Archaeology, History & History of Art

The Tawdry Thirties Collapse Into Chaos The Shape Of Things To Come

All CategoriesArchaeology, History & History of Art

Course synopsis

Topics- Music:

Let’s Dance- Propelled by the exciting new trend in pop music- Swing – young people found a refuge from the gloomy headlines in dancing. And one entrepreneur made a million showing them how to do it.

 

Depression Blues- The Wall Street Crash made the working classes poor and the poor classes destitute. Music became a vehicle for their protest, starting a movement that lasted thirty years.

 

Song Laboratories- How many different ways can you write a love song?  The poets of Tin Pan Alley knew, and their creativity, imagination and audacity led to a Golden Age of American pop. 

 

Music Under Dictators- There was no shortage of dictators in 1930s Europe.  Composers found inventive ways to survive repressive regimes – some even did so without compromising their integrity.  

 

Music For The Masses- The burgeoning cinema industry offered new opportunities and many songwriters and composers made a beeline for Hollywood. There they created the soundtrack not just for films but for people’s lives as they approached the Second World War.  

Topics - Art and Culture

Art Deco  -  the changing shape of things to come.  For a very short period there is a style that is instantly recognisable and universal. Art Deco is very much a geometrically based format which employs sleek lines to mask the social tensions that it aims to escape. From Europe spreading out across the Atlantic and all over the world, from Clarice Cliff’s teacups to the Chrysler Building, pristine elegance becomes a fashionable must have.

 

Kinder Transport - the door closes.  From 1933 onwards the ominous shadows of a coming storm envelops Germany. The Jews are the canary in the coal mine. Their fate inextricably connected to the Rise of the Third Reich and the inevitable scapegoating proclaimed in Hitler’s Mein Kampf. Why did they stay? Why couldn’t they leave? And in the end only thousands of children were able to escape the fate of millions.

 

The American Nightmare – Depression, Populism and Isolation.  After the Great Crash of 1929 as investors tumbled from skyscrapers along with the shares, America is plunged into the Great Depression. It was to last right up to the Second World War. The responses to the problem were polarised with the populists screaming “share the Wealth”, whilst Franklin D Roosevelt tried to put all of America back to work. But to the right of these conflicting responses was a darker side of America that espoused Isolationism on one hand and an Americanism that was akin to Fascism on the other.

 

The Last Chance Saloon - Spain a very uncivil war – they shall not pass!  The legacy of the First World War was an unsatisfactory impractical resolution at Versailles which led to a struggle between left and right wing solutions to social and economic collapse. Whilst there were uneasy tensions throughout Europe, in Spain a War by proxy was fought by both sides of the ideological divide. Young men and women of all nationalities flocked to take part in what they believed was an existential threat to democracy.

 

The Cultural Divide Britain and America – worlds apart – Realism to Superman.  Against an increasingly unpropitious Social, Political and Economic background, Art and Culture in Britain, Europe and America faced in two directions at the same time. For some it was the harsh school of Modernism and Realism in Art, whilst for others it was a retreat to the escapism of the silver screen and the creation of Superman – the comic hero. And for the more resilient, it was Surrealism, the dreamy unconscious leading the way to abstraction.

16th April , 23rd April , 30th April, 7th May  & 14th May

Book your place

Time/PlacePriceSessionsQuantity
Summer 2023/2024
Tuesdays, 10:00 - 12:00
£545

About the teacher

Frank Vigon

Frank Vigon has been a headteacher of an...

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