REPRESENTATION OF THE HUMAN

FORMPrehistoric to Ancient Greece

The Human Form

Has obsessed some of the great artistsWhatever their use-None of these images resemble a real human being.

Imagine if people looked like the images we created of them.

People rarely create images of the body that are realistic ---- why???

About us fundamentally- what can we learn about ourselves??

ParmigianinoMadonna with the Long Neck (1534-40)

The Paleolithic Period

• Roughly two million years ago, in east-central Africa, early hominids made crude stonecutting tools

• These tools enabled our predecessors to extend their skills and gain a measure of control over their surroundings

• Human beings developed the abilities to reason and to visualize, to remember the past, to relate it to the present, and to imagine a possible future

• Emergence of cognitive personhood

• As we become form-creating creatures, our ability to conceive mental images set us apart from other animals

• Imagination is our special advantage.

Upper Paleolithic20,000-4,000 BC

• Hunter-gatherers • Nomadic people• Hunted ins mall groups• Rarely stayed in one place

very long• Finding evidence of their life

very hard

Chauvet-Pont-d'Arc Cave

France32,000–30,000 BCcontains some of the best preserved

figurative cave paintings in the world, as well as other evidence of Upper Paleolithic life.

Hundreds of animal paintings have been catalogued, depicting at least 13 different species, including some rarely or never found in other ice age paintings.

Rather than depicting only the familiar herbivores that predominate in Paleolithic cave art, i.e. horses, cattle, mammoths, etc., the walls of the Chauvet Cave feature many predatory animals, e.g., cave lions, panthers, bears, and cave hyenas. There are also paintings of rhinoceroses.

Typical of most cave art, there are no paintings of complete human figures

Painting of Lions

A Group of Rhinos

Painting of Deer

Pedra FuradaPiauí, Brazil12,000 BCrepresenting actions of daily life),

hunting and ceremonial events, as well as abstract and geometrical designs

Cave of Beasts, Egypt. 9,000 BC

Cueva de la Soledad, Baja California, Mexico. 5500 BC

La Trinidad, Baja California, Mexico

5,500BC

Cueva de las Manos, Argentina. 13,000-9,000BC

El Castillo cave in Cantabria, Spain44,000 BC

Lascaux Caves in central France

Cave of Beasts, Egypt, 9,000 BC

Ham Cave, East Kalimantan, Indonesia. 40,000 BC

Venus of WillendorfAustria

• 28,000 and 25,000 BC

• 4 inches high

• Made of limestone

• Venus applied to any female nude of the past

• Our first clue to why our modern world is obsessed with unrealistic images of the body

• Fertility- exaggerated body parts are all deliberate. Why would the artist do this?

• This continued to happen for many thousands of years! For the next 20,000 years

Kostienki VenusRussia

22,000 BC

Venus of Hohle Fels

located near Schelklingen, Germany. It is dated to between 35,000 and 40,000 years ago,

Oldest human figure ever discovered

Venus de Lausselapproximately 25,000 years old

Southwestern France

Venus of Dolní Věstonice

(29,000 BCE – 25,000 BCE)

the earliest discovered use of ceramics

Czech Republic

Venus of MoravanySlovania

22,800 BC

Exaggerated some parts while ignoring others.

But why?

Were they more stimulated by images like this??

Producing exaggerated versions of the human form- preprogramed what mattered the most.

Ice age environment, fatness and fertility were highly desired.

If this is true for the nomadic people of the Paleolithic era this should also be true for the peoples that came after.

End of the Ice Age 5,000BCAfter the ice began melting and

climates became drier and more desert like- people started settling around areas that had large concentrations of water.

One main example is the Nile River

Egyptian Civilization• By 5,000 BC Egypt had

become a fully developed civilization- One of the very first on earth

• Because the Nile flooded every year- Egyptians were able to calculate yearly production of goods- thus creating a highly stratified society

• Egyptians were the first settled humans to use the human body extensively in their art.

• What happened to the exaggeration of the human form in their art?

Sarcophagus Tomb of Ramses VI1137 BC• Tomb contains hundreds of

images of the human body• Carved out of solid rock • Decorated by highly skilled

artist for the pharaoh for the after life

• Unlike the Venus of Willendorf they don’t have exaggerated features

• Their arms, legs and feet and are all just about the right size.

• Nomadic way depicting people didn’t survive.

• These images are driven by something all together different.

• The images of the body continue to be highly unrealistic

• Remember that their society was highly organized just like our own

• Rather than exaggerating- they showed the part from its more clearest angle.

