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Before 1914, most Europeans continued to believe in the values and ideals that had been generated by the Scientific Revolution and the Enlightenment. Reason, science, and progress were still important buzzwords in the European vocabulary. The ability of human beings to improve themselves and achieve...

Before 1914, most Europeans continued to believe in the values and ideals that had been generated by the Scientific Revolution and the Enlightenment. Reason, science, and progress were still important buzzwords in the European vocabulary. The ability of human beings to improve themselves and achieve a better society seemed to be well demonstrated by a rising standard of living, urban improvements, and mass education. Such products of modern technology as electric lights, phonographs, cinema, and automobiles reinforced the popular prestige of science and the belief in the ability of the human mind to comprehend the universe through the use of reason. Near the end of the nineteenth century, however, a dramatic transformation in the realm of ideas and culture challenged many of these assumptions. A new view of the physical universe, an appeal to the irrational, alternative views of human nature, and radically innovative forms of literary and artistic expression shattered old beliefs and opened the way to a modern consciousness. These new ideas called forth a sense of confusion and anxiety that would become even more pronounced after World War I. Science was one of the chief pillars supporting the optimistic and rationalistic view of the world that many Westerners shared in the nineteenth century. Supposedly based on hard facts and cold reason, science offered a certainty of belief in the orderliness of nature that was comforting to many people for whom traditional religious beliefs no longer had much meaning. Many naively believed that the application of already known scientific laws would give humanity a complete understanding of the physical world and an accurate picture of reality. The new physics dramatically altered that perspective. Throughout much of the nineteenth century, Westerners adhered to the mechanical conception of the universe postulated by the classical physics of Isaac Newton. In this perspective, the universe was viewed as a giant machine in which time, space, and matter were objective realities that existed independently of the people observing them. Matter was thought to be composed of indivisible solid material bodies called atoms. These views were first seriously questioned at the end of the nineteenth century. The French scientist Marie Curie (kyoo-REE) (1867–1934) and her husband Pierre (1859–1906) discovered that the element radium gave off rays of radiation that apparently came from within the atom itself (refer to Image 24.2). Atoms were not simply hard, material bodies but small worlds containing such subatomic particles as electrons and protons that behaved in seemingly random and inexplicable fashion. Inquiry into the disintegrative process within atoms became a central theme of the new physics. Building on this work, in 1900, a German physicist, Max Planck (PLAHNK) (1858–1947), rejected the belief that a heated body radiates energy in a steady stream but maintained instead that energy is radiated discontinuously, in irregular packets that he called “quanta.” The quantum theory raised fundamental questions about the subatomic realm of the atom. By 1900, the old view of atoms as the basic building blocks of the material world was being seriously questioned, and Newtonian physics was in trouble. The Work of Einstein Albert Einstein (YN-styn or YN-shtyn) (1879–1955), a German-born patent officer working in Switzerland, pushed these theories of thermodynamics into new terrain. In 1905, Einstein published a paper titled “The Electro-Dynamics of Moving Bodies” that contained his special theory of relativity. According to relativity theory, space and time are not absolute but relative to the observer, and both are interwoven into what Einstein called a four-dimensional space–time continuum. Neither space nor time had an existence independent of human experience. As Einstein later explained simply to a journalist, “It was formerly believed that if all material things disappeared out of the universe, time and space would be left. According to the relativity theory, however, time and space disappear together with the things.” Moreover, matter and energy reflected the relativity of time and space. Einstein concluded that matter was nothing but another form of energy. His epochal formula —each particle of matter is equivalent in energy to its mass times the square of the velocity of light—was the key theory explaining the vast energies contained within the atom. It led to the atomic age. Many scientists were unable to comprehend Einstein’s ideas, but during a total eclipse