Visiting modern time
As a student in art history, my interest had always been on modern art. If I could travel back in time and space, I would pick Paris at the verge of twentieth century, the place and time of modern art development, without hesitation.
I believe that living during the period of the avant-garde art in Paris would be something quite exciting. I could go to experience the Eiffel Tower’s opening, or visit the first Cubist exhibition. I would also be enthusiastic to attend Bergson or Poincare’s lectures at College de France, or read articles in the newspapers of the time. I have always curious how people felt when they saw for the first time an automobile or an airplane.
Moreover, I think it would be exciting to see how long distance communication became a reality, and how people perceived the introduction of the Greenwich Universal Time. This was an age in which incredible changes took place in the way people saw the world, in the way they perceived and understood time and space. It was the time when Einstein published his first studies about relativity. It was, as far as I am concerned, a time that it is worth taking a look at. I believe that Paris at the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th would be something fascinating.
If I were to return from the past back to our own times, I would be much more confident in my researches about that time, and my contribution to the study of art history would be a quite substantial one. Till now I can only read books and articles about it, and just imagine the wonderful time Paris had been just before the war!
