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<p> The year 1900 was the pivotal fulcrum of the turn of the century, that short but crucial era we call the fin-de-siècle, ranging from 1890 to WW I. This explosively creative period of literary and artistic expression witnessed the dramatic transition from the cultural order of old Europe to the new worlds of modernity: Freud's Vienna, Toulouse Lautrec's Paris, and the London of George Bernard Shaw and Oscar Wilde. It was an exciting new era of steam, speed and electrification, of the exhilarating cultural life of world's fairs, crowded boulevards, cafes, music halls, art galleries, and photographer's studios. <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p> New styles of painting by Viennese Secessionists Gustav Klimt, Egon Schiele, and Oscar Kokoschka, along with Picasso's Cubist experiments, would change people's ideas of what art could do and even of what art was for. Colorful posters featured a new world of travel and consumerism, of daring cabaret performers and uninhibited night-life, and of "new women" shown smoking cigarettes, riding bicycles, and claiming public space. Radical performances by Diaghilev's innovative company, the Ballets Russes, could provoke controversy, and even rioting in the concert halls. The excitement of Belle Époque Paris is legendary, but London may have felt the most vibrant polarizations of all: on the one hand, the sternly patriarchal imperial and colonialist culture celebrated by Rudyard Kipling, with comic relief provided by Gilbert and Sullivan; and on the other, the subterranean currents of aestheticism and gender-bending decadence explored by Oscar Wilde and Aubrey Beardsley, who pushed the boundaries of what Victorian London would tolerate, up to and beyond its limits. <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p> Our interdisciplinary exploration will range from the fine arts and music, through architecture, urban design and city planning, to popular culture and the radical social changes marking this turn of the century epoch. <o:p></o:p></span></p>