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Need Help for my Art discussion. Reading material is attached as well as Discussion questions w/ links.  1. Locate the artwork you want to discuss and post an image of the artwork in the discussion (please embed the image if possible). 2. Explain what it is about the work of art that you either like or dislike. 3. Conduct an online search and share one fact about the artwork that was not mentioned in the textbook. Module 2 – Discussion 1. Locate the artwork you want to discuss and post an image of the artwork in the discussion (please embed the image if possible). 2. Explain what it is about the work of art that you either like or dislike. 3. Conduct an online search and share one fact about the artwork that was not mentioned in the textbook.  Video: Paleolithic Art - Woman of Willendorf: https://youtu.be/ENAZqOoOVaI Video: Neolithic Art - Bushel with Ibex Motifs https://youtu.be/eeNfDr4ojZg Video: Neolithic Art – Stonehenge https://youtu.be/h0J_RnRILJ0 https://www.google.com/maps/place/Stonehenge/@51.178882,-1.826215,1256m/data=!3m1!1e3!4m5!3m4!1s0x0:0x979170e2bcd3d2dd!8m2!3d51.178882!4d-1.826215?hl=en Video: Ancient Mesopotamia - Standard of Ur https://youtu.be/Nok4cBt0V6w Video: Ancient Egypt - The Great Pyramids https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xjzYGWddvrM Video: Ancient Egypt - Queen Hatshepsut https://youtu.be/pZOUV_rTyj0 https://www.google.com/maps?ll=25.737974,32.607417&z=17&t=h&hl=en&gl=US&mapclient=embed&cid=225146420852930003 Introduction to Art Chapter 5: Finding Meaning 56 Chapter 5: Finding Meaning How We See: Objective and Subjective Means Up until now we’ve been looking at artworks through the most immediate of visual effects: what we see in front of our eyes. Now we can begin to break down some barriers to find specific meaning in art, including those of different styles and cultures. To help in this journey we need to learn the difference between looking and seeing. To look is to get an objective overview of our field of vision. Seeing speaks more to understanding. When we use the term “I see” we communicate that we understand what something means. There are some areas of learning, particularly psychology and biology, that help form the basis of understanding how we see. For example, the fact that humans perceive flat images as having a reality to them is very particular. In contrast, if you show a dog an image of another dog, they neither growl nor wag their tail, because they are unable to perceive flat images as containing any meaning. So, you and I have actually developed the ability to see images. In essence, there is more to seeing than meets the eye. We need to take into account a cultural component in how we perceive images and that we do so in subjective ways. Seeing is partly a result of cultural biases. For example, when many of us from industrialized cultures see a parking lot, we can pick out each car immediately, while others from remote tribal cultures (who are not familiar with parking lots) cannot. Gestalt is the term we use to explain how the brain forms a whole image from many component parts. For instance, the understanding of gestalt is, in part, a way to explain how we have learned to recognize outlines as contours of a solid shape. In art for example, this concept allows us to draw space using only lines. The sites below have some fun perceptual games from psychology and science about how we see, along with some further explanations of gestalt: Scientific Psychic Visual Illusions Gallery The First Level of Meaning: Formal So, after we see an object, we can understand its form: the physical attributes of size, shape and mass. With art, this may at first appear to be simple: we can separate out each artistic element and discover how it is used in the work. The importance of a formal level of meaning is it allows us to look at any work of art from an objective view. The invention of the photograph has greatly changed our ideas about what looks ‘correct’. A good example of this idea can be seen looking at the two images below: the first is a digital photo of a foggy landscape and the second a painting by the color field painter Mark Rothko (click the hyperlink here to view his work). http://www.scientificpsychic.com/graphics/ http://dragon.uml.edu/psych/illusion.html https://www.nga.gov/collection/art-object-page.67512.html Introduction to Art Chapter 5: Finding Meaning 57 Foggy Landscape. Image: Christopher Gildow Used with permission of artist When you compare the two, you see that formally they are similar; bands of color spread horizontally across the surface in layers. Yet Rothko’s painting is much more reductive than the photo. The space is flat, sitting right on the surface of the canvas, whereas in the photo you get a feeling of receding space as areas of color overlap each other. This similarity is not coincidental. As a young man Rothko lived in Portland, Oregon, and hiked the Cascade Mountains. On hikes to higher elevations, he saw the landscape and atmosphere around him and was especially moved by the colors in the sky near the horizon just before sunrise and just after sunset. This phenomenon is called the Veil of Venus: bands of pink, violet and blue near the horizon directly opposite the setting or rising sun. Below is an example of this phenomenon. Veil of Venus. Image: Christopher Gildow Used with permission of artist Now you can imagine these memories reflected in Rothko’s series of abstract ‘color field’ paintings. It’s simplistic to say this was Rothko’s only influence. As an artist he explored painting styles emerging out of Surrealism, including automatic drawing and more complex mythomorphic techniques. But it’s hard to deny that to some extent his paintings are based on what he saw. Click the link to read more about Mark Rothko. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Rothko Introduction to Art Chapter 5: Finding Meaning 58 In another example of formal similarities, early photographs often used paintings as reference. We can see this in a comparison of a nineteenth century photo of the Acropolis in Athens, Greece, and a painting from the series ‘The Course of Empire’ by Thomas Cole titled “The Consummation”. Both show commanding views of landscape dominated by classic Greek architecture. The photo mimics Cole’s painting in formal terms, emphasizing the grandeur of the architecture within a vast expanse of space. Conversely, realist paintings from the 19th century were sometimes ridiculed for being too lifelike and not ‘ideal’ enough. Theodore Gericault’s Raft of the Medusa is an example. Nowadays people often proclaim that a painting is good because it looks just like a photograph. The rise of modern art produced artistic styles that challenge viewers in finding meaning in the works they see. The use of abstraction and gesture as subject matter runs counter to traditional avenues for finding meaning. It is in this formal, gesture-laden approach, however, that much of the grace and delicacy, as well as power, anger or other emotions can be conveyed. In other words, it is the application of the elements that can give us clues to a work’s meaning. If we take the formal quality of application (what kind of lines or shapes are created, how the paint is applied, etc) and combine it with a specific subject (the act of painting itself), you can discover a new meaning from the combination of these visual effects. When looked at from this perspective, the paintings of the Abstract Expressionists become more meaningful. In particular, the art of Joan Mitchell captures the exuberance and energy that the application of paint can achieve. This bridge between formal quality and subject matter can be applied to meaning in works of art from many cultures. Gesture and pattern combine to enhance the meaning of more decorative works like the paintings from a Ceremonial House ceiling from the Sepik region of New Guinea. The ceremonial house was built as a place for spirits to dwell. The paintings themselves indicate abstracted images of faces making fierce gestures, suns and female genitalia, all in reference to the spirits surrounding the ceremony taking place inside. The Second Level of Meaning: Subject There are specific categories of ideas that have been represented in art over time. Many of them are present in some cultures, but never present in others. This disparity gives us another place to look for meaning when we approach differences in representation. But generally, these categories of ideas (sometimes called subjects) can also be called a genre of art; that is, a fairly loose category of images that share the same content. Here is a brief list of the type of genre that you may see in a work: • Landscape • still life • portrait • self-portrait • allegory: representing a mythological scene or story • historical: actual representation of a historic event • religious: two forms: religious representation or religious action • daily life: sometimes also called genre painting http://archives.getty.edu:30008/getty_images/digitalresources/gary_edwards/jpegs/grl_92r84_04-01-04.jpg http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Cole_Thomas_The_Consummation_The_Course_of_the_Empire_1836.jpg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Raft_of_the_Medusa#/media/File:JEAN_LOUIS_TH\%C3\%89ODORE_G\%C3\%89RICAULT_-_La_Balsa_de_la_Medusa_(Museo_del_Louvre,_1818-19).jpg https://www.theartstory.org/movement-abstract-expressionism.htm http://www.artnet.com/awc/joan-mitchell.html https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/310007?