Apocalypse at Painting to Cinema: The end of Western Civilization and Hegemony

Abstract

As we know, the European-American Western civilization and authority has started to form with the Greek civilization, and strengthened itself through the advent of monotheistic religions. After the Renaissance era and industrial revolutions, the transition from feudalism to industrialization and then to capitalism, made Europe a center of the world. Yet, today, the center has been shifted to the line of Europe-America. In the art of painting, the concept of apocalypse is as old as the first paintings that depict the narrations about human existence. Yet, we can see this concept in an intensified way in the film arts. Finding its inspiration from the social world we live in, film art has been deeply affected by the social class struggles, income inequality, cold war period followed by two major wars, and environmental disasters. By analyzing examples from the history of art and directors from film arts (such as Tarkovsky, Iñárritu, Lars von Trier, and Nuri Bilge Ceylan) who use metaphorical sceneries in dystopian /utopian contents, this article will focus on decoding the signification of the concept of apocalypse throughout the history of humanity.