First world war: the soldier's perspective – in pictures

The British army banned the use of personal cameras on Christmas Eve in 1914, but privates and officers carried on using them. Over the last 25 years, the historian Richard van Emden has assembled a vast collection of their photographs. From al fresco cooking to swimming expeditions, he illuminates the experience of the ordinary soldier.

Two officers of the Loyal North Lancashire Regiment pose for the camera in February 1915. The private possession of cameras had been banned by the army on Christmas Eve 1914. Nevertheless, the officer on the right is holding a Vest Pocket Kodak. Photograph: Richard van Emden.

Behind the front lines after taking a dip: this officer carries an umbrella 'borrowed' from a billet in Ypres. Photograph: Richard van Emden.

Goatskins were widely issued to the infantry. Both waterproof and windproof, they very popular in the trenches, as this picture from the winter of 1914 shows. Photograph: Richard van Emden

Cooks of the 14th Field Ambulance prepare a beef and vegetable stew in dixies, October 1914. Photograph: Richard van Emden

More than 1.1 million men volunteered to fight in 1914. These men are undertaking physical training known as 'Swedish Drill' in June 1915. Photograph: Richard van Emden

Read more here.

http://www.theguardian.com/

War Horse

In 1914, Joey, a young farm horse, is sold to the army and thrust into the midst of the war on the Western Front. With his officer, he charges towards the enemy, witnessing the horror of the frontline. But even in the desolation of the trenches, Joey’s courage touches the soldiers around him.




War Horse at the theatre:



Movie:



Interactive map and video of WWI

http://www.warhorseonstage.com/app/webroot/map/

Michael Morpurgo`s official website:http://michaelmorpurgo.com/

20th Century Art (part 1)

20th cent art from Patricia Guzman

When flappers ruled the Earth

The wild women of 1920s dance didn't just get everyone doing the Charleston and the Grizzly Bear. Stars like Josephine Baker and Tallulah Bankhead also played a pivotal role in women's emancipation

The Nefertiti of now' ... Josephine Baker at the Casino of Paris in 1939. Photograph: Lipnitzki/Roger Viollet/Getty.

In 1908, wearing little more than a jewelled breastplate and a transparent skirt, the Canadian dancer Maud Allan stormed the fortress of British proprieties with her solo work, The Vision of Salomé. Allan danced an audacious choreography of desire, her body "swaying like a witch, twisting like a snake, and panting with [a hypnotic] passion", according to one dazed viewer. But while several theatres outside London barred Allan's performance as indecent, to her legions of women admirers, she was an inspiration. Margot Asquith, wife of the Liberal PM, was among those who saw Allan's dancing as a liberating expression of female sexuality.The early decades of the 20th century were an exhilarating battleground for women, with key gains made in political and legal reform. But women were also testing out another arena of emancipation: their bodies. As fashions grew simpler and skirts rose higher, reaching knee-length by the late 1920s, women found new physical freedoms – or, at least, those with sufficient money and time to take advantage of them.

In contrast to their bustled, draped and corseted grandmothers, they could feel the sun and wind on their limbs; they could run, stride and ride a bicycle with ease. They could also dance – and it's surely no coincidence that this was an era obsessed with dancing. From the barefoot ecstasies of Isadora Duncan, whosefree, expressive dancing struck a blow against the corseted rigours of classical ballet, to the collective "jazzing" of the 1920s, dance came to play a surprisingly emblematic role in the story of women's liberation.

The impact of Allan's Salomé spread far beyond theatre. To one rightwing politician, Noel Pemberton Billing, its eroticism was nothing less than an incitement to female depravity, specifically lesbianism. A decade later, with Britain at war, Billing published an article in his magazine Vigilante, accusing Allan of being key to a perniciously widespread "cult of the clitoris", and symptomatic of the unpatriotic decadence that was undermining the upper echelons of British society.

Even if Allan wasn't driving women to Sapphic wickedness, she was, in the words of another commentator, "promoting a dangerous tendency to dancing". And it wasn't just on the stage, but on the dancefloor, too, that women were displaying an alarming lack of modesty, with the social dances that began spreading through the west just before the first world war. Driven by the rhythms of American ragtime, the Bunny Hug, the Turkey Trot and the Grizzly Bear triggered a riotous deviation from the formality of the ballroom.

