“The End of Art” - ETD - University of Notre Dame

The thirteenth century Virgin of Chartres is not a unity in the sense that it is monolithic or
unambiguous. It would be wrong to say that unity lacks complexity. For Adams, the Virgin is
characterized by unity because the culture of medieval France was so profoundly organized
around her. Just as in the thirteenth century the Virgin penetrated the people’s hearts,
coordinated work and power, and structured social relationships, so does the Dynamo for
the modern world. He discovers that the twentieth century which appears so complex and
inexplicable is in fact organized around everything that is associated with the Dynamo, and
this includes the acceleration of scientific change, but more importantly the power of the
finance that makes such scientific projects possible and then puts them on display in
Chicago. It should be recalled that people traveled from across the world to see the
Exposition, as if they were on a religious pilgrimage to a medieval cathedral. It mesmerized
the crowds, exerted the power of a spectacle, despite how few understood what it signified.
Like the Virgin, it holds a kind of “force” over society because of the awe or “faith” that
people have in it. Adams even says that faith is his best way to describe his, as well as
everyone else’s, awestruck reverence for the Dynamo and all it stood for. Perhaps today the
Dynamo would be live television news coverage, the economy, or the internet.
Adams puts in question the education comes down to him and seems to provide the
only stories, or autobiographical possibilities, that he can tell about himself. He comes to
view his education as limited whenever he opens his eyes to the changes occurring around
him, which is to say the forces of modernity, especially as those forces are defined by the
power that they hold over people’s lives. The twentieth century is a time when he thinks that
autobiography can never be written according to the same rules again. He sees
autobiography and history as joint enterprises because he thinks the present is always
changing in a way that, however obscure, is ultimately determined by the past.
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