of the sun in May 1919, scientists were able to demonstrate that light was deflected in the gravitational field of the sun, just as Einstein had predicted. This confirmed Einstein’s general theory of relativity and opened the scientific and intellectual world to his ideas. The 1920s would become the “heroic age” of physics. Intellectually, the decades before 1914 witnessed a combination of contradictory developments. Thanks to the influence of science, confidence in human reason and progress still remained a dominant thread. At the same time, however, a small group of intellectuals attacked the idea of optimistic progress, dethroned reason, and glorified the irrational. Nietzsche Friedrich Nietzsche (FREED-rikh NEE-chuh or NEE-chee) (1844–1900) was one of the intellectuals who glorified the irrational. According to Nietzsche, Western bourgeois society was decadent and incapable of any real cultural creativity, primarily because of its excessive emphasis on the rational faculty at the expense of emotions, passions, and instincts. Reason, Nietzsche claimed, actually played little role in human life because humans were at the mercy of irrational life forces. Nietzsche thought that Christianity should shoulder much of the blame for what he saw as Western civilization’s enfeeblement. The “slave morality” of Christianity, he believed, had obliterated the human impulse for life and had crushed the human will: How, then, could Western society be renewed? First, said Nietzsche, one must recognize that “God is dead.” Europeans had killed God, he said, and it was no longer possible to believe in some kind of cosmic order. Eliminating God and hence Christian morality had liberated human beings and made it possible to create a higher kind of being Nietzsche called the superman: “I teach you the Superman. Man is something that is to be surpassed.” Superior intellectuals must free themselves from the ordinary thinking of the masses, create their own values, and lead the masses. Nietzsche rejected and condemned political democracy, social reform, and universal suffrage. Bergson Another popular revolutionary against reason in the 1890s was Henri Bergson (AHN-ree BERK-son) (1859–1941), a French philosopher whose lectures at the University of Paris made him one of the most important influences in French thought in the early twentieth century. Bergson accepted rational, scientific thought as a practical instrument for providing useful knowledge but maintained that it was incapable of arriving at truth or ultimate reality. To him, reality was the “life force” that suffused all things; it could not be divided into analyzable parts. Reality was a whole that could only be grasped intuitively and experienced directly. When we analyze it, we have merely a description, no longer the reality we have experienced. Sorel Georges Sorel (ZHORZH soh-RELL) (1847–1922), a French political theorist, combined Bergson’s and Nietzsche’s ideas on the limits of rational thinking with his own passionate interest in revolutionary socialism. Sorel understood the political potential of the nonrational and advocated violent action as the only sure way to achieve the aims of socialism. To destroy capitalist society, he recommended the use of the general strike, envisioning it as a mythic image that had the power to inspire workers to take violent, heroic action against the capitalist order. Sorel also came to believe that the new socialist society would have to be governed by a small elite ruling body because the masses were incapable of ruling themselves.Around the turn of the twentieth century, Sigmund Freud (SIG-mund or ZIG-munt FROID) (1856–1939), a Viennese doctor, put forth a series of theories that undermined optimism about the rational nature of the human mind (refer to Image 24.3). Freud’s thought, like the new physics and the irrationalism of Nietzsche, added to the uncertainties of the  age. His major ideas were published in 1900 in The Interpretation of Dreams, which contained the basic foundation of what came to be known as psychoanalysis.Role of the Unconscious According to Freud, human behavior was strongly determined by the unconscious, by earlier experiences and inner forces of which people were largely oblivious. To explore the content of the unconscious, Freud relied not only on hypnosis but also on dreams, but the latter were cloaked in an elaborate code that had to be deciphered if the content was to be properly understood. But why did some experiences whose influence persisted in controlling an individual’s life remain unconscious? According to Freud, the answer was repression (refer to Historical Voices, “Freud and the Concept of Repression”), a process by which unsettling experiences were blotted from conscious awareness but still continued to influence behavior because they had become part of the unconscious. To explain how repression worked, Freud elaborated an