History of Western Art and Architecture

History of Art and Interior Design

Definition of Art

• An aesthetically pleasing and meaningful arrangement of elements, such as words, sounds, colors, shapes, etc.
• A form of human activity whose chief character is determined by such arrangement.

Definition of Architecture

• The science or profession of designing and constructing buildings or other structures.

Definition of Decorative Arts

• Any of the arts pertaining to or referring to painting, sculpture, glass and glassware, ceramic and pottery, metallurgy, and plants.

Style Analysis

• Practical approach: seeks to establish what was built, when, by whom, and for whom
• Historical approach: explores the whys and its relationship to the social, economic, political, cultural, and religious environment
• Aesthetics approach: accounts for visual and stylistic differences and explains how styles change and why they do so

Factors of Historical Development

• Rational, technological, and constructional factors
• Social and religious factors
• Economic, cultural, and political factors
• Spirit of the age (Zeitgeist)

Pre-History

Paleolithic (30,000-10,000 BC)

• Characteristics:
  • Concerned with food or fertility
  • Attempt to gain control over their environment through magic or ritual
  • Represents a giant leap in human cognition: abstract thinking
• Types of art:
  • Portable art: small figurines or decorative objects carved or modeled with clay
  • Stationary art: cave paintings, rock paintings, and sculptures

Mesolithic Age (10,000-8,000 BC)

• Characteristics:
  • Saw the beginnings of settled communities and farming
  • Invention of the bow and arrow, pottery for food storage, and domestication of small animals
  • Human objects are highly stylized
• Types of art:
  • Pottery: utilitarian in origin, not for visual pleasure

Neolithic Age (7,000-3,000 BC)

• Characteristics:
  • Men developed agriculture and settled in permanent villages
  • Mud bricks were first used
• Types of art:
  • Pottery: made by kilning and mostly for storage of food
  • Vessels used for storage and cooking

Prehistoric Architecture

• Types of architecture:
  • Hut
  • Monolith
  • Shielings
  • Beehive huts
  • Dolmen
  • Stonehenge
  • Cave dwelling

Mesopotamian Civilization (4300-331 BC)

• Characteristics:
  • Domestication of animals, trade, and coinage
  • Legal government, potter's wheel, wagon wheel, alphabet, architecture, mathematics, and astronomy
  • Monotheism and monogamy
• Historical periods:
  • Sumerian (6000-4000 BC)
  • Akkadian
  • Neo-Sumerian
  • Babylonian/Chaldean (4000-700 BC)
  • Assyrian (700-500 BC)
  • Persian (539-331 BC)

Mesopotamian Art

• Characteristics:
  • Cuneiform writing
  • Sculptures characterized by large circular eyes and curly hair and beard
  • Image of a lamassu (a creature with a human head, wings, and a bull's body)

Mesopotamian Architecture

• Characteristics:
  • Arches and corbel forms for roofs
  • Inlay and glazed tiles for decoration
  • Crenellation (battlement)
  • No temples, rituals held outdoors
  • Introduced use of columns with bull capital
  • Low relief decorations
• Types of architecture:
  • Ziggurat: artificial mountains made of tiered rectangular layers
  • Tower of Babel: a seven-tiered ziggurat
  • Hanging Gardens of Babylon: a great palace built by Nebuchadnezzar for his wife, Amytis

Palaces

• Characteristics:
  • Polychrome ornamental brickwork
  • High plinths or dadoes made of great stone slabs placed on edges, usually carved with low relief sculpture
• Examples:
  • Ishtar Gate: entrance gate to the Palace of Sargon
  • Palace complex at Persepolis

Ancient Egyptian Period (3500-1000 BC)

• Characteristics:
  • Focus on permanence, stability, eternity, and life after death
  • Formalized art: rules for the portrayal of the human figure
  • Theocracy: Pharaoh thought to be a god
  • Hieroglyphics: a system of writing with picture-symbols

Egyptian Gods

• List of gods:
  • Amon
  • Anubis
  • Aten
  • Bes
  • Hapi
  • Hathor
  • Horus
  • Imhotep
  • Isis
  • Mast
  • Mut
  • Osiris
  • Ptah
  • Ra(e)
  • Seth

Egyptian Art

• Characteristics:
  • Brilliant color
  • Groove chiseled around each figure
  • Law of Frontality: face must look straight ahead, and each side must be exactly like the other
  • Scale: royalty portrayed large and formally, commoners portrayed naturally, slaves and enemies in smallest scale
  • Men colored reddish brown, females in yellow

Egyptian Architecture

• Characteristics:
  • Rectangular forms in straight lines
  • Massive and solid
  • Excessively thick walls
  • Simple forms and few moldings
  • Proportions and support were heavy and sturdy
  • Trabested construction
  • A system of column and lintel

Egyptian Architectural Landmarks

• Examples:
  • Mastabas
  • Bent and straight pyramids
  • Obelisks
  • Temples: post and lintel construction, characterized as a forest of columns
  • Mortuary temples
  • Cult temples
  • Rock-hewn tombs/temples
  • Pylon
  • Peristyle - Open Court
  • Hypostyle Hall
  • Sanctuary
  • Necropolis
  • Pyramids: massive funerary structures of stone or brick with a square base and four sloping triangular sides meeting at the apex

Aegean Period (3000-1200 BC)

• Characteristics:
  • Art of the civilization that flourished on the Greek peninsula, in Asia Minor, on the north coast of Africa, and in the western Mediterranean
  • System of construction based on rules of form and proportion

Historical Background

• Greek ancient civilization rose from the Dorians who overwhelmed the Mycenaeans

Ages of Aegean Art

• Cycladic (3200-1200 BC)
• Minoan (3000-1500 BC)
• Mycenaean (1600-1300 BC)

Aegean Art

• Characteristics:
  • Cycladic art: marble sculptures (idols), most found lying down in gravel
  • Minoan art: fresco, building of great palaces on the island, vase paintings flourished with sea motifs as popular subjects
  • Mycenaean art: funerary mask, cyclopean architecture, large rectangular area with hearth in the center, and many columns supporting the roofs