How Art Can Be Used for Many Purposes - Essay Example

Venus Compared Although there is no means of proving their claim, archaeologists have long believed artwas originally practiced as a magical means of calling a successful hunt or discovering healing rituals among other possible hopes (Gombrich, 1995). By the time civilization emerged in Ancient Egypt, art took on the role of commemorating important people. The Greeks seemed to somewhat combine these approaches by creating art as an aid to worshipping their gods and goddesses and to preserve their cultural myths. The Romans combined the Greek quest for perfection of expression with the Egyptian focus on content and developed an artistic approach intended to inspire and celebrate their cultural and individual achievements. The art of the Middle Ages sought to replace the Paganism of the fallen Roman Empire with themes of Christian religious myths, giving the practice of art religious, political and educational purposes. This gave way to the explosion of art during the Renaissance which was inspired by the re-discovery of ancient art forms and practices (Gombrich, 1995). This skip through history illustrates how art can be used for many purposes and is often inspired or developed to build on the past. These ideas can be found in a comparison of paintings created on a similar theme such as Boticelli’s “Birth of Venus,” Titian’s “Venus of Urbino” and Edouard Manet’s “Olympia,” all of which seek to reflect and define their culture’s conception of beauty and expectations of the female gender ideal. The period of the Renaissance is generally recognized as occurring between 1300 and 1500 in Italy. In the years between the collapse of the Roman Empire and the birth of the Renaissance, artworks typically had a very religious theme, focusing almost exclusively on figures from the Bible. With the discovery of some of the classic art and architecture of Rome, there was renewed interest in the deities that had once been important to these people. Venus, the goddess of love, was reborn in statues and paintings throughout this period. Perhaps one of the most well-known of these resurrections is Botticelli’s “Birth of Venus” (1485). Although this wasn’t the first image of Venus created during the Renaissance, Botticelli chose to display Venus in the nude in deliberate reference to her classical poses. However, he is wisely not so blatant as to have her standing with no discretion. In Botticelli’s highly Christianized society, the only nudes generally accepted by the powers that be were Adam, Eve or the crucified Christ figure. Although breaking the rules, Botticelli does restrict nudity to the supernatural figures only in the form of Venus and the personified wind characters. Botticelli’s Venus is not posed as naturally as any of the various poses in found Greek or Roman statuary, but more of her legend is preserved in the painting. In the painting, the goddess is carried across the sea on a giant open clamshell, moving through the waves with the power of the wind, depicted as additional characters to her left. This reflects the legend that Venus was the child of the sea (Stewart, 2005). At the same time that he’s breaking the nudity rule, Botticelli also provides various forms of drapery intended to hide the more objectionable pubic regions of his nude characters. The women, Venus and the female half of the wind, are permitted to leave one breast exposed in an open referral to one of Venus’ specialties as the goddess of love. For the first time in history, Venus is given long flowing hair that is unrestrained on the wind. This flowing hair functions to cover Venus modestly until she reaches the shore where a woman awaits with appropriate clothing for her. The hand she uses to try to cover her breasts serves only to bring attention to them. Compared with the other characters in the painting, Botticelli’s Venus has alabaster skin and a cool, reserved approachability in her facial expression as well as a slender, slightly columnar build that reflects the marble statuary of the ancients. Less than a century later, the subject of Venus underwent a radical transformation. Titian’s oil on canvas painting “Venus of Urbino” (1538) depicts a naked woman lying provocatively on a bed in the foreground while two maids work in the background to dig clothing out of chests placed along the far wall. The woman stretches out across the front bottom half of the canvas. The arm closest to the viewing plane is thrown back and over her head while the other arm rests comfortably on her torso in a way that allows her hand to cover her vulva placed at the center of the image. Rather than trying to hide her sexuality, her gender and her sensual appetites, this Venus looks directly out of the painting as if daring the viewer to step into her world. Yet she also manages to appear sweet and almost innocent in her expression. “Titian’s painting is purposefully sensual … She displays none of the attributes of the goddess she is supposed to represent: she is not demure, idealized, unattainable, or remote. This Venus is a flesh-and-blood beauty, awake and fully aware of the viewer’s presence” (Hill, 2006). Titian suggests that the woman is very available for consumption through his heavy use of linear perspective and light while also providing her with a private, secluded space within the context of the frame. “Linear perspective is a mathematical system for creating the illusion of space and distance on a flat surface. The system originated in Florence, Italy in