Artist Makoto Fujimura describes visiting the Fra Angelico (1395-1455) exhibit at the Met one December. As he gazed at Angelico's "Madonna and Child," he says he had to close his eyes. What he saw on the canvas was so powerful that he felt overwhelmed, so that he physically staggered.
"What is the five-hundred-year question?" he writes. "Well, it's a long-term, historical look at the reality of our cultures that asks, What ideas, what art, what vision in our current culture has the capacity to affect humanity for more than five hundred years? ... If our decisions matter and make ripple effects in the world, then should we not weigh what we say and do in light of the five-hundred-year question?"
Many of us know the company Seventh Generation, whose plant-based household products take their inspiration from the indigenous tribal wisdom that every decision made should be considered in light of its effect on seven generations hence. But 500 years from now? That seems harder to get our minds around.
In addition to this unusual timeline, Fujimura acknowledges our fragile place in the world today, noting that future-oriented thinking has been clouded by our "capacity to blow ourselves up a thousand times over." Apocalyptic movies and literature witness to a mood of despair in which there is no future. Many millennials are deciding not to have children.
Yet the power of Fra Angelico's vibrant and luminous "Madonna and Child" endures.