These encouraged dancers to kick up their feet, rock crazily from side to side and lock their swaying pelvises together. In 1914, the Vatican felt compelled to issue a formal denunciation of their suggestive, animalistic moves. To the young and very aristocratic British socialite Lady Diana Manners, these ragtime dances were part of a new "budding freedom", a sign that "Victorianism" had finally lost its grip.

Nightclubs had begun to appear in London in 1912 and, whenever Manners was able to evade her chaperones, these dark and crowded basements promised a cocktail of illicit thrills: smoking cigarettes, wearing lipstick, drinking Pink Ladies – and dancing. Her own expertise on the floor had been fuelled by a year of formal training in ballet and Russian folk dance. The physical poise she acquired wasn't just unusual for a woman of her class, though; it also provided a necessary boost to her confidence after the war, when she further flouted tradition by embarking on an acting career. Not only did this take her to Broadway, it also allowed her to support her husband, Duff Cooper, through his first years as a politician.

In the 1920s, ragtime was superseded by the wayward jangle and bounce of the Charleston and by the pert, buttock-flourishing naughtiness of the Black Bottom. Zelda Fitzgerald, famously the inspiration for her husband F Scott's fictional flapper heroines, was also a wicked exponent of the decade's jazz dances. The celebrity myths that accumulated around the Fitzgeralds were fed by stories of Zelda lifting her skirts high above her waist to emphasis the sway of her hips – and the flash of what Ernest Hemingway was pleased to call her "long nigger legs".

If dances were getting wilder, so too were morals. Between 1914 and 1929, the divorce rate doubled in the US and surveys reported that premarital sex was rising even faster. The promiscuity of young women caused alarm, particularly in Britain where, after the carnage of the war, it was estimated that only one in 10 were likely to find a husband and settle down to marriage and motherhood. As early as 1919, sympathy for their plight ebbed as the press began to speculate about the kinds of selfish, destabilising pleasures these single young women might be indulging in. The Daily Mail warned that the number of "superfluous" females could be a "disaster to the human race".

Dancing continued to be a lightning rod for public concern. In 1923, when Tallulah Bankhead came to London to advance her acting career, it wasn't just the delicious huskiness of her Alabama accent or the fizz of her personality that clinched her success. It was the topicality of the play in which she made her debut. The Dancers, written by Gerald du Maurier and Viola Tree, dramatised the arguments for and against liberated 1920s flappers through the stories of two very different dance-mad women. Bankhead's character Maxie was a professional cabaret artist whose dancing symbolised her independence; she earned her own money, and made her own way in the world. Her opposite number Audry, however, was a socialite whose addiction to dancing led only to a neurotic netherworld of nightclubs, cocktails and sex.

Fizz ... Tallulah Bankhead in 1925. Photograph: Alamy

The moral chaos of Audry's world was captured in a picture painted by the Scottish artist John Bulloch Souter in 1926. Titled, starkly, The Breakdown, it showed a naked flapper dancing the Charleston to the accompaniment of a jazz saxophonist. The latter was seated astride a fallen statue of Minerva, goddess of wisdom; the fact that he was also black contributed to the public furore that got Souter's painting forcibly removed from the walls of the Royal Academy in London.

Race was another taboo being broken, as the era saw a mass emigration of black American musicians and dancers into the major cities of Europe.Ada "Bricktop" Smith, a cabaret singer from West Virginia, became doyenne of the Paris nightclubs, giving Charleston lessons to everyone from the writer and heiress Nancy Cunard to the Prince of Wales. And when a skinny chorus girl from St Louis called Josephine Baker was shipped over to Paris in 1925 to perform in the fashionable Revue Nègre, her subversively inventive versions of jazz dance were hailed by artists and intellectuals as genius. Picasso called her the "Nefertiti of now" – and such was the impact of her dancing that she became elevated to an aesthetic ideal.

Having endured racial abuse and discrimination back home, Baker was now advertising beauty products that allowed white women to mimic her own glossy cropped hair, her burnished skin and supple silhouette. It was an astonishing turnaround for her. But it also demonstrated the power that the symbols of the jazz age – its clothes, music and dancing – had to cut across social barriers.

