CHAPTER 20:

THE AGE OF THE MASSES AND THE ZENITH OF MODERNISM

1914—1945

Let’s start with a short review of the Expressionist Art that got us to this point in painting: Paul Cezanne (1839-1906) is said to be the original expressionist.

Sister Wendy Beckett on Cezanne . . .

Cezanne was concerned, then, with the interrelationships of shapes and colors, and how they rely on each other. Unlike Impressionists who captured a moment, he tried to capture all the moments of his subject. Let’s let Sister Wendy continue.

We’ve discussed some of the early life of Picasso. Let’s let Sister Wendy review this . . .

As you can see, Sister Wendy has a better understanding of Picasso’s work than I do. There is much more to the painting than just the influence of African masks. Let’s see what she says about Picasso’s Cubism period . . .

Picasso after the First World War . . .

Picasso had already begun his masterpiece, Guernica, when the Nazis bombed Guernica, Spain, on April 26, 1937, and he decided to name his painting after the city, where deaths were estimated as high as 1600.

“The Spanish struggle is the fight of reaction against the people, against freedom. My whole life as an artist has been nothing more than a continuous struggle against reaction and the death of art. How could anybody think for a moment that I could be in agreement with reaction and death? ... In the panel on which I am working, which I shall call Guernica, and in all my recent works of art, I clearly express my abhorrence of the military caste which has sunk Spain in an ocean of pain and death.”

Pablo Picasso

The harsh monochromatic color of “Guernica” may well be inspired by the many newsreel films which provided theatres with war news.

The overall scene is within a room, where, at an open end on the left, a wide-eyed bull stands over a woman grieving over a dead child in her arms.

The center is occupied by a horse falling in agony as it had just been run through by a spear or javelin. The shape of a human skull forms the horse's nose and upper teeth.

The shape of a human skull forms the horse's nose and upper teeth.

Two "hidden" images formed by the horse appear in Guernica

A human skull is overlayed on the horse's body. A bull appears to gore the horse from underneath. The bull's head is formed mainly by the horse's entire front leg which has the knee on the ground. The leg's knee cap forms the head's nose. A horn appears within the horse's breast.

Under the horse is a dead, apparently dismembered soldier, his hand on a severed arm still grasps a shattered sword from which a flower grows.

The sword appears to be in the flesh of a corpse lying on the ground.

A light bulb blazes in the shape of an eye over the suffering horse's head.

To the upper right of the horse, a frightened female figure, who seems to be witnessing the scenes before her, appears to have floated into the room through a window. Her arm, also floating in, carries a flame-lit lamp.

From the right, an awe-struck woman staggers towards the center below the floating female figure. She looks up blankly into the blazing light bulb.

Daggers that suggest screaming replace the tongues of the bull, grieving woman, and horse.

A bird, possibly a duck, stands on a shelf behind the bull in panic.

On the far right, a figure with arms raised in terror is entrapped by fire from above and below.

A dark wall with an open door defines the right end of the mural.

When asked to explain the meanings of the symbols, Picasso said, “this bull is a bull and this horse is a horse... If you give a meaning to certain things in my paintings it may be very true, but it is not my idea to give this meaning. What ideas and conclusions you have got I obtained too, but instinctively, unconsciously. I make the painting for the painting. I paint the objects for what they are."

October, 1937: “Weeping Woman,” clearly a postscript to “Guernica.”

When the Nazis occupied Paris, Picasso handed them prints of “Weeping Woman.” When asked, “Did you do this?” he replied, “No, you did.”

The Charnel House, 1944-45 depicts Picasso’s reaction to early rumors of the Holocaust. Clearly, the painting shows the same attitude toward the horror of modern war as did “Guernica.”

In his later years, Picasso’s work became somewhat introspective and self-centered, as he examined his own career, in works such as The Studio of "La Californie" at Cannes (1956).

He also parodied a couple of old friends. Do You remember Las Meninas” by Velászquez?

Or Manet’s “Luncheon on the Grass?”

Luncheon on the Grass. After Manet. 1961

Finally, renowned throughout the word as the greatest artist of the 20th century, having had two wives, many mistresses, and four acknowledged children, and having created more than 20,000 works of art, Picasso died on April 8, 1973. He was buried at his chateau in the foothills of Sante Victoire, the same area so beloved by Cezanne.

