ART HISTORY

• Art history begins with the emergence of human beings whose imagination propels an expression of the great legacies that human civilizations have witnessed
• Art is as old as history, even before the discovery of the cuneiform writing in Mesopotamia and the hieroglyphics in Egypt
• Pre-historic Period


  • Regarded as nomads, our early ancestors engaged in primitive art using stone flakes to produce fire to protect themselves
  • Art was an integral part of their lives, serving both functional and symbolic purposes
  • They joined in hunting wild animals for food and used animal skins to cover their bodies
• Pre-historic art periods


  • Old Stone Age (Paleolithic)
  • Middle Stone Age (Mesolithic)
  • New Stone Age (Neolithic)
• Pre-historic Period: Old Stone Age (Paleolithic)


  • Began roughly around 2.5 to 3 million years ago and lasted until about 8,000 BCE
  • Marked by the rise of Homo sapiens and their ever-developing ability to create tools and weapons
  • There was a lot more ice, and the ocean shoreline was far different than it is now
  • Humans were strictly hunter-gatherers, constantly on the move in search of food
  • Art from this period is known for its two main forms: small sculptures and monumental paintings, incised designs, and reliefs on the walls of caves
• Portable art


  Necessarily small (in order to be portable) and consisted of either figurines or decorated objects, carved (from stone, bone, or antler) or modeled with clay, most of which was figurative
• Stationary art


  Cave paintings in western Europe, created during the Paleolithic period
• Paints


  Manufactured from combinations of minerals, ochres, burnt bone meal, and charcoal mixed into mediums of water, blood, animal fats, and tree saps
• Aurochs, horses, and deer cave paintings from the Lascaux caves


  • The combined effort of many generations, usually estimated at around 17,000 years old
• Paleolithic art


  • Concerned itself with either food (hunting scenes, animