Art HistoryChapter 1 Prehistory

Enduring Understanding 1.1

• Human expression existed across the globe before the written record. While prehistoric art of Europe has been the focus of many introductions to the history of art, very early art is found worldwide and shares certain features, particularly concern with the natural world and humans’ place within it.

Enduring Understanding 1.1a) Defined in terms of geological eras or major

shifts in climate and environment. Human Behavior & expression was influenced by the changing environments in which they lived.

b) Earliest peoples were small groups of hunter-gatherers. Paramount concern was survival, resulting in the creation of practical objects. Practical tools, ritual and symbolic works. Established artistic media: ceramics, painting, incised graphic designs, sculpture, and architecture.

Enduring Understanding 1-2

• First instances of important artistic media, approaches, and values occurred on different continents, with Africa and Asia preceding and influencing other areas as the human population spread.a) Awareness of fundamental, stable

phenomena: macrocosmic ( astronomical cyces), microcosmic (available materials in environment: jade, clay..)

Enduring Understanding 1-2

b) Origins of Humanity understood to have begun in Africa & radiated outward. Typically 2-D geometric representations of life forms & natural materials

c) Paleolithic communities in West, Central, South, Southeast & East between 70,000 & 40,000 BCE

d) Pacific regions, migrations from Asia aprox 45,000 yrs ago due to lowered sea levels

Enduring Understanding 1-2

e) Paleolithic & Neolilithic Europe’s human figural sculptures provided glimpses into ritual life & showed the connections of naturalism (cosmos, fertility) and abstraction found throughout art’s history.

f) American continent, indigenous peoples (migrated from Asia before 10,000 BCE) makd sculptures from animal bone & later from clay. Animals & sacred humans dominant subject matter.

Enduring Understanding 1-3

• Over time, art historians’ knowledge of global prehistoric art has developed through interdisciplinary collaboration with social and physical scientists.a) Ongoing archaeological excavations & use of

carbon-14 dating

b) Stratigraphic archaeology

c) Function inferred from evidence of technology & survival strategies, culture, food sources

1-4 Venus of Willendorf Flashcard

Subtractive Sculpture

1-10 Spotted Horses and negative hand imprints

Flashcard

Apollo 11 Stones

New APAH

1-11 Hall of the Bulls

faculty.evansville.edu/.../sum04/art105-12.html

TWISTED PERSPECTIVE – combination of frontaland side view.

Frontal

Side view(profile)

Flashcard

Camelid sacrum in the shape of a canine. Tequixquiac, central Mexico 14,000-7000 BCE Bone

Running horned woman. Tassili n’Ajjer, Algeria. 6000-4000 BCE

Earliest example of rock artDotted marks indicate body paintFeatureless faceWhite parallel patterns represent flowing raffia decorHorns shown in twisted perspective or composite are part of ceremonial attire

Bushel with ibex motifs. Susa, Iran. 4200-3500 BCE. Painted terra cotta

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eeNfDr4ojZg#t=199

Terra cotta fragment. Lapita, Solomon Islands, Reef Islands. 1000 BCE

The Ambum stone •Pre-historic zoomorphic figure,•Possibly representing the embryo of a long-beaked echidna (spiny anteater)•3500 years ago

TlatilcoFemale figure, 1200–900 B.C.Ceramic with traces of pigment

Jade cong Liangzhu, China 3300-2200 BCE Carved jade

http://smarthistory.khanacademy.org/jade-cong.html

Anthropormorphic stele.Arabian Peninsula. Fourth millennium BCE Sandstone.

1-16 Level VI Catal Hoyuk, Turkey

COMPOSITE RECONSTRUCTION DRAWING OF A SHRINE ROOM

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http://catal.arch.cam.ac.uk/visit/Neolithic/B5EN.html

Flashcard

Megaliths

Cromlech or henge

Post and LintelLintel

Post

Trilithon

1-19 Stonehenge

Significant astronomical alignments at Stonehenge

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Flashcard

Historical Context• Time period: 30,000 BCE – 2300 BCE• Paleolithic – old stone age• Mesolithic –Middle Stone Age• Neolithic – New Stone Age • Hunter Gatherers to towns with permanent

houses• No written language – unable to understand art’s

meaning – must speculate• Tool – burin used to incise (scratch)

Stylistic Characteristics• Paleolithic – mostly animals• Cave paintings• Sculptures – relief, subtractive, in the round• Animals – strict profile• Humans – twisted or composite perspective

(combined front & side view)• Megaliths, trilithons, cromlechs/henge, post &

lintel