&searchField=All&sortBy=Relevance&ft=ceremonial+house+sepik&offset=20&rpp=20&pos=38 Introduction to Art Chapter 5: Finding Meaning 59 • nude: male nude and female nude are separate categories • political: two forms: propaganda and criticism • social: work created to support a specific social cause • power: work created to connect to specific spiritual strength • fantasy: work created to invent new visual worlds • decoration: work created to embellish surroundings • abstraction: work whose elements and principles are manipulated to alter the subject in some way. What you will discover when you think about some of these subjects is that you may already have a vision of how this subject should appear. For example: visualize a portrait or self-portrait. You can see the head, probably from the shoulders up, with little background, painted fairly accurately. Artists often reinvent how a subject is portrayed Some works of art can be part of a certain genre by using metaphor: one image that stands for another. A good example is this quilt by Missouri Pettway from Gees Bend, Alabama. Made of strips of old work clothes, corduroy and cotton sacking material, it becomes a portrait of the artist’s husband. Missouris daughter Arlonzia describes the quilt: It was when Daddy died. I was about seventeen, eighteen. He stayed sick about eight months and passed on. Mama say, I going to take his work clothes, shape them into a quilt to remember him, and cover up under it for love. Contemporary artists sometimes reinterpret artworks from the past. This can change the context of the work (the historical or cultural background in which the original work was created), but the content remains the same. Dorothea Lange’s Migrant Mother, Nipomo Valley from 1936 (below) uses the subject matter of a mother and her children to symbolize the hardships faced during the Great Depression. The woman’s face speaks of worry and desperation about how to provide for her children and herself. Comparatively, San Francisco photographer Jim Thirtyacre’s image Working Mother from 2009 reflects this same sentiment but through the context of the first major economic crisis of the twenty first century. Dorothea Lange, Migrant Mother, 1936. Photograph. Farm Security Administration collection, U.S. Library of Congress. Jim Thirtyacre, Working Mother, 2009. Color digital image. Used by permission http://www.auburn.edu/academic/other/geesbend/explore/catalog/slideshow/pages/q057-02b_JPG.htm Introduction to Art Chapter 5: Finding Meaning 60 It is important to note that many cultures do not use particular genres – portraiture, for example, in their art. For some cultures the representation of an actual human face is dangerous and can call up spirits who will want to live in the image: so their masks, while still face-like, are extremely stylized. Traditional Islamic images are forbidden to depict figures and other material objects. In their place artists use the genre of decoration. The Third Level of Meaning: Context The craft arts have meaning too, primarily in the functionality of the art works themselves, but also in the style and decorations afforded them. A goblet from the 16th century has an aesthetic meaning in its organic form, in its function as a means to hold and dispense liquid, and a particular historical meaning in the way it is embellished with diamond point engravings that depict the flow of the river Rhine. Goblet (Roemer), early 17th century. Dutch probably Amsterdam. Metropolitain Museum of Art, New York. Image is in the public domain The goblet’s detailed map of the Rhine gives it specific context: the historical, religious or social issues surrounding a work of art. These issues not only influence the way the viewer finds meaning in particular works of art but also how the artists themselves create them. For instance, the hammered gold mask from Peru’s Sican culture below is simple and symmetrical in form and striking in its visage. For the Sican people the mask represented either the Sican deity from the spiritual world or the lord of Sican, a man who represented the deity in the natural world. Masks were stacked at the feet of the dead lord in his tomb. In this cultural context the masks had significance in the life, death and spiritual worlds of the Sican people. http://www.africa.upenn.edu/Face_Masks/menu_Face_Mask.html Introduction to Art Chapter 5: Finding Meaning 61 Golden Mask, Lambayeque, Sican culture, Peru. C. 9th century C.E. Museo Oro del Peru y Armas del Mundo, Lima. Image licensed through Creative Commons To view James Rosenquist’s painting F-111 is to be confronted with a huge image of a fighter jet overlaid with images from popular culture, all in bright colors and seemingly without connection. But when we see the work in the context of American experience in the 1960’s we realize the two-pronged visual comment Rosenquist is making about war and consumerism; what he termed “a lack of ethical responsibility”* (from James Rosenquist, “Painting Below Zero”, Notes on a Life in Art, 2009, Alfred A. Knopf, page 154). In the artist’s hands the two ideas literally overlap each other: the salon hair dryer and diver’s bubbles mimic the mushroom cloud rising behind the opened umbrella (which is another formal link to the nuclear bomb blast behind it). The painting is at such a large scale that viewers are dwarfed by its overpowering presence. The Fourth Level of Meaning: Iconography At the simplest of levels, iconography is the containment of deeper meanings in simple representations. It makes use of symbolism to generate narrative, which in turn develops a work’s meaning. Jan van Eyck, The Arnolfini Portrait, 1434. Oil on oak. The National Gallery, London. Image licensed through Creative Commons https://www.moma.org/collection/works/79805?classifications=any&date_begin=Pre-1850&date_end=2019&locale=en&page=1&q=F-111&with_images=1 Introduction to Art Chapter 5: Finding Meaning 62 Each of the objects in Jan van Eyck’s The Arnolfini Portrait has a specific meaning beyond their imagery here. In fact, this painting is actually a painted marriage contract designed to solidify the agreement between these two families. It is especially important to remember that this is not a painting of an actual scene, but a constructed image to say specific things. 1. You notice that the bride is pregnant. She wasnt at the time of the painting, but this is a symbolic act to represent that she will become fruitful. 2. The little dog at her feet is a symbol of fidelity and is often seen with portraits of women paid for by their husbands. 3. The discarded shoes are often a symbol of the sanctity of marriage. 4. The single candle lit in the daylight (look at the chandelier) is a symbol of the bridal candle, a devotional candle that was to burn all night the first night of the marriage. 5. The chair back has a carving of St. Margaret, the patron saint of childbirth. 6. The orange on the windowsill and the rich clothing are symbols of future material wealth (in 1434 oranges were hand carried from India and very expensive). 7. The circular mirror at the back reflects both the artist and another man, and the artists signature says, Jan van Eyck was present, both examples of witnesses for the betrothal pictured. (We dont think of this much anymore, but a promise to marry was a legal contract). The circular forms around the mirror are tiny paintings of the Stations of the Cross. You can see how densely populated iconography in imagery can convey specific hidden meanings. The problem here is to know what all of this means if we want to understand the work. Understanding the context of the work will help. Another more contemporary painting with icons imbedded in it is Grant Wood’s American Gothic from the 1930’s. Grant Wood, American Gothic, 1930. Oil on beaver board. The Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago. This image is in the public domain. Introduction to Art Chapter 5: Finding Meaning 63 The dower expressions on the figures’ faces signify the toughness of a Midwestern American farm couple. Indeed, one critic complained that the woman in the painting had a “face that could sour milk”. Notice how the trees and bushes in the painting’s background and the small cameo the woman wears mirror the soft roundness of her face: these traditional symbols of femininity carry throughout the work. In contrast, the man’s straight-backed stance is reflected in the pitchfork he holds, and again in the window frames on the house behind him. Even the stitching on his overalls mimics the form of the pitchfork. The arched window frame at the top center of the painting in particular is a symbol of the gothic architecture style from 12th century Europe. In addition, a popular genre in painting from 16th century northern Europe, especially the Netherlands, is known as vanitas painting. These still life paintings are heavily dependent upon symbolic objects that project the joy and accomplishments life affords, yet at the same time remind us of our mortality. Edward Collier’s painting below is a good example of how crowded these could be. Edward Collier, A Vanitas, 1669, oil on canvas. This item is in the public domain The armor, weapons and medals show a focus on military accomplishments. The open book alludes to knowledge and in this case, the drawing of a canon mirrors the overall theme. The globe is a symbol of both travel and our common existence as earth-bound beings. Contemporary vanitas paintings could certainly include allusions to air and space travel. On the far right of the work, behind the book and in the shadows, lies a skull, again reminding us of the shortness of life and the inevitability of death. We can use iconography to find meaning in artworks from popular culture too. The “Golden Arches” mean fast food, the silhouette of an apple (with a bite out of it) means a brand of computer, a single, sequined glove stands for Michael Jackson, the ‘king of pop’ and the artist Andy Warhol’s soup can image forever links Campbell’s soup with Pop Art. Critical Perspectives From the first forms of art criticism in ancient Greece, the discussion of meaning in art has taken many directions. The professional art critic is one of the gatekeepers who, through their writing, http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/623056/vanitas http://www.moma.org/collection/object.php?object_id=79809 Introduction to Art Chapter 5: Finding Meaning 64 endorse or reject particular kinds