Art History Notes: What is Art? Art in the Stone Age

Class 1: What is Art? Art in the Stone Age

Modern Museum Examples

• Claude Lorrain, Embarkation of the Queen of Sheba, 1648. Oil on canvas. National Gallery, London.

• Hesire (Hesy-Re), relief from his tomb at Saqqara, Egypt, Dynasty III, ca. 2650 BCE. Wood. Egyptian Museum, Cairo.

• The four evangelists, folio 14 verso of the Aachen Gospels, ca. 810. Ink and tempera on vellum. Domschatzkammer, Aachen.

• Altar to the Hand (Ikegobo), from Benin, Nigeria, ca. 1735–1750. Bronze. British Museum, London.

• Clyfford Still, 1948-C, 1948. Oil on canvas. Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C.

Art History in the 21st Century

• The commercial art gallery system is a common way for artists to sell their work.

• Example: Clyfford Still's paintings of pure color, titled with the year of their creation.

Questions Art Historians Ask

• Chronology: Dating art objects and buildings.

  • Physical evidence: Provides reliable indications of an object's age.

  • Documentary evidence: Helps to pinpoint dates.

  • Visual evidence: Includes hair, furniture, and clothing styles depicted.

  • Stylistic evidence: Analysis of style; an artist's distinctive manner of producing an object (the most unreliable method of dating).

What is Style?

• Defining artistic style is a key element of historical inquiry.

• Period style: The characteristic artistic manner of a specific era within a distinct culture (e.g., “Archaic Greek” or “High Renaissance”).

• Regional style: The style tied to geography.

  • Menkaure and Khamerernebty, from Gizeh, Egypt, Fourth Dynasty, ca. 2490–2472 BCE. Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.

  • Portrait Statue of Mentuemhet, from Karnak, Egypt, 26th Dynasty, ca. 660–650 BCE. Granite. Egyptian Museum, Cairo.

  • Kritios Boy, from the Acropolis, Athens, Greece, ca. 480 BCE. Marble. Acropolis Museum, Athens.

  • Fragmentary Figure of a Woman, from the Jos Plateau region of Nigeria, ca. 500 BCE–200 CE. Terracotta. Museum of Fine Arts, Houston

• Personal style: The distinctive manner of individual artists or architects, often recognizable in multiple works.

  • Family of Saltimbanques, Pablo Picasso, 1905, National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. (Rose Period).

  • Les Demoiselles d'Avignon, Pablo Picasso, 1907, oil on canvas; arguably the first Cubist painting; 20th-century Spanish artist.

What is Art Subject?

• Wassily Kandinsky, Composition IV, 1911.

Iconography and Iconology

• Iconography: Descriptive study of images; classifies and describes them from their representation, relating them to textual sources. Keyword: Description.
  *Gislebertus, Weighing of Souls, detail of Last Judgement, west tympanum of Saint-Lazare, Autun, France, ca. 1120–1135.

• Iconology: Puts the study object in context as a product of a particular process of thought of its author or predominant moment in History. Keyword: Interpretation.
  *Statue of Liberty Enlightening the World (1886)
  *The Fourth Woodcut of the Apocalypses Series, The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse (1498)
  *Abstract Ideas Codified in Human Form
  *Ben Shahn, The Passion of Sacco and Vanzetti, 1931–1932. Tempera on canvas. Whitney Museum of American Art, New York
  *Achilles Painter, Warrior Taking Leave of his Wife (Athenian White-Ground Lekythos), from Eretria, Greece, ca. 440 BCE. National Archaeological Museum, Athens.
  *Head of the Statue of Augustus as Pontifex Maximus, from Via Labicana, Rome, Italy, late first century BCE. Marble. Palazzo Massimo alle Terme, Museo Nazionale Romano, Rome.
  *Portrait of Augustus as Imperator (General), from Prima Porta, Italy, early-first-century CE copy of a bronze original of ca. 20 BCE. Marble, $6'8''$ high. Musei Vaticani, Rome.
  *The Art of Portraiture

Form and Composition

• Form: An object’s shape and structure, either in two dimensions (e.g., a portrait on canvas) or three dimensions (e.g., a statue).

Material and Technique

• Artists shape materials (pigment, clay, marble, gold, etc.) with tools (pens, brushes, chisels, etc.).

