1-First you click on “New” on the top of the page.
2-You title you blog post based on the assignment.
3-Select the revelant catergories on the side bar like which class you attend and the assignment you are completeing.
4-Publish your post by clicking the “publish” on the side bar.
To me, art is a completely subjective form of expression that can be show through many outlets like video, paper, books and so much more that it considered as vast as the world. All art has meaning behind it, no matter how strange it seems to be called art. A piece of gum carelessly stuck onto a piece of canvas may be low effort and considered trash by many, the art still has purpose and meaning behind it. Even if the artist just did it for the sake of doing so, that itself is the meaning and purpose. If people try to dispute this, high effort art is the same. If someone spent hours drawing and planning a huge painting of a human face, no matter how thought provoking and complex the reason to make it is, it still has a purpose and meaning like a piece of gum stuck on a canvas. To me, I am indifferent to art. I accept all forms of art but will only care for ones that appeal to me. I hope to understand art from a more educational perspective in this class.
My art story is that I haven’t taken an art history before and I started to learn what art was under the lectures that our professor has taught us. Most of my art knowledge is from school and it’s mostly about making art and not learning about the art work like in this class. In unit one, I learned that formal analysis is a technique used to help us understand the artwork of the author. I learned to not the judge the artwork but to embrace the art because we all have different views about art and we may have similar opinions about it. Art is a lifestyle to almost everyone because we see art everywhere from street art to art in the museum. Art gives a nice vibe when you look at some of them because they are colorful and the gesture in the artwork gives a mood for us. Art fits in my life because I see art everywhere and sometimes I would stop by and took a long look at it to understand what’s being display. Sometimes it can boost my mind because I can imagine what’s happening about it. In this class, I want learn about art expression in art history about art related to the art in the past to modern art. I may still be learning about art but I’m going to understand a lot of artworks by the end of this semester. I also want to learn how the artist decides to produce their work and what gave them the idea to finalize it.
1. You go to the class site and you select our 9:30 AM class.
2. After clicking on the link, there will be our classmates blogs and there will be a plus button that says posts, documents and media.
3. You select post to start posting on our blog post site.
4. Must have a title, image and minimum of 250 word count or more on some blog post.
5. Remember to save and tag the blog. Publish it when you are ready to post it up for everyone to see.
For me art is a reflections of ones feeling conveying an important historical moment for that person. All throughout history you can see leaders, kings, and other political figures have been glorified after victories. Using marble, bronze, paintings, and architecture these leaders were recreated displaying honor, leadership, wisdom, and strictness.
But in our current times I believe art shifted from displaying people in position of power and to self expression. Everyday people expression themselves through music, drawing, and painting for just the simple reason of self expression. I personally turn to music everyday to make my day better and smoother. I want to be able to take knowledge of important figures and the arts created to represent them pre Renaissance period.
Art 1010
Fall 2018
Final Project Details and Due Dates
Final Project Guidelines
For your final project you may choose one of three assignments:
Important Due Dates and Deadlines
Craft a statement that identifies how these works illustrate something about your topic. This is your provisional thesis statement or argument. You should say something about the issues and works of art you have chosen.
Image lists and thesis statement should be posted to the class site NO LATER THAN DECEMBER 3.
DECEMBER 10
Compile a bibliography of at least 3 online sources (smarthistory, the Met’s Timeline of Art History, museum websites) plus two articles (art magazine, newspaper, etc.) that relate to your topic. Once compiled, describe each source—what is it about—and what does it offer your project? How is it useful?
This is an annotated bibliography and should be posted by Dec. 10.
Dec 12: Final Projects Due.
Well, humanism is basically presenting human characteristics upon artwork or sculptures. The modern day answer or definition for humanism is supposedly the belief of humans should be showing respect towards other humans because they’re human or basically respect towards humanity. There are many sculptures that create a aspect of humanism that captures the structure of humans and their anatomy. The Greeks and Romans created sculptures that captured humanism while also capture the well-defined features of a human with detail. Their sculptures emphasized more depth towards anatomy and sports of hunting and such. Ancient Egyptians showed some artwork expressing human characteristics on deities. Some of the deities had heads of animals while some would just have human characters overall.
Throughout the second unit of Art 1010 I learned a lot about ancient civilizations and how art from those civilizations are similar and how they are different. The four main civilizations that we focused on throughout this unit were Mesopotamia, Ancient Egypt, Ancient Greece, and early Ancient Rome.
Mesopotamia
The first civilization that we focused on in this second unit was Mesopotamia. Mesopotamian art tend to focus more on being symbolic and it was mainly used as a form to worship the Mesopotamian deities. An example of a piece of Mesopotamian art work is the sculpture named The Standing Male Worshiper. The sculpture was used as a stand in for someone was unable to pray to the deity. Due to the fact that it’s only purpose to worship a deity there was no real detail that can really be seen in the physical sculpture. The only detail that can be seen is the stylistic waves of the beard, the abnormally large eyes and nose with its small mouth and the basic detailing at the bottom of its robe.
