Three years into the Soviet experiment, the ruling Bolsheviks were finding it difficult to win the ‘hearts and minds’ of the proletarian masses they so deeply loved (but refused to feed).
Additional magazine and newspaper articles about the Cold War may be read on this page.
The attached VANITY FAIR article announced that the numero uno society portrait painter of the Gilded Age, John Singer Sargent (1856 – 1925) was swearing-off portrait commissions in order to concentrate on water color. Little did he know that he would be back at it in a few years painting whole boat-loads of general officer portraits when he was named as one of the Official British War Artists.
Among all the paintings on exhibition at the Paris Fall Salon, none is attracting so much attention as the extraordinary productions of the so-called ‘Cubist’ school. In fact, dispatches from Paris suggest that these works are easily the main feature of the exhibition.
Why Dada? is a thoughtful essay by Sheldon Cheney (1886 – 1980), a Dada enthusiast and founder of the American monthly THEATRE ARTS MAGAZINE. This is a fine article which attempted to explain Dada to the American public and identified several American artists who subscribed to Dada principles.
…at last years exhibitions the Futurists and Cubists joined the academicians in denouncing the Dadaists as fakers, charlatans, and ignoramuses who know nothing of the laws of art and only wish to shock the public into considering them a sensation! And the Dadaists get unlimited joy out of the situation, but hold to the center of the stage…
In our era it doesn’t seem terribly odd that a fresh, exciting and highly popular industry would begin generating new words to fill our dictionaries, and 1914 was no different. The attached article introduced the readers of THE NEW YORK TIMES to a new verb contributed by the early film industry:
The verb ‘to film’ having gained currency, it must be graciously admitted to the language. It will soon be in the ‘advanced’ dictionaries and it must be recognized. The old idea of protecting the English language from invasion is extinct. To ‘film’ means to make a picture for a ‘movie’ show’.
During the past twenty years, Hollywood provided us with a whole slew of terms, such as dramedy (a combination between a comedy and a drama) and “romcom” (romantic comedy), sitcom (situation comedy) to name only a few.
Click here to read another article about the impact of film on the English language.
The three great military monarchies which have lately fallen to pieces – Russian, Austro-Hungarian and German – were all based upon an aristocracy of large landed properties, whereas the other European countries had become parliamentary and democratic states. Europe was thus divided between two political orders, founded on two social orders, in fact, into two different worlds between which the river Elbe was approximately the boundary…
The war proved a decisive test of the stability of the two social orders; the democratic states went through it without flinching, the monarchies which had which had engendered the war in the hope of strengthening their position have gone under; from their defeat has sprung the revolution, which is overthrowing all aristocracies.
Click here to read a 1916 VANITY FAIR article about how the war had affected the British upper class.
One of the most romantic figures of the entire war was Thomas Lawrence, a young Oxford graduate who had specialized in archeology… To Colonel Lawrence more than any other man was due the efficient organization of the Hejaz Army. He worked in perfect harmony with King Hussein and Prince Faisal, to whom he was second in command.
The Germans and Turks alike soon discovered the presence of this young Englishman among their Arabic opponents in the desert and, realizing the menace of his mysterious and amazing successes, put a price of $5000,000 upon his head.
Blonde as a Viking, he walked about the streets of Jerusalem or other cities, in full panoply of Arab royal costume, plunged in some inner dream.
Read other articles from 1919.
When England and France yielded to Germany in the Munich Agreement of last September, a significant change took place. The balance of power in Europe shifted from the democracies to the dictatorships… [and] the United States had to stop thinking of England and France as America’s ‘first line of defense’ in the time of a European war.
Not too long after the close of the war, exiled German author Thomas Mann (1875 – 1955) was invited to return to Germany. Walter von Molo, a German writer, who during the Nazi regime remained and worked in Germany, sent the invitation to Mann as an Open Letter in the name of German intellectuals. Attached an excerpt of the writer’s response.
The first half of this article succinctly summarizes the German political experience that took place between 1919 through 1933; the second half anticipated a new, stable beginning for Germany. The German correspondent seemed not be bothered at all about their incoming chancellor.
A similar article can be read here…