Wall painting from the Tomb of Nebamun

Thebes, Egypt1450 BC

• Human figures are generally depicted either in a frontal position or in profile

• Egyptian artists portrayed each object and each part of the human body from what they identified as its most characterize angle, avoiding ambiguity

• The hunting scene presented a wealth of specific information without making the painting confusing

• Flat shapes portray basic elements of each subject in the clearest, most identifiable way

• The head, hips, legs, and feet of the nobleman who dominates this painting are shown from the side, while his eye and shoulders are shown from the front

Karnak Temple Complex

2055BC- 100BC

The temple of Karnak was known as Ipet-isu—or “most select of places”—by the ancient Egyptians.

It is a city of temples built over 2,000 years and dedicated to the Theban triad of Amun, Mut, and Khonsu.

It is the largest religious building ever made, covering about 200 acres (1.5 km by 0.8 km), and was a place of pilgrimage for nearly 2,000 years.

Temple of Karnak

• Image of the Pharoah Ramses and the sun god Amun-Ra

• 1,900 BC• All the classical components of typical

Egyptian portrayal of the human body.

• This was built a full 700 years later

• Over 50 million Egyptians had lived and died

• And in all that period the way they depicted the human body had not changed at all.

• It just didn’t last 700 years but 3000 years

• This was the only image of the body that anyone ever saw!

• An image from today until the 41st century!

• Why would they continue to preserve this style?

• We know that Egyptians used a grid system

• Recording numerous details

• The figure 19 squares tall. Etc

• Then they applied the same grid to different parts of Egypt

• Egyptian society didn’t want the images to change

• Shared obsession with consistency and order

• The same orders the civilization had been founded on.

• We can now begin to see it in everything they did.

Egyptian Sculpture

• Sculpture is characterized by compact, solidly structured figures that embody qualities of strength and geometric clarity

• Typical of sculpture of this era are the formal pose with left foot forward, the false ceremonial beard, and figures that remain attached to the block of stone from which they were carved.

King Menkaura and Queen Khamerenebty Giza, Egypt. 2490-2472

BC

Symbols of the order that had risen from the desert

Permanence and order.

Statues made on an astonishing scale

These sculptures/images of the body wanted them to represent who they were- symbols of power.

Created images of the body this way because of their culture

■ Does that mean culture is king?■ The society we live in, the values we create for that society,

■ dictate how we depict the human body?

ANCIENT GREECE

Ancient Greece

• Ancient Greeks had a very particular mindset that included philosophy, mathematics and a polytheism religion that dictated much of their lives

• Ancient Greeks were fixated with the body. • For the ancient Greeks the perfect body was an

athletic body.• So men took an obsessive shameless pride in their

physique • Displayed their bodies without hesitation or shame • If you had a fine torso, you flaunted it!

Ancient Greece

They believed their gods took human form and their bodies were beautiful

So the more you looked like a god the more you were treated like one

If you looked good you were good

Affected more than just their vanity

Center the life in the Greek world

• Wherever the Greeks settled they built temples

• Here in temples is where we see images of their gods that were realistic

• Worshipers came to expect their gods in residence

• For that to happen they need statues

Temple of Concordia. Agrigento, Sicily, Italy. 440-430BC

Terracotta jointed "doll“5th century BCGreek sculptures were mostly confined to figurines as

late as 700 BC.

And yet within a few generations they would be able to realize their dream.

Temples would soon be filled with large statues- so lifelike that they believed they were the gods in person.

Staring at them, hearing their prayers.

This transformation from small figurine to large sculpture happened very quickly.

How did this happen?

Greece and Egypt began to trade, exchanging ideas and know-how.

The Egyptians had amazing mason skills that they shared with the Greeks.

Egyptian rigid style is evident

Greeks have been present in Egypt since at least the 7th century BC.

The Greeks were one of the first groups of foreigners that ever lived in Egypt.- living there since the 5th century BC

Archaic Period

• late 7th to early 5th century BC

Classic Period

• 480-323 BC

Hellenistic Period

• 323-31 BC

Ancient Greece

Greek Civilization

■ The Greeks distinguished themselves from other peoples of Europe and Asia by their attitude toward being human beings

■ They came to regard humankind as the highest creation of nature- the closest thing to perfection in physical form, endowed with the power to reason

■ With this attitude came a new concept of the importance of the individual

■ The Greek focus on human potential and achievement led to the development of democracy and to the perfection of naturalistic images of the human figure in art.

Korous580 BC

■ The Greeks honored individual achievement by creating life-size, freestanding states of nude male and clothed female figures.

■ The Archaic-style is known as kouros

Archaic Style – Ancient Greek, (600 - 480 B.C.)

rigid frontal position from Ancient Egyptian roots

Stiff and unnatural, but with universal man with

ideal beauty

Stylized hair and “Archaic smile”

Kouros (male), Kore (female)

Archaic Style – Ancient Greek, (600 - 480 B.C.)Archaic Style – Ancient Greek, (600 - 480 B.C.)

