It is impossible to calculate the exact influence this Florentine Renaissance Man has had on the art world in the centuries since his death. He was a painter, sculptor, architect, draughtsman, and poet, and was a master in all these trades. Few painters or sculptors have matched his grace and attention to detail when it came to the human body. His David as well as the Ignudipainted around the ceiling of the Sistene Chapel show a mastery of human anatomy as well as an insight into humanity rarely achieved. While previous artist represented humans as being ideally crafted, Michelangelo chose rather to emphasize the real beauty of the body. Man was created in God’s image, and his true form should be depicted in all its glory.
He was born near Tuscany in 1475, and moved to Florence as a young boy. There he studied with the humanist scholar Fransesco da Urbino but showed little interest in his studies, preferring to copy famous paintings and work on his art. Soon he would take an apprenticeship for sculpting as well as painting. He left the apprenticeship after a short period and was drawn to the humanist circles of Lorenzo de Medici. After the death of Lorenzo, Michelangelo left Florence for Rome where he completed his first sculpture Bacchus. By the time he was thirty, he had already sculpted the Pieta and the David.
In 1505 Michelangelo met and received patronage from Pope Julius II, and would receive two commissions which would take years of his life, and cause much hardship and turmoil. Two monumental jobs were given around the same time by the Pope, one of which would never be completed. The gigantic tomb for Julius was to be designed and completed with forty figures to be sculpted by the artist. Also Julius had desired the ceiling of his chapel, the Sistene, named for Pope Sixtus IV. The latter would finally be completed after four years but resulted in several serious health problems for the painter, including eye infections from the paint dripping while he was on his back on the scaffolding. The Pope was unyielding with his deadlines and nagging, but Michelangelo, though working mostly alone, finally completed one of the most famous frescoes in art history.
Michelangelo never even considered himself a painter and had begrudgingly accepted the commission at the insistence of Pope Julius. He wrote, while working on the project, “I am not in a good place, nor am I a painter,” which pretty well sums up his thoughts at the time. He even considered his frescoes to be “dead paintings.” Nonetheless, his mastery as a painter is unmatched by contemporaries, save perhaps by Leonardo and Raphael, which, of course, is subjective and debatable. Though most of his art was commissioned by the Church, it was he himself, not the subjects of his artwork, who his contemporaries called “Divine.”
If there was one word to describe Leonardo, it is “Versatile.” Unlike Michelangelo, whose genius, though various, was mostly limited to the arts, Leonardo excelled at not only painting, and sculpting, but also in engineering, mathematics, and science. He is considered to be one of the greatest artists, as well as thinkers of the Renaissance. His contributions are enormous, helping to advance the fields of physics, philosophy and anatomy, among others. He was always pondering the secrets of the universe and making his own experiments. His ideas were way ahead of his time, even predicting airplanes, helicopters and other machines which would not be thought of for centuries.
Leonardo was born in Tuscany in 1452 and received a wide range of education, with training for decorative arts, sculpture and techniques of painting. He considered painting to be the sum of all the sciences, which led to a knowledge of the world from a recreation of it. From a very young age he was observing the world around him, in all its peculiarities and composed ways of expressing it with paint.
Disliking the art scene of the Tuscan workshops, Leonardo moved away and sought patronage from Ludovico the Moor in Lombardy, where he would spend the next twenty four years of his life. As a risk taker he was constantly trying new things, so when he received a commission by Ludovico he decided to disregard conventional methods of fresco in an attempt at a more subtle effect. Unfortunately this would result in the recent deteriorating of the Last Supper, which luckily has been recently restored. Besides using a new technique, other conventionalities were dropped as well. Traditionally the scene of the Last Supper was painted with a wall behind the table with Judas seated separately from the others. Here, Leonardo chose an open space with receding perspective, leading to windows, behind the group of apostles sitting in groups of three. The scene is the moment when Christ announces one of their betrayals. The instant we observe is the variety of emotions of the disciples ranging from shock, anger, disbelief, pain, dismay and fear, which Leonardo called, “The emotions of the soul.”
Besides being an inventor in the sciences, Leonardo was an innovative painter. His technique of sfumato comes from the Italian, “smoky,” and describes the effect of layers upon layers of thin paint added subsequently. This way subjects, particularly people, can be portrayed how they truly appear, without hard lines and borders. One of the best examples of this is the Mona Lisa, with as much as 40 layers of paint indicating what could or may not be a subtle smile.
His ideas toward portraying a sitter in a psychological way created the idea that a painter can be a thinker more than just a simple artisan. The Mona Lisa, as well as other portraits such as Lady With an Ermine (seen above), along with the Last Supper, are revolutionary in the sense that human emotion was not previously a selling point in a painting. Rather than simply painting people, Leonardo painted the passions of their inner souls.