intricate theory of the inner life of human beings. According to Freud, a human being’s inner life was a battleground of three contending forces: the id, ego, and superego. The id was the center of unconscious drives and was ruled by what Freud termed the pleasure principle. As creatures of desire, human beings directed their energy toward pleasure and away from pain. The id contained all kinds of lustful drives and desires and crude appetites and impulses. The ego was the seat of reason and hence the coordinator of the inner life. It was governed by the reality principle. Although humans were dominated by the pleasure principle, a true pursuit of pleasure was not feasible. The reality principle meant that people rejected pleasure so that they might live together in society. The superego was the locus of conscience and represented the inhibitions and moral values that society in general and parents in particular imposed on people. The superego served to force the ego to curb the unsatisfactory drives of the id. The human being was thus a battleground among id, ego, and superego. Ego and superego exerted restraining influences on the unconscious id and repressed or kept out of consciousness what they wanted to. The most important repressions, according to Freud, were sexual, and he went on to develop a theory of infantile sexual drives embodied in the Oedipus complex (Electra complex for women), or the infant’s craving for exclusive possession of the parent of the opposite sex. Repression began in childhood, and psychoanalysis was accomplished through a dialogue between psychotherapist and patient in which the therapist probed deeply into memory in order to retrace the chain of repression all the way back to its childhood origins. By making the conscious mind aware of the unconscious and its repressed contents, the patient’s psychic conflict was resolved. Although many of Freud’s ideas have been shown to be wrong in many details, he is still regarded as an important figure because of the impact his theories have had.In the second half of the nineteenth century, scientific theories were sometimes wrongly applied to achieve other ends. The application of Darwin’s principle of organic evolution (refer to Chapter 22) to the social order came to be known as the pseudoscience of social Darwinism. Social Darwinism The most popular exponent of social Darwinism was the British philosopher Herbert Spencer (1820–1903). Using Darwin’s terminology, Spencer argued that societies were organisms that evolved through time from a struggle with their environment. Progress came from “the struggle for survival,” as the “fit”—the strong—advanced  while the weak declined. As Spencer expressed it in 1851 in his book Social Statics: Racism Rabid nationalists and racists also applied Darwin’s ideas in an even more radically inappropriate way. In their pursuit of national greatness, extreme nationalists argued that nations, too, were engaged in a “struggle for existence” in which only the fittest survived. The German general Friedrich von Bernhardi (FREED-rikh fun bayrn-HAR-dee) (1849–1930) argued in 1907: War is a biological necessity of the first importance, a regulative element in the life of mankind which cannot be dispensed with, since without it an unhealthy development will follow, which excludes every advancement of the race, and therefore all real civilization. “War is the father of all things.” The sages of antiquity long before Darwin recognized this. Numerous nationalist organizations preached the same doctrine as Bernhardi. The Nationalist Association of Italy, for example, founded in 1910, declared that “we must teach Italy the value of international struggle. But international struggle is war? Well, then, let there be war! And nationalism will arouse the will for a victorious war … the only way to national redemption.” Racism, too, was dramatically revived and strengthened by new biological arguments. Perhaps nowhere was the combination of extreme nationalism and racism more evident and more dangerous than in Germany. The concept of the Volk (FULK) (nation, people, or race) had been an underlying idea in German history since the beginning of the nineteenth century. One of the chief propagandists for German volkish thought at the turn of the twentieth century was Houston Stewart Chamberlain (1855–1927), an Englishman who became a German citizen. His book The Foundations of the Nineteenth Century, published in 1899, made a special impact on Germany. Modern-day Germans, according to Chamberlain, were the only pure successors of the “Aryans,” who were portrayed as the true and original creators of Western culture. The Aryan (AR-ee-un) race, under German leadership, must be prepared to fight for Western civilization and save it from the destructive assaults of such lower races as “Jews,” “Negroes,” and “Orientals.” Increasingly, Jewish people were singled out