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Albrecht Durer produced his Apocalypse series of fifteen woodcuts at a time of significant change in Europe. The Spanish and the Portuguese were discovering new lands to the south and west. The Turks were invading Europe from the south and east. New ideas were erupting from the towns in northern Italy and the Lowlands. The comforting certainties of medieval life, with its celebration of order and Christian unity (however different the experience of reality might have been), were giving way to spiritual doubt and ultimately to schism and war. Martin Luther would not challenge the Church Universal until 1517 but, in northern Germany in 1498, the movement towards developing a personal relationship with God separate from the discipline of priest and bishop was well under way.

Durer’s series was originally published in both a Latin and a German edition, and the vivid woodcuts themselves delivered their message even to those who could not read. In a fascinating preview of later communications revolutions, “Durer was operating under the assumption that products of the printing press – reproducible statements – make the most profit by appealing to the largest cross-section: literate, semi-literate, and illiterate audiences.”¹ In addition to faithfully reflecting the Millenarian panic sweeping northern Germany (many were convinced that the year 1500 would mark the end of the world), Durer was adapting quickly to the stirrings of capitalism. In fact, the Apocalypse was the first book to be published by an artist as an independent commercial project.

Durer’s Apocalypse was an artistic and commercial success. It tapped into some of the most deep-seated anxieties of a disordered time. His woodcuts gave form to nameless fears but ultimately provided reassurance in the face of apparent chaos.

The L-20 project’s ambitions were considerably less exalted than Durer’s, but sought to come to grips with many of the same concerns. It is not only the experts on international affairs who feel that events are running out of control and that the multilateral structures laboriously built up over the past 60 years are not up to the task of managing issues of war, famine, climate change and disease. Ordinary people all over the world sense the loss of normalcy, and too many have had direct experience of the results of systems breakdown.

And yet, the positive signs are there as well, and the L-20 project participants would hardly have undertaken their work over the past three years if they did not have a reasonable expectation of hope. The outcomes of the L-20 project represent only a step in seeking new answers to the puzzles of global governance, but enough progress has been made to warrant a further investment of ingenuity and hard work.

In the meantime, Durer’s Horsemen are still out there, circling – reminding the modern world that the chaos of earlier times is never all that far away.

Endnotes

¹ Sandra Seekins, The Apocalypse. In: On the Eve of the Reformation: The Graphic Art of Albrecht Durer, Victoria, 1993, p. 34.

Document(s) 13 of 21