How did they do it??

Carrying on the this theme of Utopia/ Dystopia i am looked into a number of different artist who have created work in response to the concepts. Thomas More, the founder of the word Utopia, created the word from Greek to represent a "perfect place" or a "none place" which has been explored and reinvented in many different areas within our society. For example it can be expressed through, politics, economically or religion. 

Today in this blog i plan to research into the Religious side and how artist have expressed they reflection of the idea of Utopia and Dystopia though their work. During the Romanesque and Gothic period ,1000-1140 AD, the main commission for making art was from the church and at this time in the west it held the most money and power to do so. This being the case most art work was either sculptural with the architecture of the cathedrals or paintings within the Church and bibles. The main Utopian and dystopian thinking was about how to lead a Christian honest life and how to prevail to heaven and avoid hell. This was reflected within the art.

Here above is a piece by an unknown French Romanesque sculpture dated 1125-35 which is a sculpture out of stone above a door way of an Abbey called Church of Sainte-Foy in Conques, France. It represents the gate way to heaven and hell. The left side represents heaven as it appears at the bottom people are being led away by Jesus and above there is an angle shooing away the goblin like figure on the right where people are being subjected to beatings and at the bottom right being feed to a larger beast.

This piece interested me because this image is quite graphic and portrays images that if the church was to recreate them today in a more contemporary manor would shock and upset a lot of people. This piece of art  has been carefully and beautifully made which also represents our views of life during that period. I relate this to my work as i have fondness with contradictions and contrasting images and sculpture and this piece is just that this each side contrasting the ways of after lives Western people believed we would live. If i was to create a piece of work based on this i would make a number of little figures which into days world i would considered to be modern and recreate this scene but with the sins and virtues of our current society.

(insert image of my imitation to come)