in morals

Main article: Master–slave morality
In Beyond Good and Evil and On the Genealogy of Morality, Nietzsche's genealogical account of the development of modern moral systems occupies a central place. For Nietzsche, a fundamental shift took place during human history from thinking in terms of good and bad toward good and evil.
The initial form of morality was set by a warrior aristocracy and other ruling castes of ancient civilizations. Aristocratic values of good and bad coincided with and reflected their relationship to lower castes such as slaves. Nietzsche presents this "master morality" as the original system of morality—perhaps best associated with Homeric Greece. To be "good" was to be happy and to have the things related to happiness: wealth, strength, health, power, etc. To be "bad" was to be like the slaves the aristocracy ruled over: poor, weak, sick, pathetic—an object of pity or disgust rather than hatred.
Slave morality comes about as a reaction to master-morality. Here, value emerges from the contrast between good and evil: good being associated with other-worldliness, charity, piety, restraint, meekness, and submission; and evil seen as worldly, cruel, selfish, wealthy, and aggressive. Nietzsche sees slave morality as pessimistic and fearful, values for them serving only to ease the existence for those who suffer from the very same thing. He associates slave-morality with the Jewish and Christian traditions, in a way that slave-morality is born out of the ressentiment of slaves. Nietzsche argued that the idea of equality allowed slaves to overcome their own condition without hating themselves. And by denying the inherent inequality of people (such as success, strength, beauty or intelligence), slaves acquired a method of escape, namely by generating new values on the basis of rejecting something that was seen as a perceived source of frustration. It was used to overcome the slave's own sense of inferiority before the (better-off) masters. It does so by making out slave weakness to be a matter of choice, by, e.g., relabeling it as "meekness." The "good man" of master morality is precisely the "evil man" of slave morality, while the "bad man" is recast as the "good man."
Nietzsche sees the slave-morality as a source of the nihilism that has overtaken Europe. Modern Europe and Christianity exist in a hypocritical state due to a tension between master and slave morality, both values contradictorily determining, to varying degrees, the values of most Europeans (who are motley). Nietzsche calls for exceptional people to no longer be ashamed of their uniqueness in the face of a supposed morality-for-all, which he deems to be harmful to the flourishing of exceptional people. He cautions, however, that morality, per se, is not bad; it is good for the masses, and should be left to them. Exceptional people, on the other hand, should follow their own "inner law." A favorite motto of Nietzsche, taken from Pindar, reads: "Become what you are."
A long standing assumption about Nietzsche is that he preferred master over slave morality. However, the Nietzsche scholar Walter Kaufmann rejected this interpretation, writing that Nietzsche's analyses of these two types of morality were only used in a descriptive and historic sense, they were not meant for any kind of acceptance or glorifications.[129]
In Daybreak, Nietzsche begins his "Campaign against Morality".[130][131] He calls himself an "immoralist" and harshly criticizes the prominent moral philosophies of his day: Christianity, Kantianism, and utilitarianism. Nietzsche is also known for being very critical of the Western belief in egalitarianism and rationality.[citation needed] Nietzsche's concept "God is dead" applies to the doctrines of Christendom, though not to all other faiths: he claimed that Buddhism is a successful religion that he compliments for fostering critical thought.[132] Still, Nietzsche saw his philosophy as a counter-movement to nihilism through appreciation of art:
Art as the single superior counterforce against all will to negation of life, art as the anti-Christian, anti-Buddhist, anti-Nihilist par excellence."[133]
Nietzsche claimed that the Christian faith as practised was not a proper representation of Jesus' teachings, as it forced people merely to believe in the way of Jesus but not to act as Jesus did, in particular his example of refusing to judge people, something that Christians had constantly done the opposite of.[132] He condemned institutionalized Christianity for emphasizing a morality of pity (Mitleid), which assumes an inherent illness in society:[134]
Christianity is called the religion of pity. Pity stands opposed to the tonic emotions which heighten our vitality: it has a depressing effect. We are deprived of strength when we feel pity. That loss of strength which suffering as such inflicts on life is still further increased and multiplied by pity. Pity makes suffering contagious.[135]
In Ecce Homo Nietzsche called the establishment of moral systems based on a dichotomy of good and evil a "calamitous error",[136] and wished to initiate a re-evaluation of the values of the Judeo-Christian world.[137] He indicates his desire to bring about a new, more naturalistic source of value in the vital impulses of life itself.
While Nietzsche attacked the principles of Judaism, he was not antisemitic: in his work On the Genealogy of Morality, he explicitly condemns antisemitism, and points out that his attack on Judaism was not an attack on contemporary Jewish people but specifically an attack upon the ancient Jewish priesthood whom he claims antisemitic Christians paradoxically based their views upon.[138]
Modern antisemitism he felt was "despicable" and against European ideals.[139] Its cause, in his opinion, was the growth in European nationalism and the endemic "jealousy and hatred" of Jewish success.[139] He wrote that Jews should be thanked for helping uphold a respect for the philosophies of Ancient Greece,[139] and for giving rise to "the noblest human being (Christ), the purest philosopher (Spinoza), the mightiest book, and the most effective moral code in the world."[140]

Death of God and nihilism

Main articles: God is dead and Nihilism
The statement God is dead, occurring in several of Nietzsche's works (notably in The Gay Science), has become one of his best-known remarks. On the basis of it, most commentators[141] regard Nietzsche as an atheist; others (such as Kaufmann) suggest that this statement reflects a more subtle understanding of divinity. Recent developments in modern science and the increasing secularization of European society had effectively 'killed' the Abrahamic God, who had served as the basis for meaning and value in the West for more than a thousand years. The death of God may lead beyond bare perspectivism to outright nihilism, the belief that nothing has any inherent importance and that life lacks purpose. Here he states that the Christian moral doctrine provides people with intrinsic value, belief in God (which justifies the evil in the world) and a basis for objective knowledge. In this sense, in constructing a world where objective knowledge is possible, Christianity is an antidote to a primal form of nihilism—the despair of meaninglessness. As Heidegger put the problem, "If God as the suprasensory ground and goal of all reality is dead, if the suprasensory world of the ideas has suffered the loss of its obligatory and above it its vitalizing and upbuilding power, then nothing more remains to which man can cling and by which he can orient himself."[142]
One such reaction to the loss of meaning is what Nietzsche calls passive nihilism, which he recognises in the pessimistic philosophy of Schopenhauer. Schopenhauer's doctrine—which Nietzsche also refers to as Western Buddhism—advocates separating oneself from will and desires in order to reduce suffering. Nietzsche characterises this ascetic attitude as a "will to nothingness", whereby life turns away from itself, as there is nothing of value to be found in the world. This moving away of all value in the world is characteristic of the nihilist, although in this, the nihilist appears to be inconsistent:[143]
A nihilist is a man who judges that the real world ought not to be, and that the world as it ought to be does not exist. According to this view, our existence (action, suffering, willing, feeling) has no meaning: this 'in vain' is the nihilists' pathos—an inconsistency on the part of the nihilists.
— Friedrich Nietzsche, KSA 12:9 [60], taken from The Will to Power, section 585, translated by Walter Kaufmann
Nietzsche approaches the problem of nihilism as a deeply personal one, stating that this problem of the modern world is a problem that has "become conscious" in him.[144] Furthermore, he emphasizes both the danger of nihilism and the possibilities it offers, as seen in his statement that "I praise, I do not reproach, [nihilism's] arrival. I believe it is one of the greatest crises, a moment of the deepest self-reflection of humanity. Whether man recovers from it, whether he becomes master of this crisis, is a question of his strength!"[145] According to Nietzsche, it is only when nihilism is overcome that a culture can have a true foundation on which to thrive. He wished to hasten its coming only so that he could also hasten its ultimate departure. Heidegger interprets the death of God with what he explains as the death of metaphysics. He concludes that metaphysics has reached its potential and that the ultimate fate and downfall of metaphysics was proclaimed with the statement God is dead.

Will to power

Main article: Will to power
A basic element in Nietzsche's philosophical outlook is the will to power (der Wille zur Macht), which he maintained provides a basis for understanding human behavior—more so than competing explanations, such as the ones based on pressure for adaptation or survival.[146][147][148] As such, according to Nietzsche, the drive for conservation appears as the major motivator of human or animal behavior only in exceptions, as the general condition of life is not one of emergency, of 'struggle for existence'.[149] More often than not, self-conservation is but a consequence of a creature's will to exert its strength on the outside world.
In presenting his theory of human behavior, Nietzsche also addressed, and attacked, concepts from philosophies popularly embraced in his days, such as Schopenhauer's notion of an aimless will or that of utilitarianism. Utilitarians claim that what moves people is mainly the desire to be happy, to accumulate pleasure in their lives. But such a conception of happiness Nietzsche rejected as something limited to, and characteristic of, the bourgeois lifestyle of the English society,[150] and instead put forth the idea that happiness is not an aim per se—it is instead a consequence of a successful pursuit of one's aims, of the overcoming of hurdles to one's actions—in other words, of the fulfillment of the will.[151]
Related to his theory of the will to power, is his speculation, which he did not deem final,[152] regarding the reality of the physical world, including inorganic matter—that, like man's affections and impulses, the material world is also set by the dynamics of a form of the will to power. At the core of his theory is a rejection of atomism—the idea that matter is composed of stable, indivisible units (atoms). Instead, he seems to have accepted the conclusions of Ruđer Bošković, who explained the qualities of matter as a result of an interplay of forces.[153][154] One study of Nietzsche defines his fully developed concept of the will to power as "the element from which derive both the quantitative difference of related forces and the quality that devolves into each force in this relation" revealing the will to power as "the principle of the synthesis of forces."[155] Of such forces Nietzsche said they could perhaps be viewed as a primitive form of the will. Likewise he rejected as a mere interpretation the view that the movement of bodies is ruled by inexorable laws of nature, positing instead that movement was governed by the power relations between bodies and forces.[156] Other scholars disagree that Nietzsche considered the material world to be a form of the will to power. Nietzsche thoroughly criticized metaphysics, and by including the will to power in the material world, he would simply be setting up a new metaphysics. Other than aphorism 36 in Beyond Good and Evil, where he raised a question regarding will to power as being in the material world, it was only in his notes (unpublished by himself), where he wrote about a metaphysical will to power. Nietzsche directed his landlord to burn those notes in 1888 when he left Sils Maria for the last time.[157]

Eternal return

Main article: Eternal return
Eternal return (also known as eternal recurrence) is a hypothetical concept that posits that the universe has been recurring, and will continue to recur, in a self-similar form for an infinite number of times across infinite time or space. It is a purely physical concept, involving no supernatural reincarnation, but the return of beings in the same bodies. Nietzsche first invokes the idea of eternal return in a parable in Section 341 of The Gay Science, and also in the chapter "Of the Vision and the Riddle" in Thus Spoke Zarathustra, among other places.[158] Nietzsche contemplates the idea as potentially "horrifying and paralyzing," and says that its burden is the "heaviest weight" imaginable ("das schwerste Gewicht").[159] The wish for the eternal return of all events would mark the ultimate affirmation of life, a reaction to Schopenhauer's praise of denying the will‐to‐live. To comprehend eternal recurrence in his thought, and to not merely come to peace with it but to embrace it, requires amor fati, "love of fate".[160] As Heidegger points out in his lectures on Nietzsche, Nietzsche's first mention of eternal recurrence presents this concept as a hypothetical question rather than postulating it as a fact. According to Heidegger, it is the burden imposed by the question of eternal recurrence—whether or not such a thing could possibly be true—that is so significant in modern thought: "The way Nietzsche here patterns the first communication of the thought of the 'greatest burden' [of eternal recurrence] makes it clear that this 'thought of thoughts' is at the same time 'the most burdensome thought.' "[161]
Not only does Nietzsche posit that the universe is recurring over infinite time and space, but that the different versions of events that have occurred in the past may at one point or another take place again, hence "all configurations that have previously existed on this earth must yet meet..."[162] And with each version of events is hoping that some knowledge or awareness is gained to better the individual hence "And thus it will happen one day that a man will be born again, just like me and a woman will be born, just like Mary – only that it is hoped to be that the head of this man may contain a little less foolishness..."[162]
Alexander Nehamas writes in Nietzsche: Life as Literature of three ways of seeing the eternal recurrence: "(A) My life will recur in exactly identical fashion." This expresses a totally fatalistic approach to the idea. "(B) My life may recur in exactly identical fashion." This second view conditionally asserts cosmology, but fails to capture what Nietzsche refers to in The Gay Science, 341. Finally, "(C) If my life were to recur, then it could recur only in identical fashion." Nehamas shows that this interpretation exists totally independently of physics and does not presuppose the truth of cosmology. Nehamas draws the conclusion that if individuals constitute themselves through their actions, then they can only maintain themselves in their current state by living in a recurrence of past actions (Nehamas 153). Nietzsche's thought is the negation of the idea of a history of salvation.[163]

