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History Of Art
Introduction
The history of art usually refers to the history of the visual arts, such as
painting, sculpture and architecture. The term also encompasses theory of the
visual arts. It is not usually taken or intended to refer to the performing arts
or literary arts. The history of art attempts an objective survey of art
throughout human history, classifying cultures and periods and noting their
distinguishing features and influences.
The field of "art history" was developed in the West, and originally dealt
exclusively with Western painting, and Western art history, with the High
Renaissance (and its Greek precedent) as the defining standard. Gradually, with
the onset of Modernism, a wider vision of history has developed, seeking to
place other societies in a global overview by analyzing their artifacts in terms
of their own cultural values. Thus, the subject is now seen to encompass all
visual art, from the megaliths of Western Europe to the paintings of the Tang
Dynasty in China.
Earliest known art
The oldest surviving art forms include small sculptures and paintings on rocks
and in caves. There are very few known examples of art that date earlier than
40,000 years ago, the beginning of the Upper Paleolithic period. People often
rubbed smaller rocks against larger rocks and boulders to paint pictures of
their everyday life, such as hunting wild game.
The so-called Venus of Willendorf (which is now being called "Woman from
Willendorf" in contemporary art history texts) is a sculpture from the
Paleolithic era, which depicts a woman with exaggerated female attributes. This
sculpture, carved from stone, is remarkable in its roundness instead of a flat
or low-relief depiction. Early Aegean art, although it dates from a much later
period, shares some of the same abstract figurative elements.
Prehistoric art objects are rare, and the context of such early art is difficult
to determine. Prehistoric, by definition, refers to those cultures which have
left no written records of their society. The art historian judges early pieces
of art as objects in their own right, with few opportunities for comparison
between contemporaneous pieces. Interpretation of such early art must be done
primarily in the context of aesthetics tempered by what is known of various
hunter-gatherer societies still in existence.
Ancient art
The period of ancient art began when ancient civilizations developed a form of
written language.
The great traditions in art have a foundation in the art of one of the six great
ancient civilizations: Ancient Egypt, Mesopotamia, Greece, Rome, India, or
China. Each of these centers of early civilization developed a unique and
characteristic style in their art. Because of their size and duration these
civilizations, more of their art works have survived and more of their influence
has been transmitted to other cultures and later times. They have also provided
us with the first records of how artists worked.
Ancient Roman art depicted gods as idealized humans, shown with characteristic
distinguishing features (i.e. Zeus' thunderbolt).
Post-ancient Western art
In Byzantine and Gothic art of the Middle Ages, the dominance of the church
insisted on the expression of biblical truths. There was no need to depict the
reality of the material world, in which man was born in a "state of sin",
especially through the extensive use of gold in paintings, which also presented
figures in idealised, patterned (i.e."flat") forms.
The Renaissance is the return yet again to valuation of the material world, and
this paradigm shift is reflected in art forms, which show the corporeality of
the human body, and the three dimensional reality of landscape.
Post-ancient Eastern art
Eastern art has generally worked in a style akin to Western medieval art, namely
a concentration on surface patterning and local colour (meaning the plain colour
of an object, such as basic red for a red robe, rather than the modulations of
that colour brought about by light, shade and reflection). A characteristic of
this style is that the local colour is often defined by an outline (a
contemporary equivalent is the cartoon). This is evident in, for example, the
art of India, Tibet and Japan.
Religious Islamic art forbids iconography, and expresses religious ideas through
geometric designs instead. However, there are many Islamic paintings which
display religious themes and scenes of stories common among the three main
monotheistic faiths of Islam, Christianity, and Judaism.
References
1. ^ "Does time fly? Peter Galison's Empires of Time, a historical survey of
Einstein and Poincare, intrigues Jon Turney" (Saturday September 6, 2003), The
Guardian
2. ^ Contradictions of the Enlightenment: Darwin, Freud, Einstein and Modern Art
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