Art History Review Chapters 1-3

1
Art HistoryChapter 1 Prehistory
2
Enduring Understanding 1.1

• Human expression existed across the globe before
  the written record. While prehistoric art of
  Europe has been the focus of many introductions
  to the history of art, very early art is found
  worldwide and shares certain features,
  particularly concern with the natural world and
  humans place within it.

3
Enduring Understanding 1.1

1. Defined in terms of geological eras or major
   shifts in climate and environment. Human Behavior
   expression was influenced by the changing
   environments in which they lived.
2. Earliest peoples were small groups of
   hunter-gatherers. Paramount concern was survival,
   resulting in the creation of practical objects.
   Practical tools, ritual and symbolic works.
   Established artistic media ceramics, painting,
   incised graphic designs, sculpture, and
   architecture.

4
Enduring Understanding 1-2

• First instances of important artistic media,
  approaches, and values occurred on different
  continents, with Africa and Asia preceding and
  influencing other areas as the human population
  spread.
• Awareness of fundamental, stable phenomena
  macrocosmic ( astronomical cyces), microcosmic
  (available materials in environment jade, clay..)

5
Enduring Understanding 1-2

1. Origins of Humanity understood to have begun in
   Africa radiated outward. Typically 2-D
   geometric representations of life forms natural
   materials
2. Paleolithic communities in West, Central, South,
   Southeast East between 70,000 40,000 BCE
3. Pacific regions, migrations from Asia aprox
   45,000 yrs ago due to lowered sea levels

6
Enduring Understanding 1-2

1. Paleolithic Neolilithic Europes human figural
   sculptures provided glimpses into ritual life
   showed the connections of naturalism (cosmos,
   fertility) and abstraction found throughout arts
   history.
2. American continent, indigenous peoples (migrated
   from Asia before 10,000 BCE) makd sculptures from
   animal bone later from clay. Animals sacred
   humans dominant subject matter.

7
Enduring Understanding 1-3

• Over time, art historians knowledge of global
  prehistoric art has developed through
  interdisciplinary collaboration with social and
  physical scientists.
• Ongoing archaeological excavations use of
  carbon-14 dating
• Stratigraphic archaeology
• Function inferred from evidence of technology
  survival strategies, culture, food sources

8
1-4 Venus of Willendorf
Flashcard
Subtractive Sculpture
9
Flashcard
1-10 Spotted Horses and negative hand imprints
10
New APAH
Apollo 11 Stones
11

• 1-11 Hall of the Bulls

Flashcard
TWISTED PERSPECTIVE combination of frontal and
side view.
Frontal
Side view (profile)
faculty.evansville.edu/.../sum04/art105-12.html
12
Camelid sacrum in the shape of a canine.
Tequixquiac, central Mexico 14,000-7000 BCE Bone
13

• Earliest example of rock art
• Dotted marks indicate body paint
• Featureless face
• White parallel patterns represent flowing raffia
  decor
• Horns shown in twisted perspective or composite
  are part of ceremonial attire

Running horned woman. Tassili nAjjer, Algeria.
6000-4000 BCE
14
Bushel with ibex motifs. Susa, Iran. 4200-3500
BCE. Painted terra cotta
https//www.youtube.com/watch?veeNfDr4ojZgt199
15
Terra cotta fragment. Lapita, Solomon Islands,
Reef Islands. 1000 BCE
16

• The Ambum stone
• Pre-historic zoomorphic figure,
• Possibly representing the embryo of a long-beaked
  echidna (spiny anteater)
• 3500 years ago

17
Tlatilco Female figure, 1200900 B.C. Ceramic
with traces of pigment
18
Jade cong Liangzhu, China 3300-2200 BCE Carved
jade
http//smarthistory.khanacademy.org/jade-cong.html
19
Anthropormorphic stele. Arabian Peninsula. Fourth
millennium BCE Sandstone.
20
Flashcard
1-16 Level VI Catal Hoyuk, Turkey
faculty.evansville.edu/.../sum04/art105-12.html ht
tp//catal.arch.cam.ac.uk/visit/Neolithic/B5EN.htm
l
COMPOSITE RECONSTRUCTION DRAWING OF A SHRINE ROOM
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Megaliths
Trilithon
Cromlech or henge
Post and Lintel
Lintel
Post
22
Flashcard

Significant astronomical alignments at Stonehenge
1-19 Stonehenge
faculty.evansville.edu/.../sum04/art105-12.html
23
Historical Context

• Time period 30,000 BCE 2300 BCE
• Paleolithic old stone age
• Mesolithic Middle Stone Age
• Neolithic New Stone Age
• Hunter Gatherers to towns with permanent houses
• No written language unable to understand arts
  meaning must speculate
• Tool burin used to incise (scratch)

24
Stylistic Characteristics

• Paleolithic mostly animals
• Cave paintings
• Sculptures relief, subtractive, in the round
• Animals strict profile
• Humans twisted or composite perspective
  (combined front side view)
• Megaliths, trilithons, cromlechs/henge, post
  lintel