Efflorescence:
- the state or a period of flowering.
- an example or result of growth and development:
These works are the efflorescence of his genius.- Chemistry .
- the act or process of efflorescing.
- the resulting powdery substance or incrustation. [Dictionary.com]
Noted in “In New York, a look into the early days of the world’s oldest Christian nation,” Philip Kennicott, WaPo:
Orson Welles, in “The Third Man,” posited a cynical theory of what makes some cultures creative and others not: “In Switzerland, they had brotherly love, they had 500 years of democracy and peace — and what did that produce? The cuckoo clock.” This isn’t a fair summation of the creative potential of peace or democracy, and only slightly more accurate about the cultural accomplishments of the Swiss. But an exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art seems to prove the same thing by inverting the logic.
A sumptuous survey of early Christian art in Armenia suggests that no matter how scattered the people, no matter how frequent the wars or painful the disruptions, nothing could dim the Armenian cultural efflorescence.
