20th- and 21st-Century Culture, Arts, and Demographic Trends

By the end of this lesson, students will be able to:

• Account for how and why European culture changed from the period following the Second World War to the present (Skill 5.A; LO O).
• Account for KC-4.3.I.B: how the effects of world war and economic depression undermined confidence in science and human reason and produced existentialism and postmodernism in the post-1945 period.
• Account for KC-4.3.III, KC-4.3.III.A, and KC-4.3.III.B: how organized religion continued to play a role despite secular and ideological challenges, how Christian churches responded variably to totalitarianism and communism, and how the Second Vatican Council reformed Catholic doctrine and practice.
• Account for KC-4.3.IV, KC-4.3.IV.A, and KC-4.3.IV.B: how twentieth-century arts were defined by experimentation, self-expression, subjectivity, and the increasing American influence; how new visual-arts, architectural, and musical movements shifted aesthetic standards; and how writers across the century challenged literary conventions and questioned Western values.
• Account for KC-4.4.I.C, KC-4.4.II.C, KC-4.4.III.B, and KC-4.4.III.C: how mass production and new food technologies produced the consumer culture; how the postwar baby boom reshaped European demographics; how women's, gay-and-lesbian, and other movements expanded civil rights; and how intellectuals and youth reacted against perceived bourgeois materialism in the revolts of 1968.
• Identify patterns and connections across the multiple cultural-and-demographic dimensions (Skill 5.A in direct practice).

Topic 9.14 covers the substantial postwar European cultural and demographic transformation across eleven CED key concepts. The lesson is structured in five interlocking parts: the existentialist and postmodernist intellectual traditions (KC-4.3.I.B); the religious-life transformation including Vatican II (KC-4.3.III, KC-4.3.III.A, KC-4.3.III.B); the postwar visual arts, architecture, music, and literature (KC-4.3.IV, KC-4.3.IV.A, KC-4.3.IV.B); the postwar consumer society and demographic transformation (KC-4.4.I.C, KC-4.4.II.C); and the postwar civil-rights movements and the revolts of 1968 (KC-4.4.III.B, KC-4.4.III.C).

Existentialism and postmodernism (KC-4.3.I.B). The effects of world war and economic depression undermined confidence in science and human reason, producing existentialism and postmodernism in the post-1945 period. Existentialism (Topic 8.10 covered) anchored the immediate postwar Western European intellectual position: Jean-Paul Sartre's Being and Nothingness (1943) and his October 1945 lecture "Existentialism Is a Humanism" (published 1946); Albert Camus's The Myth of Sisyphus (1942) and The Rebel (1951); Simone de Beauvoir's The Ethics of Ambiguity (1947) and The Second Sex (1949); Maurice Merleau-Ponty's Phenomenology of Perception (1945). The Frankfurt School critical-theory tradition extended through the postwar period: Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer's Dialectic of Enlightenment (1944, published 1947); Adorno's Negative Dialectics (1966) and Aesthetic Theory (posthumous 1970); Herbert Marcuse's Eros and Civilization (1955) and One-Dimensional Man (1964); the substantial subsequent Habermas, Honneth, and Frankfurt School development.

French structuralism and post-structuralism produced the principal mid- to late-twentieth-century European intellectual register. The structuralist period: Claude Levi-Strauss's Structural Anthropology (1958); Roland Barthes's Mythologies (1957) and S/Z (1970); the Lacanian psychoanalytic tradition (Jacques Lacan's seminars from 1953 onward; Ecrits 1966); Louis Althusser's Marxist structuralism. The post-structuralist period: Michel Foucault's The Order of Things (1966), Discipline and Punish (1975), and The History of Sexuality (1976-1984); Jacques Derrida's Of Grammatology (1967) and the principal deconstructionist tradition; Jean-Francois Lyotard's The Postmodern Condition (1979) that articulated the principal postmodernist position ("incredulity toward metanarratives"); Jean Baudrillard's Simulacra and Simulation (1981); Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari's Anti-Oedipus (1972) and A Thousand Plateaus (1980). The substantial subsequent Anglo-American post-structuralist reception (the principal North American "theory" tradition of the 1980s and 1990s) extended the French intellectual influence globally.