• Each material and tool has its own potential and limitations.

Line

*Marks that span a distance between two points.
*Contour lines

Light

• Light reveals all colors.

• Natural light (sunlight) is whole or additive light.

• The painter’s light in art is subtractive light.

• Paint pigments produce their individual colors by reflecting a segment of the spectrum while absorbing the rest. Green pigment, for example, subtracts or absorbs all the light in the spectrum except that seen as green.

Hue

• Hue is the property giving a color its name. Artists usually conceive their hues as distinct from one another. They can also be seen as “pure colors”
  Josef Albers, Homage to the Square: “Ascending,” 1953. Oil on composition board. Whitney Museum of American Art, New York. Hue refers to the specific color name, such as red, blue, or green, that artists use to differentiate and identify colors in their work.

Texture

• Texture refers to the quality of a surface, such as rough or shiny.

Space, Mass, and Volume

• Space: The bounded or bound-less “container” of objects. It can be real three-dimensional space or illusionistic space depicted on a two-dimensional surface.

Perspective

• Perspective is one of the most important pictorial devices for organizing forms in space. Artists have used various types of perspective to create an illusion of depth on a two-dimensional surface.
  Peter Paul Rubens, Lion Hunt, 1617–1618. Oil on canvas. Alte Pinakothek, Munich. Foreshortening—the representation of a figure or object at an angle to the picture plane—is a common device in Western art for creating the illusion of depth. Foreshortening is a type of perspective.

• Foreshortening: the representation of a figure or object at an angle to the picture plane.

Proportion

• Proportion concerns the relationships (in terms of size) of the parts of persons, buildings, or objects.
  *Altar to the Hand (Ikegobo), from Benin, Nigeria, ca. 1735–1750. Bronze, 19 inch high. British Museum, London.

Sculptural Technique

*Types of Sculpture
Michelangelo Buonarroti, Unfinished Statue, 1527–1528. Marble. Galleria dell’Accademia, Florence. Carving a freestanding figure from stone or wood is a subtractive process. Michelangelo thought of sculpture as a process of “liberating” the statue contained within the block of marble.

Additive Sculpture

• Modeling: Additive process where material is added to build up a shape (e.g., clay, wax, plaster).
  *Head of a Warrior, detail of a statue from the sea off Riace, Italy, ca. 460–450 BCE. Bronze, full statue $6'6''$ high. Museo Archeologico Nazionale, Reggio Calabria. The sculptor of this life-size statue of a bearded Greek warrior cast the head, limbs, torso, hands, and feet in separate molds, then welded the pieces together and added the eyes in a different material.

Relief Sculpture

• Subjects project from the background but remain part of it.

• High-relief sculpture: Images project boldly.
  *The Reign of Jupiter, marble bas-relief depicting Jupiter (centre) and Mercury (left), dating to the Northern French Renaissance, ca. 1550–70; in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City

Prehistoric Art / The Stone Age

• The Paleolithic Period.

• The Neolithic Period.

• The Bronze Age.

Paleolithic Art

• The oldest and best-known painted caves are in southern France and northern Spain. The most famous is the cave at Lascaux. More than 17,000 years ago, prehistoric painters covered many of the walls of the cave with images of animals.
  Pebble Resembling a Face, Makapansgat, ca. 3,000,000 BCE
  *Africa
  *Apollo 11 Cave, Namibia, AfricaBetween 1969 and 1972, scientists working in the Apollo 11 Cave in Namibia found seven fragments of what are usually referred to as painted stone plaques but are really fragments that fell from the cave’s ceiling. The approximate date of the charcoal from the archaeological layer containing the Namibian fragments is 28,000 bce.

• This era was of unparalleled importance in human history and in the history of art.

• It was during the Old Stone Age that humans first consciously manufactured pictorial images.

• The works that the earliest artists produced are remarkable not simply for their existence but also for their astonishing variety.
  *Woolly Mammoth Ivory

• Paleolithic African artworks were discovered in a cave in Namibia near the southern tip of the continent.

• Apollo 11 Cave, Namibia: Fragments of painted stone plaques dated to approximately 28,000 BCE were found.
  Human with Feline (Lion?) Head, from Hohlenstein-Stadel, Germany, ca. 40,000–35,000 BCE. Woolly mammoth ivory. Ulmer Museum, Ulm.

