ART H340 Painting
Fall 2005

Instructed by Ralph Larmann
BRIEF HISTORY OF PAINTING

Lascaux Cave Paintings
Paleolithic Europe
cave painting
30,000-15,000 B.C.

Ancient Painting

Cave Art (Lascaux)
-murals at Lascaux. Normally, Paleolithic man did not portray humans in painting. Most are animals. Based on observation. Probably done by blowing pigment through a pipe.

Pigment -ground color used with a vehicle or binder on a support.

Cave art often uses the contours of the cave to define the form of the animal. Leon Battista Alberti, an Italian Renaissance aesthetician, believed that man first created images through association. The surface of the wall may have inferred the shape then the artist would "perfect" an image. The works at Lascaux seem to confirm Alberti's "image by accident" theory.

Judgement before Osiris
Ancient Egyptian
painted papyrus
1285 B.C.

Religion
-Egyptians believed in polytheism (many gods).
-Death and the preparation for death was an integral part of Egyptian life. Objects and images of the dead person were put in the tomb so the ka (soul), of the person could enter into it. Proper embalming was essential. The jackal-headed god, Anibus was the embalmer of the dead. It was his duty to take the heart of the deceased and weigh it against the Feather of Truth before Osiris, god of the Underworld, and 42 other gods. If the heart was lighter than the Feather of Truth, the ka entered into a contented afterlife.

Toreador fresco
Minoan
fresco
1600-1400 B.C.

Myth of the Minotaur- from Greek mythology, half man/half bull who lived at the center of the Labyrinth (Palace of Minos).

Minoan Fresco-believed to be buon fresco (painting on fresh plaster). The Toreador fresco is an excellent example of the flowing line that exemplified Minoan art.

Dipylon Vase (amphora)
Greek Geometric Style
pottery
c. 600 B.C.

The Ancient Greeks believed that Man was an ideal form. In their estimation, Man is the measure of all things. Their works reflect an interest in the naturalistic world. More like reality except that there is an emphasis on the "ideal" figure.

Pottery
Greeks exported olive oil and wine and the decoration of these containers helped to market their products. Note the development of naturalistic painting styles on the ceramic pieces.
-Geometric Style (c. 900-700 BC) characterized by stylized motifs
-Black Figure (c. 600-480 BC) black coated surface that was scratched into, example: Ajax Commiting Suicide by Exekias, 525 B.C.
-Red Figure (c. 530-450 BC) negative version of Black Figure
-White Ground (c. 450-400 BC) grave ornamentation

Encaustic Painting- using pigment and beeswax to paint.

Aesthetics of Plato and Aristotle
-Plato believed in a theory of ideal forms. All forms of this world are derived from an "ideal form in the spiritual world. Therefore all that we experience is an "imperfect" copy of a greater ideal. Plato regarded artists as imitators of imitation.
-Aristotle disagreed with Plato. He believed that art was connected to and an expression of the human soul.

Painting -encaustic: beeswax and pigment
-buon fresco: pigment and water on wet plaster
-egg tempera: egg yolk and pigment

Travelers Amid Streams and Mountains
Fan Kuan
Chinese painting
11th C. AD

The philosophical differences and similarities of China to the Western World of the same time are reflected in their art. For example, in Renaissance Italy the Classical idea of the development and importance of the "entire" person led to artwork that was based on the individual. The focus was on a single person with landscape or architecture as background. Chinese philosophers, in contrast, felt that Man was only a small part of a larger universe unto which he was subject. The figure in art, consequently, was sublimated to a minor role in paintings which featured the landscape as subject. If man was introduced into such a composition, he was depicted as small and insignificant compared to his surroundings.

Chan Painting
-called Zen painting in Japan
-Used simplicity and discipline to achieve form

Yin and Yang
-describes a balance in nature between opposite forces.

literati painting-the literati were a group intellectual elites (much like artists in Renaissance Italy) who expressed their philosophical ideas through painting and calligraphy. Poets greatly influenced these artists of China.

"First we see the hills in the painting, then we see the painting in the hills," Li Li-Weng (one often receives a heightened awareness of nature through art)