Übermensch

Main article: Übermensch
Another concept important to an understanding of Nietzsche's thought is the Übermensch (translated variously as "overman", "superman", or "super-human").[164][165][166][167] Developing the idea of nihilism, Nietzsche wrote Thus Spoke Zarathustra, therein introducing the concept of a value-creating Übermensch, not as a project, but as an anti-project, the absence of any project.[105] According to Lampert, "the death of God must be followed by a long twilight of piety and nihilism (II. 19; III. 8). ... Zarathustra's gift of the overman is given to a mankind not aware of the problem to which the overman is the solution."[168] Zarathustra presents the overman as the creator of new values, and he appears as a solution to the problem of the death of God and nihilism. The overman does not follow morality of common people since it favors mediocrity but instead rises above the notion of good and evil and above the herd.[169] In this way Zarathustra proclaims his ultimate goal as the journey towards the state of overman. He wants a kind of spiritual evolution of self-awareness and overcoming of traditional views on morality and justice that stem from the superstition beliefs still deeply rooted or related to the notion of God and Christianity.[170]
While interpretations of Nietzsche's overman vary wildly, here is one of his quotations from Thus Spoke Zarathustra (Prologue, §§3–4):
I teach you the overman. Man is something that shall be overcome. What have you done to overcome him?... All beings so far have created something beyond themselves; and do you want to be the ebb of this great flood, and even go back to the beasts rather than overcome man? What is ape to man? A laughing stock or painful embarrassment. And man shall be that to overman: a laughingstock or painful embarrassment. You have made your way from worm to man, and much in you is still worm. Once you were apes, and even now, too, man is more ape than any ape... The overman is the meaning of the earth. Let your will say: the overman shall be the meaning of the earth... Man is a rope, tied between beast and overman—a rope over an abyss ... what is great in man is that he is a bridge and not an end.
Zarathustra contrasts the overman with the last man of egalitarian modernity (most obvious example being democracy), an alternative goal humanity might set for itself. The last man is possible only by mankind's having bred an apathetic creature who has no great passion or commitment, who is unable to dream, who merely earns his living and keeps warm. This concept appears only in Thus Spoke Zarathustra, and is presented as a condition that would render the creation of the overman impossible.[171]
Some have suggested that the notion of eternal return is related to the overman since willing the eternal return of the same is a necessary step if the overman is to create new values, untainted by the spirit of gravity or asceticism. Values involve a rank-ordering of things, and so are inseparable from approval and disapproval; yet it was dissatisfaction that prompted men to seek refuge in other-worldliness and embrace other-worldly values. It could seem that the overman, in being devoted to any values at all, would necessarily fail to create values that did not share some bit of asceticism. Willing the eternal recurrence is presented as accepting the existence of the low while still recognizing it as the low, and thus as overcoming the spirit of gravity or asceticism. One must have the strength of the overman in order to will the eternal recurrence; that is, only the overman will have the strength to fully accept all of his past life, including his failures and misdeeds, and to truly will their eternal return. This action nearly kills Zarathustra, for example, and most human beings cannot avoid other-worldliness because they really are sick, not because of any choice they made.

Critique of mass culture

Friedrich Nietzsche held a pessimistic view on modern society and culture. His views stand against the concept of popular culture. He believed the press and mass culture led to conformity and brought about mediocrity. Nietzsche saw a lack of progress, leading to the decline of the human species. According to Nietzsche, individuals needed to overcome this form of mass culture. He believed some people were able to become superior individuals through the use of will power. By rising above mass culture, society would produce higher, brighter and healthier human beings.[172]

Reading and influence


The residence of Nietzsche's last three years, along with archive in Weimar, Germany, which holds many of Nietzsche's papers.
Main article: Library of Friedrich Nietzsche
A trained philologist, Nietzsche had a thorough knowledge of Greek philosophy. He read Kant, Plato, Mill, Schopenhauer and Spir,[173] who became his main opponents in his philosophy, and later Spinoza, whom he saw as his "precursor" in many respects[174] but as a personification of the "ascetic ideal" in others. However, Nietzsche referred to Kant as a "moral fanatic", Plato as "boring", Mill as a "blockhead", and of Spinoza he said: "How much of personal timidity and vulnerability does this masquerade of a sickly recluse betray?".[175]
Nietzsche's philosophy, while innovative and revolutionary, was indebted to many predecessors. While at Basel, Nietzsche offered lecture courses on pre-Platonic philosophers for several years, and the text of this lecture series has been characterized as a "lost link" in the development of his thought. "In it concepts such as the will to power, the eternal return of the same, the overman, gay science, self-overcoming and so on receive rough, unnamed formulations and are linked to specific pre-Platonics, especially Heraclitus, who emerges as a pre-Platonic Nietzsche."[176] The pre-Socratic thinker Heraclitus was known for the rejection of the concept of being as a constant and eternal principle of universe, and his embrace of "flux" and incessant change. His symbolism of the world as "child play" marked by amoral spontaneity and lack of definite rules was appreciated by Nietzsche.[177] From his Heraclitean sympathy, Nietzsche was also a vociferous detractor of Parmenides, who opposed Heraclitus and believed all world is a single Being with no change at all.[178]
In his Egotism in German Philosophy, Santayana claimed that Nietzsche's whole philosophy was a reaction to Schopenhauer. Santayana wrote that Nietzsche's work was "an emendation of that of Schopenhauer. The will to live would become the will to dominate; pessimism founded on reflection would become optimism founded on courage; the suspense of the will in contemplation would yield to a more biological account of intelligence and taste; finally in the place of pity and asceticism (Schopenhauer's two principles of morals) Nietzsche would set up the duty of asserting the will at all costs and being cruelly but beautifully strong. These points of difference from Schopenhauer cover the whole philosophy of Nietzsche."[179]
Nietzsche expressed admiration for 17th-century French moralists such as La Rochefoucauld, La Bruyère and Vauvenargues,[180] as well as for Stendhal.[181] The organicism of Paul Bourget influenced Nietzsche,[182] as did that of Rudolf Virchow and Alfred Espinas.[183] Nietzsche wrote in a letter in 1867 that he was trying to improve his German style of writing with the help of Lessing, Lichtenberg and Schopenhauer. It was probably Lichtenberg (along with Paul Rée) whose aphoristic style of writing contributed to Nietzsche's own use of aphorism instead of an essay.[184] Nietzsche early learned of Darwinism through Friedrich Albert Lange.[185] The essays of Ralph Waldo Emerson had a profound influence on Nietzsche, who "loved Emerson from first to last",[186] wrote "Never have I felt so much at home in a book", and called him "[the] author who has been richest in ideas in this century so far".[187] Hippolyte Taine influenced Nietzsche's view on Rousseau and Napoleon.[188] Notably, he also read some of the posthumous works of Charles Baudelaire,[189] Tolstoy's My Religion, Ernest Renan's Life of Jesus and Fyodor Dostoyevsky's Demons.[189][190] Nietzsche called Dostoevsky "the only psychologist from whom I have anything to learn."[191] While Nietzsche never mentions Max Stirner, the similarities in their ideas have prompted a minority of interpreters to suggest a relationship between the two.[192][193][194][195][196][197][198] In 1861 Nietzsche wrote an enthusiastic essay on his "favorite poet", Friedrich Hölderlin, mostly forgotten at that time.[199] He also expressed deep appreciation for Stifter's Indian Summer,[200] Byron's Manfred and Twain's Tom Sawyer.[201]

Reception

Main article: Influence and reception of Friedrich Nietzsche

Portrait of Friedrich Nietzsche by Edvard Munch, 1906.
Nietzsche's works did not reach a wide readership during his active writing career. However, in 1888 the influential Danish critic Georg Brandes aroused considerable excitement about Nietzsche through a series of lectures he gave at the University of Copenhagen. In the years after Nietzsche's death in 1900, his works became better known, and readers have responded to them in complex and sometimes controversial ways.[202] Many Germans eventually discovered his appeals for greater individualism and personality development in Thus Spoke Zarathustra, but responded to them divergently. He had some following among left-wing Germans in the 1890s; in 1894–1895 German conservatives wanted to ban his work as subversive. During the late 19th century Nietzsche's ideas were commonly associated with anarchist movements and appear to have had influence within them, particularly in France and the United States.[203][204][205] H. L. Mencken produced the first book on Nietzsche in English in 1907, The Philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche, and in 1910, a book of translated paragraphs from Nietzsche, increasing knowledge of his philosophy in the United States.[206] Nietzsche is known today as a precursor to expressionism,[207] existentialism, and postmodernism.[208]
W. B. Yeats and Arthur Symons described Nietzsche as the intellectual heir to William Blake. Symons went on to compare the ideas of the two thinkers in The Symbolist Movement in Literature while Yeats tried to raise awareness of Nietzsche in Ireland.[209][210][211] A similar notion was espoused by W. H. Auden who wrote of Nietzsche in his New Year Letter (released in 1941 in The Double Man): "O masterly debunker of our liberal fallacies [...] all your life you stormed, like your English forerunner Blake".[212][213][214] Nietzsche made an impact on composers during the 1890s. Writer on music Donald Mitchell notes that Gustav Mahler was "attracted to the poetic fire of Zarathustra, but repelled by the intellectual core of its writings." He also quotes Gustav himself, and adds that he was influenced by Nietzsche's conception and affirmative approach to nature, which Mahler presented in Third Symphony using Zarathustra's roundelay. Frederick Delius has produced a piece of choral music A Mass of Life based on a text of Thus Spoke Zarathustra, while Richard Strauss (who also based his Also sprach Zarathustra on the same book), was only interested in finishing "another chapter of symphonic autobiography".[215] Famous writers and poets influenced by Nietzsche include André Gide, August Strindberg, Robinson Jeffers, Pío Baroja, D. H. Lawrence, Edith Södergran and Yukio Mishima.
Nietzsche was an early influence on the poetry of Rainer Maria Rilke. Knut Hamsun counted Nietzsche, along with Strindberg and Dostoyevsky as one of his primary influences.[216] Author Jack London wrote that he was more stimulated by Nietzsche than by any other writer.[217] Critics have suggested that the character of David Grief in A Son of the Sun was based on Nietzsche.[218] Nietzsche's influence on Muhammad Iqbal is most evidenced in Asrar-i-Khudi (The Secrets of the Self).[219] Wallace Stevens[220] was another reader of Nietzsche and elements of Nietzsche's philosophy were found throughout Harmonium.[221][222] Olaf Stapledon was influenced by the idea of Übermensch and it is central theme in his books Odd John and Sirius.[223] In Russia, Nietzsche has influenced Russian symbolism[224] and figures such as Dmitry Merezhkovsky,[225] Andrei Bely,[226] Vyacheslav Ivanov and Alexander Scriabin have all incorporated or discussed parts of Nietzsche philosophy in their works. Thomas Mann's novel Death in Venice[227] shows a use of Apollonian and Dionysian, and in Doctor Faustus Nietzsche was a central source for the character of Adrian Leverkühn.[228][229] Hermann Hesse, similarly, in his Narcissus and Goldmund presents two main characters in the sense of Apollonian and Dionysian as the two opposite yet intertwined spirits. Painter Giovanni Segantini was fascinated by Thus Spoke Zarathustra, and he drew an illustration for the first Italian translation of the book. The Russian painter Lena Hades created the oil painting cycle "Also Sprach Zarathustra" dedicated to the book Thus Spoke Zarathustra.[230]
By World War I, Nietzsche had acquired a reputation as an inspiration for both right-wing German militarism and leftist politics. German soldiers received copies of Thus Spoke Zarathustra as gifts during World War I.[231][232] The Dreyfus Affair provides a contrasting example of his reception: the French antisemitic Right labelled the Jewish and Leftist intellectuals who defended Alfred Dreyfus as "Nietzscheans".[233] Nietzsche had a distinct appeal for many Zionist thinkers around the start of the 20th century most notable being Ahad Ha'am,[234] Hillel Zeitlin,[235] Micha Josef Berdyczewski, A. D. Gordon[236] and Martin Buber who went so far as to extoll Nietzsche as a "creator" and "emissary of life".[237] Chaim Weizmann was a great admirer of Nietzsche; the first president of Israel sent Nietzsche's books to his wife, adding a comment in a letter that "This was the best and finest thing I can send to you".[238] Israel Eldad, the ideological chief of the Stern Gang that fought the British in Palestine in the 1940s, wrote about Nietzsche in his underground newspaper and later translated most of Nietzsche's books into Hebrew.[239] Eugene O'Neill remarked that Zarathustra influenced him more than any other book he ever read. He also shared Nietzsche's view of tragedy.[240] Plays The Great God Brown and Lazarus Laughed are an example of Nietzsche's influence on O'Neill.[241][242][243] Nietzsche's influence on the works of Frankfurt School philosophers Max Horkheimer and Theodor W. Adorno[244] can be seen in the popular Dialectic of Enlightenment. Adorno summed up Nietzsche's philosophy as expressing the "humane in a world in which humanity has become a sham."[245]
Nietzsche's growing prominence suffered a severe setback when his works became closely associated with Adolf Hitler and the German Reich. Many political leaders of the twentieth century were at least superficially familiar with Nietzsche's ideas, although it is not always possible to determine whether they actually read his work. Hitler, for example, probably never read Nietzsche and, if he did, his reading was not extensive,[246][247][248][249] although he was a frequent visitor to the Nietzsche museum in Weimar and did use expressions of Nietzsche's, such as "lords of the earth" in Mein Kampf.[250] The Nazis made selective use of Nietzsche's philosophy. Mussolini,[251][252] Charles de Gaulle[253] and Huey P. Newton[254] read Nietzsche. Richard Nixon read Nietzsche with "curious interest," and his book Beyond Peace might have taken its title from Nietzsche's book Beyond Good and Evil which Nixon read beforehand.[255] Bertrand Russell wrote that Nietzsche had exerted great influence on philosophers and on people of literary and artistic culture, but warned that the attempt to put Nietzsche's philosophy of aristocracy into practice could only be done by an organization similar to the Fascist or the Nazi party.[6]
A decade after World War II, there was a revival of Nietzsche's philosophical writings thanks to exhaustive translations and analyses by Walter Kaufmann and R.J. Hollingdale. Others, well known philosophers in their own right, wrote commentaries on Nietzsche's philosophy, including Martin Heidegger, who produced a four-volume study and Lev Shestov who wrote a book called Dostoyevski, Tolstoy and Nietzsche where he portrays Nietzsche and Dostoyevski as the "thinkers of tragedy".[256] Georg Simmel compares Nietzsche's importance to ethics to that of Copernicus for cosmology.[257] Sociologist Ferdinand Tönnies read Nietzsche avidly from his early life, and later frequently discussed many of his concepts in his own works. Nietzsche has influenced philosophers such as Martin Heidegger, Jean-Paul Sartre,[258] Oswald Spengler,[259] George Grant,[260] Emil Cioran,[261] Albert Camus, Ayn Rand,[262] Jacques Derrida, Leo Strauss,[263] Max Scheler, Michel Foucault and Bernard Williams. Camus described Nietzsche as "the only artist to have derived the extreme consequences of an aesthetics of the absurd".[264] Paul Ricœur called Nietzsche one of the masters of the "school of suspicion", alongside Karl Marx and Sigmund Freud.[265] Carl Jung was also influenced by Nietzsche.[266] In Memories, Dreams, Reflections, a biography transcribed by his secretary, he cites Nietzsche as a large influence.[267] Aspects of Nietzsche's philosophy, especially his ideas of the self and his relation to society, also run through much of late-twentieth and early twenty-first century thought.[268][269] His deepening of the romantic-heroic tradition of the nineteenth century, for example, as expressed in the ideal of the "grand striver" appears in the work of thinkers from Cornelius Castoriadis to Roberto Mangabeira Unger.[270] For Nietzsche this grand striver overcomes obstacles, engages in epic struggles, pursues new goals, embraces recurrent novelty, and transcends existing structures and contexts. No social or cultural construct can contain this idealized individual.[271]