Religious life and the Second Vatican Council (KC-4.3.III, KC-4.3.III.A, KC-4.3.III.B). Organized religion continued to play a role in European social and cultural life despite the challenges of military and ideological conflict, modern secularism, and rapid social changes. The principal twentieth-century European religious patterns combined the substantial postwar secularization in Western Europe (the long-running decline in church attendance from approximately 60-80 percent in the immediate postwar period to approximately 5-25 percent by 2010 across most Western European countries) with the substantial Eastern European religious life under Communist Party rule (the Polish Catholic Church under Cardinal Stefan Wyszynski and subsequently Pope John Paul II maintained substantial institutional continuity; the Russian Orthodox Church operated under substantial state control through 1991; the substantial post-1989 religious revival across the former Eastern bloc).

The challenges of totalitarianism and communism in central and eastern Europe brought mixed responses from Christian churches. The principal Catholic responses include the German Confessing Church under Dietrich Bonhoeffer (executed by the Nazis on 9 April 1945); the principal European Resistance contributions from Catholic priests and religious orders during the Second World War; Pope Pius XII's substantially contested wartime position (the substantial subsequent debate over the Vatican's Holocaust-era response); the Polish Cardinal Stefan Wyszynski's principal anti-Communist leadership (interned 1953-1956); the substantial principal long-running Catholic Church-Polish Communist regime contestation; the post-1978 Polish Pope John Paul II's principal anti-Communist political role (the June 1979 Polish papal visit substantially anchored the subsequent Solidarity movement); the Hungarian Cardinal Jozsef Mindszenty (imprisoned 1948-1956; subsequent Vienna asylum 1956-1971); the Czechoslovak Catholic Church under Cardinals Beran and Tomasek; the substantial Romanian Greek Catholic Church suppression (1948-1989).

The Second Vatican Council (Vaticanum II) was the principal mid-twentieth-century Catholic reform event. Pope John XXIII opened the Council on 11 October 1962 in the Vatican Basilica with approximately 2,540 bishops in attendance; subsequent sessions through 1965 produced four Constitutions, nine Decrees, and three Declarations. Pope Paul VI succeeded John XXIII on 21 June 1963 and presided over the subsequent sessions; the Council closed on 8 December 1965. The principal documents include the Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World (Gaudium et Spes, 7 December 1965); the Dogmatic Constitution on the Church (Lumen Gentium, 21 November 1964); the Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy (Sacrosanctum Concilium, 4 December 1963; authorized vernacular liturgy); the Decree on Ecumenism (Unitatis Redintegratio, 21 November 1964); the Declaration on Religious Freedom (Dignitatis Humanae, 7 December 1965); and the Declaration on the Relation of the Church to Non-Christian Religions (Nostra Aetate, 28 October 1965; substantially reframed Catholic-Jewish relations and rejected the deicide charge against Jews collectively).

The post-Vatican II period produced substantial subsequent Catholic theological development. The principal post-Vatican II theological positions include the Latin American liberation theology (Gustavo Gutierrez's A Theology of Liberation of 1971); the substantial European theological figures including Karl Rahner, Hans Urs von Balthasar, Joseph Ratzinger (subsequently Pope Benedict XVI), Hans Kung, and Jurgen Moltmann (Protestant). Pope John Paul II (Karol Wojtyla, pope 1978-2005) substantially shaped the post-Vatican II Catholic Church; Pope Benedict XVI (Joseph Ratzinger, 2005-2013) extended the John Paul II theological position; Pope Francis (Jorge Mario Bergoglio, from 13 March 2013, the first Latin American pope and the first Jesuit pope) substantially modified the institutional emphasis. The substantial subsequent ecumenical and inter-religious dialogue, the substantial sexual-abuse-crisis revelations from the 2000s onward, and the broader substantial twentieth- and twenty-first-century European Catholic decline have produced sustained institutional contestation.