“The different styles I have been using in my art must not be seen as an evolution, or as steps towards an unknown ideal of painting. Everything I have ever made was made for the present and with the hope that it would always remain in the present. I have never had time for the idea of searching. Whenever I wanted to express something, I did so without thinking of the past or the future. I have never made radically different experiments. Whenever I wanted to say something, I said it the way I believed I should. Different themes inevitably require different methods of expression. This does not imply either evolution or progress; it is a matter of following the idea one wants to express and the way in which one wants to express it.”  -- Picasso

Henri Matisse (1869-1954) set his focus especially on color and its interrelationships.

Russian painter, Wassily Kandinsky

(1866-1944), said his major influences were Cezanne and Matisse. He, too, loved color.

Composition VIII. 1923

Kandinsky’s early works were illustrations from Russian folklore, all showing his devotion to color.

Couple Riding. 1906

Volga Song. 1906

Later, his landscapes definitely showed his respect for Cezanne.

Old Town II. 1902

In Cemetery and Vicarage in Kochel (1909) we see how realistic images are fading away to pure color.

Moscow I 1916

Red Spot II. 1921

In Grey. 1919

Dominant Curve. 1936

Dutch painter, Piet Mondrian, (1872 — 1944) went ever further than Kandinsky in painting pure color with no recognizable images at all.

Tableau 2, with Yellow, Black, Blue, Red, and Gray, 1922

Color Planes in Oval. (1913–14)

Composition. 1933

Broadway Boogie Woogie. 1942–43 (Mondrian’s most famous work.)

Surrealism

The painting Sister Wendy hates so much is “The Persistence of Memory” (1931)

Salvador Dalí (1904 –1989), a Spanish artist, is the well-known master of surrealism. Each object in his work has symbolic meaning.

Atavistic Vestiges after the Rain. 1934

Sleep. 1937

Daddy Longlegs of the Evening - Hope! 1940

As with many artists, Dali started out imitating the styles of artist he admired. In Port of Cadaqués (Night) ca.1918, we see an impressionist work with the lights reflected on the water.

Self-Portrait in the Studio. ca 1919 shows the colors of Matisse combined with the frantic brush strokes of Van Gogh.

Pierrot and Guitar (1924) obviously shows the influence of Picasso.

Dali’s major works fall into two categories: the first, as in Dream Caused by the Flight of a Bee around a Pomegranate. One Second before Awakening. (1944) deals symbolically with his childhood sexual problems.

Or My Wife, Nude, Contemplating Her Own Flesh Becoming Stairs, Three Vertebrae of a Column, Sky and Architecture. 1945

His other interest, as in The Christ of St. John of the Cross (1951) is be shock us with clever new angles and optical illusions.

Apparition of Face and Fruit Dish on a Beach. 1938

Slave Market with the Disappearing Bust of Voltaire. 1940

The Discovery of America by Christopher Columbus (1958-9) is one of Dali’s true masterpieces.

The Ecumenical Council. 1960

Hallucinogenic Toreador 1969-70

Expressionism took an interesting turn in Germany early in the 20th century, as both film and painting actively employed elements of German Expressionism.

Edvard Munch, “Vampire”

Nosferatu, 1922

The first Expressionist films used set designs with wildly non-realistic, geometrically absurd sets, along with designs painted on walls and floors to represent lights, shadows, and objects. The plots and stories of the Expressionist films often dealt with madness, insanity, betrayal, and other "intellectual" topics (as opposed to standard action-adventure and romantic films); the German name for this type of storytelling was called Kammerspielfilm (chamber film in English).

The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari directed by Robert Wiene (1920)

Another example of German Expressionism is the science fiction classic Metropolis, directed by Fritz Lang (1927).

F.W. Murnau directed Nosferatu in 1922. Max Shreck was the first Dracula (Count Orloff).

When World War II threatened so many people in Germany, a number of artists emigrated to America. You can find their influence in many American films of the thirties. One very obvious example is Son of Frankenstein, directed by Rowland V. Lee in 1936. The set was designed by American Russell A. Gausman (1892-1963), who later was nominated seven times for oscars, winning two, for Spartacus (1960) and The Phantom of the Opera (1943).

German Expressionism is kept alive today by director Tim Burton.

Batman, 1989

The Nightmare Before Christmas (1993)

Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, 2005

In 1931, before moving to America, Fritz Lang directed M, a story about a child murderer.

Which introduced Peter Lorre.

M led the way for a whole movie genre which was called FILM NOIR, so named by French film critic Nino Frank in 1946.

Noir films tended to be dark, with shadowy images and tough, gritty characters.

