Landscape The Fall Of Icarus

Humans really do suck, don't they? In modern guild, it would seem to be that humans are starting to become more in tune with nature and also with the people effectually them. Humans are only now noticing how their excessive use of plastic products such as straws are hurting the oceans and they are just now taking actions against it, banning plastic straws from multiple states effectually the United states. Humans are besides seeing that their corruption towards bees is only going to make them finish up like the bees; causing for raised awareness towards declining bee population. Why am I bringing all of this up? Unproblematic, humans have always had a selfish nature lurking in them, even yet. Even though we might not call up of information technology applying to today's society with development in medicine and engineering, life is nevertheless survival of the fittest, and those non fit to support themselves without the help of others don't survive. The vast majority of humans seem to only care well-nigh things that pertain to them and their ain personal bug, with about of them non going out of the way to save others, which tin can be seen in the painting Landscape with the Fall of Icarus past Renaissance painter Pieter Bruegel.

In the Landscape with the Autumn of Icarus, Bruegel shows how selfishness has always been in human nature. In the traditional Greek Myth, The Tragic Story of the Fall of Icarus, Daedalus and his son Icarus are sent to prison on the island of Crete. On Crete, Daedalus gathers enough feathers and wax for both him and his son Icarus to build wings to fly away from the island and escape. Daedalus warns Icarus not to wing as well high so that the Sun'south rut would non melt the wax off from the wings and crusade Icarus to fall to his expiry. Ignoring his begetter's commands, Icarus flew likewise high and when the wax melted off the wings and he roughshod down, he drowned in the ocean. And then looking at the painting, the setting shows a small island in the Aegean Sea (where Icarus drowns in the myth) with nice cute colors of the vivid blue sea waters and the brilliant sun in the background. Also in the moving picture, at that place features a small send off in the distance of the sea, small islands scattered around, and mountains in the background.

For the foreground, in that location are three humans painted; one being a shepherd, another being a farmer, and the last one appearing to be a fisherman. In the h2o, very shut to the shore, announced to be the legs of the fallen and drowning Icarus. This brilliant and beautiful setting of a gleaming sunny spring/summers day on the Mediterranean takes abroad from the tragedy of a kid's death. The result that this has it that information technology makes it seem that what happened to Icarus regarding his death was just equally natural as the sea beingness blue or the leaves on trees on the island being bright green. With this consequence existence in place, information technology would seem that the reactions of the 3 humans on the island; the shepherd, the farmer, and the fishermen would also announced to exist natural, that reaction existence no reaction at all.

Let's go into depth on what all of the people in this painting are doing. If the centre of our paradigm would to be the two legs of Icarus sticking out of the water, then the object closest to them would be the big transport that is sailing towards the shore and towards Icarus. Appearing to be very close to the drowning Icarus, if one of the sailors on the transport took activeness and jumped off the send to go and save Icarus or throw a rope down for Icarus to catch, and so his decease could take been prevented. Besides the same can be said for the fishermen fishing very close to the border of the shore and also appearing to be very close to Icarus, but in the painting, even with Icarus being very close to him, he still seems disinterested in going out of his manner of saving him and would rather continue on trying to catch fish, in hopes of either selling them for him to make money, or for eating them later for lunch.

Finally for the fishermen, close to the shore appears to exist a little gunkhole with a paddle that could have been used to become out into the sea to relieve the drowning Icarus visible to him. The shepherd and his sheep are the side by side topics of discussion. In the painting, it can be seen that there are around three or four sheep shut to the border of the shore and the shepherd himself announced to be close to the edge too. When Icarus fell from the heights he was soaring at, he would have virtually likely caused a loud splash when he fabricated an impact with the water which would accept surely caught the attention of either the sheep or the shepherd. Judging from the painting, this was not the case, with the farmer minding his own business, continuing to look off to the left and his sheep continuing to eat, finally, with the farmer who is plowing his fields, the fall of Icarus appears to be no bother to him, who doesn't fifty-fifty look back once to encounter what that racket could accept been and continues to plow his fields. Ironically selfishness is far from you lot would associate with a farmer, only this painting shows that no human being is an exception to selfishness. All of these people could take taken some time out of the activities that they were doing and they could accept gone to get save Icarus with the pocket-sized boat on the shore but with the selfishness of humans, the events of another human being'due south life practise not affect theirs and then there is no need to worry nigh it.

With some research, I institute out that towards the end of his career every bit a painter, Bruegel started to make his paintings focus more on the relationships that humans had between themselves and also their relationships with nature. Especially, he focused on how both nature and humans only cared about themselves, both of which are evident in Landscape of The Fall of Icarus, with non only the humans on the island tending to their personal issues, but with nature disregarding Icarus. The Sun, whose heat melted the wax on Icarus' wings, and the bounding main's waters where Icarus landed and drowned. Both could have spared Icarus but held themselves over the life of some other's. With other research, I found a poem with the same name written by poet William Carlos Williams. In the poem, the lines "the edge of the ocean concerned with itself" and "sweating in the sun that melted the wings' wax" summarize the selfishness of nature in this painting. The sea was just concerned with itself, if it wasn't, it could have caused waves that carried Icarus to the shore, the same with the Dominicus emitting enough heat to cause the wax to cook. The terminal line, "insignificantly off the coast in that location was a splash quite unnoticed, this was the Icarus drowning.", shows the selfish nature that all humans showroom, in how the splash acquired by Icarus was "quite unnoticed" and "insignificant". I get out with the question, despite all the progress of technology, research, mathematics etc. have humans truly evolved then that we remember of others and their problems rather than only ours?

03 December 2019

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