Art reflects the situation of the people. People often become the muse of artists and serve as their vessels to express their feelings about society. Artists are also often paid to depict the views of the rich, leaving the views of the poor often unrepresented (unless, of course, the artist is part of a lower class and expresses his or her own views in their work). In ancient times, the views of the leaders of the people made up a majority of the perspectives recorded through artwork.
The Uruk people (Uruk is an ancient city of Sumer) have been known to emphasize the importance of figures in their statues by means of height, size of eyes and length of beards. Perfect examples of this lie within the statues found at the Abu Temple (as seen below) The statues include both idols and votive statues. The two tallest statues are thought to be idols of the Uruk god Abu, whereas, the shorter statues are thought to be votives of richer Uruk people so that they can be seen as constantly praying to Abu. Only the rich people of Uruk (the priests and the rulers) could afford to have their own votive and, therefore, are the only people who could afford to “constantly” be praying to the gods. The larger eyes on the statues are a representation of the Uruk belief that “the eyes are the windows to the soul.” The large eyes are thought to ward off evil and show how much power a person or god has. The beards were also viewed as a symbol of power. This shows a distinct divide between the classes of the Uruk people, not only in the art itself, but in its symbolism. The votive statues allowed the richer people of Uruk to be more holy than the poorer people.
Statues from the Abu Temple
Some art of the ancient world meshed the roles of society as one. The frieze in the Parthenon (as seen below) created by the Ancient Greek people is a perfect example of this. In the city of Athens all people were represented in government because it was a democracy. The frieze in the Parthenon showed the rich and poor worshiping Athena in the Panathenaic procession (which was held to honor Athena) without distinction of power and wealth displayed. Neither rich nor poor was shown as more holy than the other. Unlike past works of art, this frieze did not use any hierarchical scale which is what most previous artworks used to clearly show who was deemed as “important” and “powerful”, and who was not.
East frieze of the Parthenon
These examples lead me to believe that artwork both reinforces and breaks down class divisions. It all depends on the artist, the benefactor, and the situation of the time and place. This is clearly seen in my examples, and in various artworks of the past and present.