The plot of Noir films are generally fatalistic, in that the main character usually make one small mistake, tells a lie, or steals some little thing, which then leads to a whirlpool, an unending spiderweb of deceit and crime.

There is always a “femme fatale,” an obviously experienced woman, whose sexuality lures our ordinary hero into a plot that will seal his fate.

Double Indemnity 1944

Film Noir used photographic chiaroscuro is often effected with the use of "Rembrandt lighting“, as in this photograph from Out of the Past (1947).

The Humanities are always interrelated. Plots for Noir films came from Noir Novelists, most importantly James M. Cain (1892-1977)

Cain’s The Postman Always Rings Twice was filmed four times, and also made into an opera in 1982 and a play in 2005 which starred Val Kilmer. The most famous version was 1946 with Lana Turner and John Garfield, but the steamiest version was in 1961, with Jack Nicholson and Jessica Lang.

Other Cain novels adapted for films were Double Indemnity (1936) , Serenade (1937), Mildred Pierce (1941), and The Butterfly (1982).

Socialist activist Dashiell Hammett (1894–1961) wrote noir detective stories, creating the famous characters Sam Spade (The Maltese Falcon), Nick and Nora Charles (The Thin Man).

Thirdly, we have Raymond Chandler (1888-1959), whose hardboiled detective, Philip Marlowe, inspired many detectives to come, including Dick Tracy.

In addition to writing the screenplay for Double Indemnity and other noir films, Chandler’s novel titles read like a list of the best of Hollywood’s noir: The Big Sleep (1939), Farewell, My Lovely (1940), The Lady in the Lake (1943), and The Long Goodbye (1954) are his most famous, each filmed again and again.

Noir and expressionism can even be found in comic books, such as “daredevil 178” (Frank Miller, 1979.

Noir films are still being done today, most notably by Quentin Tarantino: Pulp Fiction, Grindhouse, etc.

Among other painters working in the style of German Expressionism was Ernst Ludwig Kirchner (1880-1838), who painted “Self Portrait as a Soldier” to show his fear that the war would destroy his creative powers and to symbolize the reactions of the artists of his generation who suffered the kind of physical and mental damage Kirchner envisioned in this painting

Street, Dresden, 1907

“Street, Dresden” is Kirchner’s bold, discomforting attempt to render the jarring experience of modern urban bustle. The scene radiates tension. It’s pedestrians are locked in a constricting space; the plane of the unsettlingly intense pink sidewalk slopes steeply upward and exit to the rear is blocked by a trolley car. The street is claustrophobically crowded, yet everyone seems alone. The women at the right, one clutching her purse, the other her skirt, are holding themselves in; their faces are expressionless, mask like. A little girl is dwarfed by her hat, one in a network of eddying, whirling shapes that entwine and enmesh the human figures.

“Otto Mueller, Kirchner, Heckel, Schmidt-Rottluff” 1927

“Bathers Throwing Reeds,” 1909

The flat, angular style of “Bathers Throwing Reeds” is directly influenced by Oceanic, African, and Eskimo sculptures that Kirchner had seen and copied in museums. It also reflects the German Expressionists’ interest in and admiration for tribal and ethnological arts in general, part of the work of Carl Jung.

One more important painter of the period was Kandinsky’s friend, Paul Klee (1879-1940)

Siblings. 1930

A Young Lady's Adventure1921

Nocturnal Festivity. 1921

Woman in Peasant Dress 1940

CHAPTER 20, part two:

Literature, Music, Theatre, and the Rise of Socialism in the first half of the 20th Century

Two world wars and The Great Depression between them– clearly, for the individual middle and lower class humans, this was an age of despair. It is no wonder that Picasso’s best art often reflected horror and ugliness. Like painting, though, the other arts experimented with ways of translating human experience through new eyes.

James Joyce (1882-1941) developed a writing technique called “stream of consciousness,” in which characters ramble on in disorganized, unpunctuated speech patterns, much like actual thought.

His most famous work was Ulysses (1922), which includes a 45 page monologue by Molly Bloom, the main character’s wife, as she falls asleep.

The story simply follows a day in the life of Leopold Bloom, a common man, and is filled with symbolism, philosophy, etc. There is an easy version on the Internet called “Ulysses for Dummies” which you can visit.

As Ulysses contacted the natural street language of the Dublin streets, it was labeled “obscene” and wasn’t published in America until the thirties.

Virginia Woolf (1882-1941) also experimented with novels, searching for the underlying truth in people indirectly, through characters’ words and other characters discussion.

