“What a piece of work is a man, how noble in reason, how infinite in faculties, in form and moving how express and admirable, in action how like an angel, in apprehension how like a god!”
William Shakespeare’s – Hamlet
The European Renaissance happened during the 14th to the 17th centuries. Remember at that time there was no social media so things got longer to happened and get popular. That was the time where Europe was getting out from the Middle Ages. Yes, imagine getting out of a time called Middle Ages and getting inserted on a time that was coned from the French word rebirth.
It was just the time between darkness and the beginning of the Age of Enlightenment. Some historians say that was the beginning of the modern age and almost the grand part of books will say that everything started in Italy but it happened in all Europe.
This was the time where humanity decided to take the classical Greek philosophy and the Roman way of thinning on the humanity and decided that all together was a new manifestation where, attention to this, ¨Man is the measure of all things¨.
It was not easy. Europe was living revolting times and conspiration was at every corner. But this way of thinking made differences in all kind of manifestation from architecture and especially in politics. But was in the art that humanity still keep hooked. Because this rebirth in art was directly employed by all humanists in search of realism and human emotion in art.
This was the era of the Renaissance man. Man that where in Florence living (most by the patronage of the Medici). But it wasn’t just Florence all Italy was receiving new minds from the fall of Constantinople or the Ottoman Empire. Of course the Renaissance was in his underway before Lorenzo de’ Medici. Some historians say that Florence was the birthplace of the Renaissance as a result of luck as great men were born or living there by chance.
While the spirit of the Renaissance ultimately took many forms, it was expressed earliest by the intellectual movement called humanism. The humanists where believers that it was important to transcend to the afterlife with a perfect mind and body. And that could only be accomplished by education. They were in his majority catholic and created very important religious work of arts. But the accomplishment was on the art of the man as a whole. The objective of humanism on this time was to have a universal man that could function in any situation. All old ideas from studding the old Greek and Roman texts with a new point of view.
Remember humanity was going out of the dark ages and looking forward a way for a new realism. So in art the development of perspective, light, shadows and colors opened the way for example to Leonardo Da Vinci study of human anatomy. Also was the time of discovering printing. The first social media that made easier to get to information. It was very expensive. As mobile phones nowadays.
In northern Europe the same happened and in England for example the theatre got full of new beginnings with Shakespeare and much others. In Germany with painters like Jan van Eyck and composers like Johannes Ockeghem. In Spain Miguel de Cervantes with Don Quixote. And so many other form of arts that inspired humanity.
Now read these lines and close your eyes and think:
Are we living in a need for a new Renaissance?
We need a new sharp break from institutions?
We need a new awareness of the individual being?
We need an awakened interest in the material world?
We need more humanist education?
We need more patrons of artists and intellectuals?
AND THIS IS MY REVINDICATION!
Let’s make a new Renaissance with the facility of the technologies of nowadays. Let’s celebrate and protect the artists that exist and are looking for more inspiration creating inside their on art. They inspire, they are the ones that begin to make us think to break from the dark times to a new Enlightenment.
Nowadays I have being very much addicted to Instagram. And how people are using photography to create new meanings or shocking with beautiful art.
Three artists took my heart and got it full of new hope for the arts. They are photographers and they are directly inspired by art to create on photography. They work on the marked. They are successful. But they get their personal and limited time to create from what inspire then.
By coincidence two of them are living in France right now having a ¨rebirth¨ of photography and art by getting inspired by the French way of life.
On the base of the pictures you can find their Instagram accounts and a link to their web pages. At least I hope you get inspired a little for the freschness of their images. Totally different styles in their personal photography. And no they are not using Renaissance art. They are using the change that the new media and art is giving to the world.
And be aware that this is coming strong in social media. Huawey has being working with a promotion to ¨A new Renaissance¨ so be aware that you will get inspired to get of the dark ages to a new Enlightenment.
