ARTS 1101 Final Exam

Taj Mahal

Most memorable piece of Mughal art created by last Mughal ruler Shah Jahan

Its white marble surfaces show different colors throughout the day, as the building catches sunlight from various angles. The bulb-shaped dome seems light in weight. The walls look paper-thin, with arch openings in a graceful rhythm. The building appears to hover above a garden, the design of which is based on the description of paradise in the Qur’an.

A pointed arch frames the central iwan; just above the opening is a decoration of twining vegetation. The beauty of this building comes not from decorations, but rather from expensive materials and poetic arrangement of masses. The paradise motif of the garden is continued in the long inscription surrounding the doorway arch, which contains the most important chapter from the Qur’an describing the afterlife. Tombs for both Shah Jahan and his wife are at the center on a lower floor. Jahan expressed his vision for the building in a written note: “Like the garden of heaven a brilliant spot, full of fragrance like paradise fraught with perfume.” The Taj Mahal’s central dome and high iwan show influence from earlier Mughal tombs, but here the rich marble and perfectly balanced masses create an otherworldly building.

Camera obscura

The forerunner of the modern camera was the camera obscura, literally “dark chamber”. Sunlight passing through a small hole in the wall of a darkened room projects onto the opposite wall an inverted image of whatever lies outside. The camera obscura thus already functioned like a camera, but the means for preserving or copying its images was still lacking.

Macchu Picchu

The Inca are perhaps best known for their skillful shaping and fitting of stones. Their masonry is characterized by mortarless joints and the softly rounded faces of granite blocks. The royal retreat center of Machu Picchu was built on a ridge in the eastern Andes, in what is now Peru, at an elevation of 8,000 feet. The city, which escaped Spanish detection, was planned and constructed in such a way that it seems to be part of the mountain. Respect for stones was an integral part of Inca culture. According to the Inca creation myth, two of their early ancestors who emerged from the earth immediately turned themselves into stones. Some stone shrines were regarded as living things requiring offerings and care.

Typography

Typography is the art and technique of composing printed material from letterforms, or designing letterforms themselves. A complete set of letterforms, including all capitals, lower case, numerals, and accent marks is a typeface, also called a font.

Many European-style typefaces are based on the capital letters carved in stone by early Romans. Roman letters are made with thick and thin strokes ending in serifs—short lines with pointed ends, at an angle to the main strokes. The capital letter H in a Roman type of font has four serifs, one at each extremity. In typesetting, the term “roman” is used to mean “not italic.”

Oceania belief

The belief that the world as we know it was created by the union of the Earth Mother and the Sky Father. Their contact created life forms on the planet’s surface. Many Oceanic traditions view ancestors as intermediaries between people and the gods. Because ancestors who now live in the spirit world can intercede and influence future events, Oceanic artists have created many objects to honor or placate them.

Oceanic art

Most meeting houses are named for specific ancestors and symbolize their presence. An ancestor’s face and body decorate the top of the gable; the ridge of the roof represents his back; the rafters are his ribs; the outer upright posts symbolize his arms, as if he is on all fours, looking straight ahead. The front gable boards are richly carved with abstract figures that represent other ancestors. The slightly ferocious aspect of these figures indicates that they inhabit the spirit world, and this carving attempts to communicate some of their mana.

The inside of the house is even more ornate. The ribs of the roof (which represent the ribs of ancestors) are painted in curving nonrepresentational patterns. On the walls, relief carvings alternate with abstract patterns in woven dyed flax. Most meeting houses represent only one ancestor, but because this one commemorates an important historical event, it represents ancestors of all of the Maori clan groups in today’s New Zealand.

Primary colors

When the pigments of different hues are mixed together, the mixture appears duller and darker because pigments absorb more and more light as their absorptive qualities combine. For this reason, pigment mixtures are called subtractive color mixtures. Mixing red, blue, and yellow will produce a dark gray, almost black, depending on the proportions and the type of pigment used.

A lesser-known triad is the three light primaries: red-orange, green, and blue-violet. These are actual electric light colors that produce white light when combined; they are the colors that our televisions and computer screens use, along with certain light artists such as Sonnier. Such mixtures are called additive color mixtures. Combinations of the light primaries produce lighter colors: Red and green light, when mixed, produce yellow light.

The complement of a primary is the opposite secondary, which is obtained by mixing the other two primaries.

Secondary hues: orange, green, and violet. The mixture of two primaries produces a secondary hue. Secondaries are placed on the color wheel between the two primaries of which they are composed.

Arcade

a series of arches supported by columns or piers.

Arch