Narrative Art

Narrative art is ascribed to be a type of art which is visually portrayed and indulges in telling stories through the presentation being rendered by the artist. Until the twentieth century, most of the art in the Western culture has been revealed to be narrative in their genre of art has been seen to be telling stories from the religion, myth, literature and other historical legends so that it can create a more familiar ambience with the audience in depicting their perspectives. Narrative art makes in front of the audience the essence and meaning of the art to be easy than the verbal narratives. Even the alleged meaning of the picture is productive in proficiently describing the contents in an organized way. It has been identified that narrative art has been highly depended over expressing the cultural perspectives of a historical place where there is an evidence of putting up of different civilization’s historical places of dimensions (Lam, 2016). Rome can be a fascinating example of a particular architectural format and the paintings where the painters through their narrative descriptions have portrayed a single historical incident description through a single glance of a painting. Moreover the narrative art is also a symbol of depicting the social and economic status of a society and there have been various evidences about prototyping the social revolutionary context like socially-engaged movement within a particular society etc. From this notion, it can be found that through depicting the socio-cultural context of the historical past, the artist through his narrative sculpture or painting has been able to portray their personal perceptions about the historic, social and political belief about a particular country or incident from the past. 
There have been many references from the past where the painters of different times have represented their judgements over contemporary conditions in social settings. One of this can be identified to be Michael Zavros’s self portrait “Bad Dad”. The portrait encompasses a meditative and convoluted moment where Zavros has projected himself as a contemporary version of the protagonist Narcissus from Caravaggio’s Baroque panting. The painting is supposedly depicting the evocation of Greek myth and representing of an admonitory tale. In “Bad Dad”, Zavros has tried to put forth an unusual composition of his perspectives of anti-hero which despises the fondness of his lover and he has vehemently been identified to be rejecting the assessments of domesticity. Through the portrait, the viewers can identify the indolent world of the self-portrayal. The painting clearly shows the figurative dimensions of the protagonist. Through his painting it can be found that there has been a minute exhibition of the social conditions of the contemporary period where the protagonist as Zavros himself describes himself to be smudged in oils which reveal his emotional familiarities connected with materialism (Butler, 2014). Through his painting it can be depicted that there is an extensive narration and reflection of historical and social emotional context by basing upon the steps of fatherhood and myth of Narcissus.
Arthur Boyd’s “the Persecuted Lovers” is an extensive narrative pictorial work which represents Boyd’s artistic representation of his own sense of tentativeness with his intricate series stuffed with the difficult ideas to express during the phase of 1950s Australian race, sex, love and violence which has been compactly posited in the setting traditionally linked with far-reaching plains and bucolic motifs. This vision of the portrait was the impetus for the possible series of arrangement that wound up one of Australia's most cryptic and provocative profound quality stories. It depicts a blended legacy lady and spouse distressed and chased and their love being culminated; however prohibited and definitely met by a pitiless and hypocrite death resulting of racism (Heathcote, 2016). Boyd's depicting out of their predicament for his narrative story finds an outrageous type of brutality and narrow mindedness in mankind as those with blended legacy were viewed as neither dark nor white and were separated and dismissed untouchables subjected to a specific type of mistreatment and fanaticism. The dramatical statement of the portrait is identified to be clearly depicting the intense sensuousness of the Australian indigenous tribal people fate amidst the white domination. This certainly reciprocates for a critical theme of societal picturization of the contemporary society of Australia treating the indigenous people with negligence and inhumanity. The painter’s aggrieve has been stated through the painting by allowing to represent it through the story telling of an intense love reciprocation within the painting. 

Butler, R. (2014). Modernism: more popular than populism. Broadsheet, 43(4), 19-28.
Heathcote, C. (2016). Did arthur boyd paint aboriginal genocide?. Quadrant, 60(3), 77.
Lam, R. W. Y. (2016). The narrative art of visual storytelling: Equipping our students with visual literacy for the 21st century. narrative.