The Myth of Progress: The Grecian Harvest-Home
February 2, 2008
In Gordon Jackman’s first article in the Myth of Progress series, he shared his discovery of a rare book of etchings depicting the progress of human knowledge and culture, the original paintings of which still adorn the Grand Room of the Royal Society of Arts in London, as they have done since they were painted between 1777 and 1801.
James Barry is virtually unknown now and his paintings seen only by a few. However, his series of six paintings were a consensus view of intellectual, economic and hereditary elites in the last quarter of the 18th century as the Industrial Revolution got into full swing.
The ideas portrayed were meant to replace the world view of the Middle Ages dominated by the church with an enlightened, improved, rational and scientific view of the world. These ideas are now the drivers of our modern progressive and globalized world. This second article looks looks at the modern idea of paradise, not in heaven, but on Earth.
A Grecian Harvest Home
A Grecian Harvest Home is the second in the series of paintings by James Barry depicting the progress of human knowledge and culture. Having left behind Barry’s idea of the savage state and considering the transformation brought about by Orpheus bringing civilization, we find in this second picture an Eighteenth Century Vegetable Garden of Eden. This is the self-sufficient rural community in harvest time.
From Barry’s point of view the components of this picture depict an ideal rural human society. Gods, depicted from Roman and Greek times, include Ceres and Demeter, goddess of crops, harvest and fertility; Bacchus and Dionysus the gods of wine; Sylvanus and Pan the gods of the forest, fields and flocks; Janus, the two faced god of doorways and change.
From an anthropological point of view, of course, the domestication of animals and plants made the transition from hunter-gatherer societies to agrarian societies possible; in a nomadic existence wealth had to be carried, or left it in caches. In the archaeological record societies were more balanced - female with male in terms of power - before the agricultural revolution. Women had more status as equal decision makers and wealth tended to be displayed in public works as well as private goods.
Settled agriculture sometimes gave rise to a surplus of crops and, once proper storage was invented, gave rise to the actuality of inherited wealth and power. Domesticated animals gave mobility, increased agricultural production and allowed transportation of resources and people. Technological innovation and the use of metal allowed the development of wealth-producing tools ranging from the military to the mundane.
Between 5000-6000 BC the first stone granary forts spread around the Mediterranean and across Europe, from Egypt to the Orkney Islands. New patriarchal and military societies and religions developed, not the least reason being that men wanted to know who their children were for the purposes of inheritance. Judaism, Christianity and Islam, all religions centered on a single male god, arose out of this social change.
Janus, always depicted as the two-faced god of doors and corridors, symbolizes change. He is a key figure in the Enlightenment, his role is to get us from one year to another, hence the month January, transitioning us from the end of one year to the next and taking us through the passage of New Year’s Resolutions.
So what changed, and what stayed the same when we left the cave and followed Orpheus in the myth of progress?
The first thing we need is a house with a fire and sturdy construction to keep out the weather and wild animals, while we raise a family.
The man is working the field with bullock and plough with beehives nearby. The woman is either harvesting or bringing him lunch.
A marriage procession of the villagers signifies social cohesion. The Temple is new, on the mountain, guarding the mountain road and the minds of the people. People are gaining power and some more than others.
In the middle ground, men are wrestling to the approving gaze of old men no longer able to participate. Men are drinking as a reward from working in the field. A woman, two children and a friendly dog model the nuclear family during happy hour. Children are playing everywhere. The oxen are pulling the wagons of corn to be stored till the next harvest.
In the foreground of the picture we have young men and women dancing as part of the celebration of the harvest, looked over by the figures of Sylvanus and Pan. Sylvanus was the Roman god of woods, fields and flocks, and Pan is his Greek counterpart. He looked over the untilled land. Sylvanus had to be propitiated whenever his lands were converted to agriculture. In this painting he is the largest god. Surrounding him is the community, under the threshing roof, and there is a Madonna-like child figure which may be a slight reference to Christianity.
In total it is quite a simple message of the fecundity or fertility of happiness in the ideal scene where men are firmly in charge but everybody is doing well; the first step of progress. In this message we are seeing an ideal human society, where there is an almost Aryan image of the human body. This introduces the next picture and establishes a link. From a disability perspective this shows how this sort of discrimination runs deep and is setting the scene for the Olympic games which symbolizes the worship of the perfect body.
The people depicted are all wonderfully able-bodied, even the old people. In his etchings, Barry exaggerates this aspect of human muscularity and the old men are sitting back relaxing in a comfortable, perfect idealization of human society.
The Grecian Harvest was meant to represent the state of civilization between the cave and the town. In the industrial revolution, where many people had been herded off the land and into the cities, presenting an idyllic and bucolic past as an early step on the concept of progress was a brilliant way to keep people working hard in the cities.
We can’t go back because we are meant to go forward, and while the present isn’t too bright at the moment, only progress offers any hope of a brighter future. Of course if you do really well - then you can, through a reputable real estate agent, buy yourself a piece of the lost Elysium in rural Middlesex, and live happily ever after.
The real estate agents are still doing well out of life style blocks.
In the next article we shall see the next building block in the myth of progress, The Victors at Olympia.
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