CAPAS RESEARCH PROJECT - JULIET SIMPSON Time after Time – Apocalypse, Revelation, Eschaton in Image, Object and Word, 1919-1933
The sense of endings, of catastrophic human, social and cultural collapse, of a post-Apocalypse world, was omnipresent in Europe’s politics and cultures, and in their global interactions in the aftermath of the First World War. Yet these entwine with complex visions of ‘Judgement’ and ‘Revelation’ in attempts by artists, historians and literary writers at this period to navigate a ‘time after time’ – the Eschaton. This project seeks to put post-Apocalypse, focusing on Revelation and Eschaton, at the heart of how we conceptualize and communicate the pivotal contributions of artists and collectors, as well as of writers and historians of art as creators and world-makers at a critical period in Europe’s history and identity-construction. Its key objective is to open new scientific knowledge about how we perceive key artistic, cultural and temporal innovations of interwar Europe (challenging their construction as ‘modernist’). Indeed, the broader ambition of 'Time after Time', is to bring to visibility the importance of eschatological thinking, imaging and creation in new concepts of revelation and ‘illumination’ that envisage the heuristic and spiritual possibility of a ‘time’ and ‘order’ beyond Enlightenment models.