Menkaura and his Queen2548-2530 BCE

Korous. 580 BC

The kouros honors an individual who was not a supernatural ruler. The kouros thus adapted the Egyptian form to reflect Greek cultural values.

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Classical art: emphasizes rational simplicity, order, and

restrained emotion.

Greater interest in anatomy and more relaxed poses

More naturalistic and began to show the body as alive and

capable of movement

Polykleitos, wrote a book on the perfect proportions of the

human form and created this statue as an example

Classical Style – Ancient Greek, (480 - 323 B.C.)

Kritios BoyMarble480BC

• He's a milestone in the history of art. For the first time, man had created an perfect imitation of life.

• He's carved from marble

• But his skin looks like its baring weight

• He's in a relaxed stance

• Greeks artists had created exactly what their society had urged them to a truly realistic human body.

• What is going to be the affect on the Greeks?

• Within a century the Greeks stopped making statues that looked liked this. *

Classical Style – Ancient Greek, (480 - 323 B.C.)

• Primeval instinct to exaggerate!• This instinct is hardwired in all people, even

if in some cultures has been suppressed. • This is a universal propensity that can

be overridden by culture• The Kritios boy was too realistic= boring. • They had to do interesting things with the

image, in order to stimulate the body’s urge.

• Preprogrammed to want more. • More human than human.

Polykleitos of ArgosSpear Bearer440BC■ Depicts an athlete who once held a spear

on his left shoulder■ Typical of classical art- the figure is in the

prime of his life and blemish-free■ -not a portrait but a vision of the ideal■ The angles of the body compliment each

other- captured an athlete poised for action.

■ Seeking to show something more human than human- human perfection.

■ Contrapposto- pose where weight lies on one leg. Gives a lifelike quality to figures at rest

Classical Style – Ancient Greek, (480 - 323 B.C.)Classical Style – Ancient Greek, (480 - 323 B.C.)

Universal man

Natural contrapposto/weight shift pose with s-curve

Lifelike and naturalistic figures, but with idealized youth, beauty, and perfect

proportions

Active poses yet calm and controlled facial expressions

balance between the mind and the body

Venus de’ Medici

3rd century BCNude goddesses were unknown in previous periodsGreek idealization of the human figureThis figure came to represent a feminine ideal, and has strongly influenced many art works since then

Classical Style – Ancient Greek, (480 - 323 B.C.)

Exekias Achilles and Ajax

engaged in a game, c.540–530 BC■ Amphora- a tall ancient Greek or Roman jar

with two handles and a narrow neck■ regarded as Exekias' masterpiece■ Exekias worked mainly in the black-figure

technique, which involved the painting of scenes using a clay slip that fired to black, with details created through incision.

■ masterful use of incision and psychologically sensitive compositions mark him as one of the greatest of all vase painters

Riace Bronzes460-450 BC

■ Relatively unknown to the world at large- though debated as the best statues ever produced

■ Made 2,000 years before the Renaissance■ As realistic looking of the human body as possible.. Ideally.■ Not anatomically possible for a man to look like this.■ The division between top and bottom are exaggerated and more

defined than it ever could be■ The legs are artificially long to match the top of the body■ Implausibly deep groove between the chest■ The chest muscles are relaxed while the back are tense and defined■ The channel down the back are deeper than possible■ Missing a coccyx bone ■ This is why they’re so overwhelming! ■ The first civilization of realism used exaggeration to go

further.■ This still runs our world today! We humans do not like

reality.

Classical Style – Ancient Greek, (480 - 323 B.C.)

■ Hellenistic art is richly diverse in subject matter and in stylistic development.

■ It was created during an age characterized by a strong sense of history.

■ For the first time, there were museums and great libraries, such as those at Alexandria and Pergamon

■ Greater variety in artistic depiction of: grotesques, children, elderly people and ethnic people especially Africans.

Hellenistic Style – Ancient Greek, (323 - 31 B.C.)

The Laocoön Group1st or 2nd century BC

Art became more dynamic and less idealized

Everyday activities, historical subjects, and

portraiture become more common subjects

More expressive and frequently shows

exaggerated movement

Archaic Style – Ancient Greek, (600 - 480 B.C.)Hellenistic Style – Ancient Greek, (323 - 31 B.C.)

Hellenistic Style – Ancient Greek, (323 - 31 BC.)

Complex, twisted poses

Wrapped figures in billowing

fabric

Drama and emotion

Forms break into viewer’s

space