For about the past week I’ve been posting some introductory chapters of a book I’m working on called Masters of The Renaissance. It’s basically a compilation of brief biographical looks at some of the finest and most influential artists of the Renaissance in Europe during the 15th through 16th centuries. The purpose is to be informative, as well as entertaining as I can only hope the majority of the posts on vince’s ear are. It starts out with a brief history of art, then describes the Middle Ages in Europe, which lay the foundation for the Renaissance. Then it goes into each artist and some of their contributions.
Starting in Florence, Italy at around the middle of the 15th century and later spreading throughout Northern Europe, the cultural movement was called a “rebirth” for its general tendencies for reverting to classical themes when it came to education and the arts. Historians argue about the importance of the period, but most can agree that it marks a transition from the Middle Ages to the modern era.
The artists of this period were highly creative and were using some innovative techniques new to the time such as linear perspective. Oil painting at this time was achieving popularity and the old method of tempera was slowly dying out, though fresco painting was still widely used at the start of the Renaissance. “Renaissance men” like Leonardo, Michelangelo and Raphael were masters in numbers of trades and contributed to science, architecture, sculpture, painting, and engineering. Michelangelo was shocking the Church with his highly realistic rendering of the human body as opposed to the traditional ideal human. “Man was made in God’s image,” he said. Leonardo, besides invented several of his own painting techniques, studied the secrets of the universe predicted machines such as helicopters and airplanes centuries before they were ever even thought of. Raphael at this time was surprising his much older contemporaries Leonardo and Michelangelo with his skill. His skill came into such demand, that after he painted “The School of Athens,” the majority of his work was done entirely by assistants. He was regarded as the greatest painter who ever lived.
The book is being written for the Amazon Kindle and will only be available on that format, to be sold in the Amazon Kindle store. The next week or so I’ll be putting most of the chapters, or at least overviews of them, here on vince’s ear, in between other random posts as usual. Here and there in the book you’ll see some stuff taken from here anyway, but generally if you’re a steady reader of the blog you’ll catch most of it here. That way, Dear Reader, you won’t have to pay a penny for anything.
This is a working table of contents for what’s completed, but obviously much more is to come. I intend to include about 30 artists, and as I have said from the beginning it is by no means meant to be the definitive Renaissance artist biography. Included are only several of the most influential, innovative, and important painters, sculptors, and architects of the time.
Contents
Introduction- What is Art?
Part I- Early Art
Cave Paintings
Art From The Early Civilizations of Mesopotamia, Egypt, Greece, and Rome
This is taken from the introduction of the book Masters of The Renaissance by the author of the vince’s ear blog. The posts Cave Paintings, Early Eastern Arts, and Religious Art are all from introductory chapters from the book.
What Is Art?
What actually is art? If you ask twenty people, you’re likely to get twenty different answers. What art means to the individual relies very much on that person’s upbringing, personality, and beliefs. One’s core values comes into play when deciphering a work of art. Do you look at a splattered canvas and think the artist is a genius for conveying what you think is a strong statement? Can someone find a bunch of tossed away bric-a-brac, glue it all together haphazardly and call it modern art? What is considered beautiful, what is aesthetically pleasing? Is the art tasteful? Does it even qualify as art? In short “art” means different things to different people. Even the mere definition is more varied than the world’s cultures.
And what is culture? To understand the art of the world we must first define “culture.” Culture, anthropologically speaking, is everything about humanity that hasn’t been inherited biologically. In short, it is our human expression. Besides basic human traits and characteristics, everybody that has walked this Earth shared and learned a wealth of knowledge and customs of the people in the areas they lived. Depending on what corner of the land on the corner of the planet one came from, the language you spoke, the clothes you wore, and the means of self expression were generally apart of the culture of your people.
Ever since man became a cognitive entity, homo sapiens sapiens, or “Thinking thinking man,” he has needed to express himself in one way or another. The origins of language could have been a series of grunts and gestures, a way of communicating thoughts and ideas in tangible ways. Long before alphabets and writing came into play, symbols were created to represent ideas, and were painted on the walls and other surfaces to convey messages. This early way of putting ideas into visible cues is the origin of art.
Art, therefore, is and has always been a means of self expression. The power to ponder and associate thoughts and ideas, the ability to differentiate dreams from reality, and the assigning of perceived value and significance to real objects are what separates us from our chimpanzee cousins. Since the beginnings of humanity, our feelings and ways to express them have been a staple for our survival as a species. Once the basics of communication have been established, ways of showing others a higher form of feeling must be achieved.
