[<<] 1890s [>>]
Parent: 1800s - fin de siécle
By year: 1890 - 1891 - 1892 - 1893 - 1894 - 1895 - 1896 - 1897 - 1898 - 1899
Literature: The Picture of Dorian Gray (1890) - Ubu Roi (1896) - Alfred Jarry - Dracula (1897) - Bram Stoker - The Songs of Bilitis (1894) - Pierre Louÿs - H.G. Wells's science fiction
Film and theatre: cinema (first paying audiences) - The Kiss (1896 film) - Grand Guignol theatre (Paris)
Music: music halls (height of popularity) - ragtime music - Tin Pan Alley
Visual arts: Art Nouveau - arts and crafts movement
Technology: phonograph (enjoys popularity) - telephone (enjoys popularity) - early commercial production of cars
Sociology: Degeneration (Nordau, Lombroso) - New Woman (feminism) - first pin-up girls - Decadent movement - start of psychoanalysis in Vienna
Births (literary): H.P. Lovecraft - Henry Miller - Walter Benjamin - Edogawa Rampo - Céline - Aldous Huxley - Paul Éluard - Antonin Artaud - André Breton - Louis Aragon - Georges Bataille - Bertolt Brecht - Vladimir Nabokov - Henri Michaux -
Births (other): Erich Auerbach - Bruno Schulz - Josef von Sternberg - Jean Renoir - Alfred Kinsey - Mikhail Bakhtin - Max Horkheimer - Dziga Vertov - André Masson - Wilhelm Reich - Jean Epstein - Sergei Eisenstein - René Magritte - Herbert Marcuse - Tamara De Lempicka - Alfred Hitchcock
Quote: "We stand at the threshold of an altogether new art- an art with forms which mean or represent nothing, recall nothing, yet which can stimulate our souls as deeply as only the tones of music have been able to." --August Endell, 1898.
Lynchings of African Americans in the United States averaged 150 per year. [Apr 2006]
First modern music: If modern music may be said to have a definite beginning, then it started [!] with this flute melody, the opening of the Prélude à après-midi d'un Faune (1862-1918). -- Paul Griffiths
Tar-ra-ra-boom-der-ay (1891) - Henry J. Sayers
image sourced here.Key work of art: Scream (1893) - Edvard Munch
Events
Profile
The 1890s were sometimes referred to as the "Mauve Decade," because William Henry Perkin's aniline dye allowed the widespread use of that colour in fashion, and also as the "Gay Nineties", under the then-current usage of the word "gay" which referred simply to merriment and frivolity, with no connotation of homosexuality as in current-day usage. The phrase, "The Gay Nineties," was not coined until 1926. --http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1890s [Apr 2006]Cinema [...]
It was in America that people were first induced to pay to watch -- in May 1895 in a store on Broadway. In Europe it was not until November 1895 in Berlin that a movie was shown in public.The quality of the movies shown in New York and Berlin were extremely poor and used processes that had no lasting impact on movie technology. The "true" debut of the motion picture is therefore usually dated to December 28, 1895 in Paris, where at the Grand Cafe in Boulevard des Capucines the Lumière brothers had their first paying audience. --http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_cinema [Sept 2004]
A Biased Timeline of the Counter-Culture [...]
1890 Standard Oil becomes the first U.S. industrial `Trust' Sherman Anti-Trust Law Mississippi becomes first Southern state to draw up new constitution to control who could vote Sitting Bull, Sioux leader, assassinated, Sioux sought refuge at Pine Ridge Dec (last Indian massacre) Wounded Knee, South Dakota: U.S. army kills 300 of 350 Vincent Van Gogh dies (37!?) U.K.: William Morris: News from Nowhere (describes socialist utopia) Jacob Riis (Danish sociologist studying U.S.): How the Other Half Lives Sir James Frazer: The Golden Bough Healthy and Artistic Dress Union, U.K. "Comic Cuts" and "Chips" comic papers, U.K. (-1953) 1890s -- first generation born after birth of modern Europe 187O reaches its 20s: Dreiser, Mann, Proust, Gertrude Stein, Jack London, Rilke, Robert Frost -- "the Gay Nineties" Classic Bohemian society in Paris's Latin Quarter; Four Arts Balls held yearly; Toulouse-Lautrec, Jarry, Bonnard, Gide, Mallarme, etc. Railways permit middle class to move to countryside around London (& start of Back To The Land movement) first public bathing place on the river at Cambridge (men only) (1890s: diptheria, typhoid, smallpox & dysentery epidemics) Racist legislation in New Orleans forces Creoles, among the prosperous families of the city, into social & occupational contact with blacks; leads to changes in the music, as Creoles are educated & could read music 1891 first(?) U.S. miners strike, Tennessee 1891-3 Gauguin settles and