Alive and kicking ... a Charleston competition at the Parody Club, New York in 1926. Photograph: Hulton Archive/Getty

There is, of course, a less benign story to tell about the degree to which these symbols became commodified by the new billion-dollar advertising, fashion and beauty industries, and about the pressures they imposed. Young flappers may have thrown off the tyranny of the corset, but they discovered the new tyranny of dieting. A schoolgirl in Chicago tried to gas herself because her parents wouldn't let her bob her hair or shorten her skirts along with her classmates.

But to the American writer Dorothy Dunbar Bromley, the flapper represented a new spirit of emancipation. If women were to follow their "inner compulsion to be individuals", they had to throw off their shackling inheritance of obedience, whether to the puritanical tenets of old-schoolfeminism or to the sentimentalised duties of marriage and motherhood. It wasn't hardcore politics but, on the dancefloor at least, these women of the 1920s embodied Bromley's views. As they shimmied their shoulders and swivelled their hips, they were released into a brief but deeply subversive world – a world of freedom.

• More on this story

• 
  Josephine Baker and the wild women of 1920s dance – in pictures
  Flappers angered the Vatican and stood accused of starting 'the cult of the clitoris' in Britain. But they also played a huge role in the emancipation of women

Flappers: Women of a Dangerous Generation

1. by Judith Mackrell

http://www.guardian.co.uk

Bauhaus

Click here to see the PPP created by Alonso and López Cabrera
More in the ecaths blog.

Futurism

Fernand Leger, La Partie des Cartes (1918)

Here`s the ppt of Futurism by Basaldúa and Mora. More in the ecaths blog.

Expressionism

Here is the ppt of the presentation by Siriòn and Agra .More in the ecaths blog.

Art Nouveau

ART NOVEAU

It is an international style of art, architecture and graphic design which was most popular within the period from 1890 and 1910. the name of “art noveau” is  French for new art, but it is also known as “jugendstil” in Germany,  which is the german for “youth style”,  “secession” in austria-hungary, “floreale” in Italy and “liberty” in England.

The name of this movement was taken from an art gallery called “maison de l’art nouveau” in Paris.Samuel Bing was his owner. He was a German art dealer. This gallery was famous for featuring exclusively this kind of art, including furniture and decorative objects.

Art Nouveau was most popular in europe but its influence was global, frequently  influenced by localised tendencies.

One of the major visual influences on Art Nouveau was the Japanese art that entered the west after Japan was opened to trade in the 1850's. many westerners were intrigued by japanese art's decorative qualities and conception of space and nature.

The creators of Art Nouveau advocated the end of the distinction between high art such as painting and minor art such as decoration.

Reactions to the cold, mechanical landscape of the industrial revolution and the rigid classical styles embraced by art academies gave birth to the art nouveau movement.

It came to break all connections with classical times, it was  a complete change in the way of thinking about art in terms of a new society and new production methods, sicking to apply art to everyday lifeto make it nicer.  From that time on, art should not overlook everyday objects, an artists should work on everything from architecture to furniture design, also jewelry, pottery, metalwok, graphic design, glassware, textiles and sculpture, to add harmony and beauty to everyday life.

Gustav Klimt "The Kiss"

 AS REGARDS THE CHARACTERISTICS OF THIS STYLE:

Ø      it combines organic lines, feminine forms and a general return to nature as the inspiration for art.

Ø      typical colourfull flat patterns, -eliminates three-dimension by reducing shading-

Ø      intertwined organic forms of stems and flowers.

Ø      emphasized handcrafting instead of industrial manufacturing  -the idea of merging art with utilitarian objects was partially inspired by a reaction to the ugly manufactured goods that were beginning to dominate daily  life-

Ø      curving lines

Ø      modern techniques with new materials such as iron and steel, -symbolic materials of first industrial revolution- glass, ceramic and concrete.

Ø      principal subjects are birds, flowers and female shapes-

Ø      artifacts are beautiful works of art but not necessarily functional

Women

·        women were often depicted in a highly sexual manner, in confident postures which conveyed a strong sense of power and independence. Art Nouveau artists were also some of the first to use sexy women in advertisements for products such as train tickets, cigarettes and bicycles. Although sexually provocative advertisements are commonplace today, they were new and fresh in the 19th century.

