A Theme Of Art In The Film The Dark Ages: An Age Of Light
In this day in age, we human beings tend to be artistically inclined to create meaningful pieces of art. In The Dark Ages, known as a time related to Western European history holds a time in which various styles of art were often shared among human beings. The overall premise of the film “The Dark Ages: An Age of Light”, is based on the knowledge that the art created in this era is filled with hidden meanings.
In the film, the main focus of art is centered around the religion of Christianity, in which art was expressed throughout various symbols such as the ROTAS Square to declare their faith. Christian art rarely depicted images as their art was mysterious often containing hidden meanings taken from religions, and influenced by various cultures such as the Greeks and Romans to create the art we know of today.
The influence of religions continues to support the hypothesis “Culture Defines Art and Art Defines Culture” throughout religious leaders such as Jesus. In the early Dark Ages, the images depicted of Jesus himself had been described as feminine as his features were youthful and delicate much like the Greek God of the Sun; Apollo. However, the use of cultures had later influenced leaders such as Constantine The Great to convert to Christianity in which the artistic appearance of Jesus himself was altered to appear as a masculine male with features such as a beard; a borrowed style used to match the powerful Roman god Jupiter.
The art created during this time had been defined by cultures in which art borrowed what was already there as human beings created various forms of symbols to represent meanings in the art. The meanings of art discovered from the Dark Ages shares values within previous films such as “How Art Made the World” and “Arts and the Mind” as various different cultures used creative thinking to create modern-day art. For example, in the film “How Art Made the World”, the Egyptians had influenced the Greeks to make connections by using creative thinking and memorization skills to create art that was defined and reassembled power by borrowing different concepts from each other’s cultures. Whereas the children in the film “Arts and the Mind” had used creative thinking to identify symbols and make connections to situations. In these films, art could be defined throughout the symbolic nature of borrowing styles and ideas from cultures.
During the Dark Ages, the Romans were at odds against the Christians resulting in the persecution of over two-thousand Christians in the catacombs. However, in 313 A. D Constantine the Great had legalized Christianity as it later came to be the official religion of the Roman Empire. In addition, faith contributed to how culture defines art in which the Christians borrowed the depictions of the halo and angels, as well as the idea of the Egyptian Earth Goddess Isis from the Pagans to symbolize protection within faith. The hidden meanings in the art allowed cultures to fuse together and share ideas to symbolize messages in a faith. In the Dark Ages, artists spoke to cultures throughout their art in a misleading way as the first depictions of the Christian leader Jesus was expressed as a young and delicate leader. Whereas later on in the Medieval Ages, Jesus was depicted as a leader who had undergone torture in which worshipers to strongly believed suffering is a major part of redemption. As a result, the arts have affected social elements in which death has had a major influence on the depictions and formation of art and architecture in modern-day.
Today, the architecture of a Christian church consists of a basilica space for large assemblies and a round shaped alter which serves as a thinking space for Christian worshipers. In conclusion, religions often take similar styles of art to create works that are shared among various cultures to influence new methods of creative thinking allowing human beings to discover the true hidden meanings of art.
