Cultural Heritage II

Victorian Culture

Urban Life:

What is a city; how can it be controlled/maintained when it becomes a metropolis?

The Grid:

Creative Destruction:

Large-scale industries:

Housing:

Transportation Systems:

Sanitation Systems:

Electrification and Gas

Cemeteries and Parks:

Heathcare:

Urban Diversity:

Poverty (see Jacob Riis, How the Other Half Lives, 1890).

Wealth:

The Threat of Riot and Revolution

Law Enforcement:

Subcultures, Ghettoes, Crime/”Red Light” Districts/Sexual Identities

Anonymity/Self-Reinvention

Public Education:

Museums, Libraries, and Monuments

Arts and Leisure:

Discussion?: What is the difference between living in a metropolis like Chicago and living in a small city like Holland, or even a town like Zeeland?

Victorian Era:

Victorian Sexuality:

Sexual Cultures, Subcultures, and Taboos:

Sigmund Freud (1856-1939):

Alcoholism:

Charles Darwin (1809-1882), The Origin of Species by Natural Selection (1859); The Descent of Man (1871):

Realism (after Romanticism, c. 1850-1914):

Influenced by Marx, Darwin, and Nietzsche (or the attitudes they represented)

Inspired by photography and the success of modern science. See the photographs of Matthew Brady and Edward Muybridge; also see Thomas Eakins’ The Gross Clinic (1876).

Emphasized materialism, objectivity, and cynicism about human nature:

Impressionism:

Albert Einstein (1879-1955):

Expressionism, consider Edvard Munch’s The Scream (1893) and, later, we’ll consider the paintings of Otto Dix and Ludwig Meidner.

Discussion?: What do you think were the most important intellectual developments of the period between 1850 and 1914? Which ones are we still dealing with? What is the role of artists in modern societies? Do you think it’s true that they are the “antennae of the culture”: they sense what is going to happen before the rest of us?