Connection Across Time -- Between the Wars

As an artist, I am particularly fascinated by the development of art during the period between the wars. It's interesting to me that the tension leading to WWI and prior to WWII served as such a catalyst for new techniques and views of art. Artists have always been politically involved, all the way back to ancient Rome and through the modern era. I wonder why it was this war and not another that urged artists to neglect traditional styles of painting and sculpture in favor of a style all their own.

It is this kind of rapid development that that has transformed art in the last few decades. Photography, which until the 1950s and 1960s was not even considered an art form, is now well respected and has given way to photo editing and video presentations. Protesters continue to use art as a means of catching people's attention -- something unheard of before WWI. Consider even the practice in Thailand of putting pictures of black lungs and mouth cancer on cigarette packages. This is shock value at its finest -- Thank you Duchamp.