Her most famous works are To the Lighthouse (1927), Jacob’s Room (1922), and Mrs. Dalloway (1925).

In Edward Albee’s masterwork, Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, two people with an imaginary child decide to kill the dream and face a frightening, lonely reality.

Arguably America’s greatest writer, Ernest Hemingway (1899-1961) wrote of the “lost generation,” American exiles whose futures were blighted by the war and whose main interest was sex and boose.

Hemingway’s experimental writing style focused on revealing character through dialogue. He used so much dialogue, in fact, sometimes it is difficult to figure out who’s saying what and what’s going on at the time.

For example, during what appears to be an intimate love scene between a soldier and a nurse in A Farewell to Arms (1929), she says, “There. Now you’re clear inside and out.” Apparently, she had been giving him an enema during their conversation.

Hemingway’s other famous novels include: The Sun Also Rises

(1926), To Have and Have Not (1937), For Whom the Bell Tolls (1940), Across the River and Into the Trees (1950), The Old Man and the Sea (1952), and Islands in the Stream (1970). Among his masterful short stories are: “The Killers,” “The Snows of Kilimanjaro,” and “Big Two-Hearted River.”

Sixteen feature films were made from his works, as well as numerous television plays.

Many critics believed The Old Man and the Sea was Hemingway’s greatest work.

Another American author to use “stream of consciousness” was William Faulkner (1897-1962) . Unlike Hemingway, Faulkner focused on life at home.

The Sound and the Fury (1929), Faulkner’s greatest novel, focuses on the declining southern aristocracy and the “new” dignity of the American Negro.

Naturally, other books had been written about the dignity of African American slaves (The best of which is Mark Twain’s The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn) but The Sound and the Fury portrays the new South, where Black and White families share equal roles in society.

Two generations of freedom was time enough for the African American community’s intellectual and artistic leaders to gain a foothold in society. This, coupled with the large migration of southern Negros to northern cities led to increased respect among other Americans and the development of The Harlem Renaissance in the 1920’s.

An important pioneer in the Harlem Renaissance was the great American Poet, Langston Hughes (1902-1967)

Consider what influence poems like 1923’s “My People” had on Hughes’ black audience:

“The night is beautiful,

So the faces of my people.

The stars are beautiful,

So the eyes of my people

Beautiful, also, is the sun.

Beautiful, also, are the souls of my people.”

Hughes’ poem was in direct opposition to young African Americans who somehow failed to see the beauty in their own race.

Hughes was one of the many who started the civil rights movement, long before Dr. King. He wrote Don't You Want to Be Free? in 1938, performed for his Harlem Suitcase Theatre.

We’ve already seen how African American music was used by George Gershwin in “Rhapsody in Blue” and his masterpiece, Porgy and Bess. Jerome Kern and Oscar Hammerstein II also used them to create the first serious, modern American musical, Showboat, in 1927.

While Showboat had an old-fashioned, rather silly storyline, it was the first mainstream show to honestly portray African American characters. In this scene, Julie, a mulatto who is passing for white, and her white friend, Magnolia, show the Blacks that they can sing and dance Ragtime.

Showboat also included the most important song in Musical Theatre history: “Old Man River,” the first serious song written for the Broadway stage.

In The Weary Blues (1926), Hughes wrote The Negro Speaks of Rivers, a poem which speaks to the heritage celebrated by African Americans.

I've known rivers:

I've known rivers ancient as the world and older than the

flow of human blood in human veins.

My soul has grown deep like the rivers.

I bathed in the Euphrates when dawns were young.

I built my hut near the Congo and it lulled me to sleep.

I looked upon the Nile and raised the pyramids above it.

I heard the singing of the Mississippi when Abe Lincoln

went down to New Orleans, and I've seen its muddy

bosom turn all golden in the sunset.

I've known rivers:

Ancient, dusky rivers.

My soul has grown deep like the rivers.

We don’t have time to discuss them all, but these people were part of the Harlem Renaissance: James Weldon Johnson, diplomat, songwriter, attorney, journalist, writer, and educator; Marcus Garvey, activist, publisher; Zora Neale Hurston, novelist, anthropologist; Nella Larsen, novelist; Langston Hughes, poet, playwright; Jessie Fauset, editor, poet, essayist and novelist; Countee Cullen, poet; Claude McKay, poet, novelist; Arna Bontemps, poet; Richard Bruce Nugent, essayist, artist; Jean Toomer, writer, poet; Gwendolyn Bennett, writer; Rudolph Fisher, writer; Angelina Weld Grimke, poet, writer; Ann Lane Petry, writer; Dorothy West, writer; Walter White, writer, activist; Eric Walrond, writer; Sterling Brown, writer, poet, teacher; Richard Wright, writer; Anne Spencer, poet; Wallace Thurman, novelist.