Postwar visual arts, architecture, music, and literature (KC-4.3.IV, KC-4.3.IV.A, KC-4.3.IV.B). Across the twentieth century, the arts were defined by experimentation, self-expression, subjectivity, and the increasing influence of the United States in both elite and popular culture. New movements in the visual arts, architecture, and music shifted existing aesthetic standards, explored subconscious and subjective states, and satirized Western society and its values. The principal postwar Western European visual-arts movements include Abstract Expressionism (the principal early-postwar position, with substantial American leadership under Jackson Pollock, Mark Rothko, Willem de Kooning; substantial European participation including Hans Hartung and Pierre Soulages); the British figurative tradition (Francis Bacon, Lucian Freud, Frank Auerbach); the Italian Arte Povera (Mario Merz, Giuseppe Penone, Jannis Kounellis from the late 1960s); the German Neo-Expressionism (Anselm Kiefer, Georg Baselitz, Sigmar Polke from the 1970s); the German Capitalist Realism (Sigmar Polke, Gerhard Richter from 1963); the substantial postwar French and broader European Pop Art reception; the post-1989 substantial European post-modern art (Damien Hirst and the Young British Artists; the Berlin gallery scene); the substantial subsequent video, performance, and digital-art movements.

Postwar European architecture extended the modernist tradition through the broader International Style (Mies van der Rohe in the United States after the 1933 Bauhaus closure; Le Corbusier's principal postwar projects including the Unite d'habitation in Marseille 1947-1952 and the Notre-Dame du Haut chapel at Ronchamp 1955); the principal postwar reconstruction architecture; the postmodernist architectural reaction from the 1970s (Charles Jencks's The Language of Post-Modern Architecture 1977); the substantial late-twentieth- and early-twenty-first-century European starchitect projects (Norman Foster, Richard Rogers, Renzo Piano, Zaha Hadid, Rem Koolhaas, Herzog and de Meuron). Postwar music combined the continuation of the early-twentieth-century modernist serialist tradition (Pierre Boulez's Le Marteau sans Maitre 1955; Karlheinz Stockhausen's Gesang der Junglinge 1956 and the broader Darmstadt school) with substantial subsequent postminimalist and electronic-music developments (Iannis Xenakis; Brian Eno; Kraftwerk from 1970); the parallel substantial American popular-music influence (jazz; rock and roll; subsequent musical genres); the substantial twentieth- and twenty-first-century European popular music (the Beatles and the broader British Invasion; ABBA; the European punk movement; subsequent European electronic dance music).

Postwar literature extended the modernist trajectory across multiple national traditions. The principal early-postwar European literature includes Albert Camus's The Plague (1947) and The Stranger (1942); Jean-Paul Sartre's Roads to Freedom trilogy (1945-1949); Heinrich Boll's Group Portrait with Lady (1971); Gunter Grass's The Tin Drum (1959; Grass received the 1999 Nobel Prize in Literature); Italo Calvino's If on a winter's night a traveler (1979); Umberto Eco's The Name of the Rose (1980) and Foucault's Pendulum (1988); Milan Kundera's The Unbearable Lightness of Being (1984); the substantial postwar British literature including the principal generation of Doris Lessing, Iris Murdoch, V. S. Naipaul, Kingsley Amis, Salman Rushdie. The principal European Theater of the Absurd combined Samuel Beckett's Waiting for Godot (1953) and Endgame (1957); Eugene Ionesco's The Bald Soprano (1950) and Rhinoceros (1959); Harold Pinter's principal postwar British dramatic works. The substantial twentieth- and twenty-first-century European Nobel laureates in literature include Beckett (1969), Boll (1972), Grass (1999), Doris Lessing (2007), Mario Vargas Llosa (2010, Peruvian-Spanish), Patrick Modiano (2014), Olga Tokarczuk (2018), Annie Ernaux (2022), and Han Kang (2024, Korean).

