Final answer:
After WWI, artists and authors depicted the horrors of war and its societal impact, with themes of loss, mourning, and disillusionment. Movements like Dada and Surrealism challenged established norms, leading to new forms of expression. The post-war era witnessed a shift towards abstraction and the migration of the art world center to New York City.
Step-by-step explanation:
After World War I, artists and authors depicted the horrors of war and its impact on society. Notable poets like Wilfred Owen and Siegfried Sassoon highlighted the inhumanity and suffering of the war through their writings, steering clear from glorification of heroic charges. The personal anguish of artists, many being direct victims of the war's tragedies, fueled their work with raw emotions and somber reflections. German artist Käthe Kollwitz, for example, expressed the deep pain of loss and mourning in her art, moving away from traditional themes and embracing the grief and disillusionment of the period.
Contributing to the shift in artistic expression, inventions in science, technology, and changes in societal norms challenged prior perceptions of reality. The Dada movement, which rose in reaction to the war, embraced absurdity and nonsense to protest against the rational thought that allegedly led to the war. This movement, and later the Surrealists, represented a significant counterpart to the artistic depiction of war horrors. They aimed at dismantling the established social and cultural norms and searched for new ways to express the collective disillusionment and the subconscious.
These seismic shifts in society and collective consciousness influenced the art and literature of the post-WWI era significantly. Artists like Edvard Munch, who began exploring new ways of expressing emotional states even before the war, inspired others post-war to liberate their use of color, lines, and shapes, and to move towards abstraction. This era eventually saw New York City becoming the new center for the art world, as many European artists fled the post-war chaos of their homelands.