• Human with Feline Head: One of the world’s oldest preserved sculptures, depicting a human with a feline head.

• The Laussel woman is one of the earliest relief sculptures known. The sculptor employed a stone chisel to cut into the relatively flat surface of a large rock to create an image projecting from the background.

• The two bison, like the much older painted feline from the Apollo 11 Cave, are in strict profile. Each is about 2 feet long.
  Woman from Willendorf, Austria. c. 24,000 BCE. Limestone, height 4-3/8" (11 cm). Naturhistorisches Museum, Vienna.
  Woman from Brassempouy, Grotte du Pape, Brassempouy, France. Probable c. 25,000-20000 BCE. Ivory, height 1-1/4" (3.6 cm). Musée des Antiquités Nationales, Saint-Germain-en-Laye, France. woman holding a bison horn from Laussel, France, ca. 25,000–20,000 BCE. Painted limestone, $1'6''$ high. Musée d’Aquitaine, Bordeaux.

• Woman Holding a Bison Horn: An early relief sculpture from Laussel, France.

• Bison Licking Its Flank, Fragmentary Atlatl, From La Madeleine, France, CA. 12,000 BCE. Musée d’Archéologie Nationale, Saint-Germain-en-Laye.

• Bison Licking Its Flank: Example of a sculptor using a burin to incise lines.
  *Don Marcelino Sanz de Sautuola (1831–1888) An amateur archaeologist accidentally found the first known examples of cave paintings at Altamira, Spain, in 1879. Don Marcelino Sanz de Sautuola (1831–1888) was exploring a cavern on his estate where he had previously collected specimens of flint and carved bone.
  Bison, detail of a painted ceiling in the cave at Altamira, Spain, ca. 13,000–11,000 BCE.
  Spotted Horses and Negative Hand Imprints, wall painting in the cave at Pech-Merle, France, ca. 23,000–22,000 BCE.

• Altamira Cave: features paintings of bison.
  *Spotted Horses and Negative Hand Imprints, wall painting in the cave at Pech-Merle, France, ca. 23,000–22,000 BCE.

• Pech-Merle Cave: Wall painting of spotted horses and negative hand imprints implies connection to shamanic visions.
  Axial Gallery, running horse, Lascaux, ca. 16,000–14,000 BCE.
  Woolly Rhinoceros, Wounded Man, and Disemboweled Bison, painting in the well of the cave at Lascaux, France, ca. 16,000–14,000 BCE.
  Aurochs, Horses, and Woolly Rhinoceroses, wall painting in the Chauvet Cave, Vallon-Pont-d’Arc, France, ca. 34,000–32,000 BCE.

• Lascaux Cave: The Hall of the Bulls has impressive collection of Paleolithic animal paintings with good acoustics for rituals, possibly.

• Woolly Rhinoceros, Wounded Man, and Disemboweled Bison: Possible hunting scene and earliest example of narrative art.

• Chauvet Cave: Radiocarbon dating indicates its paintings are the oldest known, displaying advanced features such as overlapping animal horns and possible narrative content.

Neolithic Art Manifestations

• Anatolia and Mesopotamia.
  *Tower of Jericho

Characteristics of the Neolithic Age

• Humans give up being nomads and form permanent settlements.

• Instead of being hunters and gatherers, humans become farmers and start planting wheat, barley, and rice.

• Humans start domesticating animals: Taming animals like horses, pigs, sheep, and cows to use on the farm.
  *The Tower of Jerico

• Of those sites known for some time, Jericho, Ain Ghazal, and Çatal Höyük together probably offer the most representative picture of the rapid and exciting transformation of human society and of art during the Neolithic Period.
  Human Skull with Restored Features, from Jericho, ca. 7200–6700 BCE. Features modeled in plaster, painted, and inlaid with sea shells. Life-size. Archaeological Museum, Amman, Jordan

• Jericho: Important Neolithic settlement.

• Human Skull with Restored Features: From Jericho, with features modeled in plaster and inlaid with sea shells.
  Human Figure, from Ain Ghazal, Jordan, ca. 6750–6250 BCE. Plaster, painted and inlaid with bitumen. Musée du Louvre, Paris.

• Ain Ghazal: A second important Neolithic settlement in ancient Palestine.

