Are you ready for the Second Renaissance?

[Eric the Green]

(12-16-2021, 07:34 PM)pbrower2a Wrote: There was no break from the Renaissance into later times. The Enlightenment is more of the same, and mostly we are here.

Certainly, most historians agree that with modernism, beginning in circa 1892 (1885-1898) with Post-Impressionist painting, followed by symbolism, fauvism, expressionism and cubism and in modernist music, all dating from the turn of the 20th century, we have entered a new era that ended the Renaissance. This was also seen in our becoming a global society after European imperialism rapidly climaxed and then met its end, and its world dominance since the Renaissance was unravelled by nationalism resulting in a "civil war" (world war 1, The Great War). The remaining aristocratic empires met their demise, and after the two world wars, Europe lost its colonies too and democracy cemented itself in central Europe. Japan and China became world powers from the 1890s onward, and today our world is multi-centered and almost borderless at-least economically. Technology changed our lives and our landscape, from the automobile to the airplane and electrification, mass media, the skyscraper, mass production, etc. Workers gained greater power for a while. Our view of ourselves and the universe was totally transformed by the new physics, astronomy, psychology and philosophy. Enlightenment worldviews are now outdated in many respects; although perhaps not entirely in the area of human rights, despite the challenges from demagogues and totalitarian tyrants. Cross-cultural world influence is rampant and stimulating. We have discovered much more about cultures of the past and in many lands than was ever known. What is also completely different from the Renaissance/Enlightenment era and any previous era is how we have discovered in our post-1890s world that human civilization could be mortal. This is pictured in the famous scream painting of 1893 by Edvard Munch, and heard in Tchiakovsky's Pathetique Symphony from the same year.

While orchestral performance standards may still be high, inspiring compositions mostly disappeared from the academic and classical world, and that's what counts. What was composed was in new styles, more dissonant and more brash. Pop culture became king in music, in the forms of jazz, rock'n'roll, pop, musicals, folk, electronic and ambient, and the later loud and screechy genres. Modern arts are more imaginative and reflect new vitality, being freed from representation of outward reality and expressing inner reality instead, but sometimes they lack real artistry. Multi-media arts can be quite elaborate, but their mastery is not of the same kind as in previous arts.

The second renaissance emerges from this new world society, and mostly it consists of a few bright spots and is expressed among subcultures, mostly young. The hippie counter-culture brought forth an amazing underground of psychedelic garage bands, a more prolific creativity among young people in the mid to late sixties than one can even imagine, and was scarcely even visible in its own time. Poster art was also amazing, and world influences have been important. Later in the early 90s, the rave and cyber culture emerged in a second summer of love almost equally prolific and amazing, and in such genres as ambient and new age music there is a similar proliferation mostly hidden from most people, but occasionally truly mystical and inspiring. I mentioned multi-media arts, and in general the internet and electronic computers available to all has opened artistic expression to more people by far than ever before. Unfortunately in popular music the quality seen in some genres from the 1920s to the 40s and from the 1960s up into the early 1980s has mostly disappeared, and partly this is due to concentration of the media, and partly to the general cynicism of the times, but at least the internet and the web has opened the way for a few good musicians to come forward and find an audience. Jazz has been a repository of innovation and inspiration since its start at the turn of the 20th century, although its appeal is sometimes limited.