by German volkish nationalists as the racial enemy in biological terms and as parasites who wanted to destroy the Aryan race.The growth of scientific thinking as well as the forces of modernization presented new challenges to the Christian churches. Industrialization and urbanization had an especially adverse effect on religious institutions. With the mass migration of people from the countryside to the city, the close-knit, traditional ties of the village in which the church had been a key force gave way to new urban patterns of social life from which the churches were often excluded. The established Christian churches had a weak hold on workers. The political movements of the late nineteenth century were also hostile to the established Christian churches. Beginning during the eighteenth-century Enlightenment and continuing well into the nineteenth century, European governments, especially in predominantly Catholic countries, had imposed controls over church courts, religious orders, and appointments of the clergy. But after the failure of the revolutions of 1848, governments were eager to use the churches’ aid in re-establishing order and relaxed these controls. Eventually, however, the close union of state authorities with established churches produced a backlash in the form of anticlericalism, especially in the liberal nation-states of the late nineteenth century. As one example, in the 1880s, the French republican government substituted civic training for religious instruction in order to undermine the Catholic Church’s control of education. In 1901, Catholic teaching orders were outlawed and, four years later, in 1905, church and state were completely separated. Science became one of the chief threats to all the Christian churches and even to religion itself in the nineteenth century. Darwin’s theory of evolution, accepted by ever-larger numbers of educated Europeans, seemed to contradict the doctrine of divine creation. By seeking to suppress Darwin’s books and to forbid the teaching of the evolutionary hypothesis, the churches often caused even more educated people to reject established religions. The scientific spirit also encouraged a number of biblical scholars to apply critical principles to the Bible, leading to the so-called higher criticism. One of its leading exponents was Ernst Renan (re-NAHNH) (1823–1892), a French Catholic scholar. In his Life of Jesus, Renan questioned the historical accuracy of the Bible and presented a radically different picture of Jesus. He saw Jesus not as the son of God but as a human being whose value lay in the example he provided by his life and teaching. Response of the Churches One response of the Christian churches to these attacks was the outright rejection of modern ideas and forces. Protestant fundamentalist sects were especially important in maintaining a literal interpretation of the Bible. The Catholic Church under Pope Pius IX (1846–1878) also took a rigid stand against modern ideas. In 1864, Pope Pius issued a papal encyclical called the Syllabus of Errors in which he stated that it is “an error to believe” that the pope ought to “agree with progress, liberalism, and modern civilization.” He condemned nationalism, socialism, religious toleration, and freedom of speech and press. Rejection of the new was not the churches’ only response, however. A religious movement called Modernism included an attempt by the churches to reinterpret Christianity in the light of new developments. The modernists viewed the Bible as a book of useful moral ideas, encouraged Christians to become involved in social reforms, and insisted that the churches must provide a greater sense of community. The Catholic Church condemned Modernism in 1907 and had driven it underground by the beginning of World War I. Yet another response of the Christian churches to modern ideas was compromise, an approach especially evident in the Catholic Church during the pontificate of Leo XIII (1878–1903). Pope Leo permitted the teaching of evolution as a hypothesis in Catholic schools and also responded to the challenges of modernization in the economic and social spheres. In his encyclical De Rerum Novarum (day RAYR-um noh-VAR-um), titled in English as Rights and Duties of Capital and Labor, issued in 1891, he upheld the individual’s right to private property but at the same time criticized “naked” capitalism for the poverty and degradation in which it had left the working classes. Much in socialism, he declared, was Christian in principle, but he condemned Marxist socialism for its materialistic and antireligious foundations. The pope recommended that Catholics form socialist parties and labor unions of their own to help the workers. Other religious groups also made efforts to win support for Christianity among working-class poor people and to restore religious practice among the urban working classes. Sects of evangelical