Also James Latimer Allen, Henry Bannarn, Richmond Barthé, Romare Bearden, John T. Biggers, Edward Burra, Beauford Delaney, Aaron Douglas, Palmer Hayden, Sargent Claude Johnson, William H. Johnson, Lois Mailou Jones, Jacob Lawrence, Archibald Motley, Horace Pippin, Nancy Elizabeth Prophet, Augusta Savage, Ellis Wilson, Hale Woodruff, James Van Der Zee, Carl Van Vechten, Meta Vaux Warrick Fuller, Roy DeCarava, Henry Ossawa Tanner, Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington, Pops Foster, Fletcher Henderson, Luis Russell, Ethel Waters, Paul Robeson, Charles S. Gilpin, Bessie Smith, James P. Johnson, Bill "Bojangles" Robinson, W.C. Handy, Eubie Blake, Florence Mills, Rose McClendon, Ma Rainey, Fats Waller, Jelly Roll Morton, James Reese Europe, Josephine Baker, Gladys Bentley, Noble Sissle, Oscar Michaux, Tim Moore, Adelaide Hall, Harold Jackman, Hubert Julian, Father Divine, Adam Clayton Powell, Sr.

Let’s look at a few Harlem Renaissance artists, starting with Jacob Lawrence (1917-2000)

“The Shoemaker," 1945

Woman with Veil, 1937

Home Chores, 1945

“Slums”

Sculptress Augusta Savage, 1892-1962

“Gamin”

Boy on a Stump

Henry Ossawa Tanner (1859-1937), The Banjo Lesson, 1893

Meta Vaux Warrick Fuller (1877-1968), Ethiopia Awakening

Archibald J. Motley, Blues, 1929

Aaron Douglas, Study for Aspects of Negro Life: The Negro in an African Setting, 1934

Loïs Mailou Jones, Jennie, 1943

Palmer Hayden, The Janitor Who Paints, about 1937

Archibald J. Motley, Nightlife, 1943

Aaron Douglas, Idylls of the Deep South, 1934

Romare Bearden, “Soul History”

Aaron Douglas,"The Creation,"1927

Henry Ossawa Tanner The Seine, c. 1902

Loïs Mailou Jones, Fishing Smacks, Menemsha, Massachusetts, 1932

The Harlem Renaissance included a number of other important African Americans. Let’s look at two of the best: Josephine Baker and Paul Robeson.

Josephine Baker (1906-1975), an American-born dancer, actress and singer, nicknamed "Black Venus", "Black Pearl", and "Creole Goddess“, became a French citizen in 1937. (This is her famous banana dress.)

Starting as a Street Dancer in St. Louis, Baker came to New York during the Harlem Renaissance, where she quickly became the highest paid chorus girl in vaudeville and a major star. In 1925, to escape the prejudice which greeted her outside of Harlem, she began a European tour in Paris, where she became the most popular American performer Europe has ever seen.

In Europe, she inspired contemporary authors, painters, and sculptors including Langston Hughes, Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, and Pablo Picasso. Ernest Hemingway called her "the most sensational woman anyone ever saw."

But Baker was not just a performer. She was an important advocate for Civil Rights, in many ways. For one (Move over, Angelina Jolie) she adopted 12 multi-cultural children, called her “Rainbow Tribe,” from Korea, Japan, Columbia, Finland, Canada, France, Saudi Arabia, Africa, and Venezuela.

Whenever she performed, she refused to work for segregated theatres, a gesture which helped to defeat segregation in Las Vegas, among other places.

At 1963’s famous march on Washington, Josephine Baker stood beside Dr. King and was the only woman invited to speak at the rally.

Children Jean-Claude Baker and his brother Jarry run the restaurant 'Chez Josephine' on Theatre Row, 42nd Street, New York, that celebrates Josephine's life and works.

In 1975, She became the first American-born woman to receive French military honors at her funeral. Paris came to a standstill that day, and 20,000 people filled the streets to watch her procession.

"Place Josephine Baker" in the Montparnasse Quarter of Paris was named in her honor.

Paul Robeson (1898-1976) may have been, simply, the most incredible man who ever lived: athlete, scholar, lawyer, singer, actor, author, activist—honored in just about everything he did.

