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Freud's impact on the modern world

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How did the more dynamic and complex view of the universe affect the literature, art, and music composition of the early 20th century? How are the Imagists poems or the Cubists paintings a break in form from naturalism and representation? How did the Freudian revolution help change views about art and architecture or change industry? What are some main themes of Freuds theories that manifest in modern literature?

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Discussion of the Industrial Age, and Freud's theories - how his theories influenced science, music, architecture and art, among others.

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The more complex view of the Universe held in the late 19th and early 20th centuries (ascompared to earlier times) influenced all aspects of life, culture and artistic expression. Scientific discoveries were advancing at a prodigious rate, and so were manufacturing and industry, resulting in a general trend of abandonment of rural life for many, and a concentration of people in urban areas where there was work to be had.

Art reflected this change in social circumstances in several ways. First, it must be remembered that Louis Daguerre's perfection of photographic techniques prior to the Civil War made possible for the first time artworks that were not realistic in nature (reference URL: http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/dagu/hd_dagu.htm). If a patron wanted to preserve an image, they now had the low-cost, quick option of a photograph, instead of commissioning an artist, and waiting for a painting to be finished. Photography freed artists from recording images, and opened a new door to artistic expression. The living conditions of many people in relatively small city spaces during the age of industrialization reduced people to unnatural, mechanical lives as they went daily to work in the factories. Artists expressed this soulless disconnect people were feeling in abstracted, splintered figures, such as those we see in Cubist works.

Imagist poetry (URL reference: http://www.ehow.com/how_2143092_write-imagist-poem.html) describes objects by using metaphors which remind the poet of the object, using little emotion, the object broken down into essentials. This is what was happening to people's lives in the Industrial Age, and similar concepts were also expressed in music. Music took three general forms during this time (URL reference: http://library.thinkquest.org/15413/history/history-mod.htm). First, there was a deliberate continuation of the previous period's styles in an attempt to hold on to "the good old days" which also happens in popular music today. However, the new music went against this grain, with atonal (discordant) aspects, and expressivism (such as happened with expressionistic paintings) which was new "mood" music, unlike what went before in music-making. The final addition to the early 20th century's new music was its pride in expressing patriotism, especially with the advent of World War I.

Sigmund Freud ...

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