Unit-IV; Professional Sales Representative (PSR).pptx
Lecture, Prehistoric Art
1. Preh
isto
r ic
Art
History of the World: Part I
Mel Brooks, 1981
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W_v_ubcYsTI
The Flintstones, Hanna-Barbera, ca. 1960s
2. The Stone Age
• “The first known period of
prehistoric human culture
characterized by the use of stone
tools” (Merriam-Webster)
• Prehistoric (pre-history = a time
before writing and recorded history)
• Earliest Stone Age art comes from
Southern Africa
• Important Stone Age artifacts on
every continent except Antarctica
• Bias in Stokstad textbook toward
European art
• Variety of materials used (clay,
stone, cave paintings, relief
sculptures)
Map of Prehistoric Europe
Incised ochre plaque,
Blombos Cave, South Africa, 70,000 BCE
3. Paleolithic Art
Paleolithic Neolithic
30,000 BCE 9,000 BCE
(oldest known
art objects)
Paleo = “old”
lithos = “stone”
Neo = “new”
5. The Female Nude denotative = literal, descriptive meaning
Jenny Saville, Self-Portrait
ca. 1990 Rineke Dijkstra,
Saskia Harderwijk, Netherlands
March 16 1994, c-print
Connotative = meaning derived from context (cultural/historical)
6. Paleolithic Sculpture - Venus of Willendorf
Denotative Connotative
• 4¼“ • One of many
• limestone other small
Paleolithic
• Nude woman female nudes
• Exaggerated • Both lack faces,
reproductive arms
anatomy • Both exaggerate
(breasts, breasts, belly,
belly, pubic pubic region
triangle) • Suggest
• Arms and emphasis on
hands very fertility (female, Venus of Dolní
Earth?)
small Vĕstonice
(hidden) • Representation ca. 29,000 BCE
of womanhood ceramic
• No face not a specific Czech Nude Woman (Venus of Willendorf)
(decorative woman? 28,000 - 25,000 BCE
braids) Willendorf, Austria
7. Paleolithic Cave Art
• Focus on Southern France and
Northern Spain
• At least 300 sites discovered
• Still rare considering they range
in date from ca. 30,000 BCE – ca.
10,000 BCE
• Most are paintings on walls (deep
in caves); some relief sculptures
(in clay), some wall engravings
• Paintings red or black (red or
yellow ochre, iron oxides like
hematite, charcoal or manganese
dioxide)
• Crushed into powder and mixed
with binder (water) then applied
with brushes made of twigs,
reeds
• Or blown onto surface through
hollowed reed or bone
• Illuminated work through stone
lamps using fat as fuel
• Could complete a wall in a day
• These deep, dark spaces
uninhabited by man
Powdered red ochre Hematite rock
8. Active Learning Project
(see worksheet)
“Paleolithic Cave Art in France”
By Jean Clottes
http://www.bradshawfoundation.com/clottes/index.php
Focus in your readings on “Themes Chosen”
“Human and Animal Activities” and “Meaning(s)”
9. Paleolithic Cave Art – Groups 1 & 2
• Shows most common
subject (animals)
• Clay relief of two bison
• Modeled by hand and
smoothed with spatula
• Fingers used to create
mane and facial
features
• In profile (most common
& complete, descriptive
rendering)
• “Pictorial definition” of
subject Two bison, reliefs in the cave at
Le Tuc d’Audoubert, France
ca. 15,000 – 10,000 BCE, clay
each 2ft long
10. Paleolithic Cave Art – Groups 3 & 4
• Shows most common
subject (animals)
• Two horses and
handprints
• Animals rendered in
profile
• Shape dictated by rock
formation on right?
• Accompanied by
geometric forms (here,
dots)
Spotted Horses and negative handprints
• Handprints created by Cave at Pech-Merle, France
blowing paint through ca. 22,000 BCE
hollowed reed or bone 11’2” long
(artist’s or other
signature?)
11. Paleolithic Cave Art – Groups 5 & 6
• Shows most common
subject (animals)
• Not all are bulls
• Also shown in profile and
in twisted perspective
• Contoured and shaded
bodies
• “Hall” added to over time
• Probably not intended to
represent a herd
• Some share a ground
line while some float
Hall of the Bulls
above
Lascaux, France
• Lack of setting or ca. 15,000 – 13,000 BCE
background largest bull 11’ 6” long
• Focus on pictorial
definition of animal
(conceptually rendered) detail of above
not narrative or scene
12. Paleolithic Cave Art – Groups 7 & 8
• Shows most common
subject (animals –
rhinoceros and bison)
• Animals in profile (rhino
more naturalistic than
schematic bison)
• Not painted by single artist
• One of earliest appearances
of man (not woman)
• Suggested narrative?
