3. The breakup of the old social order (early 1900's)

The Victorian era literally died with Queen Victoria of the United Kingdom in 1900, and a comfortable, settled period of European history ended in World War I (1914-1918) and the Russian Revolution (1917). The social dominance of old aristocracies effectively disappeared. The first decade of the 1900's saw the birth of modern art with Henri Matisse and the Fauves (1905) and Pablo Picasso's LesDemoiselles d'Avignon (1907). New patrons, such as Gertrude and Leo Stein in Paris, endorsed new "isms."

By 1916, Dadaism captured the European mood of madcap futility and despair. With the end of the old order came the possibility for creating entirely new "modern art." Democratization of the arts, with public and middle class patronage, endorsed the creation of mass housing projects, an appreciation of folk and popular art, and other manifestations of material culture.

 

Marilyn Stokstad is the Judith Harris Murphy Distinguished Professor of Art History at the University of Kansas. For her Top 10 list, Stokstad selects broad cultural movements of global significance seen in the light of the American experience. She generally notes a few specific events that triggered or characterized the larger issue or movement. She also expresses the impact on art either by a general movement or by a specific work of art.

1.

Science and technology get human beings to the moon (July 20, 1969)
2. Medical research produces "miracle" drugs (middle to late 1900's)
3. The breakup of the old social order (early 1900's)
4.

Private versus state patronage of the arts (throughout the 1900's)
5. The consumer society embraces the machine-made object (throughout the 1900's)
6. Advances in communication and transportation create the "global village" (throughout the 1900's)
7. The advance of civil rights and gender issues (middle to late 1900's)
8. The rise of ethnic nationalism (middle to late 1900's)
9. Totalitarian states attempt to control artists (throughout the 1900's)
10. Dropping the atomic bomb during World War II (1945)