From The Rising Nepal. (Just a thought: How easily could you (or I) write a survey of Asian art history?)

Golden Period of Fine Arts [ 2006-8-3 ]

By P. Gopakumar

IT is considered that the golden age of fine arts was in the era of the Greek supremacy in the region of Mediterranean Sea.

Some of the temples, houses and statues still exist there as the last remaining relics enough as a proof. But most of the drawings, which once decorated the walls of those buildings, are in a dilapidated condition. Only the drawings on the Grecian urns are left behind us to have an idea about the greatness of Grecian art. Certainly these drawings are enough to invoke poetic imagination indeed. Remember the great poem of John Keats 'Ode to a Grecian urn�.

The most interesting feature of the Grecian art is that they developed three different styles in their drawings. The oldest among them is known as geomenic style. This style was popular around 800 B. C. This style is actually combinations of squares and triangles. One has to scrutinize to find the figures in the squares and triangles. Unlike the pictures of Egyptians and Cretes, Grecians endeavored to depict emotions.

That is one of the special features of Grecian art. It seems that Greek drama was also influenced by the style later. The world classics, Oedipus and Antigony, might have owed much to Grecian drawings.

The second style existed in Greece was about 500 B. C. This style is known as archaic style. This style is also largely influenced by the Egyptian style. Archaic style is more realistic than geomenic style.

The third style, classical style, had become popular about 450 B. C. The extreme greatness of Grecian art can be visible in this style. Those artists, followed the archaic style, had used very limited colors viz. black, dark red and green. The classical artists used a lot of colors. And the more, they elegantly combined the colors. They were the first to use brush for drawing pictures as it had its own specialties. With the pointed touches, they could give originality and more effect.

In the first decade of 19th century, Davy, the French artist, tried to revive the classical style. This, itself, indicates that classical style is comparable to the modern styles. That is why some of the classical works are difficult to recognize they were drawn more than 2000 years ago.

But the Greek style had several shortcomings. All their works looked identical, like the creations from one mould. Hence artist's individuality was not articulated. They only tried to draw the bodies of human beings. They never thought they could portray individuals like the way drawing abstract figures. Portraying was not existed then. They were interested only in drawing beautiful abstract figures, not portraying individuals.

About 150 B.C. Greece was conquered by energetic Romans, the then warmongers. This resulted in the end of the golden age of Grecian art. But these Romans had a lot of respects to the Grecian arts and literatures. They carried several pictures and sculptures to their native, Rome. They copied some of the Grecian works. The huge sculpture of discobolus by Meeron and pebble players, a drawing by Alexandeross, were the few copies found in some Italian cities.

These Romans, who understood the greatness of the classical style, used that style in their works. As they occupied all over Europe, they could make the style popular throughout Russia to England. Well before the Romans, classical style had already reached some parts of Asia Minor and Asia through the great emperor, Alexander the Great, by the expansion of his empire.

The Greek style developed by the Romans is known as Greco-Roman style. The first portraits in the history were seen in this period. We are fortunate; a lot of Roman portraits still exist throughout Europe especially in Italian cities.

Admirably blessed with the skill, they marvelously portrayed human body. The ancient Greeks and Romans eulogized the beauty of human body as well as proud of their might. They felt no shame with their nude portraits. The portraits depicts that they participated in sports and games even in fighting as naked.

They have innumerable number of deities in their religion. These gods and goddesses had passions and weaknesses like us, human beings. For example, Jupiter, the Roman king of gods, was a womanizer, Venus, the goddess of health, was jealous.

Legend has it that a lot of tales about the characters about these deities. They depicted the scenes from the epics as such. As they were blessed with the extra-ordinary skill in portraying the nudity of the body, nude pictures are aplenty in the collection.

For Jews, portraying nudity that too of a woman was considered a sin. The Jews, even seeing itself the drawings of the Romans, was considered as sacrilege. As Christianity is an offshoot of Judaism, the then Christians followed most of the principles of the Jews. Like the Jews they too considered seeing the works of arts of the Romans as sacrilege.

Unlike the Greek's and the Roman's approach to their deities, the Christians were eager to praise the Jesus Christ and his greatness. This attitude influenced in their creative works also. On realizing the drawing as such unsuitable, they drew symbolic pictures to fulfill their ambitions, like the Egyptians. The symbolism in the works of art was seen throughout the ancient Christian drawings. When they draw sheep and shepherd, sheep represent as souls and shepherd as Jesus Christ to lead the souls. By 200 A. D. Christianity had been spreading throughout European countries, which caused for the re-emergence of symbolism in fine arts.

The life of early Christians was full of hardships and miseries. Christians were minority in most parts of the Europe then. Being a Christian itself was enough to be catastrophic in those periods.

The rulers were not hesitated to award capital punishment to those who believed in the Jesus Christ and followed his faith.

Fine arts must have been a means for the early Christians to maintain their belief in the Jesus Christ. Anyhow the grave situation did not last long. The scenario had been changed in 400 A.D., as Constantine, the Roman emperor, declared Christianity as the official religion in his empire. It was a major event in the course of fine arts as Christian fine artists and their works had been officially recognized.