the early 1400s … To use linear perspective an artist must first imagine the picture surface as an ‘open window’ through which to see the painted world. Straight lines are then drawn on the canvas to represent the horizon and ‘visual rays’ connecting the viewer’s eye to a point in the distance” (Exploring Linear Perspective, 1997). This technique is used in the decoration of the background to indicate the servant women are in another room as well as to depict the rich quality of the palace the woman is lying in. The perspective used to create the palace details gives the viewer the sense that they are seeing this woman as if through a window. This provides Venus with a degree of separation from the viewer that is only slightly less than her separation from the women in the other room. Lighting is used to emphasize the rich drapery hanging just behind the woman while the vertical line of the drapes and the placement of her far hand continually force the viewer’s vision to the woman’s pubic area. Moving into the Victorian era, Venus again took on a more promiscuous tone in the image of Edouard Manet’s “Olympia” (1863). At the time it was first made public, this painting was greeted with widespread public scandal. This was not because of the nude state of its central figure as was the case for Botticelli, but because of the way in which Manet depicted the female character. Closely repeating the pose used in Titian’s painting, Manet focuses on Venus’ role in cultural life. Unlike Botticelli’s or Titian’s images, both of which are completely nude and thus depict a spirit of innocence in addition to sensuality, Manet’s Venus wears a gentle pair of heeled sandals, a ribbon tied around her neck, a golden bracelet and a flower in her hair. She is attended by a black woman painted so dark that she is nearly lost in the background color although she actually stands right next to the far side of the bed. Where the character of Botticelli’s Venus is seen as remote and cool and Titian’s Venus is only slightly questioned, Manet’s Venus is obviously a prostitute (Bernheimer, 1989). As she has been depicted in the past two paintings, Manet’s character is successful in that she has a servant and commands a very rich or unusual environment. Beyond this, the representation of the female evident in this painting seems to be completely subject to the interpretation. “The public nakedness of a beautiful woman sometimes becomes a question of politics … which actions are permitted under which unspoken and frequently changing rules” (Friedrich, 1992: 1). Such a blatant illustration of a prostitute communicated to the Victorian culture was a very powerful figure in society. The successful prostitute was a woman in control of her own destiny as compared to the mostly powerless women of the age. She was also a direct challenge to the rigid ideals of propriety and purity by suggesting that her type of behavior and character were accepted and even condoned within her society. There are a number of ways in which these paintings are similar in their presentations of Venus, but the effects are achieved differently as are the messages conveyed. All three paintings depict a nude woman attended by servants in a way that shocked their cultures at the time. These images provide suggestions that the woman depicted is not necessarily as pure and innocent as she might seem. In all three, this is largely the result of her bold, clear look at the individual looking at her. She is unashamed of her nudity and just barely covers her pubic area with casually placed materials – wind-blown hair in the case of Botticelli and a casually placed hand in the cases of Titian and Manet – rather than deliberately directing the eye to this point. However, eye direction is the end effect. These images also represent how artists of one period build upon the ideas of artists of another period as Titian built on the earlier work of Botticelli in making his Venus nude yet adding changes that gave his Venus a more challenging appeal. Manet made slight changes to Titian’s image in order to bring forward more blatant references to the woman’s character. However, the images are largely different in the techniques employed to bring forward their ideas. Botticelli focuses on the classical interpretation of his subject in order to make breaking the rules acceptable to his still strictly Christian society, Titian’s painting relies heavily upon linear perspective and lighting to give the viewer a sense that the woman is at least one degree separated from anyone else around her and Manet’s painting depends much more on tone and symbolism to allow the servant to melt into the background while providing a much more intimate relationship between his female and her viewer. Although these paintings depict the changing position of women in society using the same classical subject, they do so in different ways and to different effects. Works Cited Bernheimer, Charles. “Manet’s Olympia: The Figuration of Scandal.” Poetics Today. Porter Institute for Poetics and Semiotics, Duke University Press, 1989. “Exploring Linear Perspective.” The Museum of Science. Science Learning Network, 1997. Friedrich, Otto. Olympia: Paris in the Age of Manet. New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 1992. Gombrich, E.H. The Story of Art. London: Phaidon, 1995. Hill, Suzanne. “Titian’s Venus of Urbino.” Suite101. (August 1, 2006). Stewart, Michael. “Aphrodite.” Greek Mythology: From the Iliad to the Fall of the Last Tyrant. (November 14, 2005). Read More