Ancient Egypt
Another civilization which we learned about during the second unit of Art 1010 was ancient Egypt. Similar to art work from Mesopotamia, Egyptian art work was also centered around religion and worshiping deities. However, unlike Mesopotamian art which only focused on worshiping deities, Egyptian art also focused on people who were divine or had divine power and how they would interact with the deities or how they were judged/treated by the deities. An example of an Egyptian art work is the Last Judgment of Hu-Nefer, From his Tomb. This painting represents deities judging Hu-Nefer, a royal scribe who lived a good and religious life. In the painting It shows Hu-Nefer being lead by Anubis to a scale in which his heart will be weighed against a feather of Mo’at, since his heart is lighter than the feather Hu-Nefer is granted eternal life and is sparred from being eaten by Ammit, As these events occur he divine scribe, Thoth, is writing them down. After having his heart balanced he is lead by Horus to Osiris. In the top register it can be seen that Hu-Nefer is praising a long line of deities for allowing him to have eternal life.
Ancient Greece
Yet another civilization that we learned about during the second unit of art 1010 was ancient Greece. Unlike Mesopotamian and Egyptian art, which focused more on gods and served to honor/respect them, Greek art focused more on humans and more importantly how humans are at the center of moral and social concerns. This shift from a focus of deities to humans is known as Humanism. An example of a piece of art work that shows this shift is the Marble Statue of Kouros. When comparing this Greek sculpture to the Mesopotamian mentioned above we can see major changes. The Marble Statue of Kouros is more detailed then The Standing Male Worshiper, it emphasizes details to the human represented in the artwork by giving them abs and also by adding detail to their face it gives the statue a sense of emotion. There is also a change in the hair style, no facial hair, and a sense of motion thanks to one foot being in front of the other making it so that most of the weight of the figure to be on that leg that is forward, this is known as contrapposto.
Ancient Rome
The final civilization that we talked about during the second unit of art 1010 was early ancient Rome. Like ancient Greece, early ancient Rome also tend to focus more on humans and humanism instead of deities on religion. One similarity yet difference that Roman art has with Greek art is that they both focus on putting detail on the humans represented in their art work but Roman art is far more detailed then Greek art. An example of a Roman art work is Polykleitos, Doryphoros. Unlike the Mesopotamian and Egyptian art works, the Roman statue Polykleitos, Doryphoros focuses more on humans it has a lot of more detailing on the human body, similar to the Marble Statue of Kouros. The hair is less stylistic and more natrualistic, the facial features are not only proportional to each other but also to the entire body of the sculpture, these features also seem to express some form of emotion, something that could not be seen in art from Mesopotamia or Egypt. Another major difference is the stance. most Mesopotamian and Egyptian works of art are of people standing completely straight without any sense of motion in their body unlike Greek and Roman art in which there seems to be motion in all their artworks such as in Polykleitos, Doryphoros. The man represented in this art work is leaning on his right leg instead of standing straight up, this once again shows contrapposto like in the Marble Statue of Kouros,most of the weight of the statue is on the right leg which is why this particular art work has a support on its left leg.
In this unit of the Ancient World we viewed and discussed art from different ancient civilizations. These civilizations were ancient Egypt, Mesopotamia, Greek, and Roman art. Although these civilization’s had different cultures their art had some similarities, and of course differences as well.
In Mesopotamian art one can often see a depiction of hierarchy. For example in class we went over the Standard of Ur 600-2400 B.C.E. which is like wooden box whose purpose is unclear. The Standard of Ur however is divided into registers which are horizontal divisions. At the lower registers one can see people of the working class possibly servants carrying items and herding animals. Through this piece of art we can infer agriculture was a part of the culture as well as trading which can be inferred through the different rocks found in it. At the top register we see the king which is way larger in scale compared to the rest of the people thus showing hierarchy and the significance of the king and emphasizing power.
In Egyptian art they placed a great value on divine/supernatural beings. Most being Gods. These Gods were often depicted as half human half animal. For example Horus the sky god son of Isis and Osiris, who has a falcons head and human body. Egyptians also dealt a lot with the afterlife mummifying their dead and leaving treasures in there pyramids (specifically Kings and Queens). There are also various symbols and hieroglyphics. A similarity between Egyptian art and Mesopotamian is the resemblance of hierarchy but also the use of half human half animal statues, for example the Egyptians Sphinx and the Mesopotamian Lamassu which has the head of a man body of a bull or lion and wings of an eagle.
Lastly we went over Greek and Roman art. As stated in a previous post “Humanism is a philosophical system that highlights the importance and value of human beings rather than divine/supernatural matters. It has various characteristics. First it sought rational thinking, to look for explanations in the natural world. Thus encouraging the use of critical thinking leaving space for new speculations. It also placed human beings in the center of moral and social concerns. In terms of art it focused on the beauty of humans mainly man. It did this through the use of nudity in art.” (Blog post 7: Humanism) Both Greek and Romans focused on Humanism however most Roman sculptures had some sort of item of clothing. Greeks also mainly had nude statues of young males with athletic bodies and rarely used females nudes unless it was Aphrodite. Another difference between the Greek and Roman was the fact that Romans depicted aging and facial hair as opposed to Greeks. Contrapposto “an asymmetrical arrangement of the human figure in which the line of the arms and shoulders contrasts with while balancing those of the hips and legs.” (google definition) was a similarity they shared that differed from the Egyptians whose sculptures were often straight in posture and lean in muscle while Greek-Roman art highlighted the male body.
Overall this Unit was very informative on the Ancient Worlds art. It helped me make connections between the different civilizations and learn about new art terms and ideas like humanism and contrapposto.
