The Super Summary of World History - Alan Dale Daniel [105]
Artists’ predicted where the world was heading from 1870 through 1914, and the destination was not the gleaming cities of sanity and serenity envisioned by the common person in 1800.[116] According to the artists of the late 1800s, the world was plummeting into insanity and darkness where life would make no sense, and the world of reason would melt away. According to the art of the 1950s, life had no meaning and the future was chaos or worse. The decline of the world, according to the artists, began about the time of the Industrial Revolution and the rise of science. Art foretold of a world without sense, purpose, God, or reason to guide mankind. A world ruled by machines doesn’t need a God. The purpose for existence was gone according to the painters, writers, and composers.
The visual arts lost their way after Impressionism. The world, while bad in many ways, is not awful everywhere. People do live for more than death. Science does not tell us the world has no God. Impressionism still observed the confused world as a good place where each person and event had a purpose. [117] To make this statement, they did something new and broke all the old traditions. As art went onward, it seems “new” was all that mattered. If it had not been done before, then it was genius. As a result, Picasso “sculpted” using an old bike seat with bike handlebars attached, called it “bull,” and won acclaim. Pollock threw paint at a canvas, a huge canvas, and became the greatest artist since Rembrandt. The same elitist trends go on today. This is not art. Art without skill, real and abiding skill with attention to detail, is nothing.
The Industrial Revolution never ended. Machines continue to improve, and new inventions are coming all the time. In the year 2010, machines and computers have long since been married and the result is very smart machines. People may be the same murdering, cheating, conniving slime we have always been; nevertheless, we have nice stuff. From the end of the Napoleonic Wars to 1914, Europe generally enjoyed prosperity and peace. There were wars in faraway places as colonial powers fought to keep their conquests, and short wars erupted between Austria, and later France against Germany; however, to most people in England and Europe things looked good. Great advances were being made everywhere. One of the greatest was made by Frenchman L. Pasteur in 1864 with his germ theory. After Pasteur’s discovery, medical science began an unprecedented advance to the modern age and its fantastic medical miracles. Most of this was due to the Industrial Revolution. Our modern world enjoys industrial progress because of the foundations laid down from 1750 onward, and that prosperity still looks good.[118]
Rise of New Nations in Central Europe
After 1700, both Italy and Germany (Prussia) began to coalesce as nation states. By the peace of 1815 and the defeat of Napoleon, both Prussia and Italy gained territory and more independence. In 1848, there was a general revolt in the German and Italian principalities, but the armies remained loyal to the central governments, and in the aftermath these governments grew stronger. The sovereigns liberalized their policies by abolishing serfdom and adding power to representative assemblies. The Kingdom of Italy, proclaimed in 1861, grew to include Rome and Venice by 1870. Italy was at last united, but still struggling with industrialization and modernization. Otto Von Bismarck proclaimed the German Empire in 1871 after conducting wars to consolidate areas around Prussia forcing them under Prussian control. Bismarck was the political giant of the age, as his practical but cold-blooded politics united Germany, defeated Austria and France in war, and resulted in a German Constitution and Empire. Conflicts with Austria stopped its interfering with Prussian affairs, leading to reform in the Austrian monarchy and the establishment of Austria-Hungary in 1867. A final war of German consolidation