Reading...
Play button
Play button
Use LEFT and RIGHT arrow keys to navigate between flashcards;
Use UP and DOWN arrow keys to flip the card;
H to show hint;
A reads text to speech;
36 Cards in this Set
- Front
- Back
|
symbolism
|
he term Symbolism means the systematic use of symbols or pictorial conventions to express an allegorical meaning. Symbolism is an important element of most religious arts and reading symbols plays a main role in psychoanalysis. Thus, the Symbolist painters used these symbols from mythology and dream imagery for a visual language of the soul. they painted scenes from nature, human activities, and all other real world phenomena in a highly metaphorical and suggestive manner.
FROM BOOK: Symbols--images that take on meaning through association, resemblance, or convention. |
|
|
Metaphor
|
In artworks, symbols are often
used as visual metaphors, where an object or form refers to and stands for something quite different. Metaphors facilitate the capturing of our phenomenological experience of the world in a unique way. They provide a means by which we can connect together objects, events and actions that appear to be empirically disparate and unconnected and are part of cultural expression. |
|
|
Anima / animism
|
The word is derived from the Latin anima, for “soul.” Animists believe that all objects are ensouled, and that some things such as mountains and rivers actually carry the souls of deities. This is reflected in many traditional creation myths, which often involve the trapping of deities or higher forces in the land. Natural events and phenomena are said to be expressions of these souls; when a god is angry, for example, it might rain.
Many animist belief systems also include the idea that souls are separate from the body. Under these beliefs, it is possible for a soul to leave one entity for another, or for someone's soul to be reincarnated in someone else. An animist shaman or priest may also send his or her soul on journeys while the body remains where it is. Elaborate rituals may be performed in these cases to release the soul from the body so that it can travel. In cultures which practice animism, there are often a lot of festivals, feasts, and celebrations. Each festival is designed to cater to a specific deity, keeping his or her soul happy and content so that the people will remain blessed and healthy. Some festivals or ceremonies may also be conducted to bring about a change; a festival might ask for rain or fertility, for example. These festivals may be taken very seriously in some cultures, while others have evolved more abstract and ceremonial versions. |
|
|
subject matter
|
what it is. Includes cultural context, symbols, personal history, medium and techniques, physical properties, and all the baggage the artist is carrying. Natural subject matter includes recognizing forms and situations that we know from our own experience. This extends from recognizing human figures to animals to an understanding of the expressive significance of their postures and facial features. Iconography is then used to identify the conventional meanings associated with forms and figures as bearers of narrative or symbolic content, often specific to a particular place and time. Some paintings like abstractions don't have subjects from the world around usbut they still embody cultural values with iconic imagery or allegory.
|
|
|
CONTENT
|
includes subject matter. Content is meaning. All works of art seek to convey meaning, insofar as tehy seek to communicate ideas, convey feelings, or affirm beliefs and values of makers, patrons, and usually the people who originally viewed or used them. Can derive from the social, political, religious, and economic context in which a work was created, the intention of the artist, and reception of the work by beholders. Art historians apply different methods of interpretation and often arrive at different conclusions regarding the content of a work of art and single works of art can have multiple meanings because they are directed at multiple people.
|
|
|
FORM
|
What it looks like, representational/abstract?
Form is the shape of content. The visual structure communicates it to the viewer. Form refers to purely visual aspects of art. It encompases qualities of line, shape, color, light, texture, space, mass, volume, and composition. |
|
|
REALISM
|
Realist art has to have realistic clues such as it looks like a realistic person. Realism tells it how it really was. The realistic artist thinks of himself as an honest witness. Some art pieces have elements of both realism and idealism. Example of realism is seen in Caracalla.
|
|
|
IDEALISM
|
The ideal is perfection. Greeks were big on this idealism idea. Abstractions are in it. There are all kinds of idealizations. These ideals are very much culturally bound. We never know if our ideal is true or not. In any culture the ideal is the hardest to attain. For example, the ideal body in our culture is thin because we have constant access to food. The ideal body in the paleolithic era was plump because it was a sign of status and showed that you could eat. Greeks idealized their statues because they thought that the ideal body was a reflection of a beautiful soul.
|
|
|
Contrapposto
|
An italian term meaning "set against" used to describe the pose that results from setting parts of the body in opposition to each other around a central axis. This refers to standing in a balanced pose. To the greeks balance in a statue also represented balance in moral life.