Works


The Nietzsche Stone, near Surlej, the inspiration for Thus Spoke Zarathustra
Main article: Friedrich Nietzsche bibliography
See also: List of works about Friedrich Nietzsche


PHILOSOPHY - Nietzsche, 6:56

Nietzsche believed that the central task of philosophy was to teach us to 'become who we are'. Find out more by reading our book 'Life Lessons from Nietzsche ’ (we ship worldwide): http://www.theschooloflife.com/shop/l... Please subscribe here: http://tinyurl.com/o28mut7 Brought to you by http://www.theschooloflife.com Produced in collaboration with Mad Adam http://www.madadamfilms.co.uk

https://youtu.be/wHWbZmg2hzU



On the Cusp of Modern Music: Mahler and Brahms 1104

Gustav Mahler (7 July 1860, Kaliště in Bohemia – 18 May 1911, Vienna in Austria) was an Austrian late-Romantic composer, and one of the leading conductors of his generation. As a composer he acted as a bridge between the 19th century Austro-German tradition and the modernism of the early 20th century. While in his lifetime his status as a conductor was established beyond question, his own music gained wide popularity only after periods of relative neglect which included a ban on its performance in much of Europe during the Nazi era. After 1945 his compositions were rediscovered and championed by a new generation of listeners; Mahler then became one of the most frequently performed and recorded of all composers, a position he has sustained into the 21st century.

Born in Bohemia (then part of Austrian Empire) as a German-speaking Jew of humble circumstances, Mahler displayed his musical gifts at an early age. After graduating from the Vienna Conservatory in 1878, he held a succession of conducting posts of rising importance in the opera houses of Europe, culminating in his appointment in 1897 as director of the Vienna Court Opera (Hofoper). During his ten years in Vienna, Mahler—who had converted to Catholicism to secure the post—experienced regular opposition and hostility from the anti-Semitic press. Nevertheless, his innovative productions and insistence on the highest performance standards ensured his reputation as one of the greatest of opera conductors, particularly as an interpreter of the stage works of Wagner, Mozart, and Tchaikovsky . Late in his life he was briefly director of New York's Metropolitan Opera and the New York Philharmonic.

Mahler's œuvre is relatively small; for much of his life composing was necessarily a part-time activity while he earned his living as a conductor. Aside from early works such as a movement from a piano quartet composed when he was a student in Vienna, Mahler's works are generally designed for large orchestral forces, symphonic choruses and operatic soloists. These works were frequently controversial when first performed, and several were slow to receive critical and popular approval; exceptions included his Symphony No. 2 and the triumphant premiere of his Eighth Symphony in 1910. Some of Mahler's immediate musical successors included the composers of the Second Viennese School, notably Arnold Schoenberg, Alban Berg and Anton Webern. Dmitri Shostakovich and Benjamin Britten are among later 20th-century composers who admired and were influenced by Mahler. The International Gustav Mahler Institute was established in 1955 to honour the composer's life and work.
Johannes Brahms (German: [joˈhanəs ˈbʁaːms]; 7 May 1833 – 3 April 1897) was a German composer and pianist. Born in Hamburg into a Lutheran family, Brahms spent much of his professional life in Vienna, Austria. In his lifetime, Brahms's popularity and influence were considerable. He is considered one of the greatest composers in history,[1][2] and is sometimes grouped with Johann Sebastian Bach and Ludwig van Beethoven as one of the "Three Bs", a comment originally made by the nineteenth-century conductor Hans von Bülow.

Brahms composed for piano, organ, chamber ensembles, symphony orchestra, and for voice and chorus. A virtuoso pianist, he premiered many of his own works. He worked with some of the leading performers of his time, including the pianist Clara Schumann and the violinist Joseph Joachim (the three were close friends). Many of his works have become staples of the modern concert repertoire. Brahms, an uncompromising perfectionist, destroyed some of his works and left others unpublished.

Brahms is often considered both a traditionalist and an innovator. His music is firmly rooted in the structures and compositional techniques of the Baroque and Classical masters. He was a master of counterpoint, the complex and highly disciplined art for which Johann Sebastian Bach is famous, and of development, a compositional ethos pioneered by Joseph Haydn, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Ludwig van Beethoven, and other composers. Brahms aimed to honour the "purity" of these venerable "German" structures and advance them into a Romantic idiom, in the process creating bold new approaches to harmony and melody. While many contemporaries found his music too academic, his contribution and craftsmanship have been admired by subsequent figures as diverse as Arnold Schoenberg and Edward Elgar. The diligent, highly constructed nature of Brahms's works was a starting point and an inspiration for a generation of composers. Within his meticulous structures is embedded, however, a highly romantic nature

Titans - Mahler & Brahms : Classical Music Lecture, 4:37

Enhance your experience of a live symphony orchestra at Colston Hall and discover more about Classical Music with our Inside The Music lecture series. If you like this video, please let us know in the comments and subscribe for more In this episode Oliver Condy and Jonathan James discuss the themes within Mahler & Brahms' symphonies. This video discusses the pieces being performed by the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra on Thu 5 May 2016 2016 at Colston Hall, Bristol. Tickets are available from our website : http://www.colstonhall.org/shows/bour... _____________________________________ A symphony issuing a thrilling wake up call to modernism meets a violinist oozing “musical maturity coupled with youthful effortlessness”: the BSO takes its season’s leave with panache to spare. Conductor Kirill Karabits Violin Guy Braunstein* Brahms Violin Concerto Mahler Symphony No. 1 ‘Titan’ Buffeted by distant fanfares; eerily lit by string harmonics, an elemental unison ‘A’ sounds across the orchestra. Nature stirs. More than a century after its first performance, Mahler’s symphonic debut still packs a startlingly contemporary punch, charting a bold journey whose endgame is the Paradise attained by the Titan of the work’s subtitle. For his last programme of the season Kirill Karabits pairs it with a Titan of very different stamp: Brahms’ colossus of a concerto composed just six years before Mahler started work on his symphony.

https://youtu.be/opIBpvdxhsc



Schoenberg: Music, God, and Catastrophe in Fin-de-siècle Vienna, 1:40

In this class we will examine the remarkable cultural ferment of fin-de-siècle Vienna through the lens of one of its principal protagonists, the composer Arnold Schoenberg. Among the questions we will address are: is there a morality of art? How do the apocalyptic yearnings of Viennese Expressionism reflect, and anticipate, the turbulent politics of the early twentieth century? What is "prophetic modernism?" In trying to answer these questions, we will examine Schoenberg's relation to other leading Viennese figures, including Ludwig Wittgenstein and the satirist Karl Kraus, and read interpretations of his music by such writers as Theodor Adorno and Thomas Mann. We will use Schoenberg's own path -- from a youthful immersion in German Idealism, through his reconversion to Judaism, culminating in the messianic visions of Moses und Aron and A Survivor from Warsaw -- to explore the broader ways in which the Jewish experience in Vienna shaped the history of modernism in philosophy and the arts. And we will try to understand why, a century after their creation, the artistic monuments of turn-of-the-century Vienna still have a unique power to compel and disturb.

https://youtu.be/tcLvRGksuhA



    The Painting of Isolation: Munch 1105

Edvard Munch (/mʊŋk/;[1] Norwegian: [ˈɛdvɑʈ muŋk] ( listen); 12 December 1863 – 23 January 1944) was a Norwegian painter and printmaker whose intensely evocative treatment of psychological themes built upon some of the main tenets of late 19th-century Symbolism and greatly influenced German Expressionism in the early 20th century. One of his most well-known works is The Scream of 1893.


Africa and Empire 1106


Imperialism is a type of advocacy of empire. Its name originated from the Latin word "imperium", which means to rule over large territories. Imperialism is "a policy of extending a country's power and influence through colonization, use of military force, or other means".[2] Imperialism has greatly shaped the contemporary world.[3] It has also allowed for the rapid spread of technologies and ideas. The term imperialism has been applied to Western (and Japanese) political and economic dominance especially in Asia and Africa in the 19th and 20th centuries. Its precise meaning continues to be debated by scholars. Some writers, such as Edward Said, use the term more broadly to describe any system of domination and subordination organised with an imperial center and a periphery.[4]
The Ottoman Empire was an imperial state that lasted from 1299 to 1923. During the 16th and 17th centuries, in particular at the height of its power under the reign of Suleiman the Magnificent, the Ottoman Empire was a powerful multinational, multilingual empire controlling much of Southeast Europe, Western Asia, the Caucasus, North Africa, and the Horn of Africa. At the beginning of the 17th century the empire contained 32 provinces and numerous vassal states. Some of these were later absorbed into the empire, while others were granted various types of autonomy during the course of centuries.

With Istanbul as its capital and control of lands around the Mediterranean basin, the Ottoman Empire was at the center of interactions between the Eastern and Western worlds for six centuries. Following a long period of military setbacks against European powers, the Ottoman Empire gradually declined into the late nineteenth century. The empire allied with Germany in the early 20th century, with the imperial ambition of recovering its lost territories, but it dissolved in the aftermath of World War I, leading to the emergence of the new state of Turkey in the Ottoman Anatolian heartland, as well as the creation of modern Balkan and Middle Eastern states, thus ending Turkish colonial ambitions.

    European Imperialism 1106

    Social Darwinism: The Theoretical Justification for Imperialism 1107

Social Darwinism is a name given to various theories of society which emerged in the United Kingdom, North America, and Western Europe in the 1870s, and which claim to apply biological concepts of natural selection and survival of the fittest to sociology and politics.[1][2] According to their critics, at least, social Darwinists argue that the strong should see their wealth and power increase while the weak should see their wealth and power decrease. Different social-Darwinist groups have differing views about which groups of people are considered to be the strong and which groups of people are considered to be the weak, and they also hold different opinions about the precise mechanisms that should be used to reward strength and punish weakness. Many such views stress competition between individuals in laissez-faire capitalism, while others are claimed[by whom?] to have motivated ideas of authoritarianism, eugenics, racism, imperialism,[3] fascism, Nazism, and struggle between national or racial groups.[4][5] The term Social Darwinism gained widespread currency when used after 1944 by opponents of these earlier concepts. The majority of those who have been categorised as social Darwinists did not identify themselves by such a label.[6]
Creationists have often maintained that social Darwinism—leading to policies designed to reward the most competitive—is a logical consequence of "Darwinism" (the theory of natural selection in biology).[7] Biologists and historians have stated that this is a fallacy of appeal to nature, since the theory of natural selection is merely intended as a description of a biological phenomenon and should not be taken to imply that this phenomenon is good or that it ought to be used as a moral guide in human society. While most scholars recognize some historical links between the popularisation of Darwin's theory and forms of social Darwinism, they also maintain that social Darwinism is not a necessary consequence of the principles of biological evolution.

