PRESENTATION ON ART APPRECIATION

BYSOUMENDRA ROY

25 AUGUST 2011

1100100191SPAV-2011

CONTENTS

PALAEOLITHIC SITESNEOLITHIC AGE SITES

CLASSIC AGE SITES

SITES OF PALAEOLITHIC ART

PYRENEESCOUGNAC CAVES

PYRENEESIn the Pyrenees mountains, the Magdalenians, the last hunters of prehistoric times, have lived off a vast territory for six millenium and produced a remarkable portable art. This civilization without writing is illustrated by 450 artefacts : tools, hunting weapons, works of art on bone, ivory,cervidae antler and stone, discovered during archaeological excavations. The topics of this art essentially involve the great wild fauna consisting in horses, bisons, ibex, stags, reindeers and sometimes man himself is represented as a masked or a caricaturised figure.Between 20000 and 16000 BP, our analysis shows that the Cantabrian region developed a strong stylistic originality during the Solutrean and the early Magdalenian whilst a strong convergence can de observed during the Middle Magdalenian between the Pyrenees and the Périgord, so much so that the culture seems to have been unified on this vast territory. Around 10000 BP, at the end of the Tardiglacial, the last groups of Magdalenians once again show signs of regional diversification and divergent evolution

THE WORKS

WORKS

COUGNAC CAVESThe Grottes de Cougnac caves are near Gourdon, Lot. The site consists of two caves separated by 200 metres. The first contains many concretions, some very fine, called soda straws. The second is a decorated cave from the Paleolithic. Les Grottes de Cougnac were discovered in 1952 by Lucien Gouloumès Rene Borne, Jean Mazet, Roger, Maurice Alphonse Sauvant Boudet. The cave has many prehistoric paintings dated to the upper Paleolithic. Depictions include deer, megaceros, the ibex, and mammoths as well as various schematic human figures, interpreted as wounded men, virtually identical to similar figures at Pech Merle. Direct dating has been carried out by the carbon 14 method on samples of carbon used for some drawings. They showed that the paintings corresponded to at least two clearly distinct phases: one around 25 000 BP (Gravettian) corresponding to the animal figures, the other about 14 000 years before the present (Magdalenian)

The Grottes de Cougnac contains images from the paleolithic. There were 60 images of animals, 50 outlines of hands, and 3 images of humans found.

THE WORKSTHE ANIMALS

THE MAN WITH SPEAR

SITES OF NEOLITHIC ART

CATAL HUYUKCARNAC CAVES

CATAL HUYUKÇatalhöyük is located overlooking wheat fields in the Konya Plain, southeast of the present-day city of Konya (ancient Iconium) in Turkey, approximately 140 km (87 mi) from the twin-coned volcano of Mount Hasan. The eastern settlement forms a mound which would have risen about 20 m (66 ft) above the plain at the time of the latest Neolithic occupation. Çatal Hüyük was a Neolithic settlement in Anatolia which some date to as early as the 8th millennia B.C.E. Excavations by Stanford archeologist Ian Hodder continue today. Çatal Hüyük is located on the Konya plain, the later birthplace of the famous Persian mystic poet, Rumi. Çatal Hüyük was a city of honeycombed rooms and courtyards, a self-contained unit with interconnecting walls. There were no doors between dwellings. With the use of ladders, the people of Çatal Hüyük entered their homes through the roof. The city housed as many as 7,000—10,000 residentsIn nearly all of the houses, items of charm and religion in the shape of statues, reliefs and paintings can be found. The paintings adorned the mud-brick walls, which were often painted over again by using a thin layer of plaster to cover former drawings. It is estimated that during the period of use, the walls of the dwellings were painted at least thirty times.

