Analysis of Appropriation in the Arts - "A Greco Roman Travesty"
A Greco Roman Travesty
Within our world is an inescapable culture of appropriation. To learn is to apply the successful behavior we observe from others or from the natural world to our everyday trials and tribulations. We have this ability to thank for many advances in society, particularly in the art world wherein artists have been absorbing and evolving the creations of others since humanity’s earliest days. Appropriation can be an innocent act, even one which benefits the greater good in some sense, but it becomes a moral dilemma when by serving to benefit the appropriator, it must detract from the originator. In Biographies of Brilliance: Pearls, Transformations of Matter and Being, c. AD 1492, archeologist and anthropologist Nicholas J. Saunders observes the negative impact that competing values between Indigenous Americans and Europeans has had upon the perceived cultural and monetary significance of pearls. Never having considered that pearls had any particular cultural significance before reading Saunders’ article, I began to question whether there were other cultures appropriated through art which I had been overlooking. I surprised myself when I landed upon Italian painter Bronzino’s Allegory with Venus and Cupid, and considered for the first time whether the Greco-Roman mythological figures I’d seen re-imagined through countless works of art over my lifetime were nothing more than a warped depreciation of culture.
Saunders takes heed to offer a well-researched insight on early European-Amerindian interactions and the resulting re-contextualization of popular trade items. He considers first the sacred qualitiesattached to many natural materials by the Amerindians. “Dazzling colours and shiny matter indicated the presence of super-natural beings and essence,”[1]he explains. Pearls and similar materials of value were viewed as “the accumulation of creative power which animated and regulated the universe” and “symbolized the efficacy of rituals and reinforced the powers of the elite who conducted them”.[2](Helms) Europeans looking to trade for Amerindian objects of significance would most often judge them based on physical characteristics alone, rather than take into consideration any personal and cultural meanings attached to them.[3]Through this disconnect in trade qualifications, Europeans were able to acquire pearls, silver, and even gold in exchange for glass. In the eyes of the Amerindians, the shiny object’s production was an indication of its maker’s supernatural talent (Saunders 247). The Europeans wouldn’t hesitate to disregard and capitalize upon this obvious imbalance, and would even go on to regard it as an indication of the Amerindians “childlike foolishness” and “gullibility”.[4]As a result of European re-contextualization, the value of pearls was eventually warped and devalued even by the Amerindians, who came to associate them with the harsh practices of pearl diving which often resulted in death. Under this new value system, the abundance and eventual over-circulation of pearls would go on to diminish their monetary value across both parties. Europeans were only briefly able to appropriate the pearls of the Americas for significant profit, leaving behind nothing of long-term benefit to their people and places of origin.
Bronzino, a notable Italian painter in the sixteenth century, created Allegory with Venus and Cupidas a commission for Duke Cosimo, who himself intended it as a gift to French King Francis 1.[5]It stands out in its unflinching eroticism and unconventional portrayal of the relationship between Venus and Cupid. It is decidedly “on the nose”, a quality some would attribute to the tastes of 16thcentury nobility, who delighted in “sophisticated wordplay and esoteric Classical references”.[6]There’s certainly no shortage of oddities to consider within this piece. Here, a young Cupid fondles his mother’s breast and kisses her as she appears to sneak an arrow from his quiver. Gods of Time and Truth pull back a curtain, exposing the two. A massive serpent with the upper body of a young girl lurks behind them. A playful cherub appears ready to shower the two with rose petals as an unidentifiable man wails beside them. The floor is littered with masks accompanied by a single dove. These iconographical characteristics have allowed art historians to diagnose the image as an allegory warning of “the impossibility of constant love and the folly of lovers”, or perhaps “the dangers of illicit sexual liasons, including the pain, hair loss, and disfiguration of venereal disease.”[7]
As I pondered my own interpretation of the image’s meaning, I began to question whether an Italian painter is justified in attempting to rewrite the narrative between Venus and Cupid. It clearly serves to make a statement, but is it right to use the mythos of another culture to make that statement? How might this image be perceived if it depicted Jesus and Mary instead? In seeking to answer this question, I further questioned whether the differentiation between religion and mythos had any impact upon why the appropriation of Christianity and Greco-Roman mythology are largely viewed with differing levels of offense. Hellenism, a revival of the Greek religious practice,[8] has few remaining practitioners, but I find that makes it no less valid to Greek culture. As was the case with pearls in the Americas, where once-sacred objects became commodified, that shouldn’t diminish the degree to which the characterization or stories of the appropriated entities are represented to a respectful degree of accuracy. I can’t say I’m personally outraged by Allegory with Venus and Cupid, or similar images of Greco-Roman Gods and deities, but that shouldn’t be used to invalidate the discomfort of others because they are in the minority.
Like Pandora’s box (or more accurately “jar”, as “box” was a mistranslation that stuck), Saunders’ article forces one to consider how they might overlook textbook examples of appropriation in the art world and beyond. To cast away every inappropriate act of appropriation throughout human history would be to decimate the world as we know it, but that doesn’t mean we have to repeat the mistakes of the past. Moving forward, we can attempt to re-contextualize art and sacred objects with their originating cultures by becoming educated and remaining respectful.
Works Cited:
[1]Kensinger, K. M. 1995. How Real People Ought to Be. Prospect Heights, Ill.: Waveland Press.
[2]Helms, M. W. 1981. Precious metals and politics: style and ideology in the Intermediate Area and Peru. Journal of Latin American Lore, 7(2): 215-38.
[3]Saunders, Nicholas J. “Biographies of Brilliance: Pearls, Transformations of Matter and being, c. AD 1492.” World Archaeology, The Cultural Biography of Objects. Vol. 31. Series 2. Taylor & Francis, 1999, 246.
[4]Greenblatt, S. 1992. Marvelous Possessions: The Wonder of the New World. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
[5]Stokstad, Marilyn, and Michael Watt Cothren. Art History. 5th ed. Vol. 4. Boston: Pearson Education, 2014, 666.
[6]Stokstad and Cothren, Art History, 665.
[7]Stokstad and Cothren, Art History, 666.
[8]Schulz, Cara. "Greek Paganism Legally Recognized as 'known Religion' in Greece." The Wild Hunt. April 18, 2017. Accessed March 07, 2019. https://wildhunt.org/2017/04/greek- paganism-legally-recognized-as-known-religion-in-greece.html.