Arcadia has over the ages been known as the dwelling of the Greek gods and goddesses, also known as the Olympus gods. While the Olympus gods and their ancient worshippers could easily accommodate the most human and irrational forms of behaviour, Greek philosophers after Aristotle became increasingly obsessed with rationality and logic, and would for that reason brand the less civilized worshippers of pagan gods in the countries surrounding Greece as “Barbarians.”
Gradually the whole western world would be Christianized under the Romans, who were strongly influenced by the intellectual orientation of Greek slaves who served as their teachers. In this way the alienation between Western civilization, based on Greek philosophy, and civilizations and religious orders from African and Oriental countries would grow.
In recent times the alienation between different countries and cultures of the world has to a large extend been transcended by the internet, turning the world into a global village. The different cultures and religions could now be brought into our homes by simply pushing a button.
South African Artist Julian Venter
In his home country, South African born artist Julian Venter used to depict African gods and their masked worshippers dancing around fires, and imitate the rock engravings that played a role in rituals concerning the hunt and fertility on the African continent.
Greek Gods
Upon his arrival in Greece, the old Olympus gods seem to have arisen from their slumber to welcome and accommodate their distant brothers and sisters brought by Venter from Africa, Egypt and the Orient as well as the more contemporary gods and worshippers of the internet that the artist has in the meantime been exposed to.
The artist now traded his medium of oil and pastels for computerized collages in unapologetically bright and flashy colours. His gods, which have been considerably extended, are now placed inside a new Mediterranean environment where even the ancient Chthonian goddess of fertility and death was revived after a slumber of millenniums.
Symbols in Venter’s Work
Symbols in his works include memories from western civilization like vintage cars, clay pots, buildings and ancient ruins, earth dwellers like insects and snakes and rocks and wild animals, gods from the Hindu, Greek, African and ancient Celtic religions, African masks, crystal stars, spirals, goats lost in landscapes haunted by flying saucers and self portraits of the artist as yoga man flying over earths and oceans and buzzing with the internet energy connecting an entire universe.
The impression created by these works is that of a more vibrant and psychotic version of Salvador Dali, in which the every day objects encountered in strange combinations in our dreams are replaced by every god that has ever existed and every symbol and archetype that can be imagined, changing the Acropolis for ever.
Source
P.S. Dreyer, Die Wysbegeerte van die Grieke (Greek Philosophy), HAUM, 1976
Fransi Phillips - Published author of poetry, short stories, novels, art books in Afrikaans and English Writer of art reviews in Afrikaans and English ...