Scholars debate the extent to which the various social Darwinist ideologies reflect Charles Darwin's own views on human social and economic issues. His writings have passages that can be interpreted as opposing aggressive individualism, while other passages appear to promote it.[8] Some scholars argue that Darwin's view gradually changed and came to incorporate views from other theorists such as Herbert Spencer.[9] Spencer published[10] his Lamarckian evolutionary ideas about society before Darwin first published his theory in 1859, and both Spencer and Darwin promoted their own conceptions of moral values. Spencer supported laissez-faire capitalism on the basis of his Lamarckian belief that struggle for survival spurred self-improvement which could be inherited.[11]

Survival Theories Social Darwinism and Eugenics, 2:09

https://youtu.be/URfF6Wtyc_0



    Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness 1108

Heart of Darkness (1899) is a novella[1] by Polish-British novelist Joseph Conrad, about a voyage up the Congo River into the Congo Free State, in the heart of Africa, by the story's narrator Marlow. Marlow tells his story to friends aboard a boat anchored on the River Thames, London, England. This setting provides the frame for Marlow's story of his obsession with the ivory trader Kurtz, which enables Conrad to create a parallel between London and Africa as places of darkness.[2]
Central to Conrad's work is the idea that there is little difference between so-called civilised people and those described as savages; Heart of Darkness raises important questions about imperialism and racism.[3]

Originally published as a three-part serial story in Blackwood's Magazine, the novella Heart of Darkness has been variously published and translated into many languages. In 1998, the Modern Library ranked Heart of Darkness as the sixty-seventh of the hundred best novels in English of the twentieth century.

Heart of Darkness - Thug Notes Summary and Analysis, 4:22

https://youtu.be/dmKEltYUy6k



READINGS

    33.1 from Henrik Ibsen, A Doll’s House, Act 3 (1878) 1089
A Doll's House (Bokmål: Et dukkehjem; also translated as A Doll House) is a three-act play in prose by Henrik Ibsen. It premiered at the Royal Theatre in Copenhagen, Denmark, on 21 December 1879, having been published earlier that month.[1]

The play is significant for its critical attitude toward 19th-century marriage norms. It aroused great controversy at the time,[2] as it concludes with the protagonist, Nora, leaving her husband and children because she wants to discover herself. Ibsen was inspired by the belief that "a woman cannot be herself in modern society," since it is "an exclusively male society, with laws made by men and with prosecutors and judges who assess feminine conduct from a masculine standpoint."[3] Its ideas can also be seen as having a wider application: Michael Meyer argued that the play's theme is not women's rights, but rather "the need of every individual to find out the kind of person he or she really is and to strive to become that person."[4] In a speech given to the Norwegian Association for Women's Rights in 1898, Ibsen insisted that he "must disclaim the honor of having consciously worked for the women's rights movement," since he wrote "without any conscious thought of making propaganda," his task having been "the description of humanity."[5]

In 2006, the centennial of Ibsen's death, A Doll's House held the distinction of being the world's most performed play for that year.[6] UNESCO has inscribed Ibsen's autographed manuscripts of A Doll's House on the Memory of the World Register in 2001, in recognition of their historical value.[7]
Ibsen: A Doll's House - Analysis, 3:01

A Doll’s House, by Danish playwright Henrik Ibsen, is a dramatic criticism of 19th century gender norms, which emphasized a woman’s obedience to her husband. At the conclusion of the play, the protagonist Nora Helmer rebels against these cultural norms. She abandons her husband and her children. “I am going to see if I can make out who is right, the world or I.” In this video, we will discuss Nora’s radical transformation from an obedient wife to an assertive woman seeking independence. My blog: http://www.gbwwblog.wordpress.com Please help support this channel: https://www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr... Find me on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/pages/The-Ru...

https://youtu.be/pMUFMHM63IY



    33.2 from Stéphane Mallarmé, “L’Après-midi d’un faune” (“The Afternoon of a Faun”) (1876) 1093

"L'après-midi d'un faune" (or "The Afternoon of a Faun") is a poem by the French author Stéphane Mallarmé. It is his best-known work and a landmark in the history of symbolism in French literature. Paul Valéry considered it to be the greatest poem in French literature.[1]

Initial versions of the poem were written between 1865 (the first mention of the poem is found in a letter Mallarmé wrote to Henri Cazalis in June 1865) and 1867, and the final text was published in 1876 (see 1876 in poetry). It describes the sensual experiences of a faun who has just woken up from his afternoon sleep and discusses his encounters with several nymphs during the morning in a dreamlike monologue.

Mallarmé's poem formed the inspiration for the orchestral work Prélude à l'après-midi d'un faune by Claude Debussy and the ballets Afternoon of a Faun by Vaslav Nijinsky, Jerome Robbins and Tim Rushton. The Debussy and Njinsky works would be of great significance in the development of modernism in the arts


    33.3 from Friedrich Nietzsche, The Birth of Tragedy, Section 1 (1872) 1103

The Birth of Tragedy from the Spirit of Music (German: Die Geburt der Tragödie aus dem Geiste der Musik) is an 1872 work of dramatic theory by the German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche. It was reissued in 1886 as The Birth of Tragedy, Or: Hellenism and Pessimism (Die Geburt der Tragödie, Oder: Griechentum und Pessimismus). The later edition contained a prefatory essay, An Attempt at Self-Criticism, wherein Nietzsche commented on this earliest book.

Student Philosopher: Nietzsche, Apollo & Dionysus, 3:47

Friedrich Nietzsche believed that human life is fundamentally divided into the 'Apollonian' and the 'Dionysian'. Find out more and please subscribe here: http://tinyurl.com/o28mut7 If you like our films take a look at our shop (we ship worldwide): http://www.theschooloflife.com/shop/all/ Brought to you by http://www.theschooloflife.com

https://youtu.be/ldj0RX3CqXA



    33.4 from Friedrich Nietzsche, The Gay Science, “The Madman” (1882),

The Gay Science (German: Die fröhliche Wissenschaft) or The Joyous Wisdom is a book by Friedrich Nietzsche, first published in 1882 and followed by a second edition, which was published after the completion of Thus Spoke Zarathustra and Beyond Good and Evil, in 1887. This substantial expansion includes a fifth book and an appendix of songs. It was noted by Nietzsche to be "the most personal of all [his] books", and contains the greatest number of poems in any of his published works.

Nietzsche: The Parable of the Madman, 1:47

For Junior Collaborative class, we had to animate our own visual interpretation to this excerpt of Friedrich Nietzsche. For the sake of time, I did more moving illustrations than actual animation.

https://youtu.be/TYU9rxVapCU



Beyond Good and Evil, Section 212 (1888) 1111

Beyond Good and Evil: Prelude to a Philosophy of the Future (German: Jenseits von Gut und Böse: Vorspiel einer Philosophie der Zukunft) is a book by philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche, first published in 1886.

It draws on and expands the ideas of his previous work, Thus Spoke Zarathustra, but with a more critical and polemical approach.

In Beyond Good and Evil, Nietzsche accuses past philosophers of lacking critical sense and blindly accepting dogmatic premises in their consideration of morality. Specifically, he accuses them of founding grand metaphysical systems upon the faith that the good man is the opposite of the evil man, rather than just a different expression of the same basic impulses that find more direct expression in the evil man. The work moves into the realm "beyond good and evil" in the sense of leaving behind the traditional morality which Nietzsche subjects to a destructive critique in favour of what he regards as an affirmative approach that fearlessly confronts the perspectival nature of knowledge and the perilous condition of the modern individual.

An Introduction to Friedrich Nietzsche’s Beyond Good and Evil - A Macat Philosophy Video, 3:19

Different societies are likely to have different moralities and therefore different conceptions of “good” and “evil.” We must look beyond these ideas of good and evil to decide what future generations of human beings should aspire to. Watch Macat’s short video for a great introduction to Friedrich Nietzsche’s Beyond Good and Evil, one of the most important philosophy books ever written.

Macat’s videos give you an overview of the ideas you should know, explained in a way that helps you think smarter. Through exploration of the humanities, we learn how to think critically and creatively, to reason, and to ask the right questions.

Critical thinking is about to become one of the most in-demand set of skills in the global jobs market.* Are you ready?

Learn to plan more efficiently, tackle risks or problems more effectively, and make quicker, more informed and more creative decisions with Macat’s suite of resources designed to develop this essential set of skills.

Our experts have already compiled the 180 books you feel you should know—but will never have time to read—and explained them in a way that helps you think smarter. Dip in and learn in 3 minutes or 10 minutes a day, or dive in for 3 hours, wherever you are on whatever device you have.
Get your journey started into the great books for free: www.macat.com

Get a report on your critical thinking skills at no cost: www.macat.com/ct-study Find out more about critical thinking: www.macat.com/blog/what-is-critical-thin­king

https://youtu.be/SYIV4qXsXf0



    33.5 from Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness (1899) 1112 Heart of Darkness | Introduction | 60second Recap®, 1:12

http://www.60secondrecap.com/study-gu... by Jenny Sawyer Of all the horrors in Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad which horror is most horrifying? The horror of imperialism? The destruction of the jungle for personal gain? No wait. None of that could possibly be as horrifying as ... well, check it out.

https://youtu.be/f7DpnKLjSxY



Heart of Darkness Trailer, 1:47

Movie trailer for "Heart of Darkness" by Joseph Conrad. Ohio University ENG 3080J

https://youtu.be/h_9lVCtCtd4





    33.5a from Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness (1899) 1108

        READINGS

            33.1 from Henrik Ibsen, A Doll’s House, Act 3 (1878) 1089

            33.2 from Stéphane Mallarmé, “L’Après-midi d’un faune” (“The Afternoon of a Faun”) (1876) 1093

            33.3 from Friedrich Nietzsche, The Birth of Tragedy, Section 1 (1872) 1103

            33.4 from Friedrich Nietzsche, The Gay Science, “The Madman” (1882), and Beyond Good and Evil, Section 212 (1888) 1111

            33.5 from Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness (1899) 1112

            33.5a from Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness (1899) 1108

        FEATURES

            CLOSER LOOK Cézanne’s Still Life with Plaster Cast 1100

            CONTINUITY & CHANGE Freud and the Unconscious 1109
Sigmund Freud and his followers developed an account of the unconscious mind. It plays an important role in psychoanalysis.
Freud divided the mind into the conscious mind (or the ego) and the unconscious mind. The later was then further divided into the id (or instincts and drive) and the superego (or conscience). In this theory, the unconscious refers to the mental processes of which individuals make themselves unaware.[24] Freud proposed a vertical and hierarchical architecture of human consciousness: the conscious mind, the preconscious, and the unconscious mind—each lying beneath the other. He believed that significant psychic events take place "below the surface" in the unconscious mind,[25] like hidden messages from the unconscious. He interpreted such events as having both symbolic and actual significance.

In psychoanalytic terms, the unconscious does not include all that is not conscious, but rather what is actively repressed from conscious thought or what a person is averse to knowing consciously. Freud viewed the unconscious as a repository for socially unacceptable ideas, wishes or desires, traumatic memories, and painful emotions put out of mind by the mechanism of psychological repression. However, the contents did not necessarily have to be solely negative. In the psychoanalytic view, the unconscious is a force that can only be recognized by its effects—it expresses itself in the symptom. In a sense, this view places the conscious self as an adversary to its unconscious, warring to keep the unconscious hidden. Unconscious thoughts are not directly accessible to ordinary introspection, but are supposed to be capable of being "tapped" and "interpreted" by special methods and techniques such as meditation, free association (a method largely introduced by Freud), dream analysis, and verbal slips (commonly known as a Freudian slip), examined and conducted during psychoanalysis. Seeing as these unconscious thoughts are normally cryptic, psychoanalysts are considered experts in interpreting their messages.

Freud based his concept of the unconscious on a variety of observations. For example, he considered "slips of the tongue" to be related to the unconscious in that they often appeared to show a person's true feelings on a subject. For example, "I decided to take a summer curse". This example shows a slip of the word "course" where the speaker accidentally used the word curse which would show that they have negative feelings about having to do this. Freud noticed that also his patient's dreams expressed important feelings they were unaware of. After these observations, he came to the conclusion that psychological disturbances are largely caused by personal conflicts existing at the unconscious level. His psychoanalytic theory acts to explain personality, motivation and mental disorders by focusing on unconscious determinants of behavior.[26]

Freud later used his notion of the unconscious in order to explain certain kinds of neurotic behavior.[27] The theory of the unconscious was substantially transformed by later psychiatrists, among them Carl Jung and Jacques Lacan.