CONTRAPPOSTO from study sheet-- Contrapposto and the portrayal of consciousness show that the figure is able to act confidently, intelligently, and courageously in the real world. The physical balance of a contrapposto symbolizes the moral balance as articulated by plato. When courage is balanced by wisdom, justice prevails. |
|
|
Heroic Nudity
|
Asserts that the subject's physical strength comes from within. This represents that his strength comes from within and he doesn't need anything except his ideal soul.
|
|
|
Ideal physical form for the Greeks was important because
|
Ideal physical form represents the perfection of the subject's soul: its moral balance. Beautiful reflection of the soul.
|
|
|
Plato's definition of justice
|
When courage is balanced by wisdom, justice prevails.
|
|
|
The definitive classical image
|
includes heroic nudity, ideal physical form, and contrapposto
|
|
|
wet drapery
|
idea that the drapery covers the body but it doesn't conceal anythign about it. Type of Hellenic dress. a term used by art historians to describe cloth that appears to cling to the body in animated folds while it reveals the contours of the form beneath.
certain artistic renderings from antiquity, textiles appear fragile, even ephemeral |
|
|
ABSTRACTION
|
Any art that does not represent observed aspects of nature or transforms visible forms into stylized images. Also: the formal qualities of this process. Much more difficult to pick out realistic qualities. Not taken from nature. Much more of an idea in it. Comes from two latin words tract which is to pull toward and ab which is out. SO it literally means to pull out. This implies pulling out what is important or essential. Artists pull out what they think is important. If you move toward an idea it's idealism or perfection. How it ought to be.
|
|
|
animal interlace style
|
Decoration made of interwoven animals or serpants, often found in Celtic and early medieval Northern European art.
|
|
|
interlace
|
a decorative motif consisting of threads passing aver and under each other like threads in lace
|
|
|
Geometry
|
almost always symbolizes order. This is because geometry is an intellectual exercise. In a period of chaos it is important to have a set of belieffs. In nature we don't see squares and rectangles anywhere. They are human, intellectual structures. SO geometry symbolizes order.
|
|
|
Paleolithic period
|
human beings made tools long before we made art. Art in the sense of image making is the hallmark of the Upper Paleolithic period and the emergence of our subspecies homo sapiens sapiens. REpresentational images are showing up. Early humans are making tools stone tools some with sharp edges. Cognitive abilities and manual dexterity are seen in sophisticated stone tools such as hand axes. Late Paleolithic period homo sapies subspecies called Neanderthal inhabited Europe. Its members used a wider range of stone tools and may have carefully buried their dead. The most important new ability was the capacity to think symbolically. They started building mammoth bone houses. saw humans as interconnected with animals. Created little figures to trade with other tribes to show friendliness. Cave paintings.
|
|
|
social animals/extended family
|
social animal is a loosely defined term for an organism that is highly interactive with other members of its species to the point of having a recognizable and distinct society. A few species, notably insects of the orders Hymenoptera (ants, bees and wasps) and Isoptera (termites) show an extreme form of sociality, involving highly organized societies, with individual organisms specialized for distinct roles. This form of social behavior is referred to as eusociality.
|
|
|
sacred places/the womb of mother earth
|
ves are ambiguous spaces, offering both protection and shelter but can also trap and imprison. Because of its location within the earth, which many cultures have identified as female, the cave has been identified as the womb of Mother Earth, and associated with birth and regeneration. Although sacredness may have been invested in many other natural forms and objects (such as trees, mountains, etc.) during the prehistoric period, the earliest known sacred places are naturally-formed caves, such as that at Lascaux in France. In various cultures, caves have been location for the celebration of diverse cults and mysteries, and this was most likely the case at Lascaux.
