Friday, June 11, 2021

Roman Art

 


I know what you're thinking, just what was the quality of imperial Roman art, the aesthetic sign of that civilization's soul or ethos. Good question and worth asking, not least because it's interesting in itself, and because history rhymes, we can draw lessons from it. 




That said, we don't have much pictorial art to work with, it's mostly gone because of its perishable medium, wood, parchment/vellum and other materials. Still, we have wall art, mostly from the cities entombed by Vesuvius and a few examples elsewhere, like Nero's Domus Aurea, his Golden House. What do we see?




Several dimensions of artistry, from trompe l'oeil architectural painting, to landscapes, depiction of mythic themes, portraiture, military Triumphs and more. Although Pliny decries the descent of art from realism to a kind of impressionist decadence, we're nonetheless left with the impression that Roman artists were concerned with painting things and people as they were, albeit to effect.




And what an effect it was! Heroic, mythic and classical, yes, but also garish to our eyes. They would think us bleak and starved of visual uplift, a drab, monochrome society. We would think them, I think, in bad taste. Too much bourgeois ebullience?




But here's the rub, the Romans, for all Pliny's criticism, produced art to please the eye and uplift the mind. We don't. Our art destroys the eye and depresses the soul. It's filth. So who's the decadent in this equation?




Your call, but don't say Rome.

SPQR,

LSP

9 comments:

Well Seasoned Fool said...

I leave the subject to those who better understand it. My sole venture was the mandatory college course in Art Appreciation which I barely passed.

LSP said...

WSF, as soon as you study it you've most likely failed. Does it look good? Roman art? A bit alien, imo.

Kid said...

Agree. I also think people in those days didn't have the distractions people do in our times and the result was greater thought, theory, art, and architecture.

LL said...

The Roman culture embraced art - high art - as an essential function of empire and it graced their walls and much of what remains is their terrazzo floors, art for art's sake. Beauty for the sake of beauty. Subsequent generations only look and wonder.

SgtBob said...

For absolute alienness, the Canaanites win. Depictions of their deities are not of Earth.

LSP said...

They, the educated class, certainly had more time to think, Kid. Or at least it seems to me. That in mind, imagine Pliny's horror at the MOMO.

LSP said...

I certainly do, LL. And they had paintings as we know them, hanging or supported on stands. None of these have come down to us, sadly. What will survive the deluge of our own civilization?

LSP said...

Totally agree, Sgt.

Wild, wild west said...

Alas, hick that I am, I did not appreciate the art appreciation course any more than WSF did.