In his 1932/1933 conferences, Freud "proposes to abandon the notion of the unconscious that ambiguous judge".[28]

Sigmund Freud - The Unconscious Mind, 3:50

In this episode I explain in brief Sigmund Freud and his ideas concerning the unconscious mind while rhyming. Find out more: Sigmund Freud and the Unconscious Mind - Exploring Psychology Season 1: Episode 6. Subscribe Today! https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCRkS...

https://youtu.be/qfCT3QwerEA



PART SIX MODERNISM AND THE GLOBALIZATION OF CULTURES

Modernism is a philosophical movement that, along with cultural trends and changes, arose from wide-scale and far-reaching transformations in Western society in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Among the factors that shaped modernism were the development of modern industrial societies and the rapid growth of cities, followed then by the horror of World War I. Modernism also rejected the certainty of Enlightenment thinking, and many modernists rejected religious belief.[2][3]
Modernism, in general, includes the activities and creations of those who felt the traditional forms of art, architecture, literature, religious faith, philosophy, social organization, activities of daily life, and even the sciences, were becoming ill-fitted to their tasks and outdated in the new economic, social, and political environment of an emerging fully industrialized world. The poet Ezra Pound's 1934 injunction to "Make it new!" was the touchstone of the movement's approach towards what it saw as the now obsolete culture of the past. In this spirit, its innovations, like the stream-of-consciousness novel, atonal (or pantonal) and twelve-tone music, divisionist painting and abstract art, all had precursors in the 19th century.

A notable characteristic of modernism is self-consciousness and irony concerning literary and social traditions, which often led to experiments with form, along with the use of techniques that drew attention to the processes and materials used in creating a painting, poem, building, etc.[4] Modernism explicitly rejected the ideology of realism[5][6][7] and makes use of the works of the past by the employment of reprise, incorporation, rewriting, recapitulation, revision and parody.[8][9][10]
Some commentators define modernism as a mode of thinking—one or more philosophically defined characteristics, like self-consciousness or self-reference, that run across all the novelties in the arts and the disciplines.[11] More common, especially in the West, are those who see it as a socially progressive trend of thought that affirms the power of human beings to create, improve and reshape their environment with the aid of practical experimentation, scientific knowledge, or technology.[12] From this perspective, modernism encouraged the re-examination of every aspect of existence, from commerce to philosophy, with the goal of finding that which was 'holding back' progress, and replacing it with new ways of reaching the same end. Others focus on modernism as an aesthetic introspection. This facilitates consideration of specific reactions to the use of technology in the First World War, and anti-technological and nihilistic aspects of the works of diverse thinkers and artists spanning the period from Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900) to Samuel Beckett (1906–1989).[13]

Modernism: A Very Short Introduction, 1:56

Author Christopher Butler considers what we have learnt from the modernist movement and why they were so interested in subjective experience. http://ukcatalogue.oup.com/product/97...
https://youtu.be/rfYEpYL_MhM



1900 TO THE PRESENT 1114

    34 The Era of Invention

Donald Duck Modern Inventions, 8:49

https://youtu.be/vKZgTErLhmE



    PARIS AND THE MODERN WORLD 1117

Pablo Picasso’s Paris: At the Heart of the Modern 1119
Pablo Ruiz y Picasso, also known as Pablo Picasso (/pɪˈkɑːsoʊ, -ˈkæsoʊ/;[2] Spanish: [ˈpaβlo piˈkaso]; 25 October 1881 – 8 April 1973), was a Spanish painter, sculptor, printmaker, ceramicist, stage designer, poet and playwright who spent most of his adult life in France. Regarded as one of the greatest and most influential artists of the 20th century, he is known for co-founding the Cubist movement, the invention of constructed sculpture,[3][4] the co-invention of collage, and for the wide variety of styles that he helped develop and explore. Among his most famous works are the proto-Cubist Les Demoiselles d'Avignon (1907), and Guernica (1937), a portrayal of the Bombing of Guernica by the German and Italian airforces at the behest of the Spanish nationalist government during the Spanish Civil War.

Picasso, Henri Matisse and Marcel Duchamp are regarded as the three artists who most defined the revolutionary developments in the plastic arts in the opening decades of the 20th century, responsible for significant developments in painting, sculpture, printmaking and ceramics.[5][6][7][8]
Picasso demonstrated extraordinary artistic talent in his early years, painting in a naturalistic manner through his childhood and adolescence. During the first decade of the 20th century, his style changed as he experimented with different theories, techniques, and ideas. His work is often categorized into periods. While the names of many of his later periods are debated, the most commonly accepted periods in his work are the Blue Period (1901–1904), the Rose Period (1904–1906), the African-influenced Period (1907–1909), Analytic Cubism (1909–1912), and Synthetic Cubism (1912–1919), also referred to as the Crystal period.

Exceptionally prolific throughout the course of his long life, Picasso achieved universal renown and immense fortune for his revolutionary artistic accomplishments, and became one of the best-known figures in 20th-century art.

Pablo Picasso Biography, 2:18

Pablo Picasso http://www.cloudbiography.com See a related article at Britannica.com: http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/t... All content is either in the public domain or licensed pursuant to a Creative Commons Attribution License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/ Attribution: http://cloudbiography.com/attribution...

https://youtu.be/PeZvp0juhRE



    The Aggressive New Modern Art: Les Demoiselles d’Avignon 1120

Les Demoiselles d'Avignon (The Young Ladies of Avignon, and originally titled The Brothel of Avignon)[2] is a large oil painting created in 1907 by the Spanish artist Pablo Picasso (1881–1973). The work portrays five nude female prostitutes from a brothel on Carrer d'Avinyó (Avinyó Street) in Barcelona. Each figure is depicted in a disconcerting confrontational manner and none are conventionally feminine. The women appear as slightly menacing and rendered with angular and disjointed body shapes. Three figures on the left exhibit facial features in the Iberian style of Picasso's native Spain, while the two on the right are shown with African mask-like features. The racial primitivism evoked in these masks, according to Picasso, moved him to "liberate an utterly original artistic style of compelling, even savage force."[3][4]

In this adaptation of Primitivism and abandonment of perspective in favor of a flat, two-dimensional picture plane, Picasso makes a radical departure from traditional European painting. This proto-Cubist work is widely considered to be seminal in the early development of both Cubism and Modern art. Les Demoiselles was revolutionary and controversial, and led to wide anger and disagreement, even amongst his closest associates and friends. Matisse considered the work something of a bad joke, yet indirectly reacted to it in his 1908 Bathers with a Turtle. Braque too initially disliked the painting, yet perhaps more than anyone else, studied the work in great detail. And effectively, his subsequent friendship and collaboration with Picasso led to the Cubist revolution.[5][6] Its resemblance to Cézanne's Les Grandes Baigneuses, Paul Gauguin's statue Oviri and El Greco's Opening of the Fifth Seal has been widely discussed by later critics.

A photograph of the Les Demoiselles was first published in an article by Gelett Burgess entitled The Wild Men of Paris, Matisse, Picasso and Les Fauves, The Architectural Record, May 1910.[7]
At the time of its first exhibition in 1916, the painting was deemed immoral.[8] The work, painted in the studio of Picasso at Le Bateau-Lavoir, was seen publicly for the first time at the Salon d’Antin in July 1916; an exhibition organized by the poet André Salmon. It was at this exhibition that André Salmon, who had already mentioned the painting in 1912 under the title Le Bordel philosophique, gave the work its present title Les Demoiselles d’Avignon (in preference to the title originally chosen by Picasso, Le Bordel d’Avignon) to lessen its scandalous impact on the public.[2][5][9][10] Picasso, who had always referred to it as mon bordel (my brothel),[8] or Le Bordel d'Avignon,[9] never liked Salmon's title, and as an edulcoration [11] would have preferred Las chicas de Avignon instead.[2]

Les Demoiselles d'Avignon; Relativity and the Unconscious, 3:59

Picasso's Les Demoiselles d'Avignon explains the feeling of being alive in 1907. Subscribe to Amor Sciendi to watch videos about Art every other week. You can View the Les Demoiselles d'Avignon in the Museum of Modern Art in New York City. Minute Physics: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t91DO5... Works Consulted: Carrie Clark Miller, Arthur I. Einstein, Picasso: Space, Time, and Beauty That Causes Havoc. New York: Basic, 2001. Print. Freud image provided courtesy of: www.all-about-psychology.com/ Special thanks to Maddy Hykes for saying things in French that I can't say.

https://youtu.be/RlYj0yZUJZY



    Matisse and the Fauves: A New Color 1122

Henri-Émile-Benoît Matisse (French: [ɑ̃ʁi emil bənwɑ matis]; 31 December 1869 – 3 November 1954) was a French artist, known for both his use of colour and his fluid and original draughtsmanship. He was a draughtsman, printmaker, and sculptor, but is known primarily as a painter.[1]

Matisse is commonly regarded, along with Pablo Picasso and Marcel Duchamp, as one of the three artists who helped to define the revolutionary developments in the plastic arts throughout the opening decades of the twentieth century, responsible for significant developments in painting and sculpture.[2][3][4][5] Although he was initially labelled a Fauve (wild beast), by the 1920s he was increasingly hailed as an upholder of the classical tradition in French painting.[6] His mastery of the expressive language of colour and drawing, displayed in a body of work spanning over a half-century, won him recognition as a leading figure in modern art.[7]

Henri Matisse (1869-1954) Pintor Francés, 3:18

His parents, Emile Matisse and Héloise Gérars, had a general store selling household goods and seed. Henri planned on a legal career, and in 1887/88 studied law in Paris, in 1889 he was employed as a clerk in a solicitors office. It was in 1890 that he was first attracted to painting. Confined to his bed for nearly a year (1890) after an intestinal operation, he chose drawing as a pastime. Then the hobby took best of him and he decided for the painting career. continued... http://www.artistas-americanos.com/bi... more Matisse galleries http://www.artistas-americanos.com/ma... http://www.artistas-americanos.com/ma...

https://youtu.be/MeRSvwPTnRs



    The Invention of Cubism: Braque’s Partnership with Picasso 1122

Cubism is an early-20th-century avant-garde art movement that revolutionized European painting and sculpture, and inspired related movements in music, literature and architecture. Cubism has been considered the most influential art movement of the 20th century.[1][2] The term is broadly used in association with a wide variety of art produced in Paris (Montmartre, Montparnasse and Puteaux) during the 1910s and extending through the 1920s.

The movement was pioneered by Georges Braque and Pablo Picasso, joined by Jean Metzinger, Albert Gleizes, Robert Delaunay, Henri Le Fauconnier, Fernand Léger and Juan Gris.[3] A primary influence that led to Cubism was the representation of three-dimensional form in the late works of Paul Cézanne.[4] A retrospective of Cézanne's paintings had been held at the Salon d'Automne of 1904, current works were displayed at the 1905 and 1906 Salon d'Automne, followed by two commemorative retrospectives after his death in 1907.[5]

In Cubist artwork, objects are analyzed, broken up and reassembled in an abstracted form—instead of depicting objects from one viewpoint, the artist depicts the subject from a multitude of viewpoints to represent the subject in a greater context.[6]

The impact of Cubism was far-reaching and wide-ranging. Cubism spread rapidly across the globe and in doing so evolved to greater or lesser extent. In essence, Cubism was the starting point of an evolutionary process that produced diversity; it was the antecedent of diverse art movements.[7]
In France, offshoots of Cubism developed, including Orphism, Abstract art and later Purism.[8][9] In other countries Futurism, Suprematism, Dada, Constructivism and De Stijl developed in response to Cubism. Early Futurist paintings hold in common with Cubism the fusing of the past and the present, the representation of different views of the subject pictured at the same time, also called multiple perspective, simultaneity or multiplicity,[10] while Constructivism was influenced by Picasso's technique of constructing sculpture from separate elements.[11] Other common threads between these disparate movements include the faceting or simplification of geometric forms, and the association of mechanization and modern life.
Pablo Ruiz y Picasso, also known as Pablo Picasso (/pɪˈkɑːsoʊ, -ˈkæsoʊ/;[2] Spanish: [ˈpaβlo piˈkaso]; 25 October 1881 – 8 April 1973), was a Spanish painter, sculptor, printmaker, ceramicist, stage designer, poet and playwright who spent most of his adult life in France. Regarded as one of the greatest and most influential artists of the 20th century, he is known for co-founding the Cubist movement, the invention of constructed sculpture,[3][4] the co-invention of collage, and for the wide variety of styles that he helped develop and explore. Among his most famous works are the proto-Cubist Les Demoiselles d'Avignon (1907), and Guernica (1937), a portrayal of the Bombing of Guernica by the German and Italian airforces at the behest of the Spanish nationalist government during the Spanish Civil War.

Picasso, Henri Matisse and Marcel Duchamp are regarded as the three artists who most defined the revolutionary developments in the plastic arts in the opening decades of the 20th century, responsible for significant developments in painting, sculpture, printmaking and ceramics.[5][6][7][8]
Picasso demonstrated extraordinary artistic talent in his early years, painting in a naturalistic manner through his childhood and adolescence. During the first decade of the 20th century, his style changed as he experimented with different theories, techniques, and ideas. His work is often categorized into periods. While the names of many of his later periods are debated, the most commonly accepted periods in his work are the Blue Period (1901–1904), the Rose Period (1904–1906), the African-influenced Period (1907–1909), Analytic Cubism (1909–1912), and Synthetic Cubism (1912–1919), also referred to as the Crystal period.

