You really have a feeling that here is a building that looks fantastically beautiful, and it’s got its whole façade simply blown off by this war.

-Philipp Blom

World War I presented civilization with unprecedented violence and destruction. The shock of the first modern, “industrial” war extended far into the 20th century and even into the 21st, and changed how people saw the world and themselves. And that was reflected in the cultural responses to the war – which included a burgeoning obsession with beauty and body image, the birth of jazz, new thinking about the human psyche, the Harlem Renaissance, Surrealism...and more.

WNYC's Sara Fishko and guests sift through the lingering effects of the Great War on modern art and life in Shell Shock 1919: How the Great War Changed Culture.

Guests include Jon Batiste, Ann Temkin, David Lubin, Philipp Blom, Jay Winter, Ana Carden-Coyne, Sabine Rewald, David Levering Lewis, Emma Chambers, Marion von Osten, Emily Bernard, and Gail Stavitsky

‘L.H.O.O.Q.’ by Marcel Duchamp; readymade [postcard reproduction of Leonardo da Vinci’s Mona Lisa] and pencil (1919)
(Philadelphia Museum of Art)

James Reese Europe and the 369th Regiment band, also known as the Harlem Hellfighters (1918)
(U.S. National Archives and Record Administration)

Margaret Gorman, the first Miss America, on the Atlantic City boardwalk (1921)
(Wikimedia Commons)

Still from Wallace Worsley’s The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1923, Universal) starring Lon Chaney as Quasimodo and Patsy Ruth Miller as Esmeralda
(Universal Pictures)

The Cenotaph in Whitehall, London on November 9, 2015, surrounded by poppy wreaths for Remembrance Day
(Bailey-Cooper Photography / Alamy Stock Photo)

Producer/Host: Sara Fishko
Associate Producer: Olivia Briley
Technical Director: Ed Haber
Editor: Karen Frillmann

Production help from Terence Mickey, Meara Sharma, and Frederic Castel

With the voices of Michael Wist and Alexis Cuadrado

Thanks to Loren Schoenberg, Jennifer Keene, Jo Fox, Katy Wan, Marion von Osten, Marion Kiesow II, Patrick Helber, Shannon Connolly, and Natalia Ramirez

Shell Shock 1919 is supported by the Revada Foundation of the Logan Family

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OTM presents: Shell Shock 1919: How the Great War Changed Culture

On the Media

OTM presents: Shell Shock 1919: How the Great War Changed Culture