The Lost Tradition of Artistic Alliances

Music and Dance in Ancient Athens by Roger Payne

It is difficult to imagine a time before the digital age when countless information was not yet available at our fingertips. Somehow the art world has lost its tradition of sharing art and culture in a like forum reminiscent of a time when the world was drenched in the arts.

Five thousand years ago, in the thriving Nile Valley, ancient Egyptians used a combination of exotic inks and dyes on papyrus to create artistic communiqués, namely, hieroglyphics. Ancient royal dignitaries used this method to educate their community and to chronicle history. A distant successor of the wine-soaked Greek Symposia; artist alliances originated in ancient Italy and burgeoned in 16th and 17th-century France as vivacious hubs of culture and conversation. Serving to stimulate the advent of academic intellectualism during the Age of Enlightenment, these elite assemblies took place in the residences of affluent socialites, especially in Paris. The two successive centuries, the alliances spread throughout Europe and to various cerebral allies across the world. In England, bluestocking artistic salons provided rare spaces of empowerment for scholarly ladies interested in an array of academic topics.