Exceptionally prolific throughout the course of his long life, Picasso achieved universal renown and immense fortune for his revolutionary artistic accomplishments, and became one of the best-known figures in 20th-century art.

YouTube The History of Cubism in Less Than 2 Minute, 2:00

https://youtu.be/pHLNXTolTas



 Pablo Picasso, 1:53

https://youtu.be/JU9oaD0e7uU



    Futurism: The Cult of Speed 1128


Futurism (Italian: Futurismo) was an artistic and social movement that originated in Italy in the early 20th century. It emphasized speed, technology, youth, and violence, and objects such as the car, the aeroplane, and the industrial city. Although it was largely an Italian phenomenon, there were parallel movements in Russia, England, and elsewhere. The Futurists practiced in every medium of art including painting, sculpture, ceramics, graphic design, industrial design, interior design, urban design, theatre, film, fashion, textiles, literature, music, architecture, and even gastronomy. Its key figures were the Italians Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, Umberto Boccioni, Carlo Carrà, Gino Severini, Giacomo Balla, Antonio Sant'Elia, Bruno Munari, Benedetta Cappa and Luigi Russolo, the Russians Natalia Goncharova, Velimir Khlebnikov, Igor Severyanin, David Burliuk, Aleksei Kruchenykh and Vladimir Mayakovsky, and the Portuguese Almada Negreiros. It glorified modernity and aimed to liberate Italy from the weight of its past.[1] Cubism contributed to the formation of Italian Futurism's artistic style.[2] Important Futurist works included Marinetti's Manifesto of Futurism, Boccioni's sculpture Unique Forms of Continuity in Space, and Balla's painting Abstract Speed + Sound (pictured). To some extent Futurism influenced the  art movements Art Deco, Constructivism, Surrealism, Dada, and to a greater degree Precisionism, Rayonism, and Vorticism

A Brief Guide to Futurist Art and Futurism, 6:40

Created by Alex Fox for Hubpages. For more information please visit http://alex-fox.hubpages.com/video/A-...

https://youtu.be/NZHpmJvU7sM



    Modernist Music and Dance: Stravinsky and the Ballets Russes 1129

Igor Fyodorovich Stravinsky (sometimes spelled Strawinski, Strawinsky, or Stravinskii; Russian: И́горь Фёдорович Страви́нский, tr. Igorʹ Fëdorovič Stravinskij; IPA: [ˈiɡərʲ ˈfʲɵdərəvʲɪtɕ strɐˈvʲinskʲɪj]; 17 June [O.S. 5 June] 1882 – 6 April 1971) was a Russian (and later, a naturalized French and American) composer, pianist and conductor. He is widely considered one of the most important and influential composers of the 20th century.

Stravinsky's compositional career was notable for its stylistic diversity. He first achieved international fame with three ballets commissioned by the impresario Sergei Diaghilev and first performed in Paris by Diaghilev's Ballets Russes: The Firebird (1910), Petrushka (1911) and The Rite of Spring (1913). The last of these transformed the way in which subsequent composers thought about rhythmic structure and was largely responsible for Stravinsky's enduring reputation as a musical revolutionary who pushed the boundaries of musical design. His "Russian phase" which continued with works such as Renard, The Soldier's Tale and Les Noces, was followed in the 1920s by a period in which he turned to neoclassical music. The works from this period tended to make use of traditional musical forms (concerto grosso, fugue and symphony), drawing on earlier styles, especially from the 18th century. In the 1950s, Stravinsky adopted serial procedures. His compositions of this period shared traits with examples of his earlier output: rhythmic energy, the construction of extended melodic ideas out of a few two- or three-note cells and clarity of form, and of instrumentation.



The Expressionist Movement: Modernism in Germany and Austria 1130

German Expressionism refers to a number of related creative movements beginning in Germany before the First World War that reached a peak in Berlin during the 1920s. These developments in Germany were part of a larger Expressionist movement in north and central European culture in fields such as architecture, dance, painting, sculpture, as well as cinema. This article deals primarily with developments in German Expressionist cinema before and immediately after World War I.

GERMAN EXPRESSIONISM PART I - FILM HISTORY

GERMAN EXPRESSIONISM PART I - FILM HISTORY ___ Synopsis: German Expressionism refers to a number of related creative movements beginning in Germany before the First World War that reached a peak in Berlin, during the 1920s. These developments in Germany were part of a larger Expressionist movement in north and central European culture in fields such as architecture, painting and cinema. German Expressionist painting produced a great number of works, and led to Neo-expressionism. ___ Social Media: Twitter: http://goo.gl/8tnpiM Letterboxd: http://goo.gl/h9oQCU
https://youtu.be/4i5mtqDMYa4


    Die Brücke: The Art of Deliberate Crudeness 1130

Die Brücke (The Bridge) was a group of German expressionist artists formed in Dresden in 1905, after which the Brücke Museum in Berlin was named. Founding members were Fritz Bleyl, Erich Heckel, Ernst Ludwig Kirchner and Karl Schmidt-Rottluff. Later members were Emil Nolde, Max Pechstein and Otto Mueller. The seminal group had a major impact on the evolution of modern art in the 20th century and the creation of expressionism.[1]

Die Brücke is sometimes compared to the Fauves. Both movements shared interests in primitivist art. Both shared an interest in the expressing of extreme emotion through high-keyed color that was very often non-naturalistic. Both movements employed a drawing technique that was crude, and both groups shared an antipathy to complete abstraction. The Die Brücke artists' emotionally agitated paintings of city streets and sexually charged events transpiring in country settings make their French counterparts, the Fauves, seem tame by comparison.[2]

German Expressionism Art, 4:10

https://youtu.be/G2ADyD4Leio

Music: Soldiers in the Park by Kaiser Franz Regt and Der Golem (1920) soundtrack




    Der Blaue Reiter: The Spirituality of Color 1131

Der Blaue Reiter (The Blue Rider) was a group of artists united in rejection of the Neue Künstlervereinigung München in Munich, Germany. The group was founded by a number of Russian emigrants, including Wassily Kandinsky, Alexej von Jawlensky, Marianne von Werefkin, and native German artists, such as Franz Marc, August Macke and Gabriele Münter. They considered that the principles of the Neue Künstlervereinigung München, a group Kandinsky had founded in 1909, had become too strict and traditional.

Der Blaue Reiter was an art movement lasting from 1911 to 1914, fundamental to Expressionism, along with Die Brücke which was founded in 1905.

Der Blaue Reiter, 10:45

A short presentation on Der Blaue Reiter, or The Blue Rider

https://youtu.be/jRIlx5dXO_M



    A Diversity of Sound: Schoenberg’s New Atonal Music versus Puccini’s Lyricism 1133
Arnold Schoenberg or Schönberg (German: [ˈaːʁnɔlt ˈʃøːnbɛʁk] ( listen); 13 September 1874 – 13 July 1951) was a Jewish Austrian composer and painter. He was associated with the expressionist movement in German poetry and art, and leader of the Second Viennese School. With the rise of the Nazi Party, by 1938 Schoenberg's works were labelled as degenerate music because he was Jewish (Anon. 1997–2013); he moved to the United States in 1934.

Schoenberg's approach, both in terms of harmony and development, has been one of the most influential of 20th-century musical thought. Many European and American composers from at least three generations have consciously extended his thinking, whereas others have passionately reacted against it.

Schoenberg was known early in his career for simultaneously extending the traditionally opposed German Romantic styles of Brahms and Wagner. Later, his name would come to personify innovations in atonality (although Schoenberg himself detested that term) that would become the most polemical feature of 20th-century art music. In the 1920s, Schoenberg developed the twelve-tone technique, an influential compositional method of manipulating an ordered series of all twelve notes in the chromatic scale. He also coined the term developing variation and was the first modern composer to embrace ways of developing motifs without resorting to the dominance of a centralized melodic idea.

Schoenberg was also a painter, an important music theorist, and an influential teacher of composition; his students included Alban Berg, Anton Webern, Hanns Eisler, Egon Wellesz, and later John Cage, Lou Harrison, Earl Kim, Leon Kirchner, and other prominent musicians. Many of Schoenberg's practices, including the formalization of compositional method and his habit of openly inviting audiences to think analytically, are echoed in avant-garde musical thought throughout the 20th century. His often polemical views of music history and aesthetics were crucial to many significant 20th-century musicologists and critics, including Theodor W. Adorno, Charles Rosen and Carl Dahlhaus, as well as the pianists Artur Schnabel, Rudolf Serkin, Eduard Steuermann and Glenn Gould.

Schoenberg's archival legacy is collected at the Arnold Schönberg Center in Vienna.
Giacomo Antonio Domenico Michele Secondo Maria Puccini (Italian: [ˈdʒaːkomo putˈtʃiːni]; 22 December 1858 – 29 November 1924) was an Italian composer whose operas are among the important operas played as standards.[n 1]

Puccini has been called "the greatest composer of Italian opera after Verdi".[1] While his early work was rooted in traditional late-19th-century romantic Italian opera, he successfully developed his work in the realistic verismo style, of which he became one of the leading exponents.

Arnold Schoenberg: Father of Modern Music, 9:19

Truman Fisher introduces the works and innovations of composer Arnold Schoenberg, including interviews with Gertrud and Lawrence Schoenberg and Rudolf Kolisch.

https://youtu.be/_cKrZ3BsJiM



Early Twentieth-Century Literature 1134

    Guillaume Apollinaire and Cubist Poetics 1134

    Ezra Pound and the Imagists 1134

Ezra Weston Loomis Pound (30 October 1885 – 1 November 1972) was an expatriate American poet and critic, and a major figure in the early modernist movement. His contribution to poetry began with his development of Imagism, a movement derived from classical Chinese and Japanese poetry, stressing clarity, precision and economy of language. His best-known works include Ripostes (1912), Hugh Selwyn Mauberley (1920) and the unfinished 120-section epic, The Cantos (1917–69).
Working in London in the early 20th century as foreign editor of several American literary magazines, Pound helped discover and shape the work of American and Irish contemporaries such as T. S. Eliot, James Joyce, Robert Frost, and Ernest Hemingway. He arranged for the 1915 publication of Eliot's "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" and the serialization from 1918 of Joyce's Ulysses. Hemingway wrote of him in 1925: "He defends [his friends] when they are attacked, he gets them into magazines and out of jail. ... He introduces them to wealthy women. He gets publishers to take their books. He sits up all night with them when they claim to be dying ... he advances them hospital expenses and dissuades them from suicide."[1]

Outraged by the carnage of World War I, Pound lost faith in England and blamed the war on usury and international capitalism. He moved to Italy in 1924. Through the 1930s and 1940s he embraced Benito Mussolini's Italian Fascism, expressed support for Adolf Hitler, and wrote for publications owned by British fascist Oswald Mosley. During World War II, he was paid by the Italian government to make hundreds of radio broadcasts criticizing the United States, Franklin D. Roosevelt, and Jews. As a result, he was arrested by American forces in Italy in 1945 on charges of treason, and was kept for months in detention in a U.S. military camp in Pisa. He was held for three weeks in a six-by-six-foot outdoor steel cage, which he said triggered a mental breakdown, "when the raft broke and the waters went over me." Deemed unfit to stand trial, Pound was incarcerated in St. Elizabeths psychiatric hospital in Washington, D.C., for over 12 years.[2]

While in custody in Italy, Pound had begun work on sections of The Cantos. These were published as The Pisan Cantos (1948), for which he was awarded the Bollingen Prize in 1949 by the Library of Congress, triggering enormous controversy. 

Largely due to a campaign by his fellow writers, he was released from St. Elizabeths in 1958, and returned to live in Italy until his death. His political views ensure that his work remains as controversial now as it was during his lifetime; in 1933 Time magazine called him "a cat that walks by himself, tenaciously unhousebroken and very unsafe for children." Hemingway wrote: "The best of Pound's writing – and it is in the Cantos – will last as long as there is any literature."[3]


The Origins of Cinema 1136

    The Lumière Brothers’ Celluloid Film Movie Projector 1136

    The Nickelodeon: Movies for the Masses 1137

    D.W. Griffith and Cinematic Space 1137


Auguste and Louis Lumière

Brothers Auguste and Louis Lumière
Fratelli Lumiere.jpg
The inventors of the Moving Picture
Born
  • Auguste Marie Louis Nicolas Lumière
  • Louis Jean Lumière

  • Auguste: (1862-10-19)October 19, 1862
  • Louis: (1864-10-05)October 5, 1864

Besançon, France
Died
  • Auguste: April 10, 1954(1954-04-10) (aged 91)
  • Louis: June 6, 1948(1948-06-06) (aged 83)

  • Auguste: Lyon, France
  • Louis: Bandol, French Riviera
The Lumière (pronounced: [lymjɛːʁ]) brothers, Auguste Marie Louis Nicolas [oɡyst maʁi lwi nikɔla] (19 October 1862, Besançon, France – 10 April 1954, Lyon) and Louis Jean [lwi ʒɑ̃] (5 October 1864, Besançon, France – 6 June 1948, Bandol), were the first filmmakers in history. They patented the cinematograph, which in contrast to Edison's "peepshow" kinetoscope allowed simultaneous viewing by multiple parties. Their first film, Sortie de l'usine Lumière de Lyon, shot in 1894, is considered the first true motion picture.

