Following the tremendous industrialisation of the nineteenth century, the start of the twentieth century witnessed the emergence of international, industrial capitalism on an unprecedented scale. Mechanisation impacted not only society and the arts, but it also created an ethos of efficiency in technological warfare that was unknown in previous conflicts. Aerial bombardment, rapid-fire machine guns, chemical warfare, genocide, and atomic bombs marked the global conflagrations of the two world wars.
The rise of nationalism and imperialism of the nineteenth century was seen on a larger scale as centres of contestation burst forth everywhere, as for instance, in Russia with the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution epitomising the birth of Communism, and the death of an absolute monarchy.
This rush for power, combined with bad governance and great rivalries, triggered the first landmark event of the century: World War I. This first global war from 1914 to 1918 redistributed power, spurred the collapse of several monarchies, and prepared the way for new totalitarian powers throughout Europe and Russia.
With the close of World War I and the rejection of Wilson’s proposals – among them the establishment of a League of Nations and the refusal of reconciliation between Germany and the rest of Europe – nationalism became uncompromising in Spain, Italy, and Germany.
On 24 October, 1929, or “Black Thursday”, the United States’ stock market crashed, causing international economic collapse, and the world endured the Great Depression until the beginning of World War II. In those harsh depression years, the difficult economic and social situation made many countries vulnerable to the rise of Fascism, and while Roosevelt’s New Deal was providing jobs and putting new energy into the American art world, thanks to state patronage through the Federal Art Project, in Hitler’s Germany “degenerate” art works were being destroyed. In Nazi Germany, as well as in other totalitarian regimes of the era, art was used as an instrument of propaganda. World War I was to be “the war to end all wars”, but when German troops invaded Poland in 1939, humanity found itself in the middle of the Second World War, the largest and deadliest continuous war in history.
The Second World War ended with the capitulation of Germany and the atomic bombing of Japan. The trauma of the war redistributed power across the world. The post-1945 world would be quite different. Indeed Europe progressively lost all its colonies and thus its presence across borders and oceans. In the aftermath of the war, the world observed the rise of two radically opposed superpowers, the United States – embodying the spirit of capitalism – and its allies on the one hand, and the Soviet Union – the communist state – and its allies on the other. Both parties endured the Cold War, leading to the escalation of military build-ups and several outbursts of armed violence such as the Vietnam War, the symbol of the antagonism between the capitalist United States and the communist Soviet Union. Gradually, the Cold War led to the Détente in 1991 when the Soviet Union collapsed, putting an end to communism as a global model.
The wars thus changed the face of the world, and also imposed an evolution on the modern human psyche. As men were mobilised to the front during Second World War, women became increasingly empowered throughout the century. Women fought for their advancement, producing feminist art and literature, among other developments, from then onwards. The emancipation of women from the traditional patriarchal order of society brought with it the freeing of social and sexual behaviour. At all levels of society, a turning point occurred in the mid-twentieth century. In the United States, the Civil Rights movement gave new rights to blacks and gradually put an end to segregation. Globally, mentalities changed.
The radical destruction of human lives and social structures throughout the century created a significant period of social alienation. People began to believe that civilisation itself was in jeopardy. Enlightenment notions about the perfectibility of humankind seemed radically misplaced and defunct alongside the horrors of mechanised warfare and genocide. Artists, however, embraced these destabilising notions and sought to overturn many classical ideals.