• Human Figure: Dozens of large painted plaster statuettes (some with two heads) are the earliest large-scale sculptures known.
  Deer Hunt, detail of a wall painting from Level III, Çatal Höyük, Turkey, ca. 6000 BCE. Museum of Anatolian Civilizations, Ankara.

• Çatal Höyük:
  Deer Hunt, detail of a wall painting from Level III, Çatal Höyük, Turkey, ca. 6000 BCE. Museum of Anatolian Civilizations, Ankara.

• Çatal Höyük, Deer Hunt: Neolithic painter depicted human figures as a composite of frontal and profile views.

• The megalithic tomb at Newgrange in Ireland, north of Dublin, may date to as early as 3200 BCE, and is one of the oldest funerary monuments in Europe.
  *Newgrange passage grave at Newgrange in Ireland, a tomb with a long stone corridor leading to a burial chamber beneath a great tumulus (earthen burial mound).

• Newgrange: Megalithic tomb in Ireland dating possibly to 3200 BCE.

• Stonehenge The most famous Megalithic Monument in Europe is Stonehenge on the Salisbury Plain in Southern England. A henge is an arrangement of megalithic stones in a circle, often surrounded by a ditch. The type is almost exclusively limited to Britain.

Conclusion: Paleolithic Art

• Paleolithic (Old Stone Age) Art ca. 40,000–9000 BCE.

• The first sculptures and paintings antedate the invention of writing by tens of thousands of years. The Paleolithic humans’ decision to represent the world around them initiated an intellectual revolution of enormous consequences.

• Scholars debate why humans began to paint and carve images and what role those images played in the lives of Paleolithic peoples. All that is certain is that animals, not humans, dominate Paleolithic art, and that women were far more common subjects than men.

• Some archaeologists believe that Stone Age hunters performed rituals in front of the animal images, which aided them in killing their prey. By contrast, other scholars think that the purpose of the images was to ensure the fertility of the species on which humans depended for food and clothing. Many researchers now believe that the Paleolithic cave paintings record the visions seen by shamans during trances.
  *Woolly Rhinoceros

Conclusion

• Paleolithic (Old Stone Age) Art ca. 40,000–9000 BCE.

• The works created by Paleolithic sculptors and painters’ range in size from tiny portable figurines, such as the stone image of a woman from Willendorf, to large, sometimes over-life-size, carved and painted representations of animals on the walls of the caves of Lascaux, Pech-Merle, Altamira, and elsewhere in southern France and northern Spain. Sometimes, the choice of subject was inspired by irregularities in natural rock formations that seemed to resemble animals or humans.

• The earliest known sculptures, such as the feline-human from Hohlenstein-Stadel, date to 40,000 to 35,000 BCE. The oldest paintings known, established by radiocarbon dating, are in the Chauvet Cave at Vallon-Pont- d’Arc.

• Paleolithic artists regularly depicted animals in profile in order to present a complete picture of each beast, including its head, body, tail, and all four legs. This format persisted for millennia.

Conclusion: Neolithic Art

• Neolithic (New Stone Age) Art ca. 9000–2300 BCE.

• Around 9000 BCE, the ice that had covered much of northern Europe for millennia receded. The Neolithic Age emerged first in Anatolia and Mesopotamia, roughly corresponding to present-day Turkey, Syria, and Iraq.

• The Neolithic Age revolutionized human life with the beginning of agriculture and the formation of the first settled communities, such as that at Çatal Höyük in Anatolia, where archaeologists have uncovered an extensive town with numerous shrines.

• Some Neolithic towns—for example, Jericho in the Jordan River Valley—also had fortified stone circuit walls.

• The excavation of a religious complex with decorated stone pillars at Göbekli Tepe in Anatolia indicates that Neolithic people constructed stone temples long before they established permanent village communities.

• Neolithic (New Stone Age) Art ca. 9000–2300 BCE.

• In art, the Neolithic period brought the birth of large-scale sculpture, notably the painted plaster figurines from Ain Ghazal and the restored life-size skulls from Jericho.

• In painting, coherent narratives became common, and artists began to represent human figures as composites of frontal and profile views—a formula that would remain universal for millennia.

• Neolithic technology spread gradually from Anatolia and Mesopotamia to Europe, where it continued longer in remote places, for example, Stonehenge in England.