Week 2: Global Prehistoric Art Paleolithic/ Old Stone Age : 1st art, 1st pictures, 1st representations Food gathering Neolithic/ New Stone Age :

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1 Week 2: Global Prehistoric Art Paleolithic/ Old Stone Age : 1st art, 1st pictures, 1st representations Food gathering Neolithic/ New Stone Age : Agricultural Revolution Food production

2 1. Apollo 11 stones. Namibia. c.25,500-25,300 BCE. Charcoal on stone. 7 painted stone (quartzite) slabs found in a cave Small scale (4.5 x 5 in) portable! Painted animals Felines? Bovids? Zebra? Stylized forms: all in strict profile Shows the most info about the animal Were buried deliberately (able to radiocarbon date the burial, but not the stones) Radiocarbon dating is a method for determining the age of an object containing organic material by using the properties of radiocarbon (14. C), a radioactive isotope of carbon. Some of the oldest known artworks in the world

3 2. Great Hall of the Bulls. Lascaux, France. Paleolithic Europe. 15,000-13,000 BCE. Rock Painting. Discovered in situ: in its original place Deep inside caves, hard to reach Created/viewed in flickering firelight Painted with reed brushes, stone palettes Variety of bulls and horses Not a herd: different animals moving different ways

4 2. Great Hall of the Bulls. Lascaux, France. Paleolithic Europe. 15,000-13,000 BCE. Rock Painting. Different painters over time Overlapping images Both silhouette and outline depictions Twisted perspective Visitors experience replica, Lascaux 2 Function? Only theories...

5 1. All theories have some flaws, and there's probably no single explanation. BUT likely understood as the image having power Although the cave paintings in the Great Hall of the Bulls at Lascaux were originally interpreted as depictions of hunting scenes, they have more recently been interpreted as paintings intended to: a. Warn people about dangerous animals threatening villages b. Portray scenes of animal domestication c. Document a series of animal-based rituals d. Tell a mythic narrative of human origins

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8 3. Camelid sacrum in the shape of a canine. Tequixquiac, central Mexico. 14,000-7,000 BCE Bone

9 3. Camelid sacrum in the shape of a canine. Tequixquiac, central Mexico. 14,000-7,000 BCE. Bone. One of earliest artifacts from Mesoamerica Difficult to date Carved sacrum bone: symbolically important bone From extinct relative of camel Made to look like a canine: holes to resemble nostrils Function: unknown. A mask? Associated with fertility? Hunting?

10 Saharan rock painting.

11 4. Running horned woman. Tassili n Ajjer, Algeria. 6,000-4,000 BCE Pigment on rock. Running/dancing? Woman Painted dots on body Horned headdress No face A shaman? A ritual performance? Dynamic motion Layers of paintings from different periods Twisted perspective: A convention of representation in which part of a figure is shown in profile and another part of the same figure is shown frontally In a hard-to-access area

12 Similarities? Differences? (Remember form, function, content, context)

13 5.Bushel with ibex motifs.susa, Iran BCE. Painted terra cotta. Neolithic. 12 h Register: horizontal band of decoration Terracotta: unglazed earthenware

14 From Mesopotamian settlement From secondary burial (reinterment of remains) No written records! A grave good, but did it originally serve another purpose? Shows prosperity of neolithic city Stylized animals Aquatic birds, running dogs, ibex/goat Form of animals echo or emphasize shape of the pot Other meaning to shapes? Use of registers to divide space Probably hand-built (no wheel)

15 6. Anthropomorphic stele. Arabian Peninsula. Fourth millennium BCE. sandstone Anthropomorphic: having human characteristics Stele: upright stone slab

16 6. Anthropomorphic stele. Arabian Peninsula. Fourth millennium BCE. Sandstone ~ 60 similar stele found in Arabian Pen. (savannah-like in this period) How do they look similar over large area? Caravans? Function: Understood to be grave marker in open air sanctuary Stylized man with split-blade dagger, 2 straps across chest Geometric Frontal Minimal features

17 List the similarities and differences of these two objects in terms of content, context, form, and function

18 7. Jade cong. Liangzhu, China. 3,300-2,200 BCE. carved jade. Neolithic Liangzhu culture Socially stratified society Cong: hollow square sculpture decorated with lines Geometric, symmetrical Jade: precious green stone Carved by rubbing with sand Found in graves, but unclear function What do they represent? Faces - monsters or humans? Symbols - cosmos?

