> Did the fast-changing fashions of the postwar era reflect something about normal trends, or was it a sort of equilibrating phenomenon, and now we've returned to some normal again, that we haven't seen in over 100 years?
I'm living in a city where most of the buildings are 100+ years old. (The house I'm living in was built in 1904.) You can usually date a building from that era by about +/- 2 years of accuracy, just by the looks, regardless, whether it's art nouveau or a more conservative expression of style. However, as you approach WWII, things considerably slowed down. (Mostly for economic reasons.)
I think, this idea of a mostly stable era is a product of the shift in paradigms, you mentioned before, where we put anything that happened before in a paradigmatic box. (E.g., like it has just recently happened with brutalism, where a wide variety and evolution of concepts and oppositions was subsumed into the same thing.)
I'm living in a city where most of the buildings are 100+ years old. (The house I'm living in was built in 1904.) You can usually date a building from that era by about +/- 2 years of accuracy, just by the looks, regardless, whether it's art nouveau or a more conservative expression of style. However, as you approach WWII, things considerably slowed down. (Mostly for economic reasons.)
I think, this idea of a mostly stable era is a product of the shift in paradigms, you mentioned before, where we put anything that happened before in a paradigmatic box. (E.g., like it has just recently happened with brutalism, where a wide variety and evolution of concepts and oppositions was subsumed into the same thing.)