The postwar consumer society and demographic transformation (KC-4.4.I.C, KC-4.4.II.C). Mass production, new food technologies, and industrial efficiency increased disposable income and produced a consumer culture in which greater domestic comforts (electricity, indoor plumbing, plastics, synthetic fibers) became available across Western Europe. Topic 9.2 covered the principal postwar economic miracle that financed the consumer society. The principal postwar consumer-society features include the household-appliance revolution (refrigerators, washing machines, vacuum cleaners, televisions); the mass-motorization revolution (the Volkswagen Beetle, Citroen 2CV, Fiat 500, Mini); the supermarket-retail format; the broadcast-media transformation; the substantial mass-leisure-travel expansion. The cumulative substantial Western European consumer-society reorganization combined economic transformation with substantial cultural transformation.

With economic recovery after the Second World War, the birth rate increased dramatically (the baby boom), often promoted by government policies. The Western European baby boom ran from approximately 1947 to approximately 1965 in most countries (the British baby boom peaked in 1947 and again in 1964; the French and Italian baby booms peaked in approximately 1964; the West German baby boom peaked in approximately 1964-1965). Approximately 80 million Western Europeans were born during the baby-boom period; the cumulative European birth rate during the boom averaged approximately 2.7-2.9 children per woman, substantially higher than the prewar average of approximately 2.0 and substantially higher than the post-1980 European average of approximately 1.5. Pro-natalist government policies included substantial family allowances; substantial paid maternity leave provisions; subsidized childcare; substantial housing programs for young families. The post-1965 substantial Western European fertility decline (driven by the contraceptive pill, the substantial expansion of women's professional employment, and the broader cultural reorientation) produced the substantial subsequent European demographic challenge that the post-2000 substantial immigration has partly addressed.

Civil-rights movements and the revolts of 1968 (KC-4.4.III.B, KC-4.4.III.C). Various movements, including women's movements, political and social movements, gay and lesbian movements, and others, worked for expanded civil rights, in some cases obtaining the goals they sought, and in others facing strong opposition. Topic 9.8 covered the principal postwar feminist trajectory. The principal European gay-and-lesbian-rights movement developed in waves: the early-twentieth-century German homosexual emancipation movement under Magnus Hirschfeld and the Wissenschaftlich-humanitares Komitee (1897-1933; Hirschfeld's Institute for Sexual Science was destroyed by the Nazis in May 1933 and Hirschfeld emigrated to France); the substantial postwar criminal-law decriminalization across Western Europe (the British Sexual Offences Act of 27 July 1967, partial decriminalization in England and Wales; the French Mirguet amendment repeal of 1981; the West German Paragraph 175 reform of 1969 and 1973; the Dutch and Scandinavian early decriminalization). The post-Stonewall (June 1969 American) European gay-and-lesbian-rights movement produced the substantial late-twentieth-century European Pride parades; the substantial registered-partnership and civil-union frameworks (Denmark first, registered partnerships from 1989); the substantial subsequent same-sex-marriage legalization (the Netherlands first, 1 April 2001; Topic 9.8 covered).

Intellectuals and youth reacted against perceived bourgeois materialism and decadence, most significantly with the revolts of 1968. The principal European 1968 movements developed simultaneously across multiple national contexts. The Paris May 1968 was the principal European 1968 event: the May 3 Sorbonne occupation by Nanterre student activists; the May 6 substantial Latin Quarter street confrontations; the May 13 general strike call by the principal trade unions; the cumulative approximately 10 million workers participating in the largest general strike in French history; the May 24 de Gaulle's substantial appearance to consult military commanders at Baden-Baden; the May 30 de Gaulle's National Assembly dissolution and the June 23-30 substantial Gaullist electoral victory that produced the principal political resolution. The May 1968 events produced substantial subsequent French cultural-political reorganization but did not produce the immediate revolution that the principal student-activist leaders had sought.