of art, whether in style, artistic ability or message. In fact, a study of the different ways to look at art can tell us much about changing times and philosophies: the role of aesthetics, economics and other cultural issues have much to do with the origin of these philosophical positions. Of course, none of them are completely true but simply different types of discourse. People approach meaning from different perspectives. The artworks sit silent while all around them the voices change. We are at a time when there are several, sometimes greatly conflicting, ways of thinking about meaning in art. Here are six different perspectives art critics use as compasses to interpreting meaning: Structural Criticism Structuralism is based on the notion that our concept of reality is expressed through language and related systems of communication. On a larger scale, visualize culture as a structure whose foundation is language, speech and other forms of communication. When this approach is applied to the visual arts, the world of art becomes a collective human construction, where a single work needs to be judged within the framework supported by the whole structure of art. This structure is still based in language and knowledge and how we communicate ideas. I often use the example of the word cowboy. In your head: visualize a cowboy: then describe what you saw. What gender was your person? What race was this person? Now let’s apply those answers to historical fact. The fact is up to 25\% of the historical cowboys in the United States were black slaves freed after the civil war. Did you see your cowboy as white? Your idea of cowboy might have come from film, which is an extremely different form of reality. The structural idea manifests itself when we look for meaning in art based on any preconceived ideas about it we already have in our mind. These preconceptions (or limitations) are shaped by language, social interaction and other cultural experiences. Deconstructive Criticism Deconstructive Criticism goes one step further and posits that any work of art can have many meanings attached to it, none of which are limited by a particular language or experience outside the work itself. In other words, the critic must reveal (deconstruct) the structured world in order to knock out any underpinnings of stereotypes, preconceptions or myths that get in the way of true meaning. Taking the perspective of a deconstructive critic, we would view a portrait of Marilyn Monroe by pop artist Andy Warhol as an imaginary construct of what is real. As a popular culture icon, Marilyn Monroe the movie star was ubiquitous: in film, magazines, television and photographs. But Marilyn Monroe the person committed suicide in 1962 at the height of her stardom. In truth, the bright lights and celebrity of her Hollywood persona eclipsed the real Marilyn, someone who was troubled, confused and alone. Warhol’s many portraits of her –each one made from the same publicity photograph –perpetuate the myth and cult of celebrity. Formalist Criticism Formalist criticism is what we engaged in when we looked at the elements and principles of art. Formalism doesnt really care about what goes on outside the actual space of the work but finds meaning in its use of materials. One of the champions of the formalist approach was Clement Greenberg. His writing stresses “medium specificity”: the notion there is inherent meaning in the way materials are used to create the artwork. As is relates to painting and works on paper, the result is a focus on the two-dimensional surface. This is contrary to its traditional use as a http://www.tate.org.uk/servlet/ViewWork?workid=15976 http://www.tate.org.uk/servlet/ViewWork?workid=15976 Introduction to Art Chapter 5: Finding Meaning 65 platform for the illusion of depth. Formalism allows a more reasoned discussion of abstract and nonrepresentational art because we can approach them on their own terms, where the subject matter becomes the medium instead of something it represents. This is a good way to approach artworks from cultures we are not familiar with, though it has the tendency to make them purely decorative and devalue any deeper meaning. It also allows a kind of training in visual seeing, so it is still used in all studio arts and art appreciation courses. Greenberg was a strong defender of the Abstract Expressionist style of painting that developed in the United States after World War II. He referred to it as “pure painting” because of its insistence on the act of painting, eventually releasing it from its ties to representation. Ideological Criticism Ideological criticism is most concerned with the relationship between art and structures of power. It infers that art is embedded in a social, economic and political structure that determines its final meaning. Born of the writings of Karl Marx, ideological criticism translates art and artifacts as symbols that reflect political ideals and reinforce one version of reality over another. A literal example of this perspective would view the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C. as a testament to a political system that oppressed people because of race yet summoned the political will to set them free in the process of ending a Civil War. The Lincoln Memorial, Washington, D.C. Photo by Jeff Kubina and licensed through Creative Commons In contrast, Ernst Ludwig Kirchner’s painting Franzi in Front of a Carved Chair (below) from 1910 is also considered a symbol of artistic (hence, political) freedom. His Expressionist art – with its strong, sometimes arbitrary colors and rough approach to forms, was denounced by Nazi Germany as being “degenerate”. The Degenerate Art Show of 1937 was a way for the German political establishment to label modern art as something evil and corrupt. Hitler’s regime was only interested in heroic, representational and idealistic images, something Kirchner was rebelling against. Kirchner and other Expressionist artists were marginalized and many of their works destroyed by the authorities. https://www.theartstory.org/movement-abstract-expressionism.htm http://www.historyguide.org/intellect/marx.html http://fcit.usf.edu/HOLOCAUST/arts/artdegen.htm Introduction to Art Chapter 5: Finding Meaning 66 Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Franzi In Front of A Carved Chair, 1910, oil on canvas, Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum, Madrid This item is in the public domain Psychoanalytic Criticism Psychoanalytic criticism is the way we should look at work if we feel it is only about personal expression. The purest form of this criticism ranks the work of untrained and mentally ill artists as being just as important as any other art. It is in this way that the artist “inside” is more important than any other reason the art happens or the effect the art has. When discussing Vincent van Gogh you will often hear people make mention of his mental state more than his actual artwork, experience, or career. This is a good example of psychoanalytic criticism. One of the problems in this type of criticism is that the critic is usually discussing issues the artist themselves may be totally unaware of (and may deny these issues exist). Feminist Criticism Feminist criticism began in the 1970s as a response to the neglect of women artists over time and in historical writings. This form of criticism is specific to viewing art as an example of gender bias in historical western European culture and views all work as a manifestation of this bias. Feminist criticism created whole movements in the art world (specifically performance-based art) and has changed over the last few years to include all underrepresented groups. Examples of feminist art include Judy Chicago’s large-scale installation The Dinner Party and the work of Nancy Spero. In reality, all of these critical perspectives hold some truth. Art is a multifaceted medium that contains influences from most all the characteristics of the culture it was created in, and some that transcend cultural environments. These perspectives, along with the different levels of https://www.vangoghmuseum.nl/en/vincent-van-gogh-life-and-work https://www.vangoghmuseum.nl/en/vincent-van-gogh-life-and-work https://www.brooklynmuseum.org/exhibitions/dinner_party https://art21.org/artist/nancy-spero/ Introduction to Art Chapter 5: Finding Meaning 67 meaning we explored, help us to unravel some of the mysteries inherent in works of art, and bring us closer to seeing how art expresses feelings, ideas and experiences that we all share. In our search it is important to be aware of all the issues involved, take aspects of each critical position depending upon the work being viewed, the environment (and context) you’re seeing it in, and make up our own mind. License and Attributions Chapter 5: Finding Meaning How We See: Objective and Subjective Means The First Level of Meaning: Formal The Second Level of Meaning: Subject The Third Level of Meaning: Context The Fourth Level of Meaning: Iconography Critical Perspectives Structural Criticism Deconstructive Criticism Formalist Criticism Ideological Criticism Psychoanalytic Criticism Feminist Criticism Introduction to Art Chapter 14: The Stone Age 150 Chapter 14: The Stone Age A significant discovery Apollo 11 Cave Stones, Namibia, quartzite, c. 25,500–25,300 B.C.E. Image courtesy of State Museum of Namibia. Approximately 25,000 years ago, in a rock shelter in the Huns Mountains of Namibia on the southwest coast of Africa (today part of the Ai-Ais Richtersveld Transfrontier Park), an animal was drawn in charcoal on a hand-sized slab of stone. The stone was left behind, over time becoming buried on the floor of the cave by layers of sediment and debris until 1969 when a team led by German archaeologist W.E. Wendt excavated the rock shelter and found the first fragment (above, left). Wendt named the cave “Apollo 11” upon hearing on his shortwave radio of NASA’s successful space mission to the moon. It was more than three years later however, after a subsequent