History

The Lumière brothers were born in Besançon, France to Claude-Antoine Lumière and Jeanne Joséphine Costille Lumière. They moved to Lyon in 1870, where both attended La Martiniere, the largest technical school in Lyon. Their father, Claude-Antoine Lumière (1840–1911), ran a photographic firm where both brothers worked for him: Louis as a physicist and Auguste as a manager. Louis had made some improvements to the still-photograph process, the most notable being the dry-plate process, which was a major step towards moving images.


Cinématographe Lumière at the Institut Lumière, France
It was not until their father retired in 1892 that the brothers began to create moving pictures. They patented a number of significant processes leading up to their film camera, most notably film perforations (originally implemented by Emile Reynaud) as a means of advancing the film through the camera and projector. The original cinématographe had been patented by Léon Guillaume Bouly on 12 February 1892. The brothers patented their own version on 13 February 1895. The first footage ever to be recorded using it was recorded on March 19, 1895. This first film shows workers leaving the Lumière factory.

First film screenings

The Lumières held their first private screening of projected motion pictures in 1895. Their first public screening of films at which admission was charged was held on December 28, 1895, at Salon Indien du Grand Café in Paris. This history-making presentation featured ten short films, including their first film, Sortie des Usines Lumière à Lyon (Workers Leaving the Lumière Factory). Each film is 17 meters long, which, when hand cranked through a projector, runs approximately 50 seconds.

The world's first film poster, for 1895's L'Arroseur arrosé
It is believed their first film was actually recorded that same year (1895) with Léon Bouly's cinématographe device, which was patented the previous year. The cinématographe — a three-in-one device that could record, develop, and project motion pictures — was further developed by the Lumières.
The public debut at the Grand Café came a few months later and consisted of the following ten short films (in order of presentation):
  1. La Sortie de l'Usine Lumière à Lyon (literally, "the exit from the Lumière factory in Lyon", or, under its more common English title, Workers Leaving the Lumiere Factory), 46 seconds
  2. Le Jardinier (l'Arroseur Arrosé) ("The Gardener", or "The Sprinkler Sprinkled"), 49 seconds
  3. Le Débarquement du Congrès de Photographie à Lyon ("the disembarkment of the Congress of Photographers in Lyon"), 48 seconds
  4. La Voltige ("Horse Trick Riders"), 46 seconds
  5. La Pêche aux poissons rouges ("fishing for goldfish"), 42 seconds
  6. Les Forgerons ("Blacksmiths"), 49 seconds
  7. Repas de bébé ("Baby's Breakfast" (lit. "baby's meal")), 41 seconds
  8. Le Saut à la couverture ("Jumping Onto the Blanket"), 41 seconds
  9. La Places des Cordeliers à Lyon ("Cordeliers Square in Lyon"—a street scene), 44 seconds
  10. La Mer (Baignade en mer) ("the sea [bathing in the sea]"), 38 seconds
The First Film in the History - December 28 - 1895 - The Lumiere Brothers
"Workers Leaving The Lumière Factory" film is often referred to as the first real motion picture ever made.

The film consists of a single scene in which workers leave the Lumiere factory. The workers are mostly female who exit the large building 25 rue St. Victor, Montplaisir on the outskirts of Lyon, France, as if they had just finished a day's work.
Three separate versions of this film exist. There are a number of differences between these, for example the clothing style changes demonstrating the different seasons in which they were filmed. They are often referred to as the "one horse," "two horses," and "no horse" versions, in reference to a horse-drawn carriage that appears in the first two versions (pulled by one horse in the original and two horses in the first remake).

This 46-second movie was filmed in Lyon, France, by Louis Lumière. It was filmed by means of the Cinématographe, an all-in-one camera, which also serves as a film projector and developer. This film was shown in 1895 at the Grand Café on the Boulevard des Capucines in Paris, along with nine other short movies.
It is believed their first film was actually recorded that same year (1895) with Léon Bouly's cinématographe device, which was patented the previous year. The cinématographe — a three-in-one device that could record, develop, and project motion pictures — was further developed by the Lumières.

The moving images had an immediate and significant influence on popular culture with "L'Arrivée d'un Train en Gare de la Ciotat (literally, The arrival of a train at La Ciotat)", but more commonly known as "Arrival of a Train at a Station") . Their actuality films, or actualités, are often cited as the first, primitive documentaries. They also made the first steps towards comedy film with the slapstick of "L'Arroseur Arrosé".




The Lumières went on tour with the cinématographe in 1896, visiting Brussels (the first place a movie was played outside Paris on the Galleries Saint-Hubert on March 1. 1896), Bombay, London, Montreal, New York and Buenos Aires.

The moving images had an immediate and significant influence on popular culture with L'Arrivée d'un Train en Gare de la Ciotat (literally, "the arrival of a train at La Ciotat", but more commonly known as Arrival of a Train at a Station) and Carmaux, défournage du coke (Drawing out the coke). Their actuality films, or actualités, are often cited as the first, primitive documentaries. They also made the first steps towards comedy film with the slapstick of L'Arroseur Arrosé.

Early color photography


Autochrome color picture by Jean-Baptiste Tournassoud of North-African soldiers, Oise, France, 1917.

The brothers stated that "the cinema is an invention without any future" and declined to sell their camera to other filmmakers such as Georges Méliès. This made many film makers upset. Consequently, their role in the history of film was exceedingly brief. In parallel with their cinema work they experimented with colour photography. They worked on a number of colour photographic processes in the 1890s including the Lippmann process (interference heliochromy) and their own 'bichromated glue' process, a subtractive colour process, examples of which were exhibited at the Exposition Universelle in Paris in 1900. This last process was commercialised by the Lumieres but commercial success had to wait for their next colour process. In 1903 they patented a colour photographic process, the "Autochrome Lumière", which was launched on the market in 1907. Throughout much of the 20th century, the Lumière company was a major producer of photographic products in Europe, but the brand name, Lumière, disappeared from the marketplace following merger with Ilford. They also invented the color plate which really got photography on the road.

Other early cinematographers

The Lumière Brothers were not the only ones to claim the title of the first cinematographers. The scientific chronophotography devices developed by Eadweard Muybridge, Étienne-Jules Marey and Ottomar Anschütz in the 1880s were able to produce moving photographs, as was William Friese-Greene's 'chronophotographic' system, demonstrated in 1890, and Thomas Edison's Kinetoscope (developed by W K-L Dickson), premiered in 1891. Since 1892, the projected drawings of Émile Reynaud's Théâtre Optique were attracting Paris crowds to the Museé Grevin. Louis Le Prince and Claude Mechant had been shooting moving picture sequences on paper film as soon as 1888, but had never performed a public demonstration. Polish inventor, Kazimierz Prószyński had built his camera and projecting device, called Pleograph, in 1894. Max and Emil Skladanowsky, inventors of the Bioscop, had offered projected moving images to a paying public one month earlier (November 1, 1895, in Berlin). Nevertheless, film historians consider the Grand Café screening to be the true birth of the cinema as a commercial medium, because the Skladanowsky brothers' screening used an extremely impractical dual system motion picture projector that was immediately supplanted by the Lumiere cinematographe.
Although the Lumière brothers were not the first inventors to develop techniques to create motion pictures, they are often credited as among the first inventors of the technology for Cinema as a mass medium, and are among the first who understood how to use it.


Their house in Lyon, France, is now the Institut Lumière museum.


READINGS

    34.1 from Gertrude Stein, The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas (1932) 1119

    34.2 from Filippo Marinetti, Founding and Manifesto of Futurism (1909) 1141

    34.3 from Guillaume Apollinaire, “Rue Christine Monday” (1913) 1134

    34.4 Guillaume Apollinaire, “It’s Raining” (1914) 1134

    34.5 Ezra Pound, “In a Station of the Metro” (1913) 1135

    34.6 Ezra Pound, “A Pact” (1913) 1135

FEATURES

    CLOSER LOOK Picasso’s Collages 1126

    CONTINUITY & CHANGE The Prospect of War 1139


REVIEW



LECTURES
2:28
2:31
Pre-Built Course Content

Wilde (1997) - Stephen Fry as Oscar Wilde - Trial - The love that dare not speak its name, 3:25
At his trial, Oscar Wilde is asked about Lord Alfred Douglas's poem "Two Loves"
https://youtu.be/UwhYn-P7hLg

Decadents and Aesthetes, poetry
"The Cat-Lady," by John Barlas, 1:01
poem, by Barlas (1860-1914), pseudonym of Evelyn Douglas. Poem from Aesthetes and Decadents of the 1890s, edited by Karl Beckson (Vintage). Image of woman with cat from blingee.com, image of Barlas from wikimedia, image of lioness from National Geographic, grateful acknowledgement.
https://youtu.be/OMBLMqUORy8


Origins of Cinema
https://youtu.be/rFhpluZdxY8
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=rFhpluZdxY8
TFM 363 Lecture on Origins of Cinema

MUSIC FOLDER
Pre-Built Course Content
EXPLORE ACTIVITY
week 7 explore.html
Debussy, La Mer, 2:28
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=qXWeeJMo4OM
Debussy's "Prélude à l'après-midi d'un faune": An Introduction, 3:42
In Carnegie Hall's continuing "A Golden Age of Music" series, our Director of Artistic Planning Jeremy Geffen and Sir Simon Rattle of the Berliner Philharmoniker introduce Debussy's sensual "Prélude à l'après-midi d'un faune"—arguably the French composer's most beloved and influential score.

Composed to precede a stage reading of a poem titled "The Afternoon of a Faun" by Debussy's Symbolist colleague Stéphane Mallarmé, Geffen calls it "a velvet revolution" and describes it as "about the 11 most perfect minutes you can spend listening to anything in a concert hall."

More information about Debussy's "Prélude à l'après-midi d'un faune" is available at http://www.carnegiehall.org/Golden_Ag...

More information about "A Golden Age of Music" is available at http://www.carnegieghall.org/goldenage
https://youtu.be/MDvrQznO-n4
Introducing Mahler Symphony No. 2 - Resurrection, 1:57
A short introduction to Mahler's Second Symphony (Resurrection). Find out more about the London Philharmonic Orchestra's performances at http://www.lpo.org.uk
Introduced by Patrick Bailey, filmed by the London Philharmonic Orchestra, edited by Tall Wall Media. Recording excerpts from the LPO's CD of Mahler 2 (LPO-0054)
https://youtu.be/heCyqVx3Ue0

Introducing: Mahler Symphony No. 6, 3:11
A short introduction to Mahler's Sixth Symphony, by Patrick Bailey.
Join the London Philharmonic Orchestra at Southbank Centre's Royal Festival Hall on 15 January 2014 for a performance of the work: http://www.lpo.org.uk/whats-on-and-ti...
http://www.lpo.org.uk
https://youtu.be/l4MANh2il2I

Kandinsky's Effect: Reflections on Synesthetic Lesson in Abstraction, 7:22
When Wassily Kandinsky introduced his theory in art composition in the 1920s, his method of abstraction was perceived as objective and universal resulting in a learned language believed to be able to communicate universally. As historians have asserted that Kandinsky's theory was influenced by his genuine synesthesia experience, the method can also be viewed as subjective. Therefore, objective teaching and critique of abstraction often raises controversies due to the perceived universal quality. In this light, this paper proposes a quasi-experimental study based on a small cross-modality experiment conducted by Kandinsky in order to gain insight understanding in abstraction lesson design. In this study, 30 students are randomly divided into two groups, one with single-modality method of learning another with synesthetic or cross-modality method of learning based on Kandinsky's synesthetic paintings. In the cross-modality method, students immerse themselves into the paintings by creating sound samples from percussion instruments, which are then blindly assigned to other students in the same group to compose three dimensional models that best depict the sound samples. Findings are presented in a narrative amalgamation in order to provide an understanding in advantages and disadvantages of single-modality method (objective-based lesson) and cross-modality method (subjective-based, synesthetic lesson) in abstraction. (By: Chutarat Laomanacharoen, Assumption University)
https://youtu.be/Z0GtwbgaQXY


Vincent van Gogh for Children: Biography for Kids - FreeSchool, 4:13
DISCUSSION, 9:45 pm
"Great Composers and Color Analysis" Please respond to one (1) of the following, using sources under the Explore heading as the basis of your response:

  • Determine whether you prefer Debussy or Mahler after listening to works by each at the Websites below or in this week's Music Folder and after reading about them. Explain the reasons for your preference. Here we find musical composers inspired by poetry and by philosophy. Identify one (1) element within a work that you find interesting or intriguing by either composer, with regard to the manner in which the work is performed or conducted. Describe the types of things that inspire you to creativity.

