Art before History

Before we start discussing art history, we first need to understand time.  BCE or “Before Common Era”, is anytime before year 0.  CE, “Common Era”, is after year 0.  A work of art made in 30,000 BCE is actually around 32,000 years old (30,000 + 2000 years after year 0).  Its not that complicated until we start talking about centuries.  Take a look at the chart below for a good explanation.

Ancient Art Time Periods

Paleolithic Art: 40,000 to 10,000 BCE (paleo = old, lithic=stone)

• Oldest of the three.
• Happened during the end of the last ice age
• Very difficult life.
• Average life-span was about 35.
• Hunters followed herds of bison, horses and antelope.
• Gathered nuts, berries and herbs.

Mesolithic Art: 10,000 to 8,000 BCE (meso=middle)

• Developed the representational skills which theses early peoples used to describe and define their domain.
• Human figural representation is regularized into narratives, which identify human activities and concerns.
• The environment at this point in time is much like what it is today.  Ice was melting and the nomadic peoples were starting to settle down

Neolithic: 8,000 to 3,000 BCE (neo=new)

• people settled into communities, which were fixed in place, and where animals and crops were domesticated.
• In this period, art becomes an integral component for community living, describing the community and the aesthetic vision of its people.
• While not as complete a vision as seen in later history,  Neolithic art visually expressed communities’ thinking, philosophy, and religion.

Image: Waterworn pebble resembling a human face, from Makapansgat, South Africa, ca. 3,000,000 BCE. Reddish brown jasperite, approx. 2 3/8” wide.

• 1925
• explorers of a cave at Makapansgat in South Africa discovered bones of humans who lived some three million years ago.
• Found reddish-brown pebble that looks like a human face.
• This type of stone is found 20 miles away from the cave.
• One of the humans who stayed in the cave must have been impressed that it looked like a little face and brought it with him

Is the Makapansgat pebble art? What do you think? Why is anything art?

• Art is created when an object is taken from their normal context, altered, and then labeled.
• For art historians to call a found object such as the Makapansgat pebble an “artwork,” it must have been modified by human hands beyond just choosing it

Around 30,000 BCE

• Most of Northern Europe was still covered with glaciers during the Ice Age
• Humans intentionally made sculptures and paintings.
• That is when the story of art through the ages really begins.

Objects made during this time period were small.  They had to be because the people were constantly on the move, searching for both food and shelter.  One way to tell how advanced a group of people were is to examine the size of their sculptures.  Larger sculptures meant the people were more sedentary (less nomadic) and therefore probably grew their own food.

After 30,000 BCE there was a huge burst of creativity.

This image is from a cave (called the Apollo cave) near the southern tip of Africa.

• The charcoal that was used has been dated to around 23,000 BCE.

The painter of the Apollo 11 plaque had to answer two questions before beginning this work:

• What am I going to draw?
• How am I going to draw it?

In Paleolithic art

• The answer was almost always an animal— bison, mammoth, ibex, and horse were most common.
• Rarely depicted humans, men almost never.
• In Paleo, Meso and Neolithic time periods, animals were always painted in profile.
• The profile is the only view of an animal where the head, body, tail, and all four legs can be seen.
• Any other view would hide some part of the animal’s body.
• No emphasis on creativity, just representing what they saw

Pech-Merle, France

• Wall painting in the cave
• 22,000 BCE
• Spotted horses and negative hand imprints
• 11 feet long.
• Painted hands near the horses may be “signatures” of community members or individual painters
• The caves in prehistoric Europe are anywhere from a few hundred to several thousand feet long.
• Often crowded with stalactites and stalagmites (think Ruby Falls).

Paleolithic paintings have been found at more than 200 sites

• Still seen as rare
• Were created over a period of 10,000 to 20,000 years.

Used stone lamps filled with marrow or fat, with a wick of moss. 

• Drawing – used chunks of red and yellow ocher.
• Painting – ground these same ochers into powders, then mixed with water to make paint.
• Large flat stones served as palettes.
• Made brushes from reeds, bristles, animal fur or twigs
• Use animal fat as a binder.
• May have used a blowpipe (reeds or hollow bones) to spray paint on higher walls they couldn’t reach.
• Would place charcoal in their mouth, mix it with saliva and spray it onto the wall
• Some caves have holes where scaffolding may have been used to reach the ceiling
• Was difficult work, but they could probably cover large areas in less than a day.

The paintings must have meant something to the people who created them

• Checks, dots, squares, and lines were often drawn with the animals.
• Paintings of human hands also are common; painted as a “negative”
• Placed one hand against the wall and then brushed, blew or spit paint around it.
• Would also make positive prints by dipping their hand in paint and pressing it against the wall
• The horse head appears to be inspired by the shape of the rock

The Paleolithic painting above is very unusual.

