FROM ENLIGHTENMENT TO MODERN TIMES: THE CULT OF PROGRESS AND ITS REFLECTIONS ON PAINTINGS

The supremacy of reason, science, experiment and knowledge that determined the Enlightenment in the 18th century, were effective in transforming Europe. While the Industrial Revolution and Mechanization articulated in it changed the cities faces and the living conditions, the foundations were also laid for the formation of a modern and contemporary social structure. Developments of being modern and contemporary, create awareness for some artists and make them look at contemporary issues. Some of these artists, transferred developments/progress that marked the era to the painting plan, while others choose to paint the different geographies of colonization. The shocking effects of contemporary life on human psychology also painted by European painters in that time. In the 19th century, artists who were uncomfortable with the power of progress, left Europe and set out to look closer to the primitive cultures, paint them and reach the source of pure energy missing in their contemporary world. And in the 20th century, some artists, whom witnessed the transformation of the cult of progress into a backfire, causing destruction of masses by wars, reflected the savagery and nightmares of pure fear in their artworks.