|
|
|
shamanism
|
hamanism encompasses the belief that shamans are intermediaries or messengers between the human world and the spirit worlds. Shamans are said to treat ailments/illness by mending the soul. Alleviating traumas affecting the soul/spirit restores the physical body of the individual to balance and wholeness. The shaman also enters supernatural realms or dimensions to obtain solutions to problems afflicting the community. Shamans may visit other worlds/dimensions to bring guidance to misguided souls and to ameliorate illnesses of the human soul caused by foreign elements. The shaman operates primarily within the spiritual world, which in turn affects the human world. The restoration of balance results in the elimination of the ailment. hamanic practices may originate as early as the paleolithic, predating all organized religions,[76][77] and certainly as early as the Neolithic period.Shamanism is based on the premise that the visible world is pervaded by invisible forces or spirits that affect the lives of the living. In contrast to animism and animatism, which any and usually all members of a society practice, shamanism requires specialized knowledge or abilities. Shamans are not, however, organized into full-time ritual or spiritual associations, as are priests. Can often take on the form of animals as it did in the bird man and the bison.
|
|
|
chthonic religions/celestial religions
|
hthonic, of or relating to earth, particularly the Underworld. Chthonic figures in Greek mythology included Hades and Persephone, the rulers of the Underworld, and the various heroes venerated after death; even Zeus, the king of the sky, had earthly associations and was venerated as Zeus Chthonius. Oracles (prophecies) delivered through incubation (that is, whereby the inquirer slept in a holy precinct and received an answer in a dream) were believed to come from chthonian powers. In the symbolism and iconography of chthonic deities, snakes are often associated with such deities in world mythology. any ancient spiritual traditions existed and flourished that incorporating many different understandings of the Creator and of celestial bodies.
Objects such as stars, planets, the moon, the sun, comets and meteorites would have commanded awe and wonder. Similarly, events such as eclipses and the Aurora Borealis (Northern Lights) would easily have led to marvel at the forces of nature. Whilst all these objects are still as awe-inspiring as they were in ancient times, huge advances in science mean we are constantly exposed to new research on celestial bodies. We are thus no longer astonished upon hearing that a new star or galaxy has been discovered, whereas ancient man would have looked into the sky and been perplexed at objects that he could neither reach nor comprehend. Archaeology has unearthed many ancient structures with alignments to celestial bodies and the strong notion that those people worshipped stars, the sun and the moon. Examples include Stonehenge in the UK, which is an ancient stone circle with a spiritual history, and the pyramids of Egypt and Mexico. Ancient Egypt, although it is likely that there was monotheism in the early dynasties of rulers, over time, the sun took on a huge significance in the religion of the Egyptians and the status of Pharaoh. Some of the hieroglyphs depict Pharaoh with the sun on his head, the great Amon-Ra. Amon, or Amun was considered as the supreme creator while Ra was the much older sun-god, so the two were combined as Amon-Ra. The great temple complex of Karnak on the Nile appears to be oriented to the direction of the summer solstice through the hypostyle hall and the adjacent hall of festivals. Gerald Hawkins strongly claimed in his work that there is evidence that the temple had been aligned to the midsummer sun, and that the temple complex contained ‘hymns of praise to that god that appears at dawn’. (Devereux, p.164) Indeed, one of the temples on the Karnak site (near the modern town of Luxor) is named after Ra-Hor-Akhty, an ancient Egyptian name that can be translated as the ‘sun brilliant on the horizon’. In Egyptian worship, Horus is the rising sun, Ra is the noon sun and then Osiris (god of the dead) is the dying or setting sun. Some commentators even link Horus, Ra and Osiris with the Christian Trinity concept (Gordon, p.657). One of the most well known of the Egyptian Pharoahs was Amenhotep IV who eliminated the many gods of the realm and told his countrymen to worship just one god, signified by the solar disc known as aten, and even changed his name to Akhenaten. After he died, Tutankhaten who had married one of his daughters succeeded him, and he reverted back to the old traditions and changed his name to Tutankhamun. (Hagen, p.47) |
|
|
twisted perspective, strict profile, composite view
|
A convention of representation in which part of a figure is shown in profile and another part of the same figure is shown frontally
|
|
|
NEOLITHIC REVOLUTION
|
the world was warming up this affected the distribution, density, and stability of plant and animal life and marine and aquatic resources. Relationship btwn ppl and environment changed. They started to exert increasing control over the land and its resources. They produced food, origin of plant and animal domestication occurred. They balanced hunting, gathering, and farming to maintain a steady food supply. Beginnings of architecture made simple durable structures out of clay, mud, dung, and straw interwoven among wooden posts. The dead were burined under the floors of many of the buildings so the site connected the community's past, present, and future. Megalithic structures were built such as stonehenge. Planting allows you to feed more people so there is a huge population explosion. cities and villages arise. When you have cities there is a hierarchy.
|
|
|
post and lintel construction
|
two going upward and one going across.Post and lintel (or Post and beam) is a simple architrave[1] where a horizontal member (the lintel—or header) is supported by two vertical posts at either end. This form is commonly used to support the weight of the structure located above the openings in a bearing wall created by windows and doors.The biggest disadvantage to a post and lintel construction is the limited weight that can be held up, and the small distances required between the posts.
|
|
|
Strict profile
|
WE ONLY SEE FROM THE SIDE which gives us the most information.
|
|
|
bronze, copper, tin, BRONZE AGE
|
Copper is relatively abundant in Europe and Spain, objects fashioned in it are too soft to be functional and have a metaphoric use. However, bronze an alloy, or mix of copper and tin is a stronger substance with a wide variety of uses. This allowed them to make weapons such as swords and daggers. Tin that was required was scarce. Power bases shifted within communities as the resources needed to make bronze weren't widely available. Trade and intergroup contact increased.
|
|
|
hierarchy / social stratification / aristocracy
|
the classification of a group of people according to their ability, or economic or social status. This arose because of cities. When soomeone controls resources, someone is then below them and a hierarchy develops. Aristocracy - government by the best individuals or a small privileged class. social stratification refers to the hierarchical arrangement of individuals into divisions of power and wealth within a society. The term most commonly relates to the socio-economic concept of class, involving the "classification of persons into groups based on shared socio-economic conditions ... a relational set of inequalities with economic, social, political and ideological dimensions."
|
|
|
hieroglyph/ alphabet / demotic script
|
Hieroglyphs" refer to the characters made by graphical figures, be it animals, objects, or concepts that concern the religions' god. Hieroglyphs was represented in the form of symbols and pictures. They were mainly written on papyrus paper or on Pyramids. Hieroglyphics came from the Egyptian definition: "Writing the Words of God". Hieroglyphics were created by ancient Egyptians. Today many believe that this form of writing was first to be created, but actually it was cuneiform. Hieroglyphics originated from Sumer in Mesopotamia. Before the creation of writing on Pyramids they were used for recording agricultural products and registering births, rather like a census. An alphabet is a standardized set of letters—basic written symbols or graphemes—each of which roughly represents a phoneme in a spoken language, either as it exists now or as it was in the past. refers to either the ancient Egyptian script derived from northern forms of hieratic used in the Delta, or the stage of the Egyptian language following Late Egyptian and preceding Coptic. The term was first used by the Greek historian Herodotus to distinguish it from hieratic and hieroglyphic scripts. By convention, the word "Demotic" is capitalized in order to distinguish it from demotic Greek.