This is art as we know it. Individuals with their own unique thoughts are expressing it in ways their fellow people can understand. Early art was animals painted on the walls of a cave. Fellow cave dwellers looked at the art and knew instantly what it was and what it meant. Certain methods of portraying people and events in art became commonplace in any given community. The leaps and bounds of art throughout history, however, have been a challenging of such readily accepted ideals. Society as a whole has their own set of values of what is acceptable and many pioneering artists who were ahead of their time were shunned.
Like anything else, art has its fads and fashions. What’s news today is tomorrow’s fish wrapper. Throughout history, each society and period of time had its styles. From early art to recent times, art had a propensity toward realistically representing nature. The figure was portrayed to look human, at first ideally, and then gradually more realistic. The 19th century brought some new ideas such as Impressionism, which sought to express landscapes and events by the impression of the light reflected off surfaces. Eventually the abstract art of the early 20th century challenged realistic representation altogether by showing expressions of thoughts and ideas with no recognizable elements besides colors and gestures. The minimalists made a statement about how art is a continuous subtraction since the beginnings or art, therefore art will eventually be no more than a black canvas. Blank canvases and simple geometric shapes become a fad to demonstrate this statement.
We all know that art and its trends of course did not eventually reduce itself to nothing, and representational art is still very much alive. If anything on may say that art has been cyclic, starting with symbols and basic shapes, going to ideal figurative art, to realistic representation, all the way to photo realism, back to abstract symbols, and finally back to realistic representation again. One thing is for sure, no one can predict the future, therefore it is impossible to say where the art of tomorrow can be headed.
So, in a nutshell, art is what you make of it. You, as an individual, have the power to decipher art, and to express your own art in any way you see fit. Art can exist anywhere. It can be the small crafts one makes for seasons and holidays such as Halloween and Christmas. It can be the consumer versions of these in the form of statues for sale which were mass produced and stocked on the shelves of any department store- someone had to design them, right? Artists of all ages, skill levels, and backgrounds produce their art in their own way. Not all art is going to be as great as Michelangelo‘s David, and this is important in your critiques of what art actually is. Good art, crummy art, corporate art, scribble drawings, advertisements, finger paintings, rug designs, body painting, found art, digital paintings, you name it- it’s all art. So it is unfair to the artist to say that something simply isn’t “Art” because you don’t understand it, and it may not smile back at you like the Mona Lisa.
One look at one of Sidney’s Sime’s wonderful illustrations and I was intrigued. His fantastical imagery is superb enough to adequately complement the writings of any great author.
Hailing from England, Sidney Sime lived and worked in the Golden Age of Illustration along with other illustrator greats as Sir John Tenniel and Edmund Dulac. He was even born in the same year as the legendary Arthur Rackham. Educated at the Liverpool School of Art, Sime illustrated for such humourous London magazines as Pick-Me-Up and later for the more prestigious Pall Mall and The Idler. He even purchased and co-edited The Idler after a rich uncle left him a sizable fortune.
In just under two years, however, The Idler went out of business. But, with the help of his dead uncle’s estate, the illustrator still had no troubles staying financially afloat himself. Without the need to work, he found the time to work on his illustrations with an ever enhanced fervor.
Though magazine work was his forte, Sime would catch the eye of a certain up and coming Irish aristocrat author. Lord Dunsany at the time was only 26 years old and was working on The Gods of Pegana, and knew of only one illustrator alive who could possibly complete the task of effectively illustrating the work. Lord Dunsany approached the artist and eight plates were completed for the book, which was published a year later. This started a fifteen year collaboration between the two.
Lord Dunsany was so impressed with the illustrations he would eventually write an entire book based on the Sime artworks called the Book of Wonder. Besides providing frontispieces for two other books, Dunsany’s were the only books Sime illustrated. When Sidney Sime died in 1941, his works were left to his wife who later created a memorial in Surrey, England.
Whether you believe in God or not you can’t deny the importance of religion in society. Atheists being a minority, a large percentage of the world’s population belongs and has belong throughout history to some form of religion or spiritual community. This is evident in the cultures across the world and the effect this has had on art throughout art history is tremendous.
Early Art
Saying the phrase “early religious art” would be redundant. It seems in much of early art history we see the majority of artistic expression involving some religious theme in one way or another. Cave paintings often depicted rituals and ceremonies. Even if it seems only wild animals running or a hunt, it is very possible the paintings themselves were meant as a sort of prayer for good luck to supply the people with meat.