(although since deep in
cave, not necessarily meant
to be “read”) Rhinoceros, wounded man
and disemboweled bison
• Bison is disemboweled; bird
well shaft, Lascaux, France
man (masked?) falling or 15,000 – 13,000 BCE
dead? bison, 3’8” long
• Aftermath of man vs.
animal? (see spear & staff)
13. Film Screening:
Cave of Forgotten Dreams
2010
Werner Herzog, director
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oZFP5HfJPTY
14. Neolithic Art
Paleolithic Neolithic
30,000 BCE 9,000 BCE
(oldest known
art objects)
Paleo = “old”
lithos = “stone”
Neo = “new”
15. Neolithic Art - Ḉ atalhöyük
• Neolithic community from 7,000
– 5,000 BCE in present-day
Turkey
• First excavated in 1958
• One of first city dwellings
• Houses constructed by timber
frame and mud-brick
• Plastered walls with
platforms
• Dead buried beneath
floor
• Walls typically
decorated with mural
paintings and plaster
reliefs
• Shrines?
http://www.catalhoyuk.com/#
16. Neolithic Art - Ḉ atalhöyük
• Shows striking change since
Paleolithic cave painting
• Regular use of human figure
(alone and in groups)
• Introduction of pictorial narrative
• Organized hunting party
• Heads and facial features
delineated
• Details include bows, arrows,
and clothing
• Painted on prepared (plaster) Deer hunt
(detail)
surface (vs. directly on wall) wall painting
• Use of composite frontal and Ḉatalhöyük
profile views (head in profile, Turkey
torso frontal, profile view for arms 5750 BCE
and legs)
• Composite view would become
Detail from Hall of
standard (pictorial definition of Bulls, Lascaux
subject) for millennia
Diagram of ancient Egyptian
canon of proportions
17. Neolithic Art - Stonehenge
• One of most famous
prehistoric sites in world
24’
• Period saw development of
monumental architecture
• Use of huge rough-cut stones
(megaliths)
• Inspired name of period
(megalithic) Stonehenge, Salisbury Plain, Wiltshire
• Range from 17 - 24 ft. in England, 2550 – 1600 BCE
height and up to 50 tons each
• Arranged in a circle (henge)
and surrounded by a ditch
• Use of sarsen (like sandstone)
and smaller “bluestones”
• Post-and-lintel system
• Characteristic of other
megalithic monuments in Britain
John Constable, Stonehenge, 1835, watercolor
18. Stonehenge diagram, Salisbury Plain,Wiltshire
Neolithic Art - Stonehenge England, 2550 – 1600 BCE
sarsen stones
24 ft. tall support
bluestones
lintels (beams)
97 ft. diameter
outermost ring
horseshoe of
Connotative trilithons (three-stone
Meaning: constructions)
astronomical posts weigh 45 – 50
observatory? tons each
(solar calendar)
(marks point of summer solstice)
19. Stonehenge in Popular Culture
Wiccans at Summer Solstice
Jim Reinders, Carhenge, Alliance Nebraska, 1980s
This is Spinal Tap, 1984, Rob Reiner
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Zdyo4vJuCU
20. Contemporary Art Meets the Stone Age
James Turrell, Roden Crater
Ana Mendieta, from Silueta series, ca. 1970s near Flagstaff, Arizona, 1979 to present
Notas do Editor
Contrary to its presentation in popular culture, dinosaurs and humans did not co-exist. Stone Age man and woman lived quite differently than the way we do now and in many ways, they did not make or use their art in the same way that artists now do. Main themes of Stone Age art: -Art and Power – the power of art in human existence -Art and Spirituality – to connect humans and the spirit world -Art and the power of interpretation
Paleolithic people were largely hunter-gatherers. They roamed in groups and hunted and collected food. They used crudely made tools out of stone and bone.
Scarcity of images during Stone Age compared to the saturation of images today makes it especially difficult to understand the power and meaning of imagery to Stone Age makers and users.
Since prehistoric art, by virtue of its lack of historical documentation, lacks interpretive text to help us make sense of it, we are asked to understand its meaning both by looking at visual clues (denotative), as well as by looking at similar works make during that time (connotative). Of course, since we are well-versed in contemporary images of the nude, we can not only visually describe what we see but understand what the image’s messages are using the variety of signs and symbols that are familiar to many of us. This has to do with a visual language that in most cases, is understood. Denotative meaning is based purely on what you see. Connotative meaning is constructed by the viewer and so it changes over time.
During the Neolithic period, much of the ice that covered Northern Europe melted, the climate warmed and Europe became geographically and biologically similar to today. Some animals disappeared (the reindeer and the woolly mammoth) and some migrated. Humans began to settle into communities, farm the land, and domesticate animals. Man changed from hunters to herders. Sedentary societies emerged which practiced agriculture, weaving, metalwork, pottery and currency exchange.
During the 1960s and 1970s, artists stepped out of the walls of gallery and museum spaces and away from the easy commodification of art objects and made performance and installation art in the “expanded field” (nature, landscape, etc). They were not only interested in challenging the limitations of buying and selling works of art, but wanted to interact with and embrace primordial sources and sites of art making as ancient man did long ago, Ana Mendieta and James Turrell are just a couple of these artists who were (and are) interested in interacting with nature both in the use of their bodies (Mendieta) and in the alteration of the natural landscape. Among other works. Mendieta made a series of works called Siluetas in which she placed her own body in the landscape, then left and sometimes altered the remaining negative space before it was reclaimed by nature. Turrell bought this extinct volcanic crater in Arizona the late 70s and has been since working on this elaborate observatory. It is scheduled to open to the public within the next few years. How do you think the concerns of these contemporary artists are similar to and different from those of the Stone Age?