• Deep in a well shaft in the Lascaux caves in France
• One of the first paintings of a man

At the left

• A rhinoceros is moving to the left
• Beneath its tail are two rows of three dots (not sure what they mean)

At the right

• A bison
• Facing left but probably painted by someone else.
• The animal looks mad (his hair is standing up)
• His intestines hang below him, probably gored by the rhino

Between the two animals is a bird-faced (masked?) man with arms out to his side and hands with only four fingers.

• The man doesn’t have the same detail as the animals
• His gender, his penis, is very prominent
• Not sure if the man is just tilted back, not hurt or hurt on the ground
• Not sure if the staff(?) with the bird on top and the spear belong to him?
• Not sure if these two animals were fighting, he’s hunting or if they’re meant to be read as a group at all.

The Lascaux Cave  (Flash)

A sculpture is an object that is three dimensional; it has depth unlike a painting or drawing which are typically flat (two dimensional). Sculptures can be produced as reliefs (carved from a wall) or in the round (sculptures you can physically walk around). When an artist is creating an in the round sculpture, they must consider what the work will look like from all angles. There are additional types of sculptures but they are not covered until the second section of art history.

HOHLENSTEIN- STADEL (Human with Feline Head)

This is one of the earliest sculptures discovered

• May be as old as 30,000 BCE
• Found in Germany broken into fragments inside a cave.
• Carved out of mammoth ivory and nearly a foot tall, very large for this time period

It is a human with a cat head. Not sure if it is supposed to be a male or female.

• Human bodies with animal heads (and vice versa) were common in the ancient Near East and Egypt.
• No one knows why they were made.
• The animal-headed humans of Paleolithic art sometimes have been called sorcerers and described as magicians wearing masks.
• Have been interpreted as humans dressed up as animals (not deities/gods)
• No written explanations – the time before writing is called prehistory
• Researchers can only guess the purpose and function these statues.

These statuettes had to be important to whoever created them

• Was hard work and very complicated.
• A tusk had to be removed from the dead animal by cutting into the ivory where it joined the head.
• The sculptor cut the tusk to the desired size
• Rubbed it into rough shape with sandstone.
• A sharp stone blade was used to carve the body, arms and legs, and head
• A stone burin (a pointed engraving tool) to incise (scratch) lines into the surfaces.
• Probably took several days to finish.

Venus of Willendorf (Woman of Willendorf)

• Probably one of the most famous and most recognizable sculptures from this period
• Discovered in 1908 in Lower Austria (Between Germany and Italy)
• 25,000-20,000 B.C.E.
• 4 3/8 inches high statue of a female figure
• Easily carried by hunters and gatherers as they searched for food.
• Carved from a type of limestone that is not local to the area, and tinted with red ochre
• Have nothing do with the goddess Venus, it’s just the name that was given to these types of figures
• Exceptional piece for this time period because it’s a person, and it’s delicately carved.
• If people were painted or sculpted, they were almost always women and always nude.
• Artist responded to the natural shape of the stone when carving the woman
• Venus of Willendorf is an example of the kind of in the round sculpture made by paleolithic people.
• Thought to have possibly been a fertility figure.  People were not this large at this point in history.  No Burger Kings, no Snickers. You lived and died based on your ability to find food and shelter. It is thought that a larger woman would be better able to reproduce and take care of a family, something that was very important to a group on the move.

Venus of Laussel 30,000-15,000 B.C.E. 

Venus of Laussel is another example of a Venus figure

• This is a low relief, meaning carved into a wall, and is one of the oldest known.
• The woman holds a bison horn with 13 marks on it
• May relate to menstruation, or could refer to the 13 months of the lunar year.
• No defining features
• Was found with traces of blood on her thighs.
• Indicates she was used in some type of childbirth ceremony.
• One of the oldest relief sculptures found
• Still not sure what it was used for
• About 18” tall – four times larger than the Willendorf statue
• Was part of a great stone block that measured about 140 cubic feet.

Accurate dating is impossible in the Paleolithic era, so a range of dates is given.

• Probably older than the Venus of Willendorf.

Found in a shallow open air shelter.

• Not all people at this time lived in caves
• This sculpture was once painted.
• Most sculptures of this time we actually painted, but its worn off.

8,000 – 3,000 BCE

• Ice that covered much of northern Europe during the Paleolithic period has melted
• Climate has become warmer
• Sea level rose more than 300 feet
• Separated England from Europe and Spain from Africa.
• Reindeer migrated north
• Woolly mammoth disappeared.
• Humans began to domesticate plants and animals
• Built homes instead of moving
• Shift from hunters to herders, to farmers, and finally to townspeople.
• Built villages surrounded by fields.

The Paleolithic, Mesolithic, and Neolithic periods are divided based on the development of stone tools.

• Can also distinguish between periods based on humans got food
• Transition from food gathering to food production.