Before alphabets were even invented, symbols and images of the air god and other deities decorated the buildings of ancient Mesopotamia. People from this earliest of civilizations believed in a higher power and held rituals for important events such as burials, and began to record their beliefs. Places of worship were erected to pay homage to their many gods. These temples would be important examples of architecture in the culture of ancient Mesopotamia as would the temples and houses of worship of every other culture through the ages to this day.
Temples were an important part of the indigenous peoples of the Americas such as the Mayans, Incas, and Aztecs. They believed in human sacrifice and would have stepped temples where the person would be offered to the god on top, closest to the sky. We know about the religions of these societies by studying their writing systems, which consisted of hieroglyphs. These hieroglyphs were a series of symbols painted on ceramics, or carved in wood, stone, or molded in stucco.
In the Eastern hemisphere, art history is mostly dominated by Buddhist beliefs and thus Buddhist art. Starting around 1 A.D. in the Indian subcontinent, Buddhism would influence much of the culture of the whole of Asia and prevail for centuries. Buddha was mostly represented in sculpture and sometimes bas-reliefs. These Buddhas can be pre or post-enlightenment. The pre-enlightenment Buddhas have a whole subcategory called “Bodhisattvas.” These beings were on the way to enlightenment and offered support for others on their journey.
Medieval And Renaissance Art
The art of the Middle Ages is dominated by religion. The majority of paintings are mostly Christian-themed, representing stories mostly taken from the bible. The Church knew that most of the uneducated masses couldn’t read, so paintings were meant as a way for the peasantry and illiterate to learn the ways of God. These paintings and frescoes were painted all over churches and public walls and portrayed the lives of the saints, Jesus Christ with the Mother of God, and the Holy Spirit, as well as many other biblical passages.
Some of the finest pieces of architecture in European history belong to the magnificent cathedrals and churches that dot the landscape. In cities throughout the world, such as Philadelphia, there seems to be a church on every corner housing a plethora of different religions dating from all periods of time, some centuries old. Indeed these building structures were meant to last, with some cathedrals having about as much stone beneath the surface as was above. It is no surprise people took refuge in the old churches in time of war. The styles and attributes of these cathedrals with their arches, steeples, and flying buttresses are the subject of a much more detailed article to come in the future.
The people of the Middle Ages in general were a highly religious bunch. Christianity had a stronghold on most of the European countries and the priest and bishops were the highest ranking public officials. With plagues and other hardships, as well as basic philosophical unrest it was easy for the religious leaders to control the masses with promises of damnation or salvation. A tithe of 10% of one’s income ensured favor with the priest, thus buying favor of the saints. For a small fee one can reduce the time in purgatory of a recently deceased loved one. It is no surprise that the cardinals and popes of centuries ago as well as today are grandly dressed with gold jewelry and worshiping with fine holy instruments of precious metals.
Prayers were offered in the form of icons. Small art objects were made which were meant as an offering to God. To this day icons are an important part of religious art, ranging from modern crucifixes to tabernacles and chalices. To the people who pray and have prayed to these icons, the object is not a mere work of art, but rather a sacred object with a very special function. The making of these icons was a delicate task undertaken usually by a monk. Strict rules and guidelines had to be adhered to in order to make the object holy. The immaculate surface was painstakingly painted and was the equivalent to the writing of scriptures.
Throughout the Renaissance of the late Middle Ages, much of the early religious art stayed the same. Churches were built extravagantly in accordance to modern styles, and Christian art was still sacred and served a purpose for more than just viewing. But around this time, private patrons were beginning to commission and purchase art for themselves. Guilds of painters became artisans to serve the public, rather than just the Church and government. This meant subjects were beginning to stem away from dominant religious themes and the art was much more free. Religious themed art began to see the patrons themselves painted right alongside the saints or even the Holy Family. With advances such as the understanding of perspective, as well as the emergence of landscape paintings for their own sake, art in general started to become more diverse.
Some religious themes took on a more secular spin to them as well. Sculptors such as Michelangelo created artworks such as the biblical David but made them in a more realistic way rather than the usual religious practice of portraying people ideally. Caravaggio’s holy themes with simple humble looking subjects took the religious art world at storm. Portraying the Virgin Mary alongside peasants with dirt on their feet was a bit much for the traditional Catholics. But times were changing.
Religious Art of Modern Times
Wassily Kandinsky the Russian abstract painter stressed the importance of spirituality in art. His book, Concerning The Spiritual In Art tells us how spiritual life is like a large triangle with the point being occupied by only those who “bring sublime bread to man.” He says the artist has the task and mission of bringing others to the top through the use of his talent. During bad times, he says, souls fall to the bottom of the pyramid and seek only material success, and ignore the spiritual. Kandinsky goes on to explain some of the psychology involved in observing a painting. When we look at colors, he says, two things happen. One is a physical reaction to the colors which may bring us joy comparable to eating a tasty treat. The other is a spiritual vibrating of the soul.
