Grade 10 Art - Day 73: "Artistic Conventions: Heroic Works"

The heroic ethos is a set of values that permeates our literature, art, dramatic presentations, and music.  This set of values glorifies the courageous acts of heroic individuals. For thousands of years, people have rallied behind the valourous, singing odes to their exploits and trying to capture their greatness in paintings and plays.

In visual art, heroic works are prolific. They are dynamic in their range from vibrant colour to dark and gloomy battle scenes.  Our heroes are taken from religious doctrine, historic battles, political upheaval, and sources too numerous to mention.  Let's take a look at a few heroic works and try to better understand the culture, society, and ideologies behind them:

Landing of Captain Cook, at Botany Bay, 1770 1902 (National Gallery of Victoria)

by E. Phillips Fox

(read more about Cook`s first voyage at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_voyage_of_James_Cook)

National War Memorial Ottawa by Vernon March

(read more at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_War_Memorial_(Canada)#cite_note-CE-6)

"The Recapture of Buda Castle in 1686" by Gyula Benczúr

As a group, I would like to visit the following site: http://gizmodo.com/this-amazing-3d-render-lets-you-dive-into-a-medieval-ba-1548660882, which shows how Ekho, a Hungarian 3D artist, has turned this painting into a compelling 3D rendering.

As a parting note, I wanted to share a portion of an essay entitled ``The Heroic Ethos: Reality and Representation" by Rebecca A. Tierney-Hynes:

Contrasting the Code with Reality:

Graham Caie warns against the literalization of the heroic ethos in present analyses of Anglo-Saxon society. He points out that there are only five ‘heroic’ works extant, and that the "constant battle, acts of heroic bravery, [and] supernatural feats of individual strength"(79) can hardly be taken as an accurate representation of any society that necessarily includes women, children, farmers, tradespeople and all the paraphernalia of everyday life.