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20 Ritual Object (Bi) Period: Neolithic period Date: ca. late 3rd 2nd millennium B.C. Culture: China Medium: Jade (nephrite) Metropolitan Museum of Art

21 Megalith: colossal stone Henge: circular raised bank of earth + ditch (often with upright stones) Site-specific: purposely created/built for a specific place Post and lintel: simplest way to span a space; upright posts topped by a horizontal lintel

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23 Built in at least three phases: 36o henge + stones or posts Addition of wooden posts (maybe a roof), burials Bluestones (from Wales) and 30 Sarsen stones in an interior circle +lintels Stones were originally brighter and whiter

24 Who planned and executed this? What was their society like? Who was buried there? What was its function? Heel Stone aligns with sunrise of summer solstice (longest day of the year)

25 9. The Ambum Stone, Ambum Valley, Enga Province, Papua New Guinea c.1500 BCE, Greywacke

26 9. The Ambum Stone, Ambum Valley, Enga Province, Papua New Guinea c.1500 BCE, Greywacke One of the earliest pieces of Pacific art Disc. in a cave in 1960s Similar to animal-shaped pestles from same period, but carved at a much higher level Greywacke is very difficult to carve Maybe depicts an anteater? Unknown original function European eyes viewed/valued as example of the primitive, pure, exotic Present-day indigenous people believe these have supernatural powers ( bones of the ancestors, used in rituals)

27 10. Tlatilco female figure. Central Mexico, site of Tlatilco, BCE Ceramic

28 10. Tlatilco female figure. Central Mexico, site of Tlatilco, BCE. Ceramic One of many figurines found abundantly in burials Mostly female figurines Function: fertility? Religious? Most have similar form: Hand-made Wide hips, spherical thighs, pinched waist, elaborate hair Narrow, half-closed eyes No hands, feet Rare two-headed figurine: Idea of duality? Supernatural?

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30 11. Terra cotta fragment. Lapita. Solomon Islands, Reef Islands BCE terra cotta (incised) Pottery finds show Lapita culture spread westward: >250 sites from Micronesia to Polynesia

31 11. Terra cotta fragment. Lapita. Solomon Islands, Reef Islands BCE terra cotta (incised) Function: some funerary, some functional pots Incised and stamped decoration Geometric patterns Stylized faces Depicts ancestors? Creation myth?

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35 151. Spiral Jetty. Great Salt Lake, Utah, U.S. Robert Smithson C.E. Earthwork: mud, precipitated salt crystals, rocks, and water coil. Earthwork: excavation and embankment of earth Entropy

36 Made from materials on site Show change and decay over time Entropy Difficult to reach: idea of pilgrimage Meant to be walked on, experienced Shape found in nature Themes of creation, history, change

37 As I looked at the site, it reverberated out to the horizons only to suggest an immobile cyclone while flickering light made the entire landscape appear a quake. A dormant earthquake spread into the fluttering stillness, into a spinning sensation without movement. This site was a rotary that enclosed itself in an immense roundness. From that gyrating space emerged the possibility of the Spiral Jetty. No ideas, no concepts, no systems, no structures, no abstractions could hold themselves together in the actuality of that evidence. My dialectics of site and nonsite whirled into an indeterminate state, where solid and liquid lost themselves in each other. It was as if the lake became the edge of the sun, a boiling curve, an explosion rising into a fiery prominence. Matter collapsing into the lake mirrored in the shape of a spiral. No sense wondering about classifications and categories, there were none."

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40 AP History of Art Exam Section I Multiple Choice 80 Questions 1 Hour 50% of Exam Score Approximately 8 sets of questions (3 to 6 questions each) based on color images Approximately 35 individual multiple-choice questions Section II Free Response 6 Questions 2 Hours 50% of Exam Score Two 30-minute essay questions Four 15-minute essay questions Essay questions often include images of works of art as stimuli. Analytic grading: points for each task completed

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43 Woman of Willendorf, c.28,000 BCE 4 high stone covered with red ochre Discovered in 1908 near Willendorf, Austria What does the scale tell us? What s in a name? She was titled the Venus of Willendorf for most of the 20th century.