excavation, when Wendt discovered the matching fragment (above, right), that archaeologists and art historians began to understand the significance of the find. Introduction to Art Chapter 14: The Stone Age 151 Location of the Huns Mountains of Namibia, © Map Data Google In total seven stone fragments of brown-grey quartzite, some of them depicting traces of animal figures drawn in charcoal, ocher, and white, were found buried in a concentrated area of the cave floor less than two meters square. While it is not possible to learn the actual date of the fragments, it is possible to estimate when the rocks were buried by radiocarbon dating the archaeological layer in which they were found. Archaeologists estimate that the cave stones were buried between 25,500 and 25,300 years ago during the Middle Stone Age period in southern Africa making them, at the time of their discovery, the oldest dated art known on the African continent and among the earliest evidence of human artistic expression worldwide. Incised ochre from Blombos Cave, South Africa. Photo by Chris. S. Henshilwood © Chris. S. Henshilwood Introduction to Art Chapter 14: The Stone Age 152 While more recent discoveries of much older human artistic endeavors have corrected our understanding (consider the 2008 discovery of a 100,000-year-old paint workshop in the Blombos Cave on the southern coast of Africa), the stones remain the oldest examples of figurative art from the African continent. Their discovery contributes to our conception of early humanity’s creative attempts, before the invention of formal writing, to express their thoughts about the world around them. The origins of art? Genetic and fossil evidence tells us that Homo sapiens (anatomically modern humans who evolved from an earlier species of hominids) developed on the continent of Africa more than 100,000 years ago and spread throughout the world. But what we do not know—what we have only been able to assume—is that art too began in Africa. Is Africa, where humanity originated, home to the world’s oldest art? If so, can we say that art began in Africa? The global origins of art In the Middle Stone Age period in southern Africa prehistoric man was a hunter-gatherer, moving from place to place in search of food and shelter. But this modern human also drew an animal form with charcoal—a form as much imagined as it was observed. This is what makes the Apollo 11 cave stones find so interesting: the stones offer evidence that Homo sapiens in the Middle Stone Age—us, some 25,000 years ago—were not only anatomically modern, but behaviorally modern as well. That is to say, these early humans possessed the new and unique capacity for modern symbolic thought, “the human capacity,” long before what was previously understood. The cave stones are what archaeologists term art mobilier —small-scale prehistoric art that is moveable. But mobile art, and rock art generally, is not unique to Africa. Rock art is a global phenomenon that can be found across the World—in Europe, Asia, Australia, and North and South America. While we cannot know for certain what these early humans intended by the things that they made, by focusing on art as the product of humanity’s creativity and imagination we can begin to explore where, and hypothesize why, art began. Prehistoric cave painting The caves at Chauvet-Pont-d’Arc (see the image below), Lascaux, Pech Merle, and Altamira contain the best known examples of prehistoric painting and drawing. Here are remarkably evocative renderings of animals and some humans that employ a complex mix of naturalism and abstraction. Archeologists that study Paleolithic (old stone age) era humans, believe that the paintings discovered in 1994, in the cave at Chauvet-Pont-d’Arc in the Ardèche valley in France, are more than 30,000 years old. The images found at Lascaux and Altamira are more recent, dating to approximately 15,000 B.C.E. The paintings at Pech Merle date to both 25,000 and 15,000 B.C.E. https://web.archive.org/web/20140215034827/http:/www.culture.gouv.fr/culture/arcnat/chauvet/en/index.html https://web.archive.org/web/20140215034827/http:/www.lascaux.culture.fr/#/en/00.xml https://web.archive.org/web/20140215034827/http:/www.quercy.net/pechmerle/index.html https://web.archive.org/web/20140215034827/http:/museodealtamira.mcu.es/ Introduction to Art Chapter 14: The Stone Age 153 Replica of the painting from the Chauvet-Pont-d’Arc Cave in southern France (Anthropos museum, Brno) What can we really know about the creators of these paintings and what the images originally meant? These are questions that are difficult enough when we study art made only 500 years ago. It is much more perilous to assert meaning for the art of people who shared our anatomy but had not yet developed the cultures or linguistic structures that shaped who we have become. Do the tools of art history even apply? Here is evidence of a visual language that collapses the more than 1,000 generations that separate us, but we must be cautious. This is especially so if we want to understand the people that made this art as a way to understand ourselves. The desire to speculate based on what we see and the physical evidence of the caves is wildly seductive. The cave at Chauvet-Pont-d’Arc is over 1,000 feet in length with two large chambers. Carbon samples date the charcoal used to depict the two head-to-head Rhinoceroses (see the image above, bottom right) to between 30,340 and 32,410 years before 1995 when the samples were taken. The cave’s drawings depict other large animals including horses, mammoths, musk ox, ibex, reindeer, aurochs, megaceros deer, panther, and owl (scholars note that these animals were not then a normal part of people’s diet). Photographs show that the drawing shown above Introduction to Art Chapter 14: The Stone Age 154 is very carefully rendered but may be misleading. We see a group of horses, rhinos and bison and we see them as a group, overlapping and skewed in scale. But the photograph distorts the way these animal figures would have been originally seen. The bright electric lights used by the photographer create a broad flat scope of vision; how different to see each animal emerge from the dark under the flickering light cast by a flame. In a 2009 presentation at UC San Diego, Dr. Randell White, Professor of Anthropology at NYU, suggested that the overlapping horses pictured above might represent the same horse over time, running, eating, sleeping, etc. Perhaps these are far more sophisticated representations than we have imagined. There is another drawing at Chauvet-Pont-d’Arc that cautions us against ready assumptions. It has been interpreted as depicting the thighs and genitals of a woman but there is also a drawing of a bison and a lion and the images are nearly intertwined. In addition to the drawings, the cave is littered with the skulls and bones of cave bear and the track of a wolf. There is also a footprint thought to have been made by an eight-year-old boy. Venus of Willendorf Venus of Willendorf, c. 24,000-22,000 B.C.E., limestone, 11.1 cm high (Naturhistorisches Museum, Vienna) (photo: Steven Zucker, CC BY-NC-SA 2.0) The artifact known as the Venus of Willendorf dates to between 24,000-22,000 B.C.E., making it one of the oldest and most famous surviving works of art. In the absence of writing, art historians rely on the objects themselves to learn about ancient peoples. The form of the Venus of Willendorf—that is, what it looks like—may very well inform what it originally meant. The most conspicuous elements of her anatomy are those that deal with the process of reproduction and child rearing. The artist took particular care to emphasize her breasts, which some scholars suggest indicates that she is able to nurse a child. The artist also brought deliberate attention to her pubic region. Traces of a pigment—red ochre—can still be seen on parts of the figurine. Introduction to Art Chapter 14: The Stone Age 155 In contrast, the sculptor placed scant attention on the non-reproductive parts of her body. This is particularly noticeable in the figure’s limbs, where there is little emphasis placed on musculature or anatomical accuracy. We may infer from the small size of her feet that she was not meant to be free standing, and was either meant to be carried or placed lying down. The artist carved the figure’s upper arms along her upper torso, and her lower arms are only barely visible resting upon the top of her breasts. As enigmatic as the lack of attention to her limbs is, the absence of attention to the face is even more striking. No eyes, nose, ears, or mouth remain visible. Instead, our attention is drawn to seven horizontal bands that wrap in concentric circles from the crown of her head. Some scholars have suggested her head is obscured by a knit cap pulled downward, others suggest that these forms may represent braided or beaded hair and that her face, perhaps once painted, is angled downward. The Venus of Willendorf is only one example of dozens of paleolithic figures we believe may have been associated with fertility. Nevertheless, it retains a place of prominence within the history of human art. The Neolithic Revolution A Settled Life When people think of the Neolithic era, they often think of Stonehenge, the iconic image of this early era. Dating to approximately 3000 B.C.E. and set on Salisbury Plain in England, it is a structure larger and more complex than anything built before it in Europe. Stonehenge is an example of the cultural advances brought about by the Neolithic revolution— the most important development in human history. The way we live today, settled in homes, close to other people in towns and cities, protected by laws, eating food grown on farms, and with leisure time to learn, explore and invent is all a result of the Neolithic revolution, which occurred approximately 11,500-5,000 years ago. The revolution which led to our way of life was the development of the technology needed to plant and harvest crops and to domesticate animals. Before the