Illustration: Unknown Egyptian portrait of a woman.
Recently I have come across a number of online creative individuals who have stated that there is no point to history, no point in looking back, that the only thing that really matters is the present. In some respects, this is understandable; at times, it can seem somewhat overpowering to have endless dead generations seeming to weigh down the contemporary individual with their presence of history. However, it can be a very limiting world if we exclude those generations that came before us from giving us any real perspective of ourselves and others that we might hope to achieve whilst we are still alive.
To be frank, if we don't know where we have been, how on earth can we know where we are going. I have always had the feeling, and this can only ever be a personal feeling, that it is discourteous in the least and ultimately disrespectful to dismiss previous generations as if they mattered little to who we are today. We did not arrive fully formed, but on the back of our ancestors' achievements, though to be strictly fair, we and our world is also the result of their numerous mistakes as well.
Illustration: Neolithic painted pottery from Moravia.
It would also be unfair to expect us all to hold the past as sacred. One of the words that probably has the most dubious aspect in double-meaning is that of 'tradition'. Tradition is often bandied about by those who would keep people in their place, maintain strict and cruel social rules, as well as by those who would wish to maintain and encourage the better aspects of our history.
The creative world, by definition, is built onto the experience of the past. To understand fashion and design today, we have to understand the links it has with the past. To understand contemporary artwork we should be able to place it within the context of the past. No one can create in a vacuum, no matter how talented the individual or innovative the technology. All creativity is firmly rooted in the past. It feeds on the creative lives lived across countless generations. This then allows it to flourish, which then in turn allows it to flower in the present. However, this does mean that we are in turn slaves to the past. We are part of a process, we are not the end result, but instead a factor of a continuing momentum. The world we see around us is just one line of strata to future generations, an important piece of the whole, as all generations are, but still only one of many. 
Illustration: Incised cross slabs found in the ruins of St. George's Church, Doncaster, England.
This is perhaps one of the fundamental aspects, which seems to be lacking in our lives today. We seem to have no comprehension of time and our place within it. By continually seeing ourselves as the end result rather than just a milestone on the long path of the human species, we actively deny future generations a world fit for them to live in. By degrading our environment for the purposes of the now, we seek to give ourselves the importance of control over that environment. The act of course is futile as we are increasingly seeing around us, particularly when we open our eyes to see further than our iphones, cars and nearest shopping mall. What kind of world we pass on to future generations is much more important than our immediate comforts. Our legacy is what we will be judged by. Whether we become a black smudge in history, or the humble beginnings of a new perspective of the human spirit is very much up to us, both individually and collectively.
Illustration: Decorative Mosaics from Cairo, Egypt.
Our place within the span of history is how we should see ourselves. Creatively we are adding to the accumulation by individuals to the artistic and collective output of the human species. A large repertoire added to by each succeeding generation. A tool box if you will, that can be used by endless future generations. If we can be inspired by the work of an individual artist that lived either a hundred or tens of thousands of years ago, then the same could be true of our own work. Who is to say that our own contemporary output might not inspire a sensitive creative spirit in the next millennium, or two, or three.
That is the perspective of time and history. It was never meant to be a one-way experience or perspective, one of looking forever back. If we visualise ourselves standing with outstretched hands, one hand holding the outstretched hand of the previous generation, the other holding the outstretched hand of the next generation, that is where we are. We are all irretrievable connected in time and space with everyone that ever was and ever will be. To pretend that you stand alone in your own lifetime is disingenuous to put it mildly.
Illustration: Mural decoration from the church of S. Giovanni Battista, Urbino, Italy.
The first image at the head of this article, an unknown Egyptian portrait of a woman was purposely chosen, not so much for its creative merits, but because in many ways it helps to sum up what I have been talking about. This is not a portrait of a fictitious woman, or even just the portrait of a woman long since turned to dust. It is a portrait of a woman that stands in the same line as us. She may well be long dead, but that doesn't negate her right to a place in the history of our species. We really have no right to dismiss her contribution and her valued experiences while she was alive, they have all added to the human experience recorded or otherwise, as will ours. To sneer or dismiss her existence and contribution, or for others in the future to sneer and dismiss ours does everyone a disservice. It is misplaced, unwise, and certainly uncalled for.
The dismissal of history by those who see themselves as contemporary might well be made as a flippant gesture, the fact that the gesture has also been made repeatedly within the creative world is disappointing, and is certainly delusional, we are after all, merely passing through. Understanding your rootedness within the span of the human experience, past, present and future, can allow you the freedom to be a unique and creative individual, using the untold creative stories of the past in order to be inspired to add your own to the larger story of the human creative experience, but don't imagine for one moment that you own the contemporary space indefinitely.
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