The End of the Century: a critical period

If we have a look at History, we can observe how, curiously, the end of a century has been lived by the different societies as a problematic moment. It is lawful to see in this slightly curious fact if we consider that the calculation of years changes according to the culture in which we are situated and, inside this one, has suffered modifications also throughout the time. In West, which the predominant culture has been the established by the Christianity, we observe that it is until the 7th century (with the Pope Bonifacius IV) when the calculation is not been established according to the Christian Age, which point of item is the supposed date of Christ's birth. Before this calculation, it was the foundation of Rome (753 B.C.) the one that it was marking the beginning of the chronologies and, still today, if we go to places where other religions predominate (Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism), we will find another type of chronologies that they fix their beginnings in other key dates, not only because they are mythical but for historical.

Returning to the European frame, conditioned by the government of the emperor Constantinus (4th century A.D.), who had a mentality impregnated by the Christian Scriptures, the temporary changes -specially those referred to the millennium- were suffered as moments full of uncertainty where appeared multitude of vital and social attitudes. Thus, we find already in the 10th century the first great "crisis" worldwide in the Orb, derivative of the comparison of the end of the millennium with the end of the world, which bases have to be looked in the Saint John’s Apocalypse.

In this context, strongly philosophical currents from the 2nd century (that precisely would correspond to the millennium according to the Roman notable chronology previously) reappeared. Hermits, mystics, santones, millenarists...who preach a form of life and a few moral procedures that save the people in such a critical moment. Obviously, these thought currents had also his counterpart in the art of the epoch. In the 11th century, takes place the "Gregorian Reform" (in honour of the Pope Gregorius VII), whose principal aims in order to reform the Catholic Church were the rescue of the moral forms of life of the origins of the Christianity, the unification of the ecclesiastic institutions and the establishment of a type of uniform liturgy that had in the "Gregorian singing" his firmest prop. Beside this, in the plastic arts field, in the Iberian Peninsula, we find between the 10th and XIIIth centuries the manuscript transcriptions of the Apocalypse in the Beatus, which illustrate and comment the sacred text simultaneously whereas they reveal a worry between the clergy and the society for this issue.

Beatus of Valcavado, Palencia (Spain), c.970

As time went by, the medieval culture evolved from this marked religiousness up to obtaining a more opened character, which culminated with "Humanism", that bloomed in the Italic Peninsula between the 14th and 15th centuries. It is the moment of prominent figures such as Boccaccio, Petrarca or Dante Alighieri, whose more celebrated work, the Divine Comedy (1304-1321), returns to treat the idea of the Salvation, with a concept of the Christian Beyond I that compiles the reforms of the 11th century (Hell, Purgatory and Paradise).

Furthermore, in the 15th century, we assist to the first pendulum movement that will seem to dominate the cultural currents of West since then. The sight turns to the distant Greco-Roman past, idealizing it and rejecting the Gothic or Romanesque forms for resembling the most immediate past, the Middle Ages. This general "taste" for the classic style -understanding itself "classic" as recounted to the classic Antiquity of Greece and Rome- will be kept up to the 16th century, when -in a new commuting- the Gothic style is rescued and Baroque appears, which forms are, simultaneously, inheritors of the immediately previous Renaissance and of the medieval past that they try to dignify.

Raffaello: The Marriage of the Virgin, 1504

Caravaggio, Head of Medusa, 1597

In the 18th century a new change returns the protagonism to the classic directives, now spent by the Renaissance filter, and the Greco-Roman Antiquity, as well as the big teachers of the Italian Quattrocento and Cinquecento, become the models to continuing in the cultural and artistic spheres that developed themselves under the protection of the Academies.

Jacques-Louis David, Belisarius, 1784

Eventually, in the 19th century, it takes place a reaction against the Neoclassic current with the Romanticism, having a look again at the Middle Ages (and elaborating of it an image also idealized that nowadays is still difficult to avoid) and at the popular cultures of different countries, by the time that a turn towards the subjective interior of the creator or artist will undoubtedly mark the later art.

Eugène Delacroix, The Barque of Dante, 1822

Anyway, the dizzy quickness of changes that are happening, places us in the second half of the 19th century, when the pendulum moves for the last time in the same way that it had been doing previously. Thinkers and artists who appeared by the end of the 19th century –the french Fin de Siècle- adopted different points of view (for or against a classic or anticlassical trend), as a result of the historical tour that has been explained.

Nevertheless, academics kept defending the formal and moral perfection of the classic canons, aesthetics gave maximum protagonism to the art and his value by itself (l'art pour l'art or "the art for art's sake"), decadent ones gathered the romantic inheritance that was looking at the deepest corners of human being in order to adapt themselves to the new times. Finally, last but not least, modernists wanted to join technology and aesthetics so that they create an art for the society of the moment.

Jugend Magazine, 1900

Therefore, we will pay a special attention to this "critical" context -for being immersed in a process of intensive change – in order to observe the evolution of art and society of the 20th century up to the present day. 

Anne von B & Aida Marín Yrigaray