Medieval art series#
Medieval art tv#

The daily lives of people were therefore dictated by power, wealth, and status in the society-with the noble spending most of their time on entertainment, games and sports while the serfs toiled on their fields to serve them. Though they were not slaves-they were allowed to own property, however, in most serfdoms, peasants were legally part of the land, so, if the land was sold by the lords, the serfs were sold along with it.ĭue to the fact that the Middle Ages was dominated by the feudal system, there was a vast difference in the daily lives of peasants when compared to that of the noble. These peasants worked and laboured for the noble in a condition of bondage.

Medieval art tv#

The exhibition is less about one-to-one connections between a particular object and a specific film or TV show, Grollemond says, and more about “the way that these visual hallmarks of the Middle Ages get passed down and reworked and translated over time in our culture and the way that it makes it into pop culture.Serfs were the downtrodden and lowest social class during the Medieval Period.

It’s a long lineage of self-referential and ever-developing lore, some of it accurate and much of it studded with fantastical tropes, such as fairies, goblins and other magical creatures.

So much of what we think we know about the Middle Ages is based on retellings of stories over centuries as opposed to actual history. The answer is more nuanced than one might expect, Grollemond says. “They wanted to know: ‘What is real about this? What is based in history? Is there anything from the actual Middle Ages that comes out in ‘Game of Thrones?’” “People were really into it and they started asking us a lot of questions,” exhibition co-curator Larisa Grollemond says of the “Getty of Thrones” campaign. The toys, DVDs, replica swords, hats and Halloween costumes on view - including Morgan le Fay and Merlin Ken and Barbie dolls, dragon Beanie Babies, Dungeons & Dragons miniatures and the board game HeroQuest - exemplify just how far into the realms of pop culture and consumerism our enthrallment with medieval times reaches. Continuing in that participatory DIY spirit, a section of the exhibition includes personal items on loan from Getty staffers.

Medieval art series#

The exhibition grew out of a popular social media campaign the museum launched in 2014 called “Getty of Thrones.” The campaign appeared at first on Tumblr, then on Instagram Getty curators recapped episodes of the TV series “Game of Thrones” using images from the museum’s collection. Also on view are costume and background studies from films such as Disney’s 1959 “Sleeping Beauty” along with the enormous prop book that opened Disney’s 1963 film “The Sword in the Stone.” The hand-painted, resin object, with leather clasps and a metal diary-like lock, was shown in the film resting on a velvet spread, its big pages turning slowly in sync with the narrator’s musical voice-over to kick off the story. One of them, a tiny prayer book from the 15th century, is leather-bound with egg-based tempera paint and touches of gold leaf on parchment. The objects on view in “The Fantasy of the Middle Ages” - from the Getty’s permanent collection as well as loans from various California collections - include paintings and prints, photographs and handmade books from as early as the 14th century.

A new exhibition plumbs the intersection of medieval life and pop culture, presenting ancient objects from the Middle Ages that inspired decades of literature, television, animation and live-action films alongside pop cultural representations of the time period. Towering castles, knights on horseback, wizards in flowing robes and long-necked, roaring dragons fill the Getty Center’s galleries this summer.