Buy an essay on Historical and cultural context Analysis – Doomed love in art

body 1. Historical and cultural context Analysis
In tracing the historical development of each of the kinds of fine art, the most old form of art is poetry. Poetry originated in ancient times, when people just began to use words to express their knowledge of the world, feelings and emotions. In times of antiquity, poetry became the most popular form of art: the poets composed poems about the gods, historic events, praised the beauty of women and nature. Since that time the topic of love has become as the central theme.
The theme of love is one of the components of the theory of pure art, the most widely used in literature and reflected in poetical works. Creation of beautiful love poems can be explained not only great gift and a special talent of the poet, but also personal feelings of the author, his deep sensivity and emotionality. All that makes poems filled with true emotions and spiritual aspirations of the poet and a profound sense of hope, as reflected in the love lyric.
But the love poems, especially poems about poor doomed love, are filled with not only a sense of hope and expectations, but can be deeply tragic. Feeling of love is very controversial, it brings not only joy, but torment and suffering. In love poems readers can often reed such combinations as “the joy – the suffering”, the suffering of bliss”, etc.
Love poems provides an opportunity to penetrate deeper into general philosophical, and, respectively, aesthetic views, in “a true solution to the question of the relation of art and reality”. Love, as well as poetry, belongs to the other world that is dear and close to each reader and poet.
Also in the ancient times people turned to the visual arts – painting. Painting as a kind of visual art means “to write life, write vividly, that is to pass the reality fully and convincingly”. (Moshe, 1990)
Painting can capture the complex world of human emotions and characters, to convey subtle changes in nature, the eternal philosophical ideas and fantastic imagery. Completeness of the phenomena of painting appears in the inherent genres of painting.
The artist creates with the help of pictorial means a unique world that surprises and pleases, causes worry and happiness gives food to the mind, attaches to the secrets and mysteries of art. Color can sculpt the shape of the object, help to depict the beauty of the surrounding world, to express feelings, mood, certain emotional state. To understand the plan of the artist, the basic idea of works, it is necessary to learn the language of painting and continuously develop perception, artistic taste, and emotionality.
Let’s see the painting: “Isabella and the pot of Basil” by William Holman Hunt. The painting was made on the theme of the poem by Keats, who, in turn, used the story of the “Decameron” by Boccaccio. Hunt based his painting on the second part of the legend, where Isabella found Lorenzo dead, and hide the head of her lover in a pot of basil. The artist has depicted the girl tenderly embracing the vessel with the precious head, as if trying to be reunited with her lover. On the vessel it can be clearly seen a human skull – an eloquent sign of death.
Speaking about the different types and genres of art it is necessary to mention the theatrical art. Theatre has always been at the heart of any culture: whether it was in ancient Greece or Rome, in the Middle Ages or the Age of Enlightenment, XIX century or at present.
The first theatrical works were known since prehistoric times, when our ancestors decorated themselves in natural colors and made presentations of life. However, the birth of theatrical art in its modern sense was in the times of ancient Greece. After centuries of theatrical art has evolved and changed, but one thing remains constant – people go to the theater for the experience. Emotional intensity of stage productions attracts people, because audience feels a different atmosphere, becomes casual viewers of someone’s life, and quietly holding the breath watches the events on stage.
In the development of theatrical art appeared new masterpieces and famous names, new productions of plays, as well as new types of theatrical art: opera, operetta, ballet, and later a musical.
Musical is a music and stage performance, which uses various means of pop music, drama, ballet and opera. Like the operetta, the musical also appeals to the audience in the language of modern pop music, but the musical form is simpler and more compact: it is presented mainly in song form, it does not have many episodes of finals acts, the ensembles are rare, but has a lot of scenes with soloist or with the chorus. Musicals are characterized by saturation effects in each replica, any dance steps and comic patter. Vocal and dance scenes should grow directly out of action and to develop it, must internally motivated. (Ganzl)
In Musicals the scenes of the main plot are closely bind with character development, and ballet episodes thus cease to be inserted, but become part of the action. But this is not enough: choreography, plastics have become an essential element in the system of expressive means of the musical, along with singing. Characters of the heroes are revealed through the singing and dancing.
Musical “The Phantom of the Opera” is one of the most popular in its genre. Thanks to a beautiful setting, brilliant play of actors and fascinating story, the musical has been popular for many years and has become a classic in its genre.
In “Phantom of the Opera” there is a love story, exciting events and fun with songs and dances, and the most importantly – true life feelings and emotions. According to the plot, strange things are happening in the famous Paris Opera: there lives a ghost, inspiring fear and terror.
This story is an example of doomed love, that can not exist in this world and the characters show their emotional experiences very brightly! The tense atmosphere makes it impossible to break away from the musical for a second. He maelstrom of events drags the audience deep into that world, enables to feel all the depth of the feelings and emotions of the heroes.
The tragedy of history is astounding. It is for sure that many viewers could not help but pity poor Ghost. It is a terrible drama of doomed love is an example of how cruel people can be. The Meaning of the musical is: no matter what is you face, the main thing – what you have in mind. (Perry, 1991)
That all makes musical one of the brightest and most impressive genres of art.
Though nowadays due to the technological progress, people more often turn to the new form of art – cinematography. This is a kind of artistic creativity, which is a synthesis of literature, fine arts, theater and music. Cinematography includes dramatic, linguistic, musical, pictorial and plastic elements, as well as the play of actors. (Nowell-Smith 1999)
Cinematography does not duplicate or replace the theater, literature, music, or painting, and transforms their experience to suit the display of creativity. The emergence of new technical means of audiovisual communication does not lead to displacement and loss of cinema as an art, but expands the scope of artistic creativity, as well as provide new opportunities.
An important feature of the cinema is that “it makes it possible, without any danger, to feel enthusiasm, passion and desire, which in normal life are necessarily suppressed!” (Carl Jung)
It must be also noted that the image of the love theme on the screen – is one of the brightest, most popular, because people want to watch love stories to empathize with the actors. When they watch a love story of movie heroes, people can feel themselves in their shoes, to empathize, laugh and cry – so real seems the picture on the screen. According to Bernardo Bertolucci “People come to the cinema, to share with actors the same dream.” (Hill et all, 1998)
One of the films that show a story of doomed love is ‘The bridges of Madison County’, directed by Clint Eastwood in 1995. This picture is considered one of the best ever films about love. It is a tender and touching drama, made upon the novel by Robert James Waller, that tells a story of love between two elderly people.
It is very good, bright and romantic movie about net, touching, but the unhappy and doomed love of two good people, who unfortunately have met too late. The audience always watches it at one go, empathizes and cries together with the heroes. So, as Frank Capra said: “I thought drama film – is when the heroine is crying. I was wrong. This is when audience cries.” (Nowell-Smith 1999)
That is, cinema as a genre of art is very deep in its capabilities to reproduce the events, feelings and emotions so really that we, the viewers and connoisseurs of cinema, almost “live in the movies.” And indeed, the modern world is impossible to imagine without this art form.