Many contemporary artists still produce religious art in traditional ways. God or gods and important scriptural stories are portrayed as they always were. Much religious art of today is kitschy, with statues of saints and Blessed Virgin Marys being produced by the thousands for the religious masses to consume. People wear jewelry such as crosses and other examples of religious artifacts that they probably take for granted.
Religion in general has inspired, and will continue to inspire, artists to express their beliefs as offerings or homages to a higher spiritual world, or as messages meant to influence, inspirit, or educate society at large.
From the same time period of some of the cave paintings found in France and the rest of Europe, a separate art of its own was beginning to take course in Eastern lands. Similar to the art of Europe, this art was also painted on caves. Some of the oldest examples, particularly from central India, date to prehistoric times, beginning in the Stone Age. These wall paintings, like their European counterparts, represent animals and hunts, and were painted in a style that remained much the same for thousands of years.
The Bhimbetka rock shelters house some notable examples of Indian cave art which is about 9,000 years old. Much of the work found here give us a glimpse of the lives of the people who painted them. Besides animals and hunting, many scenes from everyday life were depicted such as childbirth, dancing and drinking, and religious rites and rituals, including burial and funeral ceremonies.
Some of the earliest art finds in Bhimbetka are petroglyphs, or rock cutouts. These symbols were cut from the rock, to portray people and animals. Paint was used to express the art afterward. This cave art shows distinguishable time periods ranging from the Upper Paleolithic era through the Mesolithic, Calcolithic, and Early Historic time periods on up to Medieval times. The early art from the Stone Age shows crude representations of animal themes dominating. The art of the Mesolithic period begins to evolve. Here we start to see people taking part in daily activities. Musical instruments and weapons are easily recognizable, and we begin to learn about rituals such as burial. Later we see contact with other agricultural communities in the Calcolithic period. And finally in the Early Historic and Medieval period, we see a notably evolved form of detailed art depicting people with colored tunics, religious symbols, and gods.
The 6th to 5th centuries B.C.E. gave us the life and works of the spiritual leader Gautama Buddha, which would indefinitely influence Eastern culture from religious values to art. Buddhist art, as an art style, would begin in the Indian subcontinent, and later spread to all parts of Asia and the rest of the world in short time. This art was initially characterized by aniconism, or a shunning of the representation of Buddha in the human form. Later, around the 1st century B.C.E., an iconic period began, which lasts to this day. From this period on, Buddha and his life and teachings have been represented not only by his symbols but as a person.
As the art form became iconic, the Buddha was first portrayed as an idealized human being retaining physical human characteristics yet representing a divine perfection. This showed Buddha as both a man and a god, and would become the norm for Buddhist art and belief in subsequent centuries. Bodhisattvas, or “enlightened beings,” were represented in sculptures which show Buddha in previous lives or as a young man destined toward final enlightenment. In Mahayana Buddhism, these Bodhisattvas can be a person who already has a considerable degree of enlightenment and seeks to help and teach the unenlightened ones.
Buddhist art continued to gain momentum and grow to the north as the Silk Road was opened to connect all parts of Asia. Various forms of Buddhism came form the contact with other Asian cultures and continued to grow and have influence until the emergence of Islam and Hinduism. By the 10th century A.C.E., Buddhism and Buddhist art was all but nonexistent in the Indian subcontinent, but had spread all across Asia and was still a considerable way of life In Japan, and other parts of Asia. As the art spread across the land, cultures and art styles mingled and Buddhist art is varied, based on the specific country.
Meanwhile in China, various art forms were developing and evolving based on the dynasty and ruler. Much of early art around the later Stone Age consisted of beautiful jade sculptures and pottery. Around the time of the Shang dynasty of around 1600 B.C.E., bronze was introduced into the art world, as well as calligraphy. Similar to the Buddhist art of India, much of Chinese art was also based on philosophy, particularly on the great Chinese philosopher Confucius. Buddhist art itself would become assimilated in Chinese culture around the 4th century B.C.E.
Different periods of Chinese art have been marked by dynasties. In the Sui and Tang dynasties of the 6th through 10th centuries A.C.E., foreign influence was embraced and new ideas came into Chinese culture. Buddhist art was still a strong art form and was characterized by sculptures of Buddha, which retain classical design based on earlier Indian art. In the Tang dynasty, painting as an art, including ink washes, started to achieve high status. Opera was introduced in the Song dynasty, and landscape painting became popular in the Yuan painting of the 13th century. Late imperial dynasties are known for increased popularity in poetry.
