SCHOOL OF BUILDING & ENVIRONMENT DEPARTMENT OF FASHION DESIGN UNIT – I - History of Art & Fashion– SFDA1303 Introduction to Art and Design History - Basic parameters The history of art focuses on objects made by humans in visual form for aesthetic purposes. Visual art can be classified in diverse ways, such as separating fine arts from applied arts; inclusively focusing on human creativity; or focusing on different media such as architecture, sculpture, painting, film, photography, and graphic arts. In recent years, technological advances have led to video art, computer art, performance art, animation, television, and videogames. The history of art is often told as a chronology of masterpieces created during each civilization. It can thus be framed as a story of high culture, epitomized by the Wonders of the World. On the other hand, vernacular art expressions can also be integrated into art historical narratives, referred to as folk arts or craft. The more closely that an art historian engages with these latter forms of low culture, the more likely it is that they will identify their work as examining visual culture or material culture, or as contributing to fields related to art history, such as anthropology or archaeology. In the latter cases, art objects may be referred to as archeological artifacts. Types Archeologists have identified 4 basic types of Stone Age art, as follows: petroglyphs (cupules, rock carvings and engravings); pictographs (pictorial imagery, ideomorphs, ideograms or symbols), a category that includes cave painting and drawing; and prehistoric sculpture (including small totemic statuettes known as Venus Figurines, various forms of zoomorphic and therianthropic ivory carving, and relief sculptures); and megalithic art (petroforms or any other works associated with arrangements of stones). Artworks that are applied to an immoveable rock surface are classified as parietal art; works that are portable are classified as mobiliary art. Types of prehistoric periods ✦ Paleolithic age ✦ Neolithic age ✦ Metal age!2!17!2 ✦ Types of metal age ✦ Characteristics The earliest forms of prehistoric art are extremely primitive. The cupule, for instance - a mysterious type of Paleolithic cultural marking - amounts to no more than a hemispherical or cup-like scouring of the rock surface. The early sculptures known as the Venuses of Tan- Tan and Berekhat Ram, are such crude representations of humanoid shapes that some experts doubt whether they are works of art at all. It is not until the Upper Paleolithic (from roughly 40,000 BCE onwards) that anatomically modern man produces recognizable carvings and pictures. Aurignacian culture, in particular, witnesses an explosion of rock art, including the El Castillo cave paintings, the monochrome cave murals at Chauvet, the Lion Man of Hohlenstein-Stadel, the Venus of Hohle Fels, the animal carvings of the Swabian Jura, Aboriginal rock art from Australia, and much more. The later Gravettian and Magdalenian cultures gave birth to even more sophisticated versions of prehistoric art, notably the polychrome Dappled Horses of Pech-Merle and the sensational cave paintings at Lascaux and Altamira. Dating and Chronology of Prehistoric Art A number of highly sophisticated techniques - such as radiometric testing, Uranium/Thorium dating and thermoluminescence - are now available to help establish the date of ancient artifacts from the Paleolithic era and later. However, dating of ancient art is not an exact science, and results are often dependent on tests performed on the 'layer' of earth and debris in which the artifact was lying, or - in the case of rock engraving - an analysis of the content and style of the markings. (Animal drawings using regular side-profiles, for instance, are typically older than those using three-quarter profiles.) For a chronological list of dates and events associated with Stone Age culture, see: Prehistoric Art Timeline. Prehistoric Culture The longest phase of Stone Age culture - known as the Paleolithic period - is a hunter-gatherer culture which is usually divided into three parts: (1) Lower Paleolithic (2,500,000-200,000 BCE) (2) Middle Paleolithic (200,000-40,000 BCE) (3) Upper Paleolithic (40,000-10,000 BCE). After this comes a transitional phase called the Mesolithic period (sometimes known as epipaleolithic), ending with the spread of agriculture, followed by the Neolithic period (the New Stone Age) which witnessed the establishment of permanent settlements. The Stone Age ends as stone tools become superceded by the new products of bronze and iron metallurgy, and is followed by the Bronze Age and Iron Age. Paleolithic Era (c.2,500,000 - 10,000 BCE) Characterized by a Stone Age subsistence culture and the evolution of the human species from primitive australopiths via Homo erectus and Homo sapiens to anatomically modern humans. See: Paleolithic Art and Culture. Lower Paleolithic (2,500,000 - 200,000 BCE) - Olduwan culture (2,500,000 - 1,500,000 BCE) - Acheulean culture (1,650,000 - 100,000 BCE) - Clactonian culture (c.400,000 – 300,000 BCE) Middle Paleolithic (200,000 - 40,000 