Ethnographers, linguists and socio-political historians have made many attempts over the last two centuries to try to determine not just what separates groups of humankind into societies, civilisations and communities but the very definitions of those terms. Qualifications of a written language, a hierarchical structure and cultural practices were all used in the differentiation. Today we have internet societies of artists who essentially fly in the face of any of such qualifying criteria.

Dividing the world into language groups was certainly one of those attempts to define a civilisation. In the late 19^th century a British colonial official Sir William Jones, presumably with little else to do, put forward the theory that English, Greek, Latin and Sanskrit all had a common root. In the same way Celtic, Slavic and Germanic languages had similar origins as did Persian, Armenian and Kurdish. This branch of science eventually became known as glottochronology. What was interesting though is that cultural, aesthetic and political practices varied enormously even within language groupings. What one cultural language group valued was not imitated or taken up by its neighbours. Some nations deliberately set out to make sure that it never happened such as 19^th Japan which banned foreignors completely and France under De Gaulle who had all English words and phrases eliminated from the language and dictionary – although Le Weekend hung on into modern times. The French and English have never agreed about much at all in spite of common ancestors and Roman invaders. And as was observed in the late 19^th century, Britain and America had everything in common but language as words gradually took on alternate meanings as in curtains becoming drapes and toilets, bathrooms even when there was no bath to be seen.

When it comes to art, historians see clear distinctions between say the Italian Renaissance and its northern European equivalent based as much on weather as anything else. Mediterranean nations are much happier than those living in the misery of perpetual winter and the art reflects that. A Grunewald Altarpiece couldn’t have been produced by an Italian artist apparently. Such distinctions can still be found half a millennium later. The frivolity of Italian futurism is contrasted against the angst of a Germany struggling to shake off WW1 and streets full of cripples governed by the corrupt – at least according to Grosz.

However, this idea of cultural disparity and difference can be a deliberate choice or one of degrees of cultural porosity. Artistic influence spreads. Artists travel. Audiences travel and nowadays governments and galleries look to break down nationalistic barriers by buying into art from anywhere in the hope of not looking either foolish for not investing in something that turns out to be culturally significant [just about every museum in the world in the face of modernism] or naïve in promoting something that turns out to be culturally insignificant in the wash up. One example comes from the American abstract cohort not wanting to be seen in the same room as their European forbears but completely ignored in their own country. Eventually they won the battle and produced an American art which was emulated and copied across the world. Porosity.

The question though is not that all of this happened but how it pertains to now. Two internet sites The Art of Creating Abstract Art and the Upbeat Artists Group have attracted tens of thousands of followers who avidly share their work and participate in the workshops offered. The participants come from every corner of the globe and as such can be seen as not just a society but a group with a cultural identity and a common language in English. But what sort of societies are they? There is no hierarchy and while beginning artists may pay obeisance to more experienced artists, the expectation is that all will rise to the same level. There is no property to be owned [all members own their own copyright] and no commerce [some sites actively forbid advertising of personal websites with shop sections]. There are almost no rules other than to be kind to each other. It is doubtful that there has ever been a society like this in human history.

There are no doubt plenty of other such groups operating with languages other than English but the connection between all of them is a desire to form a collective, a cultural group that can discuss and appreciate the art produced, that is bound by a common approach to creating art. There are no borders. With this however comes the often expressed thought that what seemed like individual work produced in isolation in a studio by an erstwhile artist, looks just like so much else to the point of being indistinguishable. The advice is often to keep going until an individual voice is found but how realistic is this? The proliferation of art has put everything in everybody’s lap and the tutorials on how to produce endless variations in colour combinations and textures lend themselves to sameness. Is uniqueness even a consideration? Probably not. The act of creation is enough.

There isn’t a branch of ethnography that deals with such global cultural connections that deny the influence of individual states or countries but increasingly the art world is rewriting the rule book. It’s an interesting proposition that ‘now’ is being defined not by cultural exclusion despite the efforts by radical nationalist movements in every country to deem it otherwise. This proliferation of art ‘societies’ is the very essence of a cultural revolution and a rewriting of history. However, this homogenising effect of artistic sameness can go one of two ways. It could engender an age where changes in artistic direction become not only unlikely but near impossible or it could herald an age of individual cantankerousness and rebellion – if there is anything left to say artistically or rebel against.

If one thing characterises humankind more than any other it is the spirit of rebellion. Modernism ‘sprang’ out of rebellion against the stringent doctrines of the Academies. Punk rock was a rebellion against the increasingly gentrified and gender-neutral excesses of the ‘love’ generation. Conservative politics celebrating state, church and small government is routinely replaced by those who propose a more egalitarian approach to wealth but who are ultimately faced with exactly the same problems. Will this approach characterise Art in the future? What would be the artistic equivalent to alternating political persuasions or are we destined to face the same choices as presented at election time when there is no perceivable difference between parties other than faces.

The only large-scale socio philosophical groupings to cross nationalistic boundaries are religious and art for all of its proliferation via the internet is hardly a religion and attempts by governmental bodies from communist Russia to Hitlerian Germany to impose a specific artistic style on the population were always doomed to failure. Artists are a difficult lot to tie down and dictate to but when so many choose the company of like minds and adopt similar approaches, I can’t imagine where we’ll be artistically or socially or politically in the near or distant future. It seems to be part of the human condition that while we cannot predict future events, as soon as those events happen we find it hard to see how they were anything other than inevitable.