Early Japanese art took a similar path to Chinese art, being influenced heavily from the introduction of Buddhism. Toward the 9th century A.C.E., Japan began to break away from Chinese culture, and new forms of expression were developed, independent from the ideals of foreign nations. Much of this early Japanese art was religious but around the time of the Tokugawa regime of the 15th century, religion began to show less influence in art and culture in general.
Throughout Japanese history, a preference toward painting as the major art form is as prevalent today as it was in prehistoric times. Traditional writing is an art form in itself and its brush strokes match the style and elegance seen in paintings. Much of the painting was also involved in printing techniques based on Chinese woodblock printing, which became extremely popular with the new Edo (Tokyo) government at the turn of the 17th century. A painter cooperated with an engraver to design and engrave a woodblock which a printer would ink and press the block onto paper. The painter would take this black and white image, and paint it with finishing touches of color.
Ukiyo-e, or “pictures of the floating world,” is a genre of art starting in the 17th century which involves painting and printing of popular Japanese subjects. Kabuki theater actors were a favorite amongst painters and appeared time and again in artwork. The theaer actors were portrayed waiting for their parts, on stage and in character, and always wearing their fantastic costumes. Also scenes of travel and geisha houses were a recurring theme with the painters and printers. Ukiyo-e, in general, portrays a still and quiet world and reflects Japanese sensitivity to nature. Still lifes and peaceful landscapes were an honored theme.
Elsewhere throughout Asia, art was developing in each country’s own unique styles. Korean art is noted for its use of bold colors and surface decoration of pottery and sculptures. In Laos, the Buddhist art was sometimes carved in relief directly in cave walls. Thai and Tibetan art was also largely Buddhist. Cambodia, besides being influenced by Buddhism also shows art coming from the Indian Hinduism, and are known for their stone bas-reliefs. Indonesia, being the center of trade routes between the Far East and Middle East, enjoy a long history of absorbing many Asian cultures and religions, and their art is varied throughout its history.
Although art in these Asian countries has become what you would call “modern,” just like any Western country’s art, Asian people of today celebrate a long history of tradition, and often include parts of traditional art in contemporary art. The art of Japan has just recently exploded with modernism with influences of Manga (comics) and anime (animation). This art is unique in its own way, and shuns away from foreign influences, making it completely their own.
As far as Western art is concerned, many of it has been influenced by ancient Eastern art. Chinese printing techniques were around for hundreds of years before anything remotely similar came out in the West. Later, in the 19th century many Western artist were heavily influenced by Eastern art, such as Vincent van Gogh and Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec. Both of these artist, henceforth influenced much of the art we know today. With tens of thousands of years of growth, Eastern art remains a powerful influence on the art of the world in general.
Look at the painting- beasts in profile, perhaps a hunt- painted with pigments from the earth mixed with the fat of the animals it portrays. I see remnants of another era. I see a mural painted by people like you and I- more so than we might want to believe. As you look, feel the experience of this painting. Can’t you see the light from the fire flickering? Smell the cave. Close your eyes and feel the damp air around you? You are in a cave, painting on the walls the essence of the daily lives of you and your community. Imagine it.
Imagine what it would be like to live in 15,000 B.C.E. when the painting above was painted. This is long before any of the comforts we know has even remotely been thought of. This is long before transportation and communication was even possible, save for between your immediate surroundings. It’s long before supermarkets and specialists- so you have to make your own clothes, catch and prepare your own food- with a limited diet, and completely take care of yourself, without dentists, doctors, or anybody else because you barely even understand your own body and how it works. Your life expectancy is about thirty, you will die of a common cold- if you survive through the winter at all, and danger lurks around every corner. How does it feel?
The Hall of the Bulls
The painting above is prehistoric, meaning it was painted before human history. That is- before history could have been kept- long before in fact. This particular cave painting was found in Lascaux, France, in 1940, and is called the Rotunda, or Hall of the Bulls. It is placed about ten feet above floor level and depicts a procession of horses and bulls. It is part of a group of paintings of Upper Paleolithic art found in French caves and is some of the earliest examples of art in history. Some other caves, however, have been found with paintings which date back some 25,000 years.
The Lascaux caves are currently off limits to the public, following a restoration period which is now under observation. Some 2,000 images were found to decorate the walls of the caves, many of which are deteriorating, or difficult to discern. Of the images that are easily recognizable, over 900 are made out to be animals, with 600 having been identified. Of these animals, the majority are horses, then stags, cattle and bison. Several images are of a cat, a bird, a bear, a rhinoceros, and a human.
