Art and literature

Art and literature

The last ball, 1905. Aurélio de Figueiredo.The arts underwent a radical transformation during the decades before World War I, and new artistic forms associated with cultural modernity emerged.

Impressionism, which had been considered the artistic avant-garde in the 1860s, did not gain widespread acceptance until after World War I: the academic realist painting style that appealed to the Belle Époque is exemplified in the eroticism paraded as mythology of William-Adolphe Bouguereau or John William Waterhouse, or the idyllic Roman scenes of Lord Leighton. More progressive tastes patronized the Barbizon school plein-air painters, and in Britain, the Pre-Raphaelites, who inspired a generation of esthetic-minded "Souls". The largely decorative style known as Art Nouveau (Jugendstil in central Europe), characterized by its curvilinear forms, become prominent from the mid-90s and dominated progressive design throughout much of Europe. Many successful examples of this style, with notable regional variations, were built in France, Germany, Belgium, Spain, Austria (the Vienna Secession), Hungary, Bohemia and Latvia. It soon spread around the world, including to Mexico and the United States.

Theatre adopted new modern methods, including Expressionism, and many playwrights wrote plays that shocked contemporary audiences either with their frank depictions of everyday life and sexuality or with unusual artistic elements. Cabaret theater also became popular. Musically, the Belle Époque was characterized by salon music. This was not considered "serious" music but, rather, short pieces considered accessible to a general audience. In addition to works for piano solo or violin and piano, the Belle Époque was famous for its large repertory of songs (mélodies, romanze, etc.). The Italians were the greatest proponents of this type of song, its greatest champion being Francesco Paolo Tosti. Though Tosti's songs never completely left the repertoire, salon music generally fell into a period of obscurity. Even as encores, singers were afraid to sing them at "serious" recitals. In that period, waltzes also flourished. Operettas were also at the peak of their popularity, with composers such as Johann Strauss III, Emmerich Kalman, and Franz Lehár. It was during this era that the motion pictures were developed, though these did not become common until after World War I.

European literature underwent a major transformation during the Belle Époque. Literary realism and naturalism achieved new heights. Among the most famous realist or naturalist authors are Benito Pérez Galdós, Theodor Fontane, Guy de Maupassant and Émile Zola. Realism gradually developed into modernism, which emerged in the 1890s and came to dominate European literature during the Belle Époque's final years and throughout the interwar years. Among the most prominent European modernist authors are Andrei Bely, Joseph Conrad, James Joyce, Franz Kafka, D. H. Lawrence, Thomas Mann, Robert Musil, Marcel Proust, Arthur Schnitzler, Robert Walser and William Butler Yeats.