missionaries were especially successful; a prime example is the Salvation Army, founded in London in 1865 by William Booth (1829–1912), the army’s first “general.” The Salvation Army established food centers, shelters where the homeless could sleep, and “rescue homes” for women, but all these had a larger purpose, as Booth admitted: “It is primarily and mainly for the sake of saving the soul that I seek the salvation of the body.”The revolution in physics and psychology was paralleled by a revolution in literature and the arts. Before 1914, writers and artists self-consciously rejected the traditional literary and artistic styles that had dominated European cultural life since the Renaissance. The changes that they produced have since been called Modernism. Naturalism Throughout much of the late nineteenth century, literature was dominated by Naturalism. Naturalists accepted the material world as real and felt that literature should be realistic. By addressing social problems, writers could contribute to an objective understanding of the world. Although Naturalism was a continuation of Realism, it lacked the underlying note of liberal optimism about people and society that had been prevalent in the 1850s. The Naturalists were pessimistic about Europe’s future and often portrayed characters caught in the grip of forces beyond their control. The novels of the French writer Émile Zola provide a good example of Naturalism. Against a backdrop of the urban slums and coalfields of northern France, Zola showed how alcoholism and different environments affected people’s lives. He had read Darwin’s Origin of Species and had been impressed by its emphasis on the struggle for survival and the importance of environment and heredity. These themes were central to his Rougon-Macquart, a twenty-volume series of novels on the “natural and social history of a family.” Zola maintained that the artist must analyze and dissect life as a biologist would a living organism. He said that he had simply done on living bodies the work of analysis that “surgeons perform on corpses.” The second half of the nineteenth century was a golden age for Russian literature. The nineteenth-century realistic novel reached its high point in the works of Leo Tolstoy (TOHL-stoy) (1828–1910) and Fyodor Dostoevsky (FYUD-ur dos-tuh-YEF-skee) (1821–1881). Tolstoy’s greatest work was War and Peace, a lengthy novel played out against the historical background of Napoleon’s invasion of Russia in 1812. It is realistic in its vivid descriptions of military life and character portrayal. Each person is delineated clearly and analyzed psychologically. Upon a great landscape, Tolstoy imposed a fatalistic view of history that ultimately proved irrelevant in the face of life’s enduring values of human love and trust. Dostoevsky combined narrative skill and acute psychological and moral observation with profound insights into human nature. He maintained that the major problem of his age was a loss of spiritual belief. Western people were attempting to gain salvation through the construction of a materialistic paradise built only by human reason and human will. Dostoevsky feared that the failure to  incorporate spirit would result in total tyranny. His own life experiences led him to believe that only through suffering and faith could the human soul be purified, views that are evident in his best-known works, Crime and Punishment and The Brothers Karamazov (refer to Historical Voices, “Dostoevsky: An Attack on Reason”). Historical Voices Dostoevsky: An Attack on Reason ​ Q Why did Dostoevsky believe that people would choose not to adhere to reason? The Russian novelist and essayist Fyodor Dostoevsky (1821–1881), whose masterpieces include Crime and Punishment and The Brothers Karamazov, questioned the Enlightenment argument that reason and science could dictate human behavior. For Dostoevsky, the individual’s happiness came from the expression of one’s free will. In Notes from Underground, the narrator of the novel, called the Underground Man, addresses an imaginary audience in a long monologue in which he expresses his revulsion for the modern principles of progress. Fyodor Dostoevsky, Notes from Underground Oh, tell me, who first declared, who first proclaimed, that man only does nasty things because he does not know his own real interests; and that if he were enlightened, if his eyes were opened to his real normal interests, man would at once cease to do nasty things, would at once become good and noble because, being enlightened and understanding his real advantage, he would see his own advantage in the good and nothing else, and we all know that not a single man can knowingly act to his own disadvantage. Consequently, so to say, he would begin doing good through necessity. Oh, the babe! Oh, the pure, innocent child! Why, in the first place, when in all these thousands of years has there even been a