Neolithic revolution, it’s likely you would have lived with your extended family as a nomad, never staying anywhere for more than a few months, always living in temporary shelters, always searching for food and never owning anything you couldn’t easily pack in a pocket or a sack. The change to the Neolithic way of life was huge and led to many of the pleasures (lots of food, friends and a comfortable home) that we still enjoy today. Introduction to Art Chapter 14: The Stone Age 156 Stonehenge, c. 3,000 B.C.E., Salisbury Plain, England Neolithic Art The massive changes in the way people lived also changed the types of art they made. Neolithic sculpture became bigger, in part, because people didn’t have to carry it around anymore; pottery became more widespread and was used to store food harvested from farms. This is when alcohol was invented and when architecture, and its interior and exterior decoration, first appears. In short, people settle down and begin to live in one place, year after year. It seems very unlikely that Stonehenge could have been made by earlier, Paleolithic, nomads. It would have been a waste to invest so much time and energy building a monument in a place to which they might never return or might only return infrequently. After all, the effort to build it was extraordinary. Stonehenge is approximately 320 feet in circumference and the stones which compose the outer ring weigh as much as 50 tons; the small stones, weighing as much as 6 tons, were quarried from as far away as 450 miles. The use or meaning of Stonehenge is not clear, but the design, planning and execution could have only been carried out by a culture in which authority was unquestioned. Here is a culture that was able to rally hundreds of people to perform very hard work for extended periods of time. This is another characteristic of the Neolithic era. Plastered Skulls The Neolithic period is also important because it is when we first find good evidence for religious practice, a perpetual inspiration for the fine arts. Perhaps most fascinating are the plaster skulls found around the area of the Levant, at six sites, including Jericho in Israel. At this time in the Neolithic, c. 7000-6,000 B.C.E., people were often buried under the floors of homes, and in some cases their skulls were removed and covered with plaster in order to create very life-like faces, complete with shells inset for eyes and paint to imitate hair and moustaches. Introduction to Art Chapter 14: The Stone Age 157 Skulls with plaster and shell from the Pre-Pottery Neolithic B, 6,000-7,000 B.C.E., found at the Yiftah’el archeological site in the Lower Galilee, Israel The traditional interpretation of these skulls has been that they offered a means of preserving and worshiping male ancestors. However, recent research has shown that among the sixty-one plastered skulls that have been found, there is a generous number that come from the bodies of women and children. Perhaps the skulls are not so much religious objects, but rather powerful images made to aid in mourning lost loved ones. Neolithic peoples didn’t have written language, so we may never know. The earliest example of writing develops in Sumer in Mesopotamia in the late 4th millennium B.C.E. However, there are scholars that believe that earlier proto-writing developed during the Neolithic period. Çatalhöyük The city of Çatalhöyük points to one of man’s most important transformations, from nomad to settled farmer. Introduction to Art Chapter 14: The Stone Age 158 Çatalhöyük after the first excavations by James Mellaart and his team (photo: Omar hoftun, CC: BY-SA 3.0) Çatalhöyük or Çatal Höyük (pronounced “cha-tal hay OOK”) is not the oldest site of the Neolithic era or the largest, but it is extremely important to the beginning of art. Located near the modern city of Konya in south central Turkey, it was inhabited 9000 years ago by up to 8000 people who lived together in a large town. Çatalhöyük, across its history, witnesses the transition from exclusively hunting and gathering subsistence to increasing skill in plant and animal domestication. We might see Çatalhöyük as a site whose history is about one of man’s most important transformations: from nomad to settler. It is also a site at which we see art, both painting and sculpture, appear to play a newly important role in the lives of settled people. Çatalhöyük had no streets or foot paths; the houses were built right up against each other and the people who lived in them traveled over the town’s rooftops and entered their homes through holes in the roofs, climbing down a ladder. Communal ovens were built above the homes of Çatalhöyük and we can assume group activities were performed in this elevated space as well. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:\%C3\%87atalh\%C3\%B6y\%C3\%BCk_after_the_first_excavations_by_James_Mellaart_and_his_team..jpg Introduction to Art Chapter 14: The Stone Age 159 Seated Woman of Çatalhöyük (head is a restoration), The Museum of Anatolian Civilizations, Ankara, Turkey (photo: Nevit Dilmen, CC BY-SA 3.0) Many figurines have been found at the site, the most famous of which illustrates a large woman seated on or between two large felines. The figurines, which illustrate both humans and animals, are made from a variety of materials but the largest proportion are quite small and made of barely fired clay. These casual figurines are found most frequently in garbage pits, but also in oven walls, house walls, floors and left in abandoned structures. The figurines often show evidence of having been poked, scratched or broken, and it is generally believed that they functioned as wish tokens or to ward off bad spirits. Neolithic Liangzhu culture A group of Neolithic peoples grouped today as the Liangzhu culture lived in the Jiangsu province of China during the third millennium B.C.E. Their jades, ceramics and stone tools were highly sophisticated. They used two distinct types of ritual jade objects: a disc, later known as a bi, and a tube, later https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Museum_of_Anatolian_Civilizations_1320259_nevit.jpg Introduction to Art Chapter 14: The Stone Age 160 known as a cong. The main types of cong have a square outer section around a circular inner part, and a circular hole, though jades of a bracelet shape also display some of the characteristics of cong. They clearly had great significance, but despite the many theories the meaning and purpose of bi and cong remain a mystery. They were buried in large numbers: one tomb alone had 25 bi and 33 cong. Spectacular examples have been found at all the major archaeological sites. Jade Cong, c. 2500 B.C.E., 49 cm high, China © Private Collection © Trustees of the British Museum Jade Cong, c. 2500 B.C.E., Liangzhu culture, 3.4 x 12.7 cm, China © 2003 Private Collection © Trustees of the British Museum Jade disc, or bi, Liangzhu culture, c. 2500 B.C.E., 18 cm in diameter © Private Collection, © Trustees of the British Museum Video – Jade Cong, c. 2500 B.C.E., Liangzhu culture, Neolithic period, China (British Museum) https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=25&v=ld8kHvz1yN4 Japan - Jōmon period (c. 10,500 – c. 300 B.C.E.) https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=25&v=ld8kHvz1yN4 Introduction to Art Chapter 14: The Stone Age 161 The Jōmon period is Japan’s Neolithic period. People obtained food by gathering, fishing, and hunting and often migrated to cooler or warmer areas as a result of shifts in climate. In Japanese, jōmon means “cord pattern,” which refers to the technique of decorating Jōmon- period pottery. As in most Neolithic cultures around the world, women made pots by hand. They would build vessels from the bottom up from coils of wet clay, mixed with other materials such as mica and crushed shells. The pots were then smoothed both inside and out and decorated with geometric patterns. The decoration was achieved by pressing cords on the malleable surface of the still moist clay body. Pots were left to dry completely before being fired at a low temperature (most likely, just reaching 900 degrees Celsius) in an outdoor fire pit. “Flame-rimmed” deep bowl, Middle Jomon period (c. 3500–2500 B.C.E.), earthenware with cord-marked and incised decoration, 13 inches tall (The Metropolitan Museum of Art) License and Attributions https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/44905 Chapter 14: The Stone Age A significant discovery The origins of art? The global origins of art Prehistoric cave painting Venus of Willendorf The Neolithic Revolution A Settled Life Neolithic Art Plastered Skulls Çatalhöyük Neolithic Liangzhu culture Japan - Jōmon period (c. 10,500 – c. 300 B.C.E.) Introduction to Art Chapter 15: Ancient Near East 162 Chapter 15: Ancient Near East Home to some of the earliest and greatest empires, the Near East is often referred to as the cradle of civilization. Map of the Ancient Near East (courtesy of the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago) The Cradle of Civilization Mesopotamia, the area between the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers (in modern day Iraq), is often referred to as the cradle of civilization because it is the first place where complex urban centers grew. The history of Mesopotamia, however, is inextricably tied to the greater region, which is comprised of the modern nations of Egypt, Iran, Syria, Jordan, Israel, Lebanon, the Gulf states and Turkey. We often refer to this region as the Near or Middle East. What’s in a Name? Why is this region named this way? What is it in the middle of or near to? It is the proximity of these countries to the West (to Europe) that led this area to be termed “the near east.” Ancient Near Eastern Art has long been part of the history of Western art, but history didn’t have to be written this way. It is largely because of the West’s interests in the Biblical “Holy Land” that ancient Near Eastern materials have been regarded as part of the Western canon of the history of art. An interest