BCE) - Mousterian culture (300,000 - 30,000 BCE) - Levallois Flake Tool culture (dominant c.100,000 - 30,000 BCE) Upper Paleolithic (40,000-8,000 BCE) - Aurignacian culture (40,000 - 26,000 BCE) - Perigordian (Chatelperronian) culture (35,000-27,000 BCE) - Gravettian culture (26,000 - 20,000 BCE) - Solutrean culture (19,000 – 15,000 BCE) - Magdalenian culture (16,000 - 8,000 BCE) Mesolithic Era (From 10,000 BCE) This era joins the Ice Age culture of the Upper Paleolithic with the ice-free, farming culture of the Neolithic. It is characterized by more advanced hunter-gathering, fishing and rudimentary forms of cultivation. Neolithic Era (From 8,000-4,000 BCE to 2000 BCE) This era is characterized by farming, domestication of animals, settled communities and the emergence of important ancient civilizations (eg. Sumerian, Egyptian). Portable art and monumental architecture dominate. Human Evolution: From Axes to Art How did prehistoric man manage to leave behind such a rich cultural heritage of rock art? Answer: by developing a bigger and more sophisticated brain. Brain performance is directly associated with a number of "higher" functions such as language and creative expression. The consensus among most most paleontologists and paleoanthropologists, is that the human species (Homo) split away from gorillas in Africa about 8 million BCE, and from chimpanzees no later than 5 million BCE. (The discovery of a hominid skull [Sahelanthropus tchadensis] dated about 7 million years ago, may indicate an earlier divergence). The very early hominids included species like Australopithecus afarensis and Paranthropus robustus (brain capacity 350-500 cc). About 2.5 million years BCE, some humans began to make stone tools (like very crude choppers and hand-axes), and newer species like Homo habilis and Homo rudolfensis emerged (brain capacity 590-690 cc). By 2 million years BCE more species of humans appeared, such as Homo erectus (brain capacity 800-1250 cc). During the following 500,000 years, Homo erectus spread from Africa to the Middle East, Asia and Europe. Between 1.5 million BCE and 500,000 BCE, Homo erectus and other variants of humans engendered more highly developed types of Homo, known as Archaic Homo sapiens. It was a group of artists from one of these Archaic Homo sapiens species that created the Bhimbetka petroglyphs and cupules in the Auditorium cave situated at Bhimbetka in India, and at Daraki-Chattan. These cupules are the oldest art on earth. From 500,000 BCE onwards, these new types morphed into Homo sapiens, as exemplified by Neanderthal Man (from 200,000 BCE or earlier). Neanderthals had a brain size of about 1500 cc, which is actually greater than today's modern man, so clearly cranial capacity is not the only guide to intellect: internal brain architecture is important too. In all probability Neanderthal sculptors (or their contemporaries) created the famous figurines known as the Venus of Berekhat Ram and the Venus of Tan-Tan, as well as the ochre stone engravings at the Blombos cave in South Africa, and the cupules at the Dordogne rock shelter at La Ferrassie. Finally, about 100,000 BCE, "anatomically modern man" emerged from somewhere in sub-Saharan Africa, and, like his predecessors, headed north: reaching North Africa by about 70,000 BCE and becoming established in Europe no later than the beginning of the Upper Paleolithic (40,000 BCE). Painters and sculptors belonging to modern man (eg. Cro-Magnon Man, Grimaldi Man) were responsible for the glorious cave painting in France and the Iberian peninsular, as well as the miniature "venus" sculptures and the ivory carvings of the Swabian Jura, found in the caves of Vogelherd, Hohle Fels, and Hohlenstein-Stadel. Note: Traditionally, prehistoric painting and sculpture is not classified as primitivism/primitive art - a category which is usually reserved for later tribal art. Paleolithic Period (2,500,000 - 10,000 BCE) Traditionally, this period is divided into three sub-sections: the Lower Paleolithic, Middle Paleolithic and Upper Paleolithic, each marking advances (especially in tool technology) among different human cultures. In essence, Paleolithic Man lived solely by hunting and gathering, while his successors during the later Mesolithic and Neolithic times developed systems of agriculture and ultimately permanent settlements.Survival wasn't easy, not least because of numerous adverse climatic changes: on four separate occasions the northern latitudes experienced ice ages resulting insuccessive waves of freezing and thawing, and triggering migrations or widespread death. In fact, the development of human culture during Paleolithic times was repeatedly and profoundly affected by environmental factors. Paleolithic humans were food gatherers, who depended for their subsistence on hunting wild animals, fishing, and collecting berries, fruits and nuts. It wasn't until about 8,000 BCE that more secure methods of feeding (agriculture and animal domestication) were adopted. Stone Tools – The Key to Civilization, Culture and Art Stone tools were the instruments by which early Man developed and progressed.