Art sense 

   Polymorphism in Art
   Rasas and Islamic Aesthetics
   Play and Symbolism
   Abstraction and Surreaslism

      

Humanism

Helen Keller
Ideals
The symbol Che
Four Signs for All Times

Schemata

Instructions On How To Put On A Shirt

                  Four Signs for All Times 

                                                In the history of humanity never have four concepts that have so strongly
                                    transformed human behaviour converged as much these have: Dialectical 
                                    Materialism   (1848),   Evolution   (1850),   Psychoanalysis   (1890)   and 
                                    Relativity (1905), and indeed, they have left notable footprints in the arts.
                      

			  
Manifest

According to the Webster Dictionary "Manifesto" is defined as "a written statement declaring publicly the 
intentions, motives, or views of its issuer".

The social and political turmoil that had arisen since the time of the French Revolution led to the 
emergence of socialist societies by the early 20th century. These societies set out their ideals through 
a document equivalent to the Tablets of the Law of Moses, which they called a "Manifesto". This 
specifically came from the theory of dialectical materialism, which in turn conceived historical 
materialism and the concept of class struggle. Its authors defined it as "a detailed theoretical and 
practical programme whose aim is to be a publicity tool, but which also serves as the (Communist) Party 
programme."

In February, 1848 the document "Manifest der Partei Kommuniftifchen", or "Communist Manifesto" by Karl 
Marx and Frederick Engels was published. Subsequently, various political and social movements were born 
also endorsed by a "manifesto".

Thus, in February 1909, on the front page of Le Figaro, in Paris the first artistic manifesto was 
published by Filippo Marinetti, a document that established an aesthetic that would respond to a 
paradigm of its time.

Filippo Tommaso Marinetti was born in 1876 in Alexandria, Egypt. 

Marinetti did not paint nor was he a musician, but he created his art by the use of political and 
military change as his "basic materials". Marinetti became the little idol that permeated the art 
that was associated with fascism and its followers. In the same way as Andy Warhol would follow in 
the United States of America several years later, Marinetti believed that he was participating in the 
founding of an ideal society.

He believed that war was "the world's only hygiene."

In one of his most amazing passages, he disclosed the news that the Japanese army was using human 
bones for the production of gunpowder, whereupon he said:

       "Glory to the indomitable ash of man who lives on in a cannon!". 

This would qualify as a case of "synthetic violence".

As has always happened and will continue to happen, human groups who worship a paradigm, cling together
through art. Around fascism, the agitated politics and war, that artist was Marinetti and there were 
many others with other specialties who belonged to that group.

The idea of the manifesto became popular and the next batch of artists believed for many years that art 
could be conceived a priori and be declared by an endorsement in the shape of a manifesto.


Evolution

The second sign is the theory of evolution, which explains the sequence of processes by which variations 
can be observed in a species. It was also seen as a way to explain cultural changes, which is an 
aberration, since in evolution theory in order to generate a change in the majority of the population a 
trait must repeated a great many times. However this is not observed with painting, for example. Despite 
this, it is common to see histories of art that begin in prehistory but do not show an evolutionary 
relationship between, say, neoclassical and Metaphysical painting.

Psychoanalysis

The third sign is the Theory of Psychoanalysis, the method in which for the first time it was 
demonstrated that the inviolable temple of the mind could be penetrated and put on view for others 
to see. Many artists started to talk about psychic automatism, or that certain works of art are 
psychoanalytical representations. Psychoanalysis came to be applied to social behaviour, with 
Lacan and Marcuse.

The theory of psychoanalysis probably produced a huge impact on human behaviour because it penetrated 
inside the mind, and it seemed as if it were to violate a sphere which up until then it was believed 
that only God could know.

André Breton, who was an active creator of vanguard groups in art, wrote the first Surrealist 
Manifesto, which was a name coined by Guillaume Apollinaire earlier, and in which he redefined it as: 
"Noun, masculine. Pure Psychic Automatism, by which it is intended to express, verbally, in writing 
or in any other manner, the real functioning of thought. It is a dictation of thought, without 
regulatory intervention of reason, exempt from any aesthetic or moral concern".

Breton referred specifically to psychic automatism, which is what interested him, probably because 
he himself was a professional psychiatrist.

He wrote: "Freud has shown that in this 'abyssal' depth reigns the absence of contradiction, and 
mobility, due to retreats and advances of the emotional levels, the timelessness and substitution 
of external reality by physical reality, submissive only to the principle of pleasure. Automatism 
heads in a straight line directly to that region. The other route offered to surrealism is the 
fixation of the images of dreams called trompel'oeil (precisely its weakness), but it has been 
found from experience that this is a much less secure road with abundant risk and loss". This text 
appeared in a surrealist exhibition catalogue in 1945, and was later quoted by Jean Cassou in 
"Panorama of Contemporary Plastic Arts", 1960.


Relativity

Finally, the fourth sign is the Theory of Relativity, which tells of a story of an astronaut 
returning from space and who meets up with his twin brother. But paradoxically, the twin who 
remained on Earth is noticeably older. So far it could  formpart of a type of creative imagination, 
but if there are scientists who affirm that it is the truth, then this produces a great disturbance 
in the intuitive mind. One can understand that if an apple breaks off from a tree, then it fall is 
due to the enormous quantity and weight of the earth, but Einstein's theory seems almost absurd, 
so it's hard to believe  something like that, unless studies are made in advanced physics. This 
relationship with time, worried Marcel Duchamp, who created enigmatic works that had a certain 
relationship with relativity.

The emergence of mass transport proliferated with industrialisation, as did the technologies that 
allow us to see  extremely small objects and others that are extremely large and far away. 
Einstein's Theory of Relativity, published in 1905, stated that time, which was believed to be 
constant and independent of everything else that happened in the cosmos, in reality was variable, 
and can be accelerated or slowed down depending on the speed with which objects move!

And as if that were not enough, it says that nothing can move faster than light. This concept was 
dramatic at a time in which everything that was built, moved with each new version, increasingly 
faster. There are factories full of machines that producemillions of products per hour, vehicles 
capable of carrying people to other regions of the world in a few hours. And finally, Einstein 
showed us that everything could go faster, but there is a limit and an end: nothing is faster 
than light.

Even by that time, he had measured the speed of light and knew it was 300,000 kilometres per 
second. When you turn on the light-bulb in a room, it seems that the light appears instantaneously 
on every corner. It was very difficult to imagine that light had a speed and that there is nothing 
that can go faster.

Such ideas, emphatically confirmed by all scientists of the planet, are disturbing and bizarre 
for ordinary people.

All of this resulted in rampant ideas where fascinating and absurd worlds were imagined. Humans 
are characterised byimagining worlds, and with this theory, a colossal escape valve was released. 

It is clear that the literary genre of science fiction has been heavily influenced by temporal 
translocations, travel through time to see what happened or what will happen and confront oneself 
with the paradoxical feeling of déjà vu where you feel that you have had an experience 
but which you know is impossible or the theoretical existence of parallel worlds. One can also see 
that the latest theories of physics continue to feed the literature of other rarities within the 
real world.