in finding the locations of cities mentioned in the Bible (such as Nineveh and Babylon) inspired the original English and French 19th century archaeological expeditions to the Near East. These sites were discovered, and their excavations revealed to the world a style of art which had been lost. https://oi.uchicago.edu/neareastmap Introduction to Art Chapter 15: Ancient Near East 163 Entrance to Ninevah Court, Illustration from: Sir Austen Henry Layard, The Ninevah Court in the Crystal Palace (London: Bradbury and Evans, 1854), p. 39. The excavations inspired The Nineveh Court at the 1851 World’s Fair in London and a style of decorative art and architecture called Assyrian Revival. Ancient Near Eastern art remains popular today; in 2007 a 2.25 inch high, early 3rd millennium limestone sculpture, the Guennol Lioness, was sold for 57.2 million dollars, the second most expensive piece of sculpture sold at that time. A Complex History The history of the Ancient Near East is complex and the names of rulers and locations are often difficult to read, pronounce and spell. Moreover, this is a part of the world which today remains remote from the West culturally while political tensions have impeded mutual understanding. However, once you get a handle on the general geography of the area and its history, the art reveals itself as uniquely beautiful, intimate and fascinating in its complexity. https://hdl.handle.net/2027/gri.ark:/13960/t3nw6gx33?urlappend=\%3Bseq=43 Introduction to Art Chapter 15: Ancient Near East 164 A fishing boat in the Euphrates Southern Iraq (photo: Aziz1005, CC BY 4.0) Geography and the Growth of Cities Mesopotamia remains a region of stark geographical contrasts: vast deserts rimmed by rugged mountain ranges, punctuated by lush oases. Flowing through this topography are rivers and it was the irrigation systems that drew off the water from these rivers, specifically in southern Mesopotamia, that provided the support for the very early urban centers here. The region lacks stone (for building) and precious metals and timber. Historically, it has relied on the long-distance trade of its agricultural products to secure these materials. The large-scale irrigation systems and labor required for extensive farming was managed by a centralized authority. The early development of this authority, over large numbers of people in an urban center, is really what distinguishes Mesopotamia and gives it a special position in the history of Western culture. Here, for the first time, thanks to ample food and a strong administrative class, the West develops a very high level of craft specialization and artistic production. Sumer Sumer was home to some of the oldest known cities, supported by a focus on agriculture. The region of southern Mesopotamia is known as Sumer, and it is in Sumer that we find some of the oldest known cities, including Ur and Uruk. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Euphrates#/media/File:20151228-Euphrates_9283.jpg Introduction to Art Chapter 15: Ancient Near East 165 Cities of ancient Sumer, photo (CC BY 3.0) Uruk Uruk (modern Warka in Iraq)—where city life began more than five thousand years ago and where the first writing emerged—was clearly one of the most important places in southern Mesopotamia. Within Uruk, the greatest monument was the Anu Ziggurat on which the White Temple was built. Dating to the late 4th millennium B.C.E. (the Late Uruk Period, or Uruk III) and dedicated to the sky god Anu, this temple would have towered well above (approximately 40 feet) the flat plain of Uruk, and been visible from a great distance—even over the defensive walls of the city. Archaeological site at Uruk (modern Warka) in Iraq (photo: SAC Andy Holmes (RAF)/MOD, Open Government Licence v1.0) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sumer#mediaviewer/File:Cities_of_Sumer_(en).svg https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Uruk_Archaealogical_site_at_Warka,_Iraq_MOD_45156521.jpg Introduction to Art Chapter 15: Ancient Near East 166 Ziggurats A ziggurat is a built raised platform with four sloping sides—like a chopped-off pyramid. Ziggurats are made of mud-bricks—the building material of choice in the Near East, as stone is rare. Ziggurats were not only a visual focal point of the city, they were a symbolic one, as well— they were at the heart of the theocratic political system (a theocracy is a type of government where a god is recognized as the ruler, and the state officials operate on the god’s behalf). So, seeing the ziggurat towering above the city, one made a visual connection to the god or goddess honored there, but also recognized that deity’s political authority. Digital reconstruction of the White Temple and ziggurat, Uruk (modern Warka), c. 3517-3358 B.C.E. © artefacts- berlin.de; scientific material: German Archaeological Institute Excavators of the White Temple estimate that it would have taken 1500 laborers working on average ten hours per day for about five years to build the last major revetment (stone facing) of its massive underlying terrace (the open areas surrounding the White Temple at the top of the ziggurat). Although religious belief may have inspired participation in such a project, no doubt some sort of force (corvée labor—unpaid labor coerced by the state/slavery) was involved as well. The sides of the ziggurat were very broad and sloping but broken up by recessed stripes or bands from top to bottom (see digital reconstruction, above), which would have made a stunning pattern in morning or afternoon sunlight. The only way up to the top of the ziggurat was via a steep stairway that led to a ramp that wrapped around the north end of the Ziggurat and brought one to the temple entrance. The flat top of the ziggurat was coated with bitumen (asphalt—a tar or pitch-like material similar to what is used for road paving) and overlaid with brick, for a firm and waterproof foundation for the White temple. The temple gets its name for the fact that it was entirely white washed inside and out, which would have given it a dazzling brightness in strong http://artefacts-berlin.de/ http://artefacts-berlin.de/ Introduction to Art Chapter 15: Ancient Near East 167 sunlight. Remains of the Anu Ziggurat, Uruk (modern Warka), c. 3517-3358 B.C.E. (photo: Geoff Emberling, by permission) Akkad Founded by the famed Sargon the Great, Akkad was a powerful military empire. Competition between Akkad in the north and Ur in the south created two centralized regional powers at the end of the third millennium (c. 2334–2193 B.C.E.). This centralization was military in nature and the art of this period generally became more martial. The Akkadian Empire was begun by Sargon, a man from a lowly family who rose to power and founded the royal city of Akkad (Akkad has not yet been located, though one theory puts it under modern Baghdad). Head of an Akkadian Ruler This image of an unidentified Akkadian ruler (some say it is Sargon, but no one knows) is one of the most beautiful and terrifying images in all of Ancient Near Eastern art. The life-sized bronze head shows in sharp geometric clarity, locks of hair, curled lips and a wrinkled brow. Perhaps more awesome than the powerful and somber face of this ruler is the violent attack that mutilated it in antiquity. https://www.flickr.com/photos/emberling/8609236153/in/photostream/ Introduction to Art Chapter 15: Ancient Near East 168 Head of Akkadian Ruler, 2250-2200 B.C.E. (Iraqi Museum, Baghdad – looted?) Ur The kingdom of Akkad ends with internal strife and invasion by the Gutians from the Zagros mountains to the northeast. The Gutians were ousted in turn and the city of Ur, south of Uruk, became dominant. King Ur-Nammu established the third dynasty of Ur, also referred to as the Ur III period. Ancient Persia The heart of ancient Persia is in what is now southwest Iran, in the region called the Fars. In the second half of the 6th century B.C.E., the Persians (also called the Achaemenids) created an enormous empire reaching from the Indus Valley to Northern Greece and from Central Asia to Egypt. A tolerant empire Although the surviving literary sources on the Persian empire were written by ancient Greeks who were the sworn enemies of the Persians and highly contemptuous of them, the Persians were in fact quite tolerant and ruled a multi-ethnic empire. Persia was the first empire known to have acknowledged the different faiths, languages and political organizations of its subjects. Introduction to Art Chapter 15: Ancient Near East 169 The Persian Empire, 490 B.C.E. This tolerance for the cultures under Persian control carried over into administration. In the lands which they conquered, the Persians continued to use indigenous languages and administrative structures. For example, the Persians accepted hieroglyphic script written on papyrus in Egypt and traditional Babylonian record keeping in cuneiform in Mesopotamia. The Persians must have been very proud of this new approach to empire as can be seen in the representation of the many different peoples in the reliefs from Persepolis, a city founded by Darius the Great in the 6th century B.C.E. Introduction to Art Chapter 15: Ancient Near East 170 Gate of all Nations, Persepolis (photo: youngrobv, CC BY-NC 2.0) The Apadana Persepolis included a massive columned hall used for receptions by the Kings, called the Apadana. This hall contained 72 columns and two monumental stairways. Assyrians with Rams, Apadana, Persepolis (photo: CC BY-SA 3.0) The walls of the spaces and stairs leading up to the reception hall were carved with hundreds of figures, several of which illustrated subject peoples of various ethnicities, bringing tribute to the Persian king. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Gate_of_All_Nations,_Persepolis.jpg https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Persepolis_24.11.2009_11-32-18.jpg Introduction to Art Chapter 15: Ancient Near East 171 View of the eastern stairway and columns of the Apadana (Audience Hall) at Persepolis, Iran, 5th century B.C.E. (The Oriental Institute, University of Chicago) Conquered by Alexander the Great The Persian Empire was, famously, conquered by Alexander the Great. Alexander no doubt was impressed by the Persian system of absorbing and retaining local language and traditions as he imitated this system himself in the vast lands he won in battle. Indeed, Alexander made a point of burying the last Persian emperor, Darius III, in a lavish and respectful way in the royal tombs near Persepolis. This enabled Alexander to claim title to the Persian throne and legitimize his control over the greatest empire of the Ancient Near East. License and Attributions Chapter 15: Ancient Near East The Cradle of Civilization What’s in a Name? A Complex History Geography and the Growth of Cities Sumer Uruk Ziggurats Akkad Head of an Akkadian Ruler Ur Ancient Persia A tolerant empire The Apadana Conquered by Alexander the Great Introduction to Art Chapter 16: Ancient Africa 172 Chapter 16: Ancient Africa Humankind’s origins and the beginnings of cultural expression may be traced to Africa. Recent discoveries in the southern tip of Africa provide remarkable evidence of the earliest stirrings of human creativity. Ocher plaques with engraved designs, made some 70,000 years ago, represent some of humankind’s earliest attempts at visual expression. Although much remains to be learned about Africa’s ancient civilizations through further archaeological research, such discoveries suggest tantalizing possibilities for rich insights into human as well as artistic evolution. Rock paintings depicting domesticated animals provide artistic evidence of the existence of agricultural communities that developed in both the Sahara region and southern Africa by around 7000 B.C.E. As the Sahara began to dry up, sometime before 3000 B.C.E., these farming communities moved away. In the north, this led to the emergence of art-producing civilizations based along the Nile, the world’s longest river. Egypt, one of the world’s earliest nation-states, was unified as a kingdom by 3100 B.C.E. Further south along the Nile, one of the earliest of the Nubian kingdoms was centered at Kerma in present-day Sudan and dominated trade networks linking central Africa to Egypt for almost one thousand years beginning around 2500 B.C.E. A corpus of sophisticated terracotta sculptures found over a broad geographic area in present- day Nigeria provides the earliest evidence of a settled community with ironworking technology south of the Sahara. The artistic creations of this culture are referred to as Nok, after the village where the first terracotta was discovered, and date to 500 B.C.E. to 200 C.E., a period of time coinciding with ancient Greek civilization. Although Nok terracottas continue to be unearthed, no organized excavations have been undertaken and little is known about the culture that produced these sculptures. Introduction to Art Chapter 16: Ancient Africa 173 Seated Figure, terracotta, 13th century, Mali, Inland Niger Delta region, Djenné peoples, 25/4 x 29.9 cm (The Metropolitan Museum of Art) Terracotta heads, buried around 500 C.E., have also been found in north eastern South Africa. These important ancient artistic traditions are underrepresented in Western museums today, including the Metropolitan, due to restrictions regarding the export of archaeological materials. The first millennium C.E. witnessed the urbanization of a number of societies just south of the Sahara, in the broad stretch of savanna referred to as the western Sudan. The strategic location of the Inland Niger Delta, lying in a fertile region between the Bani and Niger rivers, contributed to its emergence as an economic and cultural force in the area. Excavations there at the site of Jenne- jeno (“Old Jenne,” also known as Djenne-jeno) suggest the presence of an urban center populated as early as 2,000 years ago. The city continued to thrive for many centuries, becoming an important crossroads of a trans-Saharan trading network. Terracotta figures and fragments unearthed in the region reveal the rich sculptural heritage of a sophisticated urban culture (see the Seated Figure, above). Ancient Egypt Step Pyramid of Djoser at Saqqara, Old Kingdom, c. 2675-2625 B.C.E. Photo: Dr. Amy Calvert Egypt’s impact on later cultures was immense. You could say that Egypt provided the building blocks for Greek and Roman culture, and, through them, influenced all of the Western tradition. Today, Egyptian imagery, concepts, and perspectives are found everywhere; you will find them in architectural forms, on money, and in our day to day lives. Many cosmetic surgeons, for example, use the silhouette of Queen Nefertiti (whose name means “the beautiful one has come”) in their advertisements. Longevity Ancient Egyptian civilization lasted for more than 3000 years and showed an incredible amount http://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/314362 http://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/314362 https://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/05/arts/design/african-art-is-under-threat-in-djenne-djenno.html Introduction to Art Chapter 16: Ancient Africa 174 of continuity. That is more than 15 times the age of the United States and consider how often our culture shifts; less than 10 years ago, there was no Facebook, Twitter, or Youtube. While today we consider the Greco-Roman period to be in the distant past, it should be noted that Cleopatra VII’s reign (which ended in 30 BCE) is closer to our own time than it was to that of the construction of the pyramids of Giza. It took humans nearly 4000 years to build something– anything–taller than the Great Pyramids. Contrast that span to the modern era; we get excited when a record lasts longer than a decade. Consistency and Stability Egypt’s stability is in stark contrast to the Ancient Near East of the same period, which endured an overlapping series of cultures and upheavals with amazing regularity. The earliest royal monuments, such as the Narmer Palette carved around 3100 B.C.E., display identical royal costumes and poses as those seen on later rulers, even Ptolemaic kings on their temples 3000 years later. Palette of Narmer, c. 3000-2920 B.C.E. (left) and Ramses III smiting at Medinet Habu (1160 B.C.E.) (right) A vast amount of Egyptian imagery, especially royal imagery that was governed by decorum (a sense of what was ‘appropriate’), remained remarkably consistent throughout its history. This is why, especially to the untrained eye, their art appears extremely static—and in terms of symbols, gestures, and the way the body is rendered, it was. It was intentional. The Egyptians were aware of their consistency, which they viewed as stability, divine balance, and clear evidence of the correctness of their culture. This consistency was closely related to a fundamental belief that depictions had an impact beyond the image itself—tomb scenes of the deceased receiving food, or temple scenes of the king performing perfect rituals for the gods—were functionally causing those things to occur in the divine realm. If the image of the bread loaf was omitted from the deceased’s table, they had no bread in the Afterlife; if the king was depicted with the incorrect ritual implement, the ritual was incorrect and this could have dire consequences. This belief led to an active resistance to change in codified depictions. Geography Egypt is a land of duality and cycles, both in topography and culture. The geography is almost entirely rugged, barren desert, except for an explosion of green that straddles either side of the Introduction to Art Chapter 16: Ancient Africa 175 Nile as it flows the length of the country. The river emerges from far to the south, deep in Africa, and empties into the Mediterranean Sea in the north after spreading from a single channel into a fan-shaped system, known as a delta, at its northernmost section. The influence of this river on Egyptian culture and development cannot be overstated—without its presence, the civilization would have been entirely different, and most likely entirely elsewhere. The Nile provided not only a constant source of life-giving water but created the fertile lands that fed the growth of this unique (and uniquely resilient) culture. View from the high peak of the Theban hills showing the sharp delineation between the lush Valley and the barren desert. Photo: Dr Amy Calvert, CC BY-NC Each year, fed by melting snows in the far-off headlands, the river overflowed its banks in an annual flood that covered the ground with a rich, black silt and produced incredibly fertile fields. The Egyptians referred to this as Kemet, the “black lands”, and contrasted this dense, dark soil against the Deshret, the “red lands” of the sterile desert; the line between these zones was (and in most cases still is) a literal line. The visual effect is stark, appearing almost artificial in its precision. Early Development: The Predynastic Period The civilization of Egypt obviously did not spring fully formed from the Nile mud; although the massive pyramids at Giza may appear to the uninitiated to have appeared out of nowhere, they were founded on thousands of years of cultural and technological development and experimentation. ‘Dynastic’ Egypt—sometimes referred to as ‘Pharaonic’ (after ‘pharaoh’, the Greek title of the Egyptian kings derived from the Egyptian title per aA, ‘Great House’) which was the time when the country was largely unified under a single ruler, begins around 3100 B.C.E. The period before this, lasting from about 5000 B.C.E. until unification, is referred to as Predynastic by modern scholars. Prior to this were thriving Paleolithic and Neolithic groups, stretching back hundreds of thousands of years, descended from northward migrating homo Introduction to Art Chapter 16: Ancient Africa 176 erectus who settled along the Nile Valley. During the Predynastic period, ceramics, figurines, mace heads, and other artifacts such as slate palettes used for grinding pigments, begin to appear, as