Architecture

• Art Nouveau Architects such as Antoni Gaudi, created buildings with ornamental structural elements, sinuous flowing lines, open floor-plans and ornamental facades. They frequently used iron, steel, glass, ceramic and reinforced concrete. They also made use of technological innovations such as elevators and electric lights.

Sinuous Lines

·         Art Nouveau took its sinuous lines and curves from the natural world. For many artists, the use of lines went beyond ornamentation and decoration. They saw these lines as visual symbols of spiritual energy. This put them in opposition to a contemporary Aesthetic movement, and academic rigid classical art which advocated "art for art's sake." The patterns of Art Nouveau lines took many forms, ranging from the symbolic to the floral and the organic.

MAIN REPRESENTATIVES:

IN BRITAIN

-         Arthur lasenby liberty

-         Charles ashbee

-         Charles rennie mackintosh

IN FRANCE AND BELGIUM

-         Alphonse Mucha

-         Victor Horta

-         Henry Van De Velde

-         Hector Guimard

-         Émile Galle

IN SPAIN

-         Antoni Gaudi

IN AUSTRIA

-         Gustav Klimt

-         Joseph Hoffman

IN GERMANY

-         August Endell

-         Hernann Obrist

Galería Güemes, Buenos Aires

In Argentina, there was a strong predominance of agricultural exportation, being the importation of manufactured products mainly from europe.

Another factor which contributed was Buenos Aires strong dependence on french cultural tendencies.

And then, of course, the strong immigration produced during this period –final XIX century to early XX- the immigrant s hadicraft would leave their mark on architecture, furniture design, decoration and graphic design.

Galería Güemes, Inside 

We can see architecture of Art Nouveau for example in “ Galería Güemes” and in “Confiteria El Molino”  in Buenos Aires.

Then in Rosario, “El Palacio Cabanellas”, “El Club Español”  y el “Edificio Trasatlantica”  works  of  spanish artist Frances Roca I Simo

Nowadays it is considered as an important transition from 19th to 20th century before “Modernism” and recognised by UNESCO for its significant contributions to cultural heritage.

Such as Ccasa Batllo” and “Casa Vicens” of Antoni Gaudi in Barcelona among many others.

Work done by Chazarreta and Krause

Argentina & World War I

Hipólito Yrigoyen  President of Argentina in two opportunities: 1916-1922  and  1928-1930

The many Europeans in South America, as well as Japanese on its west coast, were enthusiastic for their homelands at war. British, French and Japanese communities were clamoring for their new countries' support of the Allies, as were Italians after Italy entered the war, while German communities were just as enthusiastic for Kaiser and Fatherland. Many British and German immigrants returned in 1914 to fight for their homelands - especially from Argentina and Brazil.  More on Argentina & World War I in our ecaths blog.

WWI: War in the Trenches

Two views of what life in the trenches was like.One is a video by Sir Paul Mc Cartney and the other the trailer of Spielbierg`s film, War Horse. 








See this blog entry from last year related to the subject: http://lenguaycultura2isfd97.blogspot.com.ar/2011/05/world-war-i-and-art.html

Ireland: The Road to Partition

"Easter Rising scene from the film Michael Collins and Easter, 1916 a poem by William Butler Yeats"

Read the complete poem:

World War I

Some visual aids to help us with the subject:

Older posts on the subject: War Poets and the relation with the War (audio of poems)

Treaty of Versailles

The Treaty of Versailles (click here for text and explanations) was the peace settlement signed after World War One had ended in 1918 and in the shadow of the Russian Revolution and other events in Russia. The treaty was signed at the vast Versailles Palace near Paris - hence its title - between Germany and the Allies. The three most important politicians there were David Lloyd George, Georges Clemenceau and Woodrow Wilson. The Versailles Palace was considered the most appropriate venue simply because of its size - many hundreds of people were involved in the process and the final signing ceremony in the Hall of Mirrors could accommodate hundreds of dignitaries. Many wanted Germany, now led by Friedrich Ebert, smashed - others, like Lloyd George, were privately more cautious.
The treaty was signed on June 28th 1919 after months of argument and negotiation amongst the so-called "Big Three" as to what the treaty should contain.

Who were the "Big Three" and where did they clash over Germany and her treatment after the war ?

