A brief history of Future

The little Art  Seeker , has discovered the beautiful exhibition organized around the book from the French economist Jacques Attali and called “a brief history of future”in the Louvre Museum.

In a beautiful essay,the economist explains to us how  to understand the past and take lessons from it for a better future.

The exhibition is organized with back and forth between present,future and past.The point of view that consists in making comparisons between the ancient and modern artists is very interesting.

The first painting chosen by the curator is a very old one by the painter Pieter Brueghel ,the elder ,and is called”the Parable of the Blind”(1568) .It gives us a very pessimistic vision of the future whom we are moving towards as blind people.

We thus, change the course of   time  and make a big step backwards in Mesopotamia,the craddle of humanity that invented the first form of writing. We  learn that to  build their cities Mesopotamian kings  were inspired  by the gods and searched answers in the sky to organize their future cities.

By observing the sky,men in Mesopotamia,searched for answers to their questions.To them 5000 years ago,the  royalty descended from the sky and the beautiful sculpture of king Hammurabi,gives us a beautiful example of a  serene builder king who offered all his constructions of his cities to the divinities.

To make a parallel with the vision of the city in the past and in the future ,the exhibition displays two interesting point of view from two modern artists.

We can admire the beautiful painting from the French painter Fernand Léger ,”the builders”(1920) where he represents workers whose bodies are allegory of the workers’job in the afertmath of the first world war in France.

This work represents giant builders who challenge laws of gravity .It makes a parallel with two cobwebs made of silk threads by the artist Tomas Saraceno. They embody  the network that exist in our modern society and its different ways of communication.

We discover also models from two architects Elfried Huth and Gunther Domenig who imagined  ,in 1969, a futurist structure,for the city of Ragnitz in Austria  in which they incorporated”clusters” spatial cells as housings.

With the birth of a golden age for cities and empires,we attend to the emergence of a new way of life ,imagined by the elites :gardens of bliss ;green meadows where man can rest .

The exhibition displays a gorgeous ceramic from Iran ,realized under the Safavide dynasty (beginning of the 16th century),under which the country developed one of its most beautiful artistic period.We thus ,can admire a delicate pannel representing a flutist in an imaginary garden .This interesting period in time history leaves a great field to the artists’imagination in order to imagine the most harmonious city.

History has cycles and  from chaos emerge new forms of civilizations.This was the case in Antiquity with the fall of the Roman Empire as the American artist Thomas Cole has tried to explain us in his series of paintings called “the  fate of Empires”.

In a series of 5 paintings never displayed in France,till now,Cole inspired by his readings around history and the decadence and fall of the Roman Empire ,represent landscapes inspired by the wild and magnificent nature of North America but evokes also the birth of a new Empire ,the American one .Cole seems to deliver us a simple message:a dying empire is always replaced by a new power.

Under the ashes of the Roman empire:new cities are about  to be born.

Thomas Cole:The Consummation of Empire. Oil on canvas, 1836,

The 19th century is a time of major upheavals.With the industrial revolution ,a new kind of man is born;the modern man.

The statue of liberty ,imagined by Auguste Bartholdi represents the new era and embodies the conquest for an individual and collective freedom .

Fascinated by the colossal statues from the Ancient Egypt that he discovered during a trip in 1856 with the painter Jean Léon-Gérome ,Bartholdi has given an antique dimension to his work.

The model displayed in the exhibition is a gift by the artits’s widow to the museum des Arts et métiers.It shows Bartholdi’s skill and inventiveness and the talent of its  workshop.

The modern times will bring men and women on the road,fleeing the Revolutions,wars,and chaos.The last part of the exhibition shows us the inhumanity brought by intolerance and fanatism.

A focus is set on a part of the beautiful sculpture from Auguste Rodin “the shadow”which was found in the ruins of the World trade center.

We end our visit in the hallway of time with a few portraits of the sybil of Cumes who asked about the future in ancient times.

Our interrogation of the future is still in the heart of human thought.In the future men are longing for peace and happiness.

The keys for a better future are the exchange,the respect  and trust in the other.The door for a better life is kept open.

This exhibition is a real place to think about the importance of the past and the urge to learn its key lessons  in order to build a happy future.

So if you are in Paris in the months to come,run and visit it!!!

the little Art Seeker