Born the son of an escaped slave, in Princeton, New Jersey, Robeson was a top scholar in high school and the winner of a scholarship to Rutgers in 1915, only the third African American to attend Rutgers and the only black man at the university in 1915. When he went out for the football team, he was beaten and his fingernails were torn out. He went on to become a first team All-American in both 1917 and 1918, and earned fifteen varsity letters in football, baseball, basketball, and track. Football coach Walter Camp described him as "the greatest to ever trot the gridiron." He was one of three classmates at Rutgers accepted into Phi Beta Kappa, valedictorian of his graduating class and one of four students selected in 1919 to Cap and Skull, Rutgers' honor society.

Robeson got a law degree from Columbia, working his way through school as a professor football player, a coach, and an actor (in both New York and London). He left the New York law firm that hired him because his white secretary refused to take dictation from an African American.

His amazing baritone voice led to singing and recording contracts, singing gospel music in Carnegie Hall, and numerous film and theatre roles, worldwide.

Fluent in 20 languages, Robeson went all over the world to help the mistreated: Civil Rights in America (founded The American Crusade Against Lynching in 1946), Voter Registration, Apartheid in South Africa, Concerts to support American Soldiers, supported Einstein and the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee, spoke to Stalin to help stop Russian anti-semitism, and even helped miners in Wales.

Like Charlie Chaplin, Robeson’s anti-fascist, pro-socialist views led him to be denounced by American republicans and he was accused of being a communist by the House Un-American Activities Committee.

Robeson tried to commit suicide in 1961. His son claimed the CIA had put hallucinogenic drugs in his drink. He remained in ill health until his death in 1976, two years after his 75th birthday celebration at which time he was honored by 3,000 people in Carnegie Hall, including Attorney General Ramsey Clark, Pete Seeger, Angela Davis, Dolores Huerta, Dizzy Gillespie, Odetta, Leon Bibb, Sidney Poitier, Harry Belafonte (who also produced the show), James Earl Jones, Zero Mostel, Roscoe Lee Browne, Ossie Davis, Ruby Dee, and Coretta Scott King; birthday greetings arrived from President Julius K. Nyerere of Tanzania, President Michael Manley of Jamaica, President Cheddi Jagan of Guyana, President Kenneth Kaunda of Zambia, Indira Gandhi, Arthur Ashe, Linus Pauling, Judge George W. Crockett, Leonard Bernstein and the African National Congress.

These are just a few of his many honors: Penn State University houses the Paul Robeson Cultural Center; three buildings in Rutgers are named for him; Germany established the Paul Robeson Choir and the Paul Robeson Archive at the Academy of Arts in Berlin; he was honored in 1978 by the United Nations for speaking against apartheid; He was elected to the college football hall of fame, the Rutgers University Sports Hall of Fame, and has a Lifetime Achievement in Music Grammy Award; countless countries have put him on stamps; numerous musicians have written songs about him; and in 2007, he was honored by Cuba Gooding in public service announcements celebrating Black History Month.

Robeson’s lyric changes to “Old Man River” when he performed in concert tell us much about him:

“There’s an old man called the Mississippi,

That’s the old man I don’t like to be . . . “

“Tote that barge and lift that bale!

You show a little grit and/You land in Jail . . . “

“I keeps laughing

Instead of crying

I must keep fighting

Until I’m dying,

And Old Man River,

He just keeps rolling along.”

In the genre of classical music, the Harlem Renaissance gave us William Grant Still (1895 - 1978), Dean of classical African-American composers, was the first African-American to conduct a major American symphony orchestra, the first to have a symphony of his own (his first symphony) performed by a leading orchestra, the first to have an opera performed by a major opera company, and the first to have an opera performed on national television.

William Grant Still’s (1895-1978), First Symphony (19300 subtitled “The Afro-American Symphony” echoes American influences throughout, first and foremost blues, but also folk songs and jazzy tunes. George Gershwin was a definite influence.

First movement: Longings, Moderato assai (7:22)

Second movement: Sorrows, Adagio (5:17

Third movement: Humor, Animato (3:05)

Fourth movement: Aspirations, Lento con risoluzione (8:13)

Interest in African Americans as a culture group corresponded with a general concern about other culture groups in the United States, especially in films and the theatre, where writers like Eugene O’Neill and Bertold Brecht experimented with traditional theatre and examined social conditions of humankind.

We’ll discuss several experimental new changes in the Humanities in Chapter 21.