Belle Photos

Thoughts on cultural creativity:

I was talking to my brother about varying cultural values within different societies. For instance, if you’re in a cowboy culture, belt buckles, 10-gallon hats, and wranglers rule the day. So, once the society has these values, distinctions are made within this society by whomever adopts those values and takes them to a new extreme. Once that process occurs, you will soon find that the person that has the biggest belt buckle, the biggest hat, and the tightest wranglers are then perceived as having the highest value within that society.

The same could be said about a urban, hip-hop society. You can easily see where the extreme cultural values have gone: diamond encrusted watches, pimped out autos, jewelry for teeth, etc., And then again even with weddings you have this phenomenon: the bigger and more ornamented cakes, super long wedding dresses, huge diamonds on the wedding ring, etc.,

So what? What’s the big deal? Well, I’ve been reading quite a bit on the Renaissance lately, and a question has continually plagued me: where are the Michelangelo’s of today?

If you looked at what Michelangelo’s society valued, you would see that the cultural hub and value of his society would have been the cathedral. The cathedral was the center of operations and order of their cities. Consequently, the bigger and more ornamental the cathedral, the more value was given to the town or patron. Likewise, it was common to have the powerful families of these cities commission artists to paint frescoes on the walls of their city’s cathedrals, which added even more value.

With those cultural values firmly in place, it was just a matter of time for the patrons and artists to compete against each other, creating greater and greater cathedrals, vibrant and beautiful works of art to adorn those cathedrals, and sculptures to stand as the cultural distinctions within their societies. And then, when those values are fully extended, a genius within that paradigm takes the values to a whole new level of expression. Michelangelo stands on top of his tradition and creates works that are fundamentally moving and beautiful, and with each new painting or sculptor, the cultural value becomes even greater for what he produces because it embodies the greatest values of his society.

So, in a vary distant way, the huge belt buckle and the Sistine chapel are consequences of the same cultural phenomenon. I think that could explain what was happening then and why we haven’t seen anything similar since then. In order for their to be another Michelangelo, we’d have to start out with the same values his society had. And then, eventually, we’d see the rebirth of another genius like him.