Show how the new psychology influenced the birth of key movements in the arts: Expressionism, Dada, and Surrealism

Question

What will be an ideal response?

Answer 1

It was in the visual arts that the new psychology made its most dramatic impact. As artists brought to their work their hidden emotions, their repressed desires, and their dreams and fantasies, art became the vehicle of the subconscious. The irrational and antirational forces of the subconscious were the subject and the inspiration for an assortment of styles, including Expressionism, Dada, and Surrealism.
Expressionism was a style marked by extremes, pathos, violence, and emotional intensity. In the visual arts, it was marked by distorted forms, harsh colors, and the bold and haunting use of black. Composers also wrote in the Expressionist style. Cultural anxiety and apprehension found their way into compositions in the use of atonal and harshly dissonant melodies and harmonies. Song cycles resembled stream-of-consciousness monologues.
While Expressionism investigated the Freudian unconscious, the Dada movement was dedicated to irrationality. Dadaists believed that art was the product of chance, accident, or outrageous behavior, and produced works that deliberately violated good taste, middle-class values, and artistic convention. Dada's attacks on rationalist tradition and on modern technocracy in general reflected the spirit of nihilism(the denial of traditional and religious and moral principles). Further, Dada introduced the modern notion that a work of art was first and foremost about an artist's idea.
Surrealism was devoted to giving physical expression to the workings of the unconscious mind. The Surrealists paid explicit homage to Freud and his writings, especially those on free association and dream analysis. Like Dada, Surrealism helped to liberate the artists from reason and from the demands of conventional society. Surrealism, however, placed a greater emphasis on the dream state in guiding a work's content and aesthetics.