ARTHC notes

CHAPTER 1 ART BEFORE HISTORY
Every artist in every generation asks
1. What shall be my subject?
2. How shall I represent it?
Paleolithic Art (greek paleo “old” and lithos “stone”) old stone age- few people depicted mostly profile of animals. When archaeologists first decovered statues of women they named them venus after the Greek goddess of Love
Mesolithic: middle stone age- few people depicted mostly profile of animals
Neolithic: New stone age- few people depicted mostly profile of animals
Burin: a pointed engraving tool to scratch lines into a surface
Incise: scratches on an engraving
Twisted perspective/ composite view: the viewrs see the heads in profile but the horns from the front
Optical: painting seen from a fixed viewpoint ex: portrait
Descriptive: painting that builds the concept of the image. Ex: stick figure
Negative: the painter placed one hand against the wall and then brushed or blew or spat pigment around it
Makapansgat pebble (3,000,000 BCE) South Africa: a water worn reddish-brown jasperite pebble near prehuman bones
PALEOLITHIC ART (30,000-900 BCE)
Apollo 11 cave (23,000 BCE) Africa: seven fragments of stone plaques with paint on them (recognizable animals)
Hohlenstein-stadel (30,000 BCE) Germany ivory: 1 high sculpture with feline head and human body (male/female?)
Venus of Millender (28,000-25,000 BCE) found in Austria: stone age, a women with full bossom named after the greek goddess of Love because the sculpture is nude. Like other human figures you can not see the face, but it appears to be covered in curly hair or a woven hat. The body is disproportionate, but the artist did detail the pubic triangle.
Laussel (Paleolithic era) France: stone block found in a rock shelter from stone that was painted with red ocher. Simulare to the earlier venus of Millender with a disproportionate body but one arm is up and another is across the abdomine.
Le Tuc D’audoubert (10,000 - 15,000 BCE) France: two bison about 2 feet long sculptures built in clay
La Madeleine (12,000 BCE) France: bison 4 inches long with turned head with lines into the bison’s main and carved from reindeer antler. Face turned at 180 degrees to maintain the full profile view.
Altamira (12,000-11,000) southern France, northern Spain: discovered by Don Marcelinno Sanz de Sautuola with his daughter Maria in 1879 while they explored into a cave. 85 feet into a cave a chamber with shadowy paintings of running animals. The artists sole concern was representing the animals not locating them in the space- no relation to each other.
Pech-Merle (22,000 BCE) France: checks, dots, squares, line to picture animals and human hands painted in the negative
Chauvet Cave (30,000-28,000 BCE) France: two hinoceroses suggest that the artist intended a narative. An exhibit of advanced features such as overlapping horns
Lascaux (15,000-13,000 BCE) France: most paintings hundreds of feet from entrance of the caves. There is an image of a man, with his prominent penis, but not detailed. One of the more famous is Hall of the Bulls (15,000-13,000 BCE) France: many colored silhouetttes and outlines; one is 11 feet long
NEOLITHIC ART (8000- 2300 BCE)
Shrines: distinguished from the house structures by the greater richness of their interior decoration: wall paintings, plaster reliefs, animal heads
Bucrania: bovine skulls
Terracotta: baked clay found at Catal Hoyuk and most are small female figures a few are 12 inches
Megaliths: (great stones) designated Neolithic architecture in western Europe
Passage grave: tomb with a long stone corridor leading to burial chamber covered by earthen burial mound (western Europe)
Tumulus: earthen burial mound (Western Europe)
Corbeled vault: construction techniaue used in tombs today
Courses: stacked horizontal rows
Post-and-lintel system: two uprith stones (posts) support a horizontal beam (lintel)
Apses: semicircular recesses that curve
Henge: arrangement of megalithic stones in a cirlce, often surrounded by a ditch (almost entirely limted to Britain)
Sarsen: a form of sandstone (Britian‘s stone henge)
Bluestones: various volcanic rocks (Britian’s stone henge)
Jericho (7000 BCE) Palestine and Iran: villiage with spectacular water ways, wealth, more than 2,000 people, and arcihitecture
