1940s
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
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"No poetry after Auschwitz" (1951) by Theodor W. Adorno "Though the idea that jazz is a modernist art form appeared in full force in the revivalist — swing debate, it is bebop that gets credit in the jazz canon for being the first modernist jazz, the first jazz avant-garde, the first form in which art transcends entertainment." (Gendron 2002, 143). |
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The 1940s decade ran from 1940 to 1949, primarily marked by World War II.
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World War II and its aftermath
World War II was a truly global conflict with many facets: immense human suffering, fierce indoctrination, and the use of new, extremely devastating weapons such as the atomic bomb.
The 1940s were seen as a transition period between the radical 1930s and the conservative 1950s, which also leads the period to be divided in two halves:
The first half of the decade was dominated by World War II, the widest and most destructive armed conflict in human history. So consequential was this event and its brutal aftermath that it laid the foundation for other major world events and trends for decades to follow. This war was also the first modern civilian war.
The second half marked the beginning of the East-West conflict and the Cold War, together with major social upheaval caused by the destruction of the war, the large number of refugees, and soldiers returning home and demanding government recognition for their sacrifice, especially in colonies of European countries, many of which gained independence.
Culture and religion
Film
- Frank Capra's It's a Wonderful Life is released in 1946
- Michael Curtiz's Casablanca is released in 1942
- Orson Welles' Citizen Kane is released in 1941
- Billy Wilder's Double Indemnity is released in 1944
- William Wyler's Mrs. Miniver is released in 1942
- Alfred Hitchcock's Notorious is released in 1946
- Walt Disney's Pinocchio (1940 film) and Fantasia are released in 1940.
- Walt Disney's Dumbo is released in 1941
- Walt Disney's Bambi is released in 1942
Visual arts
- The Abstract Expressionism movement in art emerges
Music
- Bebop emerges
- Rhythm and blues emerges
- Rock and roll emerges
Literature
Literature from the 1940s witnesses the start of Existentialism (Hell is other people, 1944), the early period of the Beat generation and saw the publication of influential novels such as Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949).
The intermediate postwar period separating "Modernism" from "Postmodernism" (1950s literature) is the floruit of the beat generation and the classical science fiction of Isaac Asimov, Arthur C. Clarke and Robert A. Heinlein.
Books:
- For Whom the Bell Tolls by Ernest Hemingway in 1940.
- The Myth of Sisyphus by Albert Camus in 1942.
- The Stranger by Albert Camus in 1942.
- The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry in 1943.
- Anti-Semite and Jew by Jean-Paul Sartre in 1943.
- The Gremlins (1943) by Roald Dahl
- The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand in 1943.
- No Exit by Jean-Paul Sartre in 1944.
- Pippi Longstocking by Astrid Lindgren in 1945.
- Animal Farm (1945) by George Orwell
- The Diary of Anne Frank by Anne Frank in 1947.
- Death of a Salesman by Arthur Miller in 1949.
- Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell in 1949.
- The Glass Menagerie by Tennessee Williams in 1944.
See also