time when man has acted only for his own advantage? What is to be done with the millions of facts that bear witness that men, knowingly, that is, fully understanding their real advantages, have left them in the background and have rushed headlong on another path, to risk, to chance, compelled to this course by nobody and by nothing, but, as it were, precisely because they did not want the beaten track, and stubbornly, willfully, went off on another difficult, absurd way seeking it almost in the darkness…. You see, gentlemen, reason, gentlemen, is an excellent thing, there is no disputing that, but reason is only reason and can only satisfy man’s rational faculty, while will is a manifestation of all life, that is, of all human life including reason as well as all impulses. And although our life, in this manifestation of it, is often worthless, yet it is life nevertheless and not simply extracting square roots. After all, here I, for instance, quite naturally want to live, and not simply my rational faculty, that is, not simply one-twentieth of all my faculties for life. What does reason know? Reason only knows what it has succeeded in learning … Gentlemen, I am tormented by questions; answer them for me. Now you, for instance, want to cure men of their old habits and reform their will in accordance with science and common sense. But how do you know, not only that it is possible, but also that it is desirable, to reform man in that way? And what leads you to the conclusion that it is so necessary to reform man’s desires? In short, how do you know that such a reformation will really be advantageous to man? And go to the heart of the matter, why are you so sure of your conviction that not to act against his real normal advantages guaranteed by the conclusions of reason and arithmetic is always advantageous for man and must be a law for all mankind? Source: M. Perry, J. Peden, and T. H. Von Laue, eds., Sources of the Western Tradition, Volume II: From the Renaissance to the Present (Boston: Wadsworth Publishing, 2008), pp. 273–276. Symbolism At the turn of the century, a new group of writers, known as the Symbolists, reacted against Realism. Primarily interested in writing poetry, the Symbolists believed that an objective knowledge of the world was impossible. The external world was not real but only a collection of symbols that reflected the true reality of the individual human mind. Art, they believed, should function for its own sake instead of serving, criticizing, or seeking to understand society. In the works of such Symbolist poets as W. B. Yeats (YAYTS) and Rainer Maria Rilke (RY-nuh mah-REE-uh RILL-kuh), poetry ceased to be part of popular culture because only through a knowledge of the poet’s personal language could one hope to understand what the poem was saying.Since the Renaissance, artists had tried to represent reality as accurately as possible, carefully applying brushstrokes and employing perspective to produce realistic portrayals of their subjects. By the late nineteenth century, however, artists were seeking new forms of expression. Impressionism The preamble to modern painting can be found in Impressionism, a movement that originated in France in the 1870s when a group of artists rejected the studios and museums and went out into the countryside to paint nature directly. But the Impressionists did not just paint scenes from nature. Their subjects included streets and cabarets, rivers, and busy boulevards—wherever people congregated for work and leisure. In this sense, Impressionist subject matter reflected the pastimes of the new upper middle class. Instead of adhering to the conventional modes of painting and  subject matter, the Impressionists sought originality and distinction from past artworks. Their paintings utilized bright colors, dynamic brushstrokes, and a smaller, more private scale than that of their predecessors. Camille Pissarro (kah-MEEL pee-SAH-roh) (1830–1903), one of Impressionism’s founders, expressed what they sought: Precise drawing is dry and hampers the impression of the whole, it destroys all sensations. Do not define too closely the outlines of things; it is the brushstroke of the right value and color which should produce the drawing…. Work at the same time upon sky, water, branches, ground, keeping everything going on an equal basis and unceasingly rework until you have got it…. Don’t proceed according to rules and principles, but paint what you observe and feel. Paint generously and unhesitatingly, for it is best not to lose the first impression. Impressionists like Pissarro sought to put into their paintings their impressions of the changing effects of light on objects in nature. Pissarro’s ideas are visibly portrayed in the work of Claude Monet (CLOHD moh-NEH) (1840–1926). Monet was especially enchanted with water and painted many pictures in which he attempted to capture the interplay of