Monday, May 27, 2013
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Bare
faced liars
I watched a programme made for the telly about
the Dark Ages and how light they actually were. This one focused on
Christianity in the first 400 years after the supposed birth of Christ. It
examined the art of that period. For three hundred years there were no
depictions of Christ at all, only ciphers, codes, anagrams. Then there emerged
the first portraits. Since there is nothing in the New Testaments to guide the
artists, no lean-jawed, steely-eyed, hippy peace-lover, they did exactly what
games programmers do today and sketched the ideal. For them it was a beardless
youth, androgynously breasty and sweet of lip. Christ was both male and female.
He carried a magic wand with which he did tricks called miracles. Like computer programmers they had cast around for useful prototypes, the
bisexual equivalent of a Lara Croft or a shoot-em-up platoon leader. They found
it in Roman art. Apollo was ideal. Blonde and curly haired, appealing like
David Bowie to both sexes. The suggestion made in the programme was that there
were no female figures to idolise in Christianity at the time. Then along came depictions
of the Marys, the virgin mother and Magdalene the lover (eventually twisted into a new shape and
vilified as a prostitute). Now that the female aspect was clarified the artists
and the aggressively developing Christian church could look to the Roman God Zeus
for new inspiration. Bearded, mature, a powerful leader, lord of all he surveyed. What
better image for their proselytizing?
What an archetype! It has lasted a couple of millennia. Christians the
world over, black, white and every colour in between, regardless of the place
of beard and hair in their cultures, venerate this ubiquitous image of the hairy saviour.
Advertising is a powerful tool if you get
the symbolic essence right.
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Labels: Christ unbearded. The early Christian art of advertising.
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