does imagery that will become iconic during the Pharaonic era—we can see the first hints of what is to come. Dynasties It is important to recognize that the dynastic divisions modern scholars use were not used by the ancients themselves. These divisions were created in the first Western-style history of Egypt, written by an Egyptian priest named Manetho in the 3rd century BCE. Each of the 33 dynasties included a series of rulers usually related by kinship or the location of their seat of power. Egyptian history is also divided into larger chunks, known as ‘kingdoms’ and ‘periods’, to distinguish times of strength and unity from those of change, foreign rule, or disunity. The Pharaoh—Not Just a King Kings in Egypt were complex intermediaries that straddled the terrestrial and divine realms. They were, obviously, living humans, but upon accession to the throne, they also embodied the eternal office of kingship itself. The ka, or spirit, of kingship was often depicted as a separate entity standing behind the human ruler. This divine aspect of the office of kingship was what gave authority to the human ruler.The living king was associated with the god Horus, the powerful, virile falcon-headed god who was believed to bestow the throne to the first human king. Introduction to Art Chapter 16: Ancient Africa 177 Horus is regularly shown guarding and guiding the living ruler; as in this image of a falcon (Horus) wrapped behind the head of Ramses III in the tomb of Khaemwaset (above). Photo: Dr Amy Calvert, CC BY-NC Horus’s immensely important father, Osiris, was the lord of the underworld. One of the original divine rulers of Egypt, this deity embodied the promise of regeneration. Cruelly murdered by his brother Seth, the god of the chaotic desert, Osiris was revived through the potent magic of his wife Isis. Through her knowledge and skill, Osiris was able to sire the miraculous Horus, who avenged his father and threw his criminal uncle off the throne to take his rightful place. Osiris (above; from QV44 in the Valley of the Queens). Photo: Dr Amy Calvert, CC BY-NC Introduction to Art Chapter 16: Ancient Africa 178 Osiris became ruler of the realm of the dead, the eternal source of regeneration in the Afterlife. Deceased kings were identified with this god, creating a cycle where the dead king fused with the divine king of the dead and his successor ‘defeated’ death to take his place on the throne as Horus. The Great Pyramids of Giza One of the Seven Wonders of the ancient world The last remaining of the Seven Wonders of the ancient world, the great pyramids of Giza are perhaps the most famous and discussed structures in history. These massive monuments were unsurpassed in height for thousands of years after their construction and continue to amaze and enthrall us with their overwhelming mass and seemingly impossible perfection. Their exacting orientation and mind-boggling construction has elicited many theories about their origins, including unsupported suggestions that they had extra-terrestrial impetus. However, by examining the several hundred years prior to their emergence on the Giza plateau, it becomes clear that these incredible structures were the result of many experiments, some more successful than others, and represent an apogee in the development of the royal mortuary complex. Pyramid of Khafre (Photo: Dr. Amy Calvert) Three pyramids, three rulers The three primary pyramids on the Giza plateau were built over the span of three generations by the rulers Khufu, Khafre, and Menkaure. Each pyramid was part of a royal mortuary complex that also included a temple at its base and a long stone causeway (some nearly 1 kilometer in length) Introduction to Art Chapter 16: Ancient Africa 179 leading east from the plateau to a valley temple on the edge of the floodplain. View up the causeway from Khafre’s valley temple towards his pyramid (Photo: Dr. Amy Calvert) Other (smaller) pyramids, and small tombs In addition to these major structures, several smaller pyramids belonging to queens are arranged as satellites. A major cemetery of smaller tombs, known as mastabas (Arabic for ‘bench’ in reference to their shape—flat-roofed, rectangular, with sloping sides), fills the area to the east and west of the pyramid of Khufu and were constructed in a grid-like pattern for prominent members of the court. Being buried near the pharaoh was a great honor and helped ensure a prized place in the afterlife. Introduction to Art Chapter 16: Ancient Africa 180 Giza Pyramid Complex Tutankhamun Tutankhamun was only the age of nine when he became king of Egypt during the 18th dynasty of the New Kingdom (c. 1332–1323 B.C.E.). His story would have been lost to history if it were not for the discovery of his tomb in 1922 by the archaeologist Howard Carter in the Valley of the Kings. His nearly intact tomb held a wealth of objects that give us unique insights into this period of ancient Egyptian history Introduction to Art Chapter 16: Ancient Africa 181 Death Mask from innermost coffin, Tutankhamun’s tomb, New Kingdom, 18th Dynasty, c. 1323 B.C.E., gold with inlay of enamel and semiprecious stones (Egyptian Museum, Cairo) (photo Bjørn Christian Tørrissen, CC BY-SA 3.0) The death mask of Tutankhamun The death mask (above) is considered one of the masterpieces of Egyptian art. It originally rested directly on the shoulders of the mummy inside the innermost gold coffin. It is constructed of two sheets of gold that were hammered together and weighs 22.5 pounds (10.23 kg). Tutankhamen is depicted wearing the striped nemes headdress (the striped head-cloth typically worn by pharaohs in ancient Egypt) with the goddesses Nekhbet and Wadjet depicted again protecting his brow. He also wears a false beard that further connects him to the image of a god as with the inner coffin. He wears a broad collar, which ends in terminals shaped as falcon heads. The back of the mask is covered with Spell 151b from the Book of the Dead, which the Egyptians used as a road map for the afterlife. This particular spell protects the various limbs of Tutankhamun as he moves into the underworld. The kingdom of Aksum One of the four greatest powers in the world https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tutankhamun#/media/File:Tuthankhamun_Egyptian_Museum.jpg Introduction to Art Chapter 16: Ancient Africa 182 Aksum was the name of a city and a kingdom which is essentially modern-day northern Ethiopia (Tigray province) and Eritrea. Research shows that Aksum was a major naval and trading power from the 1st to the 7th centuries C.E. As a civilization it had a profound impact upon the people of Egypt, southern Arabia, Europe and Asia, all of whom were visitors to its shores, and in some cases were residents. Aksum developed a civilization and empire whose influence, at its height in the 4th and 5th centuries C.E., extended throughout the regions lying south of the Roman Empire, from the fringes of the Sahara in the west, across the Red Sea to the inner Arabian desert in the east. The Aksumites developed Africa’s only indigenous written script, Ge’ez. They traded with Egypt, the eastern Mediterranean, and Arabia. Despite its power and reputation—it was described by a Persian writer as one of the four greatest powers in the world at the time—very little is known about Aksum. Written scripts existed, but no histories or descriptions have been found to make this African civilization come alive. Aksum provides a counterpoint to the Greek and Roman worlds and is an interesting example of Introduction to Art Chapter 16: Ancient Africa 183 a sub-Saharan civilization flourishing towards the end of the period of the great Mediterranean empires. It provides a link between the trading systems of the Mediterranean and the Asiatic world and shows the extent of international commerce at that time. It holds the fascination of being a “lost” civilization, yet one that was African, Christian, with its own script, coinage, and international reputation. It was arguably as advanced as the Western European societies of the time. Aksumite Stelae The Northern Stelae Park in Axum, Ethiopia with the King Ezanas Stele at the centre and the Great Stele lying broken. (photo Jialiang Gao CC BY-SA 3.0) The ruins of the ancient Aksumite Civilization covered a wide area in the Tigray Plateau. The most impressive monuments are the monolithic obelisks, royal tombs and the palace ruins dating to the 6th and 7th centuries AD. Several stelae survive in the town of Aksum dating between the 3rd and 4th centuries AD. The largest standing obelisk rises to a height of over 23 meters and is exquisitely carved to represent a nine-story building of the Aksumites. It stands at the entrance of the main stelae area. The largest obelisk of some 33 meters long lies where it fell, perhaps during the process of erection. It is possibly the largest monolithic stele that ancient human beings ever attempted to erect. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Axum https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/King_Ezana\%27s_Stele https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/King_Ezana\%27s_Stela#/media/File:Axum_northern_stelea_park.jpg http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/ Introduction to Art Chapter 16: Ancient Africa 184 The Rome Stele (known also as the Aksum Obelisk) in Aksum (Tigray Region, Ethiopia). (photo Ondřej Žváček CC BY 2.5) License and Attributions https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Ond\%C5\%99ej_\%C5\%BDv\%C3\%A1\%C4\%8Dek https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.5 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.5 Chapter 16: Ancient Africa Ancient Egypt Longevity Consistency and Stability Geography Early Development: The Predynastic Period Dynasties The Pharaoh—Not Just a King The Great Pyramids of Giza One of the Seven Wonders of the ancient world Three pyramids, three rulers Other (smaller) pyramids, and small tombs Tutankhamun The death mask of Tutankhamun The kingdom of Aksum Aksumite Stelae