|
|
|
the two lands / the gift of the nile / upper egypt / lower egypt
|
The niile overflowed its banks each year for several months. Every time the floodwaters receded, they left behind a new layer of rich silt, making the valley and delta a continually fertile and attractive harbor. north Africa became increasingly dry and they had to manage flood waters in a system called basin irrigation. Ancient Egypt was divided into two regions, known as Upper Egypt and Lower Egypt. To the north was Lower Egypt where the Nile stretched out with its several branches to form the Nile Delta. To the south was Upper Egypt, stretching to Syene. The two kingdoms of Upper and Lower Egypt were united c. 3100 BCE, but each maintained its own regalia. Thus, the pharaohs were known as the rulers of the Two Kingdoms (alternatively: Two Lands), and wore the pschent, a double crown, each half representing sovereignty of one of the kingdoms.
The terminology "Upper" and "Lower" derives from the flow of the Nile from the highlands of East Africa northwards to the Mediterranean Sea. So Upper Egypt lies to the south of Lower Egypt. There were a number of differences between Upper and Lower Egyptians in the ancient world. They spoke different dialects and had different customs. Many of these differences, and the occasional tensions they created, still exist in modern times. |
|
|
Necropolis / mastaba
|
A necropolis (Greek plural: necropoleis; Latin plural: necropoles) is a large cemetery or burial ground, usually including structural tombs. The word comes from the Greek νεκρόπολις - nekropolis, literally meaning "city of the dead". A mastaba is a type of Ancient Egyptian tomb in the form of a flat-roofed, rectangular structure with outward sloping sides that marked the burial site of many eminent Egyptians of Egypt's ancient period. Mastabas were constructed out of mud-bricks or stone.The word Mastaba comes from the Arabic word for "bench", because when seen from a distance it resembles a bench. Inside the mastaba, a deep chamber was dug into the ground and lined with stone or bricks. The exterior building materials were initially bricks made of sun dried mud which was readily available from the Nile River. Even as more durable materials of stone came into use, the cheaper and easily available mud bricks were used for all but the most important monumental structures.[5]
The above-ground structure was rectangular in shape, had sloping sides, a flat roof, was about four times as long as it was wide, and rose to at least 30 feet in height. The mastaba was built with a north-south orientation. This above ground structure had space for a small offering chapel equipped with a false door to which priests and family members brought food and other offerings for the soul of the deceased. A second hidden chamber called a "serdab", from the Arabic word for “cellar,” housed a statue of the deceased that was hidden within the masonry for its protection. High up the walls of the serdab were small openings. These openings “were not meant for viewing the statue but rather for allowing the fragrance of burning incense, and possibly the spells spoken in rituals, to reach the statue.”[6] |
|
|
Ka / grave goods / symbolic sacrifice / animated images
|
Ka was the egyptians soul, which lived on after the death of the body, forever engaged in the activities it had enjoyed in its former existence. But the ka needed a body to live in. It was important to provide a comfortable home from it so even in the afterlife he would ensure the well being of the king. Grave goods were necessary so they would have the things they needed in the afterlife. Grave goods sometimes included statues of their servants in this life so they could serve their masters for all eternity.
|
|
|
ephemural and eternal / the religious rold of Egyptian art
|
ephemural is somethign that lasts for a short time. They tried to take the beautiful things and make them last forever. Want to make the ephemural last forever. Wanted to find an eteranl form for the ephemural. Religion was intertwined into all their art because their pyramids were stairways to heaven and their grave goods were for afterlife. Also their statutes were made of gods so they could worship them.
|
|
|
Symbolism of Egyptian pyramids
|
the audience halls were stone but the Ka can use them still. The walls of the pyramids were coated with Some were aligned with celestail significance. Step pyramids were stairways to heaven. They changed to smooth pyramids because they represent sunbeams. The pyramids were covered with limestone and then light would reflect off of it. Limestone represented light wihtout physical substance. Religion shifted to the god of light.
|
|
|
realism, idealism, and abstraction in egyptian art
|
They were real people in their statues. Idealized sometimes by physical fitness and hierarctic scale. Abstract because of Akhenaten and his statues.
|
