Saturday, May 31, 2008
What happened to history and art?
Hegel described the idea of an end to history. If you think about the context of Hegel was describing, he was talking about an event that changes everything and which leaves the world in a transitional state. The end of the Napoleon era is an example of an end of history event. After Napoleon you had the rise of countries that had never really been all together, together, like Germany and Italy. England soon became the lone superpower, at least for a short while. France managed to remain the cultural center, but the art had changed. A romantic art had arisen out of the ashes of the Neo-Classical. The romantic art included a great many styles of art ranging from the expressionistic to the realistic. Everything was influx until the road to iconoclastic art started with the Impressionists and played out until the 1980’s. An event within many of our lifetime is the fall of the Soviet Union. The US was declared the lone superpower for a little while. And now we are seeing the rise of China and India. Europe has become even more unified in a very short time. Art styles and content are all over the map in this Post Modern period of art making. Yet again we are finding ourselves in an end of history moment in time. This is a great opportunity for artists and the world to set the projection of history for maybe the next 100 years.
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The suggestion, then, is that true history is story, meaning if there is not a story, an overarching narrative, then we are not in an historical period. The Napoleonic Age is such a narrative, as is the WWI-WWII-Cold War era. So we end up with historic era-chaotic era-historic era-chaotic era.
Another option would be to follow the spiral dynamics model, in which the egalitarian stage, in which postmodernism falls, is indeed the end of history, if we consider history the time of man, since the 1st tier is the psychosociology of man through several stages. With the advent of the 2nd tier thinker, and especially should a 2nd tier society develop, a new post-historical era will arise. Thus, different societies are in different stages. Many countries are still historical. A few, like the Western countries, are at the End of History. There are posthistorical people, but no posthistorical countries yet. It is up to the former to lead us to the latter.
Thoughts?
This article by Ian McEwan might be interesting in light of this topic.
A few more end of history moments: Fall of Rome, end of Dynastic rule
in China, fall of Mauryas in India, to Native Americans - the landing of Columbus.
a few more: the Renaissance, including Galileo and Columbus' journey (resulting in the discovery/creation of a new heaven and a new earth); Alexander the Greats' campaign/reign; overthrow of the Czars in Russia (end of Czarist history).
What would cause all histories to merge into one large history? And is it even possible? Right now, cultures are in and out of history and on different tracks. These histories trade with one another and these histories are connected to each other, but the cultural history of the West, for example, is out of history right now, where as China is currently in a historical narrative. Maybe a world wide news event very briefly unites a lot of the world, like the moon landing.
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