light, water, and atmosphere, especially evident in Impression, Sunrise. It was Monet’s Impression, Sunrise that gave the Impressionists their name (refer to Image 24.4). Following their first exhibition in 1874, a satirical magazine referred to “Impressionism” in mocking the loose brushwork of Monet’s painting. By 1877, however, the artists had adopted the name for themselves.The first Impressionist exhibition included paintings by three women, one of whom was Berthe Morisot (BAYRT mor-ee-ZOH) (1841–1895). Her work fetched the highest price at the first Impressionist auction. Morisot broke with the practice of women being only amateur artists and became a professional painter. Her dedication to the new style of painting won her the disfavor of the traditional French academic artists. Morisot believed that women had a special  vision, which was, as she said, “more delicate than that of men.” Her special touch is evident in the lighter colors and flowing brushstrokes of Young Girl by the Window (refer to Global Perspectives, “Impressionist Painting in the West and East”). Near the end of her life, Morisot lamented the refusal of men to take her work seriously: “I don’t think there has ever been a man who treated a woman as an equal, and that’s all I would have asked, for I know I’m worth as much as they.” Post-Impressionism By the 1880s, a new movement known as Post-Impressionism had emerged in France and soon spread to other European countries. Post-Impressionism retained the Impressionist emphasis on light and color but revolutionized it even further by paying more attention to structure and form. Post-Impressionists sought to use both color and line to express inner feelings and produce a personal statement of reality rather than an imitation of objects. Impressionist paintings had retained a sense of realism, but the Post-Impressionists shifted from objective reality to subjective reality and in so doing began to withdraw from the artist’s traditional task of depicting the external world. Post-Impressionism was the real beginning of modern art. Paul Cézanne (say-ZAHN) (1839–1906) was one of the most important Post-Impressionists. Initially, he was influenced by the Impressionists but soon rejected their work. In paintings, such as Mont Sainte-Victoire, Cézanne sought to express visually the underlying geometric structure and form of everything he painted (refer to Image 24.5). He accomplished this by pressing his wet brush directly onto the canvas, forming cubes of color on which he built the form of the mountain. His technique enabled him to break down forms to their basic components. Cézanne explained to one young painter that you must see in nature “the cylinder, the sphere, and the cone.”Another famous Post-Impressionist was a tortured and tragic figure, Vincent van Gogh (van GOH or vahn GOK) (1853–1890). For van Gogh, art was a spiritual experience. He was especially interested in color and believed that it could act as its own form of language. Van Gogh maintained that artists should paint what they feel, which is evident in his Starry Night (refer to Image 24.7). Despite his influence on later artists, Van Gogh considered himself an artistic failure—he sold only one of his paintings before committing suicide.The Search for Individual Expression By the beginning of the twentieth century, the belief that the task of art was to represent “reality” had lost much of its meaning. By that time, psychology and the new physics had made it evident that many people were not sure what constituted reality anyway. Then, too, the development of photography gave artists another reason to reject visual realism. Invented in the 1830s, photography became popular and widespread after George Eastman produced the first Kodak camera for the mass market in 1888. What was the point of an artist doing what the camera did better? Unlike the camera, which could only mirror reality, artists could create reality. Individual consciousness became the source of meaning. Between 1905 and 1914, this search for individual expression produced a wide variety of schools of painting, all of which had their greatest impact after World War I. In 1905, one of the most important figures in modern art was just beginning his career. Pablo Picasso (PAHB-loh pi-KAH-soh) (1881–1973) was from Spain but settled in Paris in 1904. Picasso was extremely flexible and painted in a remarkable variety of styles. He was instrumental in the development of a new style called Cubism that used geometric designs as visual stimuli to re-create reality in the viewer’s mind. Picasso’s 1907 work Les Demoiselles d’Avignon (lay dem-wah-ZEL dah-vee-NYONH), which portrays five women in a brothel, has been called the first Cubist painting (refer to Image 24.8). Picasso and other artists were inspired by collections of objects shipped from European colonies, such as African masks, textiles, tools, and weapons.