What is the lecture mainly about?

One important thing about art movements is that their popularity can be affected by social conditions, which themselves are often affected by historical events. As an example, look at what happened in the United States early in the 20th century, around the time of the Great Depression, the art movement known as Regionalism had begun in the United States even before the depression occurred. But it really flourished in the 1930s, during the depression years. Why? Well, many artists who had been living in big cities were forced by the economic crisis to leave those cities and move back to their small towns in rural America. Some of these artists came to truly embrace the life in small towns and to reject city life in so called "sophisticated society." These artists or, specifically certain painters really built the regionalist movement. They created things in every day life in small towns or farming areas. And their style was not at all neutral, really big glorified or romanticized country life, showing it stable, wholesome, and embodying important American traditions. And this style became very popular, in part because of the economic conditions of the time. You see, the Depression had caused many Americans to begin to doubt their society. But regionalist artists painted scenes that glorified American values, scenes that many Americans could easily identify with. So the movement helped to strengthen people’s faith in their country, faith that had weakened as the result of the Depression. But in the 1940s, before and after the Second World War, American culture began to take on a much more international spirit, and Regionalism, with its focus on small town life, well, it lost a lot of popularity, as American society changed once again.