Life Imagined Week 1 Beginnings.pdf

Life Imagined Week 1 – Beginnings • • Paleolithic/Neolithic Consciousness ➢ Abstraction ▪ the world is interpreted in terms of categories (a step towards theoretical thinking) ▪ an image is an abstraction ▪ abstraction is a form of categorization because if something abstracted down to its base pa...

Life Imagined Week 1 – Beginnings • • Paleolithic/Neolithic Consciousness ➢ Abstraction ▪ the world is interpreted in terms of categories (a step towards theoretical thinking) ▪ an image is an abstraction ▪ abstraction is a form of categorization because if something abstracted down to its base parts you can see the very basic things that are the same in things, so you can categorize them ➢ Conventionality ▪ Has to do with agreements ▪ There is an agreement that a certain word refers to an aspect of reality ▪ Creates communities ➢ Dichotomic Thinking ▪ With abstraction and conventionality comes dichotomic thinking ➢ Anthropomorphic gods ▪ The gods start evolving from nature phenomena to human-like depictions through imagination, abstraction and conventionality ➢ Massive constructions Paleolithic/Neolithic Imagination ➢ Writing ▪ Art becomes linguistic and allows us to express abstract meaning ▪ Writers are in charge of transmitting culture ▪ Transition of letters from concrete to abstract ➢ Horses, Chauvet, France, 32.000-30.000 BP ▪ Cave painting ▪ The cave may have served as a ritual place ▪ Concrete and accommodative representation ▪ Trying to represent horses as we see them ▪ The animal seems to have dimension ▪ Realism and sophistication ▪ The use of color shows that the paintings served some sacred and symbolic function ▪ We paint what we see ➢ The Woman of Willendorf, +/- 23.000 years ago ▪ Located in the graphic (theoretical) cultures ▪ Used to called Venus instead of Woman ▪ Originally colored ▪ • • • The exaggeration of features supports a connection to fertility and childbearing ▪ Small so it can be transported from place to place for ritual purposes ▪ No features because they probably wanted to represent the woman in general ▪ Not realistic Totemic Cultures ➢ Explain the world through myths that involve animals ➢ Concrete and imaginative (assimilative) ➢ Moving from similarities to abstraction ➢ If you are able to transform reality and make things it is easy to think that the world was created Mesopotamian Consciousness ➢ Pragmatic and Hierarchical society ➢ Emphasis on gods and kings ➢ Art serves both religious and political purposes ➢ Used to highlight relations between God and man ➢ Importance of morality Mesopotamic Imagination ➢ The Standard of Ur, Mesopotamia, approx. 4600 BP ▪ Unrealistic and prototypical representation of humans ▪ These images are intended to represent a certain section of the population ▪ The King is always shown as the tallest figure and in the center ▪ The artwork is trying to tell a story ▪ Not representing things as they are but the ideas ▪ The image is becoming narrative ▪ The importance of it is not simply as documentary evidence of Sumerian life but as one of the earliest examples we have of historical narrative ▪ The main panels of this rectangular box of unknown function are called ‘War’ and ‘Peace’, because they illustrate, on one die, a military victory, and on the other, the subsequent banquet celebrating the event ➢ The Tizoc-stone, Mexico, 15th century ▪ Aztec culture ▪ Use of images to create a narrative ▪ The images are going to the direction of a text ▪ Representation of a propaganda piece of Tizoc, emperor of the Aztecs ▪ It is shown how Aztecs are capturing wires from other tribes ▪ Repetition ▪ Used as a sacrificial stone • • • ➢ The Epic of Gilgamesh, Sumer in Mesopotamia, 3000-2500 BCE ▪ Written down on clay tablets ▪ First example of an epic, a long, narrative poem ▪ First literary work that confronts the idea of death ▪ Important because it is a reflection on mortality and humanity ▪ Narrates the story about the friendship between Gilgamesh and Enkindu ▪ Gilgamesh becomes aware of the fact that he will die (conflicted with the idea) ▪ Oldest known narrative about heroes (epic) ▪ The story is about Gilgamesh’s attempts to overcome death ▪ At the end, he accepts his humanity (that he is going to die) ▪ It is a mythical story about a hero that does not overcome the problem ▪ The fact that even a king will die makes this story contemporary ▪ Important device: metaphor ▪ With metaphoric thinking we use imagination ▪ What happens is that we use literature to reflect on aspects of life that are not easy to make sense of, such as death Egyptian culture ➢ Organized and hierarchical ➢ Art had variations of the same style ➢ Realistic and balanced ➢ Pyramids and huge monuments ➢ Little place for creativity ➢ The concept of reproduction was important for Egyptians ➢ Palette of Narmer, Hierakonpolis, 3000 BCE ▪ Early example of the then-developing hieroglyphic style ▪ Consists largely of pictograms ▪ Celebrates the defeat by Narmer of his enemies and his unification of Egypt ▪ Votive, or ritual object, a gift to a god What do images bring to culture? ➢ Structure of reality ➢ They allow us to go beyond what we can see ➢ Images help get closer to concrete reality ➢ Structures are in the world but we cannot grasp without images Mediterranean ➢ Cycladic culture: 3000-2000 BC ▪ Female figure, Cyclades, 2600-2400 Similar to the Woman of Willendorf, because we do not see a face and the correct proportions of the body We reduce the anatomy to its essentials A few inches to life-sized (Nomadic lifestyle) Found in graves Maybe connection to fertility Colored ➢ Minoan culture: 2600-1100 BC ▪ The Prince of Lilies, Knossos, 1700-1400 BC From one of the largest frescoes at the palace of Knossos Attempt to go towards a more natural depiction (more movement, more organic) It is less abstract than Egyptian art Moving towards accommodation, perception and analytical thinking ▪ Depictions of dance, sea and animals ➢ Mycenean culture: 1600-1100 BC ▪ The Lion Gate, Mycenae, 13th century BC Huge walls to protect the city (6 meters high) Two sculptors of lions to intimidate the visitor and to show the power of the city Moving towards more life-like representations ▪ Hunting and battle in their art ▪ Krater vase, Attic, 750-700 BC Used in burials Art connected to death and the unknown Unrealistic and abstract figures Reminders of neolithic era