Earliest known art
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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 is a sculpture from the
Paleolithic era, which depicts an obviously pregnant woman. 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
tribal societies still in existenceAncient artThe period of ancient art begun when ancient civilizations developed
a form of writing language. The earliest examples of ancient art
originated from Mesopotamia and Egypt.
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.
The period of Greek art saw a veneration of the human physical form
and the development of equivalent skills to show musculature, poise,
beauty and anatomically correct proportions. Ancient Roman art
depicted gods as idealized humans, shown with characteristic
distinguishing features (i.e. Zeus' thunderbolt).
Post-ancient Western 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 geometry instead
Contemporary art
The physical and rational certainties of the clockwork universe
depicted by the 19th-century Enlightenment were shattered not only
by new discoveries of relativity by Einstein and of unseen
psychology by Freud, but also by unprecedented technological
development accelerated by the implosion of civilization in two
world wars. The history of twentieth century art is a narrative of
endless possibilities and the search for new standards, each being
torn down in succession by the next. Thus the parameters of
Impressionism, Expressionism, Fauvism, Cubism, Dadaism, Surrealism
etc cannot be maintained very much beyond the time of their
invention. Increasing global interaction during this time saw an
equivalent influence of other cultures into Western art, such as
Pablo Picasso being influenced by African sculpture. Japanese
woodblock prints (which had themselves been influenced by Western
Renaissance draftsmanship) had an immense influence on Impressionism
and subsequent development. Then African fetish sculptures were
taken up by Picasso and to some extent by Matisse.
Modernism, the idealistic search for truth, gave way in the latter
half of the 20th century to a realization of its unattainability.
Relativity was accepted as an unavoidable truth, which led to the
Postmodern period, where cultures of the world and of history are
seen as changing forms, which can be appreciated and drawn from only
with irony. Furthermore the separation of cultures is increasingly
blurred and it is now more appropriate to think in terms of a global
culture, rather than regional cultures.
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