paints in Tahiti 1892 strikes all over the U.S.: iron & steel workers; gen strike New Orleans; railroad strike Buffalo NY; miners strike Coeur d'Alene, Idaho; Homestead steelworkers, Pennsylvania U.S.: Populist candidates in presidential and other elections Diesel patents his internal combustion engine First automatic telephone switchboard Bedales School, Sussex Home Colonization Society founded Monet begins series of paintings of Rouen Cathedral (-1895) Toulouse-Lautrec: "At the Moulin Rouge" first newspaper comic strips in U.S. newspapers (S.F. Examiner) 1893 Depression (worst in US so far), & riots in California U.S. adopts single gold standard, basis of capital centralism Henry Ford builds his first car George Poore, M.D.: Essays in Rural Hygiene: introduces earth closet in Britain Edvard Munch: The Scream ART NOUVEAU appears in Europe Buddy Bolden (14) is "king" of black Nola music 1894 Coxey leads mass march of unemployed to Washington Pullman Strike, Pres. Cleveland sends troops to put down; Eugene Debs, who helped organized it, sent to prison for six months Altruria community, Sonoma County, Calif (to 1895) Populist Party gets 40% of congressional elections vote Aubrey Beardsley (22) drawings for Salome 1895 Rontgen discovers x-rays Marconi invents radio (=wireless) telgraph Maryland Colony, Essex: first intensive agricultural coloney for city market (lasted 10+ years) Bouesville (ck spell) model village (Cadbury chocolate) first public film show, Paris (Hotel Scribe) H.G. Wells: The Time Machine Art Nouveau style predominates 1895-6 Bohemian "Les Jeunes" in San Francisco publish journal "The Lark" 1896 Supreme Court ruling against Homer Adolph Plessy for refusing to occupy a seat in the colored car of a Louisiana train sets up the "separate but equal" doctrine Populists enticed into Democratic Party to elect William Jennings Bryan, who lost anyway, to Republican William McKinley, supported by the first massive money campaign "La Boheme" - opera by Puccini based on Murger's work, opens in Turin, popularizes bohemian life "Die Jugend" & "Simplicissimus" Ger. art magazines, Munich Hearst starts first comics newspaper supplement when? discovery of gold in Black Hills of Dakota brings vast new influx of white settlers into Sioux territory 1896 Sioux and Cheyenne defeat Custer at the battle of Little Big Horn; later (when?) defeated at Tongue River Valley 1896-7 Purleigh Colony, Essex (commune) -1898 Whiteway Colony, Cotswalds (proposed to be deeded to God) -1901 1897 Royal Automobile Club founded, London Vienna: Klimt, Schiele and others: first Secessionist exhibition William Morris: Forecasts of the Coming Century (posth.)(get this) Henri Rousseau: "Sleeping Gypsy" In the wake of the opening of a large U.S. Navy base in New Orleans, Alderman Charles Storyville sponsors an ordinance to limit prostitution to one area of the city, bordered by the Mississippi River, Perdido & Basin Streets; it is nicknamed "Storyville" and becomes the center for the development of ragtime piano (Jelly Roll Morton, etc.) 1898 U.S. fights Spanish-American War photographs first taken using artificial light Paris Metro opened Ebenezer Howard: Garden Cities of To-Morrow proposes suburban planned developments with their own employment UK: Folk Song Society founded Aubrey Beardsley dies (26) H.G. Wells: The War of the Worlds Alfred Jarry: Ubu Roi The MacKintosh School of Art, Glasgow: art nouveau architecture Peter Kropotkin: Fields, Factories and Workshops (explain) First ragtime song published 1897, by twelve months later the first dance craze (?Scott Jopline's Maple Leaf Rag - sold 1 million copies in U.S. alone) 1899 first magnetic recording of sound London County Council buys land for first suburb, connected by electric railway (Totterdown Fields, opened 1903), meant to relieve crowding in inner city slums 1890- 1914 Invention of: the telephone, cheap camera, phonograph, rotary press & linotype, photoengraving, railroad air-brake & sleeping car, electric street car, skyscraper, suspension bridge, motor vehicles, airplane, typewriter, bicycle, electric light, motion picture, public library, scientific medicine, department store, ocean liner, refrigeration, elecvator, sewing machine, gas stove, steam heating, hot running water + traffic light Also: Art Nouveau: Vienna, London, Paris, Munich, Barcelona, Glasgow, San Francisco 1900 Sigmund Freud: Interpretation of Dreams L. Frank Baum: The Wonderful Wizard of Oz The Cake Walk becomes the most fashionable dance Silent Film era begins
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