THE WORKS OF CATAL HUYUK

BULL HEAD

EXCAVATED SITE

THE PAINTINGS

CARNAC CAVESCarnac is one of the largest megalithic complexes in Europe, and while it is tempting to see the region as a collection of separate sites, it should be recognised that an astronomical connection between sites was established by Thom (2), and that in the Neolithic age the sea level in the area was roughly 30ft lower than it is today removing any physical barrier between sites (such as Gavr'inis and Er-Lannic). The re-use of megaliths in the area can be used to determine connections between otherwise unrelated sites such as between the passage-mounds of Gavr'inis and La Table des Marchands for example, both of which incorporated pieces of an earlier monument into their structures (capstones) at around 3,100 BC.

VARIOUS PATTERNS OF ARRANGEMENT OF STONES IN CIRCLE

SITES OF CLASSICAL AGE

MACEDONIAFLORENCE

MACEDONIA

Macedonian art (sometimes called the Macedonian Renaissance) was a period in Byzantine art which began with the reign of the Emperor Basil I of the Macedonian dynasty in 867. The period followed the lifting of the ban on icons (iconoclasm) and lasted until the fall of the dynasty in the mid-eleventh century. It coincided with the Ottonian Renaissance in Western Europe. In the ninth and tenth centuries, the Empire's military situation improved, and art and architecture revived. New churches were again commissioned, and the Byzantine church mosaic style became standardised. The best preserved examples are at the Hosios Lukas Monastery in mainland Greece and the Nea Moni Katholikon in the island of Chios. The very free frescoes at Castelseprio in Italy are linked by many art historians to the art of Constantinople of the period also. There was a revival of interest in classical themes (of which the Paris Psalter is an important testimony) and more sophisticated techniques were used to depict human figures.

SCULPTURES

Although monumental sculpture is extremely rare in Byzantine art, the Macedonian period saw the unprecedented flourishing of the art of ivory sculpture. Many ornate ivory triptychs and diptychs survive, with the central panel often representing either deesis (as in the Harbaville Triptych) or the Theotokos (as in a triptych at Luton Hoo, dating from the reign of Nicephorus Phocas). On the other hand, ivory caskets (notably the Veroli Casket from Victoria and Albert Museum) often feature secular motifs true to the Hellenistic tradition, thus testifying to an undercurrent of classical taste in Byzantine art.There are few important surviving buildings from the period. It is presumed that Basil I's votive church of the Theotokos of Phoros (no longer extant) served as a model for most cross-in-square sanctuaries of the period, including the monastery church of Hosios Lukas in Greece (ca. 1000), the Nea Moni of Chios (a pet project of Constantine IX), and the Daphni Monastery near Athens (ca. 1050).

PAINTINGS

FLORENCEThe recent archaeological excavations in Piazza della Signoria have furnished evidence that present day Florence was already occupied in prehistoric times. Other signs document the presence of a village in the early iron age and in Etruscan times. But the real foundation of the city dates to Roman times and the oldest part of the city with its network of streets in an orthogonal pattern bears the imprint of these Roman origins. What the earliest chronicles had to say about the origins of the city, albeit in fable form, seems therefore to be based on fact. When it originated as one of Caesar's colonies, the operations involved in founding the castrum and the division of the land into centuriae began in the spring of 59 B.C., at the time of the ludi florales (the probable source of the name Florentia). The colony was laid down following the axis of the consular Via Cassia, which ran along the northern edge of the Florentine basin. For the sake of defense, the city was set at the confluence of two streams (the Arno and the Mugnone) where the oldest populations had previously been located.

THE FAMOUS FACE

THE MARBLE SCULPTURE

THE RELIGIOUS ART

REFERENCES

www.wikipedia.com/carnacfrancewww.grottede.Cougnc.htm

www.tourism.co.uk/thepalaeolithicpyrenees%art/page4/historywww.wikipedia.com/contenpalaelithic/pyreneeswww.artcraddle.history/florence/thecityintrend

www.macedonianart.aspx/galleryveiws/theclassicera;newwww.displayofart.com/religiousantiques

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