Ancient Near East 

Oldest known settled communities

• found in the Antilebanon, Taurus, and Zagros mountains in Turkey, Syria, Iraq, and Iran.

Provided the conditions needed for agriculture

• Lots of native plants such as wheat and barley
• Herds of animals (goats, sheep, and pigs) were domesticated.
• Plenty of rain for crops

Some settlers moved into the valleys and deltas of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers.

• Soil was very fertile
• Needed more land for their growing tribes

Started weaving, metalworking, pottery, and counting and recording with clay tokens.

• Ideas spread throughout the near east

Farming communities date back to the mid-seventh millennium BCE.

• Jarmo in Iraq
• Çatal Höyük in southern Anatolia
• Town of Jericho is even older.
• Joshua would stand before them thousands of years later

The Neolithic Revolution

Jerricho (on the River Jordan)

• Neolithic community.
• Built around a freshwater spring., which was vital to life in a desert region.
• Known as a fortified city, with walls that were 5 to 20 feet thick and towers up to 30 feet tall.

7000 BCE, agriculture was well established.

• Plateau in the Jordan River valley
• Spring provided constant water supply
• Occupied by a small village as early as the ninth millennium BCE.
• Underwent major development around 8000 BCE
• Built a new Neolithic settlement covering about 10 acres.
• Mud-brick houses
• sat on round or oval stone foundations
• roofs made from branches covered with mud.

One of the oldest continuously-inhabited cities in the world, dating back to 9000 BCE.

Jericho became incredibly wealthy

• Need for protection against invading nomads
• First known permanent stone fortifications.

7500 BCE

• Created a wide ditch and a 5- foot-thick wall surrounding the town
• Population of more than 2,000 people.

Built a circular wall to a height of almost 13 feet

• Built a circular tower of roughly shaped stones laid without mortar into the wall
• Was originally about 30 feet high.
• Almost 33 feet in diameter at the base
• Has an inner stairway leading to the top. (Today, a grate covers the entrance to the stairway.)

This is a tremendous achievement. There were no power tools.

The most powerful and haunting of these Stone Age images are plaster human heads—modeled on the skulls of deceased human beings after the flesh had decayed away.

What do these modeled heads symbolize? The standard interpretation is that they were created for use in an ancestor cult. The British archaeologist Kathleen Kenyon, who found plaster heads at Jericho, called them “portrait skulls” to suggest that each was modeled on the skull of a dead ancestor. According to this theory, the living could reclaim the powers of the dead by making a likeness of the deceased’s head.

Jericho

 

ÇATAL HÖYÜK

• Between 1961 and 1965, 12 different levels of buildings were excavated at Çatal Höyük
• They have been dated to between 6500 and 5700 BCE.
• This is the oldest planned town that has been excavated so far.

The people who lived there were very wealthy because of trade, mostly obsidian.

• Obsidian is a black volcanic rock that could be cut to make blades.
• It looks almost like black glass and is razor sharp

One of the first experiments in urban living. (along with Jericho)

• The layout of the town seems to suggest that a plan was made before they started building

There are no streets or alleys between the buildings.

• The houses were built next to each other
• They had no doors, only openings in the roof.
• The openings also served as chimneys to ventilate the fireplace
• Had a combination living room and kitchen which formed the core of the house.

May seem impractical but there were some advantages

• Buildings were more stable than freestanding structures
• Made the town very defensive
• If enemies broke through the outside wall, they would just be inside a room with no way out but through the roof

The houses were made with mud brick and strengthened by wood logs

The walls of homes were whitewashed with ground limestone

• Also see patterned decoration for the first time.
• Homes had stone benches and ovens.
• The dead were buried beneath the same platforms.

Walls and floors were plastered and painted

• Platforms along walls served as areas for sleeping, working, and eating.

Religion becomes more organized in the Neolithic period.

• Introduction of mother goddess figurines
• Most of their figures were females, alluding to a reverence for goddess figures
• They also worhsipped their ancesotrs and had shrine rooms like the one below.

Catal Hoyuk

This Neolithic painter depicted human figures as a combination of front and side views

• This method provides a very descriptive picture of the shape of the human body.
• This format would become the standard for years to come.

Breeding animals for food was well established, but they still hunted

• The importance of hunting is reflected in wall paintings (until about 5700 BCE)

Deer hunt mural

• Created at Çatal Höyük in Turkey
• Very different from the Paleolithic wall paintings.
• There is the regular appearance of human figures
• Large, coherent groups with a wide variety of poses, subjects, and settings.
• Humans were unusual in Paleolithic cave paintings
• Narratives (stories) have almost never been found.

