The widespread violence of World War I birthed surrealism

Dada artists satirized the horrors of World War I

The movement’s early performances were absurd cabarets featuring experimental poetry, avant-garde music, and maskwork. Much of it was reckoning with the growing deathcounts of World War I, with work that often lampooned Western imperialism and supposed rationality.

Surrealism toyed with ideas from psychoanalysis

The movement's artists were interested in the ideas being explored in the burgeoning fields of psychology and psychoanalysis. Dalí, in particular, often created works that toyed with Freudian theories.

Riveting artwork from the battlefields during World War I

During World War I, the United States government commissioned eight artists to accompany American Expeditionary Forces to Europe to sketch and document what they saw. Drawing tanks, soldiers, shattered villages, and even German prisoners of war, the artists preserved much of the war as a matter of historical record and to rally support back home.

American modernism highlighted a rapidly changing America

Featuring work from 1915 to 1950, the movement illustrates the country's evolution between World War I and World War II. Artists captured the loss and uncertainty of a post-war, industrialized world.

German expressionism produced some of horror’s earliest classics

After World War I, German filmmakers turned from reality to the surreal, fusing experimental art with the nascent world of film. Some of the movement’s most notable films, like FW Murnau’s “Nosferatu: A Symphony of Horror” and Robert Wiene’s “The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari,” were intent on frightening their audiences.

Theater of the Absurd brought existentialist ideas to the stage

In the 1950s, playwrights horrified by the events of World War II and inspired by existentialism’s response to it began staging plays that brought many of the philosophy's ideas to center stage. Critic Martin Esslin coined the term “Theater of the Absurd” in 1960, citing the plays of Samuel Beckett, Arthur Adamov, and Eugene Ionesco as indicative of a new theatrical style that rejected realism and standard plot.

Illustrating the beginning and end of WWI through maps

In August of 1914, Germany invaded an ostensibly neutral Belgium, kick-starting World War I. The war became one of the deadliest conflicts in human history, decimating Europe and reshaping global politics for the next century. It also brought forward sweeping and terrifying new military technologies, a product of the Industrial Revolution. Explore 40 maps explaining the Great War in detail.

Picasso was one of the 20th century's most influential artists

The artist is recognized as one of the inventors of cubism, which simplified figures and scenes into flattened geometric shapes and imagined arrangements. The movement spurred new styles in response and led to increasingly abstract art. Styles like futurism, dada, De Stijl, and art deco were built on the simple forms, abstract ideas, collage, and found objects of early cubism.

Looting art is often a byproduct of war

During WWII, Hitler orchestrated the theft of many masterpieces to eventually create his own museum. While many of these were recovered, iconic works such as Raphael's "[Portrait of a Young Man](https://www.dailyartmagazine.com/the-story-of-the-lost-raphaels-portrait-of-a-young-man/)" and Vincent van Gogh's "Painter on His Way to Work" remain missing or were destroyed by the Nazis.

Romanticism changed the norms of the artworld

Romanticism’s expressiveness led to a change in the norms of portrait painting, favoring emotion, nuance, and less conventional subjects. One such example is Géricault’s portraits of mental illness, depicting patients, including a kleptomaniac and a “child snatcher,” in states of expressive emotion.

The treaty that ended the First World War laid the groundwork for the Second

On June 28, 1919, the Treaty of Versailles officially ended World War I by demanding severe reparations, territorial losses, military restrictions, and the infamous “war guilt clause” against Germany. However, its harsh terms fostered deep resentment, economic instability, and political turmoil—ultimately becoming a catalyst for World War II.

Modernist novels used unconventional narrative approaches

Modernist writers in the early 20th century sought to capture the complexities of the human mind in their fiction. Novelists like Virginia Woolf, James Joyce, Jean Rhys, and William Faulkner experimented with the form by using unconventional approaches to narrative, time, and structure. This lecture from Dr. Madeleine Davies from the University of Reading explains how modernists revolutionized fiction, using Woolf’s “Mrs. Dalloway” as a primary example.

The failures of the interwar period made the case for a new international system

After World War I, countries devalued their currencies, raised tariffs to block imports, and seized territory unchecked, with the international community unable to organize effectively to stop them. The result was a global depression and, eventually, another world war.

Albert Camus believed existence was 'absurd'

He didn't use "absurd" as we often do—meaning something silly—but instead to describe humans' desire to ascribe meaning and transcendence in a world that provided neither. Camus believed we needed to acknowledge and accept this absurdity rather than hopelessly believing we'd one day overcome it.

Andy Warhol, explained

Andy Warhol wasn't just an artist—he was a cultural force. From his early days working as a New York illustrator to managing The Velvet Underground and creating experimental films, Warhol blurred the line between art and commerce, leaving a legacy that changed pop culture forever.

Dystopian satire became more prominent in the 20th century

Although "anti-utopian" stories have always existed, the international conflicts of World War I and World War II inspired some of dystopian literature’s most influential novels, like Yevgeny Zamyatin’s "We," Aldous Huxley’s "Brave New World," and George Orwell’s "1984." In the decades to follow, more writers would follow the example of those early novels, using the dystopian model to critique artificial intelligence, climate change, and more.

Wish you could experience life on the Western Front of WWI?

