A cold mind will always ask, “Why?” And art historians will explain why the Romanesque period was supplanted by the Gothic style, why the burning Europe nearly obliterated traces of gloomy and delightful chimeras, stained glass windows directed toward the sky, and strict geometric proportions were replaced by the curved solar lines of the Renaissance, as if broken by multiple reflections in water.

And then, as historians recount, Baroque vignettes emerged—exaggerated beauty for the elite, exalted romantics, which, in turn, seemed inadequate. Amidst the backdrop of destructive wars and revolutions, as if a call not to acknowledge the reality and simplicity of ordinary life, something appeared—adding exquisite details that would later be known as the Rococo era, which was mercilessly destroyed by zealots of the forgotten classics. And so on and so forth.

Time, as we know, is not a constant value. The subsequent chronicle of art theory spun in a whirlwind, destroying and cynically leveling under the hooves of the ‘trendy’ and ‘modern’ the remnants of a long, thoughtful creativity, brimming with passion. Don’t confuse the late 19th-century modernism with the ‘modern trends’. 

Still, the style had an undeniable advantage—loyalty to an individual, while what is now commonly referred to as a ‘modern trend’ in its essence is simply accessible and universal. I won’t say that you can’t be obsessed with zinc structures, metal, and glass, with light pouring in in its pure, undistorted, and perfect form.

And I also won’t say that one should discard the entire experience of manifest art and the search for something new, extracting from the depths of fantasy the individual features of perfect structures. An artist is a creator of multidimensionality, piece by piece, collecting their own kaleidoscope of reality on the flat palette of ordinary existence.

О. Mshvelidze