The parallel European 1968 movements include the West German Sozialistischer Deutscher Studentenbund (SDS) under Rudi Dutschke (the principal SDS leader; shot and severely wounded on 11 April 1968 by Josef Bachmann); the Italian Hot Autumn of 1969 (the substantial post-1968 Italian student-and-worker movement); the Polish March 1968 student protests (suppressed by the Polish Communist regime); the Yugoslav June 1968 student protests; the parallel American civil-rights and anti-Vietnam-war movements (Martin Luther King's assassination on 4 April 1968 substantially shaped the international 1968 register; the Robert Kennedy assassination on 6 June 1968; the Tlatelolco Massacre in Mexico City on 2 October 1968; the parallel Czechoslovak Prague Spring covered in Topics 9.3 and 9.7). The cumulative substantial 1968 movements produced substantial subsequent cultural-political reorganization including the principal post-1968 Western European new-left tradition; the substantial post-1968 feminist, gay-rights, and environmental movements; the broader substantial post-1968 cultural-and-intellectual transformation that the post-1968 generation substantially anchored.

The Skill 5.A argument. Topic 9.14's suggested skill is 5.A (Identify Patterns and Connections: identify and explain patterns and connections that link historical developments and processes). The skill applies particularly to the substantial multi-dimensional cultural-and-demographic content of Topic 9.14. Students should identify the principal patterns connecting the eleven CED key concepts: the existentialist and postmodernist intellectual traditions reflected the substantial twentieth-century cultural-philosophical trajectory; the Vatican II reforms reflected the broader substantial postwar institutional reorganization; the postwar visual-arts and literary movements substantially extended the prewar modernist trajectory; the postwar consumer society and the baby boom anchored the principal postwar demographic-and-economic transformation; the 1968 revolts and the subsequent civil-rights movements reflected the cumulative substantial Western European cultural-political mobilization. The cumulative pattern reveals the substantial Western European post-1945 cultural-and-demographic transformation that connected to and substantially extended the principal Unit 9 narrative themes.

Three short excerpts anchor Topic 9.14: Sartre's October 1945 lecture articulating the principal postwar existentialist position; Pope Paul VI's promulgation of Vatican II's Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World; and Lyotard's 1979 articulation of the principal postmodern condition.

1. Account for how Sartre's October 1945 articulation of existentialism reflected the cumulative substantial impact of the Second World War on European intellectual life. What aspects of the prewar European intellectual tradition did existentialism continue, and what did it depart from? (Connects KC-4.3.I.B; Skill 5.A pattern across pre- and post-1945 intellectual life.)
2. Compare the Second Vatican Council's Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World (December 1965) with the principal patterns of Western European secularization that the same period produced. Why was Vatican II's pastoral position substantially insufficient to halt the long-running Western European decline in church attendance? (Connects KC-4.3.III, KC-4.3.III.B; reasoning Continuity and Change.)
3. Account for how the postwar visual-arts, architectural, musical, and literary movements substantially extended versus departed from the prewar modernist trajectory (covered in Topics 8.10 and earlier units). Where did postwar Western European arts genuinely innovate, and where did they continue prewar twentieth-century patterns? (Connects KC-4.3.IV, KC-4.3.IV.A, KC-4.3.IV.B; Skill 5.A pattern reasoning.)
4. Account for how the postwar baby boom and the resulting consumer society shaped the substantial subsequent cultural mobilization of 1968. What was the relationship between the substantial Western European postwar economic miracle and the substantial 1968 youth-and-intellectual mobilization? (Connects KC-4.4.I.C, KC-4.4.II.C, KC-4.4.III.C.)
5. Compare the principal European 1968 events (Paris May, Italian Hot Autumn, Polish March 1968, Yugoslav June 1968) with the parallel American civil-rights and anti-Vietnam-war movements. What aspects were genuinely shared across the Atlantic, and what aspects were specifically European? (Connects KC-4.4.III.C; Skill 5.A pattern reasoning across multiple national contexts.)
6. Account for the substantial postwar civil-rights movements (women's, gay-and-lesbian, broader human-rights) and identify the principal ways these movements obtained the goals they sought versus the principal ways they faced strong opposition. Why did the substantial post-1989 European civil-rights expansion proceed at substantially different paces in Western Europe versus the former Eastern bloc? (Connects KC-4.4.III.B; reasoning Continuity and Change.)