Virtual reality offers a new perspective on World War I in this nearly 14-minute video. National WWI Museum and Memorial Public Program Specialist James Taub demonstrates the War Remains VR experience side by side with what he sees through the headset. A grim and detailed simulation of trench warfare combined with Taub's observations and insights.

Tolkien's grandson says 'Lord of the Rings' was influenced by WWI

JRR Tolkien fought in World War I, an experience his grandson, Simon Tolkien, says informed the fantasy legend’s famous trilogy. The companionship between Frodo and Sam and Sauron’s pervasive evil, according to the younger Tolkien, were directly influenced by time on the battlefield.

The 20th-century rise of fascism affected the World Cup

Spain, in the midst of a civil war, did not participate, and Japan, after invading China, pulled out of the competition. An additional six Central and North American teams scratched by the time that year's World Cup began.

Women's role in society expanded during the war

With millions of men at war, women managed farms and businesses, served as nurses, and organized aid efforts—broadening women's participation in public life and laying the groundwork for future suffrage movements.

Some art critics believe that Liminalism, a form of art exploring the uncanny yet familiar, defines our present moment

While analyzing images of abandoned malls or empty hallways, art historians and critics argue that this style captures the feelings of this moment in time. Liminalism, they propose, expresses prominent themes in our age like anonymity, alienation, and anxiety.

The Beat Generation inspired significant parts of 1960s counterculture

The Beat Generation championed the transformative power of psychedelics, rebelled against the post-war social order, and called for more radical politics. With a strong foothold in San Francisco, it's no surprise these themes were carried over to the city's 1960s counterculture, informing the larger national hippie movement.

'Wanderer Above the Sea of Fog' is an iconic romantic artwork

Caspar David Friedrich’s painting portrays man’s fascination with the natural world and emphasizes his smallness in the midst of its grandeur, epitomizing Edmund Burke's concept of "the sublime."

'Art is the human disposition of sensible or intelligible matter for an aesthetic end.'

- Author James Joyce (1882 -1941)

Analyzing the anti-Nazi history behind Bauhaus' sleek typography

Following World War I, the Nazi Party used the ornamental Fraktur typeface, hoping to give its materials a classical sheen. The Bauhaus school responded with a sleeker design style, including bolder, rounder fontfaces. Quartz digs into the history behind that decision and how the style can still be found in widely used typefaces like Helvetica.

In 1945, Surrealist artist Salvador Dalí and legendary animator Walt Disney began collaborating on a short film that was not completed until 2003, years after both men had died.

See the most iconic photos from four decades of LIFE magazine

See these 16 pieces of art evoking phobias of snakes, flying, spiders, and more. 

The 19th-century painters of the Hudson River School were among the first American romantics, with portraits that displayed the natural beauty of the young country.

American dance legend Martha Graham, sometimes called 'the Picasso of dance,' refused to perform at the 1936 Olympics in Berlin and conceived the piece 'Chronicle' in response to the experience.

Georgia O'Keeffe's flower paintings are often assumed to be sexual, though the artist claimed she was simply interested in highlighting the beauty of flowers that most people neglect

Art theft is the third-largest source of criminal revenues worldwide, thanks in part to the subjective nature of valuing a work of art.

The concept of phantom limbs, the perception that amputated limbs are still present, dates back to a French military surgeon in the 16th century.

The word 'jazz' evolved from 'jasm,' 19th-century American slang for 'energy'

Fireworks make a loud booming sound after exploding due to air expanding faster than the speed of sound.

Existentialist writer Jean-Paul Sartre coined the famous phrase 'Hell is—other people' in his play 'No Exit'

The Brothers Grimm were lawyers before they were storytellers, and became interested in fairy tales as they began investigating how rules and customs had been passed down through cultures.

Sunflowers have long been a symbol of nuclear disarmament because they can extract large amounts of radioactive cesium from soil.

Graffiti dates back to at least ancient Pompeii, where citizens scrawled messages to one another on public walls

At the beginning of the 20th century, a group of young men ate standard American food—replete with food additives like borax and formaldehyde—as part of government research to better understand food safety.

Famed poet TS Eliot rejected the manuscript for George Orwell's political fable 'Animal Farm,' writing that its criticism of authoritarianism was not 'the right point of view.'

The US first hosted the World Cup in 1994, a tournament that lives in soccer infamy for its poor planning and the murder of Colombian player Andres Escobar, who'd accidentally scored on his own net.

The Russia-Ukraine conflict is the largest ground war in Europe since World War II in casualties, forces mobilized, and displacement of civilians.

A 2019 Facebook event called on attendees to "Storm Area 51, They Can't Stop All of Us," resulting in countless memes, the creation of a music festival, and eventually the arrests of those who did try to approach the area.

The identity of the Tank Man in the iconic photo from the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests remains unknown and was possibly killed.

The power and influence of the American presidency have expanded significantly over time—far beyond what the founders envisioned.

Most of the observable universe's volume consists of voids and supervoids—enormous regions of space with little to no galaxies, stars, or light.

Chaos theory—informally known as the butterfly effect—is the reason why weather forecasts are presented with probabilities rather than certainties.

Before humans, the Soviet Union and the United States sent animals—including apes, dogs, and cats—to space during the Space Race.

Researchers believe the brain consolidates memories, processes emotions, and plans for the future during dream states