Musings on trade and simultaneous discovery

While traveling back from India, I had a 7 hour stop over in Amsterdam. In this small amount of time I was able to get in to the Van Gogh Museum. This is an excellent museum that pays special attention to the artist's narrative and its relation to the visual works of art. One of the things that interested me as an interculturalist was the effect that woodblock prints had on the artistic community.

The interest of European artists in woodblock prints seems to correlate with the opening up of Japan to more normalized trade relations with the West. Can you image the excitement of having a culture that has had all psychical manifestations of culture hidden from the rest of the world, then suddenly revealed? Artists poured over these new beautiful woodblock prints coming out of Japan at the same time. The creative process of copying and interpreting began almost immediately. This, I imagine, is different than one artist getting inspired by a little known work of art. This is an entire community of artists simultaneously discovering and interpreting the same forms of art from the same culture at the same time.

It is not like the discovery of new art like today's Mashup or Crunk dancing, but it is an art that has been refined for hundreds if not nearly a thousand years. Woodblock printing has been studied, refined and passed from generation to generation in Japan for hundreds of years.
Also, it is not like the Rosetta stone, which was lost and rediscovered. Woodblock prints were a living art at the time they were revealed to the West.

While standing in the museum imagining Van Gough and his peers being inspired by, interpreting, and creating woodblock prints, then competing and teaming with each other to create a new artistic vision, I wondered if anything like this could happen today.

If Iran or Cuba opened up to more normalized trade relations, I don't know if anything would be different. I have seen Iranian movies and have listened to Cuban music. Now that information flows so freely between boarders, could there ever be a moment where a community simultaneously discovers an entire culture of living art work at the same time?

Perhaps I could muse a possibility. It would not be as concrete as physical manifestations of culture, such as a painting, dance, or music. But, it would be the invisible forms of culture that has always been present, but almost invisible.

Intercultural Tip: Different cultural traditions belong to the world, take them, interpret them and apply them to your own life.