What do these paintings tell us? First and foremost we see a dominant animal theme. We can clearly see the importance of the animals to prehistoric man. This was before animals were domesticated for agriculture, meat, or pets, which means all animals were wild in the eyes of our cave friends. Beasts were both prey and predator.
Sounds pretty scary doesn’t it? Nonetheless, animals were an important part in the preserving of their lives. A successful hunt meant the difference between thriving and living through the winter and an end to their existence. With a limited diet of fish, nuts, berries, and meat, they could use all the food they could get, and they couldn’t take a ride to the supermarket to get it. There lives were in their own hands. On the other hand, the landscape was nowhere near a safe place to venture in terms of animal threats. Larger and more ferocious animals lurked around and hunted you. They had to eat too.
So it’s no surprise that we see animals taking center stage in cave art, having so much importance. A lack of animals meant a lack of meat, and an overabundance of predator beasts such as tigers meant impending danger. The animals painted on the walls are not glorified, rather painted realistically from nature. The vary in size, from small, almost pictograph representations to extremely large, namely the seventeen foot long bull in the Hall of the Bulls- the largest animal discovered in cave art. The beasts were always in profile, and usually in motion.
Who Were The Painters?
Archaeologists have used everything they could from around the caves as clues for understanding the lives of these people. They conjecture that these folk didn’t actually live inside these caves, but rather in shelters just in and around the cave openings. To be able to paint on the cave walls, they used lamps made from plant materials and animal fat. They used paints made from pigment mixed with animal fat, usually combined in small cups or with flat stones. The colors were mostly red and black, but sometimes yellow, maroon, and violet. Pigments were found naturally such as iron oxide for red, ocher for brown and yellow, and chalk for white as well as for lightening colors. Black was derived from manganese.
It’s hard to say exactly what was going on in their lives judging simply from the artwork. Many of the symbols found on the walls remain enigmatic. For instance, hand prints have been found which lack one or more fingers. Some historians believe this could have been some kind of hunter’s code. Others think the fingers could have been removed in some sort of primitive religious ritual. Other symbols are hard to make head or tails of, including basic shapes often filled in, arrangements of dots, arrows and bars. Could these symbols be just for decoration? At this point it is almost impossible to say.
What can be said, however, is that these prehistoric artists were crafty. Besides simply painting, they were sculptors as well as engravers. Some paintings show reliefs of figures, in whole or in part. Eyes and muzzles were sometimes cut into the wall before paint was applied. In some instances natural bumps and grooves from the stone were taken advantage of to portray parts of the animals and other figures.
The actual painting was accomplished mostly by using hands- fingers to trace thick lines. But besides their hands, some sorts of makeshift primitive paintbrushes were used from branches, twigs, and even bristles of hair or animal fur. These early artists used color contrast, shading, cross hatching, and varied line thickness to portray their subjects with an amazing accuracy. Primitive as they were, talentless they were not.
It goes without saying that we can’t pinpoint who the individual artists must have been. Writing was not invented for tens of thousands of years so the painter could hardly leave his or her signature. Interestingly, though, specialists have noticed certain styles among the caves and how they have evolved. The styles range from three different periods- the first being a crude portrayal of animals, barely formed and hardly realistic looking. The second is a bit more evolved, showing more recognizable animals with rounded bellies, snouts, muzzles, eyes and horns, yet the legs remained crude. The third stage shows animals which can be identified by species, and whose movement has been portrayed. At this stage, art was becoming much more realistic. The Lascaux cave paintings, seen above, belong to this period.
It’s interesting to wonder who the actual artists were who created these cave masterpieces. Was there a single artist responsible or did the community contribute? Could the whole theme of showing the hunt be the result of a holy man or religious figure praying for success? Since people are found to have not lived in these caves, were they used for special rituals or ceremonies, which the paintings are meant to complement?
No one can say for sure, only hypothesize and take educated guesses. But we can say these cave people’s lives are fascinating. Before society as whole began to take care of itself and make leaps and bounds in science and technology to make life easier, these people were etching an existence on their own, with only the help of nature, which is often cruel and unforgiving. Their art gives a glimpse of who they were, yet leave us to question what they were thinking. What we know is they were early Man, some of the first thinking humans, whose slow and steady evolution brought us where we are today. We can thank them for not letting the elements, the odds, and Mother Nature get the best of them. Otherwise we wouldn’t have anything, let alone art. But this where art began, the whole shebang started right there in those dark caverns. If they could only see where it’s gotten to. While we ponder at abstract paintings, minimalism, hyperrealism, and any other new form of expression, just remember one thing-
I’m not talking “I threw together some bell bottoms and a peasant shirt, pass me the face paint” kind of Halloween stuff. I’m talking the rich, amazing world of professional costuming, specifically, movie costumes. There have been some amazing big-screen concoctions over the years, so I am going to focus on those recognized by the Academy this year.
