THE RENAISSANCE EFFECT

THE RENAISSANCE EFFECT

Historical Analysis by Charles E.J. Moulton


When Leonardo da Vinci drew the picture of the so-called Vitruvian Man somewhere around 1490, his aim was to depict the ultimate human formation of the antique ideal. He displayed man as what he could be: physically proportioned with absolute measurements, wise, knowledgable and full of hope. That picture was to art what Bach was to music. The point is not when it happened, but that it happened. Like with Michelangelo’s David, a sculpture that was created a decade later, this Vitruvian Man later became the symbol of the Italian Renaissance. This in ink feather-drawn picture is the metaphore for a movement, whose effects we still enjoy and try to control to this day. It is what I would like to call The Renaissance Effect.
Adam looks at himself in his proverbial mirror, calls Eve over to him and says:
“Look, I think there is more here than meets the eye!”
To me, that is what the Renaissance is. Man redefines himself. He is reborn. He realizes that he can depict other things in art than just tales read to him and told to him in the bible. He now realizes that a little bit of God in himself. That, in fact, God is in everything he has created and that we, ourselves are creators. God sees himself in us and our creations here in evolution are his yin to our yang. Art is discovery, discovery is evolution, evolution is future, future is art and the circle is complete.
In that sense, Columbus trips to what he thought was the West-Indies was a work of art in all its cruelty and bigotry. Cortez and Pizarro’s egotistical escapades in The New World were dark chapters of sinister human art. Enlightened art would be Van Eyck, Botticelli, Raphael and Orlando di Lasso and those were men that fed the human soul with emotion.
The main point is that man during the Renaissance embarks on a journey that starts with knowledge and a plethorian array of possibilities and ends where we are today: in gluttony and conceit. There is more information in one current Sunday Edition of The New York Times that one average 12th centur man could sport having taken in during an entire lifetime. But are we wiser? Have we forgotten what we were back then? Knowledge-hungry wisdom-crackers. Today, that average man has now become not hungry for knowledge, but for satisfaction. He needs kicks to be happy. Alcohol, special effects and play-station. Man is now not anymore hungry for wisdom. Man is living in a huge playground. It is a Las Vegas Show with a cast of 7 020 673 780 actors.
Let’s recap where we have been going for the last 600 years: in Firenze, Italia a movement starts that redefines man. Antique ideas are reborn, man rediscovers his own world, composes new music and creates cities that look like nothing else that before has been seen. Artistically, this is a process of rejuvination. The Opera is born at the end of the 16th century and less than a century later the artform that we label Ballet sees the the light of day. Baroque churches are built and palaces so grand are built from scratch that the redefine humanity.
Simultaneously, man becomes cocky. He kills indigenous peoples from newly discovered lands in order to live there. Old empires fall, others rise. Wars are fought, because of protests from people that contradicted the established church. After all these religious wars, man misunderstands God, thinks him responsible for all that and makes the doctor and the scientist the two Gods of the human condition. The atheist is born. He is a man that never realized that the concious creator God also exists, existed and always will exist in himself as well as in the world and in heaven.
Art recreates the human condition, social infrastructure destroys it.
In Sweden, the king is empowered. Just about when the king redemands the throne there, the people take it away in France. The industrial revolution revolutionizes the world and it commences a pathway that skyrockets the population, drives man to rob the Earth of all its assets and makes man concentrate his entire life on having fun. Fun, fun, fun.
What became of the Renaissance Man? He became the Satisfaction-Fan.
Why did The Renaissance Effect turn Adam into such an ostrich-like pleasure-freak?
Lack of control. God doesn’t turn this back. Man is free. God listens. God waits. God will there to give man as many chances as he needs, before he understand evolution.
Yes, we have the Global Movement, we have New Age, we have the New Spirituality. More and more people live out their concious inner change. Many people are still Renaissance-Individuals.
The Vitruvian Man is still there in the archives of the Galleria all’Accademia in Venice.
The picture stands for the finest attributes of the human spirit: intelligence, wisdom, spirituality, love and knowledge. Man always moves forward, outward and beyond. Sometimes, his independance leads him astray.
He realized when he looked in that proverbial mirror that he needed to rediscover himself. Rediscovery, however, needs self-control. Renaissance-Knowledge became Industrial Conceit. That lead to the biggest party at the PC – Internet – WLAN – Party. Now, we have to see how we pick ourselves up and dust ourselves off.
The best way is to go back to da Vinci and learn something about the original feelings he had when he rediscovered himself and looked at himself in that proverbial mirror.
But then, when gluttony knocks on the door, we can’t go eat immeasurable amounts of fast food or dig the ground for non-existant oil.
We then have to go out into the country and look at the clouds. We learn about each other’s souls and we have a picnic in the grass, we paint, we sing, we dance and know that we are renaissance-people with a new addition: we take responsibility for our actions.
Just like The Vitruvian Man.