Ain Ghazal (7200-5000 BCE) Amman Jordan: houes of irregularly shaped stones and 3 doxen plaster statues with busts and some two heads. White plaster built up over a core of reeds and twine. Some with clothing but not always obvious gender but there were details added with painting
Catal Hoyuk (7000-5000 BCE) Anatolia- Near east: houses in early city adjoined one another and and doors but openings in the roof. With decorated rooms and burial grounds. Wall paintings of hunters, but regural appearance of the human figure with wettings and groups describing scenes. Landscape with volcanic erution is a wall painting from Level VII (6150 BCE) Catal Hoyuk, Turkey and first known landscape with out human or animals
New grange (3200 BCE) Ireland burial monument, a tomb with a large stone corridor leading to the burial chamber covered in burial mounds (others found in Franc, England, Spain and Scandinavia) to honor the dead. At winter solstice the sun illuminates the passageway
Hagar Qim (32000 and 2500 BCE) Malta an island far south: oldest stone temples, and built out of carefully cut stone blocks. Altars, stone statues of headless nude women on seats and standing
Stonehenge (2550-1600 BCE) outer ring is almost 100 feet in diameter and is made of megaliths with a ring of bluestones open end facing eat of a horseshe shaped. Some stones weigh 50 tons. Accurate to the solar calendar

CHAPTER 2 THE ANCIENT NEAR EAST
Mesopotamia: Greek meaning land between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers and gave birth to 3 major religions: Judaism, Christianity, and Islam
City-state: unified nation of Sumaria with each city was thought to be under the protection of a different deity. Ruled by a family or individual
Pictogrpahs: simplified pictures standing for words
Stylus: shar tool used to make inventory clay tablits in Sumaria
Cuneiform signs: group of wedge-shaped signs used in Samaria to simplify pictures of animals
Ziggurat: a high platform for temple construction
Bent-axis plan two or three angular changes in directions down the doorways of White Temple Uruk
Cella: set aside central hall for the divinity and housed a stepped alta
Registers/friezes: bands in a sculpture that depict the story in pictographs
Votive offering: gift of gratitude to a deity usually made in fulfillment of a vow
Conceptual: representation of what is being seen not the actual image
Hierarchy of scale: greater height of the priest-king and Inanna compared to the offering bearers indicaes their greater importance
Stele: carved stone slab erected to commemorate a historical even, or sometimes mark a grave
Ensi: ruler/king in of Lagash depicted in Stele
Lapis lazuli: rich azure-blue stone imported from Afghanistan into Ur- Iraq
Bestiaries: medieval stories with animals as the humanistic characters
Heraldic composition: symmetryical on either side of a central figure
Diorite: a rare costly dark stone, hard to find in carve, used to make Gudea statotues of Lagash for gods
Sumer (2,000 BCE) Sumarians in Iraq. Made up of city-states (government) writing (3400-3200 BCE) inventory of cattle, food, supplies into clay with stylus; these were simplified to cuneiform signs; literatuer (2,000 BCE) Epic of Gilgamesh the sotyr of king Uruk and moster slayer of Huwawa
White Temple, Uruk (3000 BCE) Uruk-a city with 40,000 people. Whitewashed walls to the sky god, with a central hall and a stepped alter. Sumerian’s refered to as waiting rooms
Inanna (3200-3000 BCE) Uruk- Iraq war discovered: fragmentary white marble female head- only a face with a flat back, drilled holes for attachment to the rest of the head and the boyd that may have been wood; goddess Inanna- but unknown. Colored shell or stone filled the deep recesses for the eyebrows and large eyes. A wig of gold leaf on the head
Warka Vase first great work of narrative relief sculpture; in Inanna temple, has several bands, figures to tell a story; with crops depicted, and domesticated animals. Naked men fills baskets, top layer has goddess
Eshunna Statuettes (2700 BCE) Iraq: cache of sculptures in temple at Eshnunna. They are gypsum inlaid with shell and black limestone of a both males and females. Their oversized eyes symbolized perpetual wakefulness of substitute worshipers offering prayers to deity, beakers they hold were for libations in honor of the gods about 30 inches tall.