This year’s Oscar winner was Elizabeth: The Golden Age. Alexandra Byrne is widely considered one of the greats in the field. She has only been lead costume designer for 9 movies in her career, and, besides her win this year, has received Oscar nominations for 3 of them. (The first Elizabeth, Hamlet, and Finding Neverland.) Her other creations have received wild acclaim, and it’s easy to see why. One only has to look at the rich detail involved in the gowns that Cate Blanchett wore and the amazing attention to historical accuracy; the incredible talent it took to make garments of such complexity has rarely been matched since the days these gowns were originally made.
The other nominees included Jacqueline Durand (Atonement), Albert Wolsky (Across the Universe), Marit Allen (La Vie en Rose), and Colleen Atwood (Sweeney Todd). It always amuses me that period pieces seem to be nominated far more often than any other (with the possible exception of fantasy, I don’t know I’ve never done or seen a statistical analysis). While the use of color and perspective by Mr. Wolsky, the almost achingly nostalgic look of La Vie en Rose, and the rich, almost decadent, feel of Ms. Durand’s work make for amazing studies in and of themselves, I honestly think Colleen Atwood was robbed this year.
The costumes of Sweeney Todd… gosh, they are just so nuanced and amazing; I can find something new to admire every time I look at them. Whether it is the arrogant leather clad Beadle, the faded, possessive Judge Turpin, or the almost ridiculously flamboyant Signor Pirelli, Ms. Atwood has really gone the extra mile in her meticulous pursuit of these characters. Sweeney Todd himself is the picture of years of hatred made (in)human. The once celebrated Benjamin Barker, has allowed himself to become, almost literally, unraveled in his quest for vengeance.
Honestly, though, my favorite has to be Mrs. Lovett. Her dark humor, and occasionally her undying optimism, shines through in her wardrobe. One of the best bits, I believe, is in the song “By the Sea,” where they are walking along the beach in bathing suits. The Broadway version of the song has a line, “Oh, I can see us now, in our bathing dresses! You in a nice, rich navy, and me… stripes, perhaps.” Though ultimately cut from the version in the movie, Colleen used it as her inspiration for those suits (though, obviously reversed).
There are so many, many more unsung heroes of the costuming world. You really pick up a lot of the mood of the scene, the personality of the character, from the costumes involved. Instead of just registering it subconsciously, next time you go to a movie, any movie, pay attention to the clothing. It is just as important as the actor in creating the character, just as crucial as the scenery for setting the stage.
Many people worked very hard to make the visions of one person come to life.
Andy Warhol helped turned the art world upside down with his consumerist pop art of the 1950s and ’60s. His ingenious use of making consumer products art forced the public to think about what art really was, and made fun of our consumer society. Boxes of Brillo pads became something to put in a museum. The mass produced soup cans of Campbell’s became mass produced examples of masterpiece pop art. What was going on in the art world?
Pop art got its origins from the Dada movement of the early 20th century. Dada and its anti-art messages led to a new movement of non-elitist culture centered on giving an alternative to upper crust avant garde styles. Pop art essentially is art from popular culture. It can be Lichetenstein’s comic book paintings, or the American flag of Jasper Johns, or mimicking the advertisements the world was seeing with increased intensity and frequency.
Warhol’s Factory in Manhattan, besides being a hot spot for socialite jet-sets, was first and foremost his studio. There he recruited many assistants to help churn out consumer art which was meant to be produced in high volumes the same way everyday products were. It was there he also made his movies with their purposeful low-budget indie poppish qualities. He also accomplish his silkscreen portraits there, which demanded quite a high price tag from celebrities who weren’t anybody unless they had a Warhol portrait.
Who would have thought a can of pepper pot soup would be art? Why not?
You are reading a daily art blog with topics ranging from art, art history, painting, sculpture, drawing, illustration, animation, artists, galleries, museums, and plenty more. It is authored by Dan Kretschmer, who lives around Philadelphia. Dan Kretschmer is also the author of a book called "Masters of the Renaissance," which takes a look at 18 of the most important artists of the Renaissance in Europe.
The purpose of this art blog is to raise general awareness of art and to share knowledge and interests. The author's goal is to spark interest in as many people as possible, and to inspire them to pursue art to enrich their lives.