  • Describe two (2) color paintings by different artists (selected from the list or sources in the Explore section below) that you believe represent the following quote by Kandinsky on the subject of color in art. Justify your response. From Concerning the Spiritual in Art: “If you let your eye stray over a palette of colors, you experience two things. In the first place you receive a purely physical effect, namely the eye itself is enchanted by the beauty and other qualities of color. […] These are physical sensations, limited in duration. They are superficial, too, and leave no lasting impression behind if the soul remains closed. And so we come to the second result of looking at colors: their psychological effect. They produce a correspondent spiritual vibration, and it is only as a step towards this spiritual vibration that the physical impression is of importance. ... Generally speaking, color directly influences the soul." – Wassily Kandinsky. Discuss these ideas for the use of color and its impact in our own times, such as its effect for advertising and sales, or its impact in the workplace and home.
Explore:
Debussy and Mahler
Kandinsky on Color
MUSIC FOLDER
Pre-Built Course Content
EXPLORE ACTIVITY
week 7 explore.html
Debussy, La Mer, 2:28
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=qXWeeJMo4OM
Debussy's "Prélude à l'après-midi d'un faune": An Introduction, 3:42
In Carnegie Hall's continuing "A Golden Age of Music" series, our Director of Artistic Planning Jeremy Geffen and Sir Simon Rattle of the Berliner Philharmoniker introduce Debussy's sensual "Prélude à l'après-midi d'un faune"—arguably the French composer's most beloved and influential score.

Composed to precede a stage reading of a poem titled "The Afternoon of a Faun" by Debussy's Symbolist colleague Stéphane Mallarmé, Geffen calls it "a velvet revolution" and describes it as "about the 11 most perfect minutes you can spend listening to anything in a concert hall."

More information about Debussy's "Prélude à l'après-midi d'un faune" is available at http://www.carnegiehall.org/Golden_Ag...

More information about "A Golden Age of Music" is available at http://www.carnegieghall.org/goldenage
https://youtu.be/MDvrQznO-n4
A child-friendly introduction to Vincent van Gogh. Who was he? Why is he famous? What did he do? FreeSchool is great for kids!
Music: Jaunty Gumption, Running Fanfare, Gymnopedie no. 1 - Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
https://youtu.be/qv8TANh8djI


The New Moral World of Nietzsche
Does SCIENCE = TRUTH? (Nietzsche) - 8-Bit Philosophy, 3:07
http://youtu.be/Y68mGbvZZZg

Nietzsche
Simon Critchley Examines Friedrich Nietzsche,
The philosopher takes a look at Nietzsche's approach to life and death.
Critchley: Yeah. Nietzsche describes a mad man who runs into a public square shouting, God is dead. God is dead and the people didn't believe him, and he's laughed at, and he leaves. He came too soon. He says, he came, I came too soon. But the thought here is deeper, more interesting. It's not that the Nietzsche said, God is dead. Something you can find on _____ worlds, the world over is that God is dead, we have killed him, and what Nietzsche means by that I think is that the outcome of history is the death of God. We no longer need or we no longer can believe in those sorts of assurances which theology gave us through let's say, let's say through the development of science and technology. We've got ourselves to a position where God is an accessory that we can do without. So, it's not that Nietzsche was celebrating the death of God. He thinks that God is a pretty bad idea. He makes us cringing, cowardly, submissive creatures but it doesn't mean the opposite is something to be celebrated. We shouldn't just celebrate our, you know, that would lead to sort of annihilism. What Nietzsche thought is that, you know, human history is led to a point where we are, we find the idea of God incredible. We can no longer believe it and at that point he says, there's a risk of us throwing up our hands, and saying, well, nothing means anything. That's what Nietzsche calls annihilism. Nietzsche's thought is not annihilistic. This is a key thing. Nietzsche is trying to think, a counter movement to annihilism and this is what he calls a re-evaluation of values, or an overcoming of annihilism. It's what Nietzsche wants us to do. Nietzsche is, you know, Nietzsche wants us to reject our usual ways of thinking morally in terms of a new way of conceding of value that would be in terms of life ultimately, the affirmation of life, something like that.
Nihilism - life is without objective meaning, purpose, or intrinsic value.
http://youtu.be/MrI5WQ4u7MY

What basis for moral values and behavioral codes do we have (if not religion)?
The Big Bang Theory - Nietzsche on Morality
http://youtu.be/1yydR6r7NNE

Heart of Darkness | Introduction | 60second Recap®, 1:12
http://www.60secondrecap.com/study-gu... by Jenny Sawyer Of all the horrors in Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad which horror is most horrifying? The horror of imperialism? The destruction of the jungle for personal gain? No wait. None of that could possibly be as horrifying as ... well, check it out.
https://youtu.be/f7DpnKLjSxY

Heart of Darkness Trailer, 1:47
Movie trailer for "Heart of Darkness" by Joseph Conrad. Ohio University ENG 3080J
https://youtu.be/h_9lVCtCtd4

DISCUSSION, 9:45 pm
"Great Composers and Color Analysis" Please respond to one (1) of the following, using sources under the Explore heading as the basis of your response:

  • Determine whether you prefer Debussy or Mahler after listening to works by each at the Websites below or in this week's Music Folder and after reading about them. Explain the reasons for your preference. Here we find musical composers inspired by poetry and by philosophy. Identify one (1) element within a work that you find interesting or intriguing by either composer, with regard to the manner in which the work is performed or conducted. Describe the types of things that inspire you to creativity.
  • Describe two (2) color paintings by different artists (selected from the list or sources in the Explore section below) that you believe represent the following quote by Kandinsky on the subject of color in art. Justify your response. From Concerning the Spiritual in Art: “If you let your eye stray over a palette of colors, you experience two things. In the first place you receive a purely physical effect, namely the eye itself is enchanted by the beauty and other qualities of color. […] These are physical sensations, limited in duration. They are superficial, too, and leave no lasting impression behind if the soul remains closed. And so we come to the second result of looking at colors: their psychological effect. They produce a correspondent spiritual vibration, and it is only as a step towards this spiritual vibration that the physical impression is of importance. ... Generally speaking, color directly influences the soul." – Wassily Kandinsky. Discuss these ideas for the use of color and its impact in our own times, such as its effect for advertising and sales, or its impact in the workplace and home.
Explore:
Debussy and Mahler
Kandinsky on Color

What is the literal definition of fin de siècle?


Given Answer:
Correct 
End of the century
Correct Answer:
 
End of the century


Question 2:   Multiple Choice

  1. Correct
    Why was Gustave Eiffel's tower so unique for the time?
    Given Answer:
    Correct 
    It was twice the height of any other building in the world
    Correct Answer:
     
    It was twice the height of any other building in the world

Question 3:   Multiple Choice

  1. Correct
    On what work did Stépane Mallarmé base his Symbolist "L'Aprés-midi d'un faune"?
    Given Answer:
    Correct 
    Ovid's Metamorphoses
    Correct Answer:
     
    Ovid's Metamorphoses

Question 4:   Multiple Choice

  1. Correct
    Why at the beginning of the twentieth century were Western powers vying to dominate Africa?
    Given Answer:
    Correct 
    To control the natural resources and trade routes
    Correct Answer:
     
    To control the natural resources and trade routes

Question 5:   Multiple Choice

  1. Correct
    Why did the Society of Men of Letters refuse to accept Rodin's Monument to Balzac, forcing him to return the advance payments?
    Given Answer:
    Correct 
    Not a realistic portrayal
    Correct Answer:
     
    Not a realistic portrayal

Question 6:   Multiple Choice

  1. Correct
    Why were Thomas Edison's early films for the Kinetoscope rather limited?
    Given Answer:
    Correct 
    Only one person at a time could view them
    Correct Answer:
     
    Only one person at a time could view them

Question 7:   Multiple Choice

  1. Correct
    Why did early silent films appeal especially to the working-class, immigrant audiences?
    Given Answer:
    Correct 
    They didn't have to understand English
    Correct Answer:
     
    They didn't have to understand English

Question 8:   Multiple Choice

  1. Correct
    Why did The Birth of a Nation establish director D. W. Griffith as a film master?
    Given Answer:
    Correct 
    His use of cinematic space
    Correct Answer:
     
    His use of cinematic space

Question 9:   Multiple Choice

  1. Correct
    What special significance does the spiral have in Cubist paintings such as Picasso's Violin?
    Given Answer:
    Correct 
    The interplay between two and three dimensions
    Correct Answer:
     
    The interplay between two and three dimensions

Question 10:   Multiple Choice

Correct
Why was the Der Blaue Reiter artist Wassily Kandinsky obsessed with color?
Given Answer:
Correct 
It directly influenced the soul
Correct Answer:
 
It directly influenced the soul

 

Question 1:   Multiple Choice

  1. Correct
    What is the literal definition of fin de siècle?
    Given Answer:
    Correct 
    End of the century
    Correct Answer:
     
    End of the century

Question 2:   Multiple Choice

  1. Correct
    Why was Gustave Eiffel's tower so unique for the time?
    Given Answer:
    Correct 
    It was twice the height of any other building in the world
    Correct Answer:
     
    It was twice the height of any other building in the world

Question 3:   Multiple Choice

  1. Correct
    On what work did Stépane Mallarmé base his Symbolist "L'Aprés-midi d'un faune"?
    Given Answer:
    Correct 
    Ovid's Metamorphoses
    Correct Answer:
     
    Ovid's Metamorphoses

Question 4:   Multiple Choice

  1. Correct
    Why at the beginning of the twentieth century were Western powers vying to dominate Africa?
    Given Answer:
    Correct 
    To control the natural resources and trade routes
    Correct Answer:
     
    To control the natural resources and trade routes

Question 5:   Multiple Choice

  1. Correct
    Why did the Society of Men of Letters refuse to accept Rodin's Monument to Balzac, forcing him to return the advance payments?
    Given Answer:
    Correct 
    Not a realistic portrayal
    Correct Answer:
     
    Not a realistic portrayal

Question 6:   Multiple Choice

  1. Correct
    Why were Thomas Edison's early films for the Kinetoscope rather limited?
    Given Answer:
    Correct 
    Only one person at a time could view them
    Correct Answer:
     
    Only one person at a time could view them

Question 7:   Multiple Choice

  1. Correct
    Why did early silent films appeal especially to the working-class, immigrant audiences?
    Given Answer:
    Correct 
    They didn't have to understand English
    Correct Answer:
     
    They didn't have to understand English

Question 8:   Multiple Choice

  1. Correct
    Why did The Birth of a Nation establish director D. W. Griffith as a film master?
    Given Answer:
    Correct 
    His use of cinematic space
    Correct Answer:
     
    His use of cinematic space

Question 9:   Multiple Choice

  1. Correct
    What special significance does the spiral have in Cubist paintings such as Picasso's Violin?
    Given Answer:
    Correct
    The in
    te
    rplay between two and three dimensions
    Correct 
    Answer:
     
    The interplay between two and three dimensions


Question 10:   Multiple Choice

Correct
Why was the Der Blaue Reiter artist Wassily Kandinsky obsessed with color?
Given Answer:
Correct 
It directly influenced the soul
Correct Answer:
 
It directly influenced the soul





HUM 112 Week 7 
Determine which music you prefer after listening to works by composers this week, at Websites, or in this week's Music Folder and after reading about them. 
What are the reasons for your preference? 
What element within a work do you find interesting or intriguing by either composer, with regard to the manner in which the work is performed or conducted? 
What types of things inspire you to creativity?
How does “color directly influence the soul?" – Wassily Kandinsky. 
How does the use of color and its impact in our own times, such as its effect for advertising and sales, or its impact in the workplace and home, influence us?
What characterizes the Fin de Siècle?
What is the difference between Realism and Naturalism?
What is distinct in Romanticism? Impressionism? Post-Impressionism? Symbolism?
What is Art Nouveau? Although Art Nouveau was replaced by 20th-century Modernist styles, it is now considered as an important transition between the eclectic historic revival styles of the 19th century and what movement?
Whose plays exposed society’s secrets? 
Can you guess the (Pointillism) animal?
What is existentialism and what is Friedrich Nietzsche’s contribution?
Is God dead?
What basis for moral values and behavioral codes do we have (if not religion)?
What is social Darwinism?
What is Freud’s contribution?
What characterizes the era of Invention? Paris? And the Modern World?




HUM 112 Week 7 Sample Quiz Questions
                What is the literal definition of fin de siècle?

                Why was Gustave Eiffel's tower so unique for the time?

                On what work did Stépane Mallarmé base his Symbolist "L'Aprés-midi d'un faune"?

                Why at the beginning of the twentieth century were Western powers vying to dominate Africa?

                Why did the Society of Men of Letters refuse to accept Rodin's Monument to Balzac, forcing him to return the advance payments?

                Why were Thomas Edison's early films for the Kinetoscope rather limited?

                Why did early silent films appeal especially to the working-class, immigrant audiences?

                Why did The Birth of a Nation establish director D. W. Griffith as a film master?
               
                What special significance does the spiral have in Cubist paintings such as Picasso's Violin?
               
                Why was the Der Blaue Reiter artist Wassily Kandinsky obsessed with color?
               







at