Stele of the vultures (2600-2500 BCE) Iraq: limestone about 2 ½ feet high and the full stele almost 6 feet. Vultures carrying off the severed heads and arms of defeated enemies; Hierarchy of scaled enemy: king on top, war chariots, foot soldiers. Eannatum is larger than any one leading his army against the enemy
Standard of Ur (3000 BCE) Iraq (biblical Abraham) tomb chambers filled with gold helmetns, dagger of lapis lazuli, dozen of bodies with musicains, servants, charioteers, soldiers. With wood inlaid with shell, lapis lazuli, and red limestone paintings using a mosaic-like technique of battlefields, and feast of celebrations. There were two sides on the box, the war side and the peace side, but they might be the first and second part of the entire narrative
Bull-headed Lyre (2600 BCE) Iraq- Ur: gold lear and lapis lazuli of a wooden core over 5 feet high a bull’s head, imaginary composite creatues as heroic figures; the lion carrying the vase, and the donkey playing the lyre
Cylinder Seals: found in the tombs of “Queen” a cylindrical piece of stone engraved to produce a raised impression when rolled over clay. Figures with large frontal eyes, profile head, seated dignitaries- looks like a stamp roller today.
AKKAD AND THE THIRD DYNASTY OF UR (2332-2279 BCE)
Akkadian: site in the vicinity of Babylon near Eastern people who spoke language related to Hebrew and Arabic, and used cuneiform characters; royal power based on loyalty to king rather than city-state
Akkadian Portraiture (2250-2200 BCE) copper head of Akkadian king is all that remains of a once grand statue, with the eyes gouged out to make statement. Life-size. Earliest known great monumental work of hollow-cast sculpture
Naram-sin Stele (2254-2218 BCE) Iran: the figures are staggered and not layered abandoning the traditional formate- the empty space between figures was utilized
Ziggurat, ur (2150 BCE) Iraq: construction of ziggurats one of the largest in Mesopotamia with a soild mas bass of brick fifty feet high, hundreds of steps
Gudea of Lagash (2100 BCE) Neo-Suerian age: portray of Gudea (ensi of Lagash) His statues were wearing a wollen brimmed hat and dressed in long garments with one shoulder exposed to give gods their du. All of diorite
SECOND MILLENNIUM BCE
Hammurabi (1792-1750) most renowned king in Mesopotamian history; best known for his law code that had penalties for adultery, murder, and cutting down a neighbor’s tree. Large blocks made of heavy stone with lions, beasts
Napir-asu of Elam (1350-1300 BCE) Iran: bronze and copper over 4 feet high but life-size of the wife of Elamite king and was as an offering in the temple with an inscription to ask the gods to protect the statue
Assyria: (721 BCE) ambitious layout the confidence of the Assyrain kings, strong defensive walls, palace on elevation, tiber roofed hallwas, courtyards, over-life-sized figures of kings lined wall
Lamassu (720-705 BCE) Iraq: limestone over 13 feet high complete view of animasl with five legs four legged on the side view and two in the front; Assyrian palace guardian
Palace of Ashuranasirpal II (875-860 BCE) Iraq: narrative reliefs exalting roay power. Throughout the palace, painted, rich textiles on the floors; archers shooting arros, enemy soldiers in the water. The human figures are enlarged to stand out from the back ground
Palace of Ashurbanipal (668-627 BCE)Nineveh palace: a great city was constructed. Brilliant depictions of straining muscles, swelling veins, wrinkled skin, flattened ears of defiant beast; making the king appear grander
NEO_BABYLONIA AND PERSIA
Ishtar Gate, Babylon (575 BCE) Iraq: under king Nebuchadnezzar II dazzling blue glazed brick that were on the front of gates, towers, with animals both real and imaginary. With lions in yellow or brown and sometime red against a blue background
The Persian Empire (559-529 BCE) Cyrus of Persia conquered Babylon
Persepolis (522-486 BCE) Iran: ceremonial/admnistrative complex with art and architecture; on high plateau, led through monumtental gateway called the Gate of All Lands, reference to the harmony among the peoples of th evast Persain Empire that is 60 feet high and 217 feet square with 36 colossal columns: 23 nations with a gift. has Greek influence that attests to mediterianian influence was speed
Sasnian Ctesiphon (330 BCE) Alexander the Great's conquest in Persia. erectedpalaces at Ctesiphon the capital his father established near modern Bahdad. a monumental iwan, covered by a vault more than 100 feet above ground
Shapur I and Rome (260 BCE) Turkey: a series of rock-cut reliefs in the cliffs of Bishapur in Iran to dipict his triumph (susanian army) over Roman emperor Valerian. with Valerian kneling before Susanian- ironic level of political message in stone