The "Big Three" were David Lloyd George of Britain, Clemenceau of France and Woodrow Wilson of America.

The terms of the Treaty of Versailles

The treaty can be divided into a number of sections; territorial, military, financial and general.

Territorial

The following land was taken away from Germany :

Alsace-Lorraine (given to France)

Eupen and Malmedy (given to Belgium)

Northern Schleswig (given to Denmark)

Hultschin (given to Czechoslovakia)

West Prussia, Posen and Upper Silesia (given to Poland)

The Saar, Danzig and Memel were put under the control of the League of Nations and the people of these regions would be allowed to vote to stay in Germany or not in a future referendum.

The League of Nations also took control of Germany's overseas colonies.
Germany had to return to Russia land taken in the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk. Some of this land was made into new states : Estonia, Lithuania and Latvia. An enlarged Poland also received some of this land.

Military

Germany’s army was reduced to 100,000 men; the army was not allowed tanks
She was not allowed an airforce She was allowed only 6 capital naval ships and no submarines The west of the Rhineland and 50 kms east of the River Rhine was made into a demilitarised zone (DMZ). No German soldier or weapon was allowed into this zone. The Allies were to keep an army of occupation on the west bank of the Rhine for 15 years.

Financial

The loss of vital industrial territory would be a severe blow to any attempts by Germany to rebuild her economy. Coal from the Saar and Upper Silesia in particular was a vital economic loss. Combined with the financial penalties linked to reparations, it seemed clear to Germany that the Allies wanted nothing else but to bankrupt her.
Germany was also forbidden to unite with Austria to form one superstate, in an attempt to keep her economic potential to a minimum.

General

There are three vital clauses here:

1. Germany had to admit full responsibility for starting the war. This was Clause 231 - the infamous "War Guilt Clause".

2. Germany, as she was responsible for starting the war as stated in clause 231, was, therefore responsible for all the war damage caused by the First World War. Therefore, she had to pay reparations, the bulk of which would go to France and Belgium to pay for the damage done to the infrastructure of both countries by the war. Quite literally, reparations would be used to pay for the damage to be repaired. Payment could be in kind or cash. The figure was not set at Versailles - it was to be determined later. The Germans were told to write a blank cheque which the Allies would cash when it suited them. The figure was eventually put at £6,600 million - a huge sum of money well beyond Germany’s ability to pay.

3. A League of Nations was set up to keep world peace.

In fact, the first 26 clauses of the treaty dealt with the League's organisation.


The German reaction to the Treaty of Versailles

After agreeing to the Armistice in November 1918, the Germans had been convinced that they would be consulted by the Allies on the contents of the Treaty. This did not happen and the Germans were in no position to continue the war as her army had all but disintegrated. Though this lack of consultation angered them, there was nothing they could do about it. Therefore, the first time that the German representatives saw the terms of the Treaty was just weeks before they were due to sign it in the Hall of Mirrors at the Palace of Versailles on June 28th 1919.

There was anger throughout Germany when the terms were made public. The Treaty became known as a Diktat - as it was being forced on them and the Germans had no choice but to sign it. Many in Germany did not want the Treaty signed, but the representatives there knew that they had no choice as German was incapable of restarting the war again.

In one last gesture of defiance, the captured German naval force held at Scapa Flow (north of Scotland) scuttled itself i.e. deliberately sank itself.

Germany was given two choices:

1) sign the Treaty or
2) be invaded by the Allies.

They signed the Treaty as in reality they had no choice. When the ceremony was over, Clemenceau went out into the gardens of Versailles and said "It is a beautiful day".

The consequences of Versailles

The Treaty seemed to satisfy the "Big Three" as in their eyes it was a just peace as it kept Germany weak yet strong enough to stop the spread of communism; kept the French border with Germany safe from another German attack and created the organisation, the League of Nations, that would end warfare throughout the world.
However, it left a mood of anger throughout Germany as it was felt that as a nation Germany had been unfairly treated.
Above all else, Germany hated the clause blaming her for the cause of the war and the resultant financial penalties the treaty was bound to impose on Germany. Those who signed it (though effectively they had no choice) became known as the "November Criminals".
Many German citizens felt that they were being punished for the mistakes of the German government in August 1914 as it was the government that had declared war not the people.