1948
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
"Pop culture - the folk culture of the modern market, the culture of the instant, at once subsuming past and future and refusing to acknowledge the reality of either - began about 1948, in the United States and Great Britain." --Lipstick Traces: A Secret History of the Twentieth Century, p. 257. "In 1948, two widely read books were published that would inspire a "neo-Malthusian" debate on population and the environment: Fairfield Osborn’s Our Plundered Planet and William Vogt’s Road to Survival." --Sholem Stein The greatest thing you'll ever learn |
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1948 is the 948th year of the 2nd millennium, the 48th year of the 20th century, and the 9th year of the 1940s decade.
Contents |
Events
- May 15 - 1948 Arab–Israeli War: The British Mandate of Palestine is officially terminated; expeditionary forces from Egypt, Transjordan, Syria and Iraq invade Israel and clash with Israeli forces.
Art and culture
- COBRA (avant-garde movement) coined
- The United Nations General Assembly adopts the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
- Jack Kerouac introduces the term Beat Generation
- Alfred Kinsey publishes Sexual Behavior in the Human Male
Literature
- And We'll Kill All the Ugly Ones by Boris Vian
- The City and the Pillar by Gore Vidal
- The Great Tradition by F. R. Leavis
- "The Lottery" by Shirley Jackson
- No Longer Human by Osamu Dazai
Visual culture
Music
- Étude aux chemins de fer by Pierre Schaeffer is recorded
- Black Coffee by written by Sonny Burke, the lyrics by Paul Francis Webster
- Nature Boy by Nat King Cole
Births
- January 23 – Anita Pointer (The Pointer Sisters) (d. 2022)
- February 1 – Rick James, American composer, singer and musician (d. 2004)
- July 11 - Hector Zazou, 60, French composer and producer (d. 2008)
- December 6 – Linda Creed, American singer-songwriter (d. 1986)
- Tee Scott
- Catherine Breillat
- Ian McEwan
- Martin Hannett
- William Gibson
- Francis Grasso
- Glenn Branca
- Catherine Millet
- Eric Fischl
- Donald Fagen, American rock keyboardist
- John Carpenter, American film director, producer, screenwriter and composer
- Alice Cooper, American hard rock singer and musician
- Barbara Hershey, American actress
- Kitten Natividad, Mexican-American film actress (d. 2022)
- Pim Fortuyn, Dutch politician and author (d. 2002)
- Mike Figgis, American director, screenwriter and composer
- Bernadette Peters, American actress and singer
- James Ellroy, American writer
- Eddy Grant, Guyanese British singer and musician
- Jimmy Cliff, Jamaican singer and actor
- Jan Hammer, Czechoslovakian composer, pianist and keyboardist
- Terry Pratchett, English comic fantasy and science fiction author (d. 2015)
- Joe Esposito, American singer-songwriter
- Steve Winwood, English rock singer
- Brian Eno, English musician and record producer
- Stevie Nicks, American rock singer and songwriter
- Nick Drake, English musician (d. 1974)
- Nathalie Baye, French film, television and stage actress
- Cat Stevens, born Steven Georgiou, later known as Yusuf Islam, British singer, musician
- Robert Plant, English singer (Led Zeppelin)
- Jean Michel Jarre, French electronic musician
- Fred Hampton, American activist (d. 1969)
- John Martyn, born Iain McGeachy, British folk-rock guitarist (d. 2009)
- Jeremy Irons, English actor
- Olivia Newton-John, English-born Australian singer and actress (d. 2022)
- Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, Pakistani musician (d. 1997)
- T. Coraghessan Boyle, American writer
- Lester Bangs, American music journalist (d. 1982)
- Samuel L. Jackson, African-American actor and film producer
- Gérard Depardieu, French actor
- Joe Dallesandro, American model and actor
- Donna Summer, African-American singer and actress (d. 2012)
Deaths
- January 8 – Kurt Schwitters, German artist (b. 1887)
- February 9 – Karl Valentin, German actor (b. 1882)
- February 11 – Sergei Eisenstein, Soviet film director (b. 1898)
- March 4 – Antonin Artaud, French playwright, actor and director (b. 1896)
- June 16 – Holbrook Jackson, English journalist, writer, publisher and bibliophile (born 1874)
- July 21 – Arshile Gorky, Soviet-born painter (b. 1904)
- July 23 – D. W. Griffith, American film director (The Birth Of A Nation) (b. 1875)
- August 10 - Montague Summers, English writer (d. 1880)
- September 13 – Paul Wegener, German actor, film director, and screenwriter; one of the pioneers of German Expressionism (b. 1874)
- October 24 – Franz Lehár, Hungarian composer (b. 1870)
- December 3 – Chano Pozo, Cuban percussionist (b. 1915)