Ethan Price
May 7, 2013
Humanities Final Exam 1. Psychology began to influence the visual arts through Expressionism, the Dada movement, and Surrealism. Expressionism focused on a Freudian unconscious concept of psychology. Edvard Muach displayed this type of art with a style of haunting synthesis of distorted forms and savage colors. The dada movement was a thought of the world as chaos; therefore the creative endeavors must be insane. It consisted of spreading the gospel of irrationality. Surrealism was devoted to giving a physical expression to the workings of the unconscious mind. 2. World War 1 showed the world that the policy of peace through superior military actually encouraged war. Due to a technological advancement in weaponry, World War 1 was the first large war fought with submarines and machine guns. Both sides of the war had used out of date tactics with these new weapons causing millions to be slaughtered by the machine gun. No one knew the capabilities of these weapons until it was too late. World War 1 also began a way of war that had never existed. Civilians became involved in the fight; an example would be submarines sinking trade ships throughout the Atlantic. 3. After the allies victory of World War 1 Germany went through a great depression caused by the humiliating peace terms that were enforced. Only one-third of Germany’s workers were fully employed during the depression. Through this time of weakness Hitler came into power and began World War 2. Hitler blamed the internal enemy such as the Jews, Marxists, bourgeois liberals, and “social deviates”. His evil mentality to purify the world sent millions to their grave. World War 2 caused a rush in weapon advancements that created something more powerful than the creators themselves imagined the atomic bomb. 4. The total wars brought great influence to the literature, arts, and music of the time. Photojournalism was used as a means to show the world what was happening throughout the wars. After the bombing in Guernica, Spain, Picasso was horrified and influenced to paint one of his famous pieces. Guernica represents the suffering, brutality, and horrors of wartime. The power of music had been feared in this era as well. Jazz was banned from Germany because of its free and improvised style. China had banned all Beethoven’s music as a sound of independent music. 5. Abstract Expressionism in New York. It embraced the role of chance with existential fervor. It also took on many different personalities from Dada, Picasso, Kandinsky, and Surrealism. One of the most famous abstract expressionist painters was Jackson Pollock. Pollock would put a canvas on the floor so that he was able to walk around and be a part of the painting which he called action painting. Edward Hooper was an Abstract Expressionist painter who presented a figurative view of an urban that is bleak and empty of meaningful relationships.

6. Industrial techniques gave sculpture new varieties and styles. Alberto Giacometti created clay works then cast them in bronze. Segal created life-size figures of plaster casts of live models and assembled environments for his art. David Smith was a pioneer for constructed sculpture welding iron shapes together and spraying them with multiple layers of automobile enamel. Therefore, not only did the styles and techniques grow but the sculpture themselves grew as well. 7. The United Fruit Company was an American corporation that traded tropical fruits grown on Central and South American plantations and sold the United States and Europe. It had a reputation for bribing government officials, exploiting its workers, paying little by way of taxes to the governments in which it operated, and working ruthlessly to consolidate monopolies. Criticism of the United Fruit Company became a staple of the discourse of the communist parties in several Latin American countries. Pablo Neruda’s poem “The United Fruit Company” was a famous example of literature denouncing the company’s corruption and hatred towards capitalism. 8. The main figures of the Harlem Resistance were Zora Hurston, Langston Hughes, and Gwendolyn Brooks. Zora Hurston was a writer, folklorist, and anthropologist who used African-American dialect to create some of the strongest female characters in early 20th century fiction. Langston Hughes became the first black to support himself as a professional writer in America. His powerful phrases are engraved in American literature and the English language. Brooks was the first black American to receive the Pulitzer Prize for poetry. 9. Over the past half century humankind has made major developments in science. The wireless electronics of today give people unlimited readings and information from anywhere on the planet. Studies of the human body have given people ability to see human blueprints, give transplants of organs, and even reprogram skin cells as stem cells. Humans are now able to study outer space, galaxies, and the universe as a whole. 10. Postmodernism was a term used to determine one’s reaction to Modernism before the total wars. However, Postmodernism took on a new meaning after World War 2. It had become a designation of the culture of the 20th century. It is a style that is marked by a bewildered awareness of historical past whose reality has been processed by mass communication and information technology. This ideology and culture was principally in the west.