Group of hunters

• shows a tense exaggeration of movement and repetition of basic shapes
• Includes bows, arrows, and clothing
• Heads have clearly defined noses, mouths, chins, and hair.
• All the heads are in profile
• Only the side view of the human head shows all its shapes clearly.
• Torsos are presented from the front
• The profile view for the legs and arms.
• Composite view of the body creates a very descriptive view of the body
• A composite view is an image of a figure built from the front view of the torso, a side view of the head and side views of the legs and arms.

Pigments were applied with a brush to a white background of dry plaster.

Painting in one of the older rooms at Çatal Höyük

• Art historians have claimed it as one of the world’s first landscape paintings
• A landscape painting is simply that. There is no story that goes with it, it is a documentation of the land. This alone makes it unusual because it starts to demonstrate an appreciation for life and not just religious ritual.
• Not another landscape created for almost 2,000 years.
• Dated to around 6150 BCE.

The foreground

• Resembles a town with rectangular houses laid out side by side
• Probably represents Çatal Höyük.

Behind the town appears a mountain with two peaks.

• The dots and lines coming from the higher of the two cones represent a volcanic eruption
• May be the mountain Hasan Da. (over 10,000 feet high)

The mountain is located within view of Çatal Höyük

• Is the only twin-peaked volcano in the area.

The volcanic eruption may not depict a specific event. If it is depicting an actual eruption, then its more of a documentary than a landscape.

In addition to painting and sculpture

• Weaving and pottery were well established
• People even knew how to melt lead

Western Europe 

• In western Europe, no towns similar to Çatal Höyük have been found.
• Most of the people in this area used massive stones for construction
• Some of the stones are as tall as 17 feet and weigh as much as 50 tons

Newgrange

• One of the oldest megalithic structures.
• Example of corbeled vaulting – megaliths (mega – large, lith – stone) are held in place by their own weight
• Located in Newgrange in Ireland, north of Dublin
• Constructed as early as 3200 BCE and is one of the oldest burial monuments in Europe.
• Passage grave (a tomb with a long stone corridor leading to a burial chamber)
• Covered by a tumulus (earth burial mound).
• These burial chambers signify their belief in the power of the dead
• 280 feet in diameter and 44 feet tall; passageway is 62 feet long

Hagar Qim 

• On an island far to the south of Newgrange
• Megalithic temple
• One of many constructed on the island of Malta between 3200 and 2500 BCE
• One of the oldest stone temples anywhere in the world.

Constructed their temples by piling carefully cut stone blocks in courses (horizontal rows).

The doorways

• built using the post-and-lintel system (posts are the vertical beams, lintel is the horizontal beam on top)
• Used straight and curved forms

Inside

• altars (considered religious shrines)
• several stone statues of headless nude women, one standing, the others seated.

Early Neolithic farming

• Limited to a narrow range of crops including wheat, millet and spelt
• Also kept sheep and goats.

By about 7000 BC

• included domesticated cattle and pigs
• establishment of permanently or seasonally inhabited settlements
• the use of pottery.

The structure in the image above is an oven. You placed a fire below and bread above.

Stonhenge

• Most famous megalithic monument in Europe
• On the Salisbury Plain in southern England.
• Probably functioned as an astronomical observatory and solar calendar.
• Sun rises over its “heel stone” at the summer solstice.
• Some of the stones weigh 50 tons.

Henge

• Arrangement of megalithic stones in a circle, often surrounded by a ditch.
• This type is almost entirely limited to Britain.

Made from sarsen (a form of sandstone) and smaller “ bluestones” (volcanic rocks)

• built in several stages over hundreds of years.

Standing apart and to the east is the “heel stone,” which, for a person looking outward from the center of the circle, would have marked the point where the sun rose at the summer solstice.

Incredibly accurate solar calendar.

Stonehenge uses post and lintel construction.

The great stones are about thirteen feet tall and weigh about 50 tons.

The posts were rolled to the site, pitched into a pit, and then buried up to the top.

Then the lintel was rolled into place.  The lintel is the piece on the top.  This type of construction will be used until the arch is invented.

Megaliths, or big stones.

One of the most famous prehistoric sites in the world, Stonehenge is composed of earthworks surrounding a circular setting of large standing stones.

Archaeologists had believed that the iconic stone monument was erected around 2500 BC, as described in the chronology below.

However one recent theory has suggested that the first stones were not erected until 2400-2200 BC, whilst another suggests that bluestones may have been erected at the site as early as 3000 BC.

No mortar was used.

The stones were cut and dressed to fit together well.

Each lintel has a tenon, which fits into the mortice.

Stonehenge was built over 1500 years, with various groups contributing to the construction.

The site obviously had some religious or ceremonial significance, but it’s difficult to determine the exact role of this prehistoric site.

Served as a burial ground from its earliest beginnings.

Remains found date to 3000 B.C, when the first ditches were being built around the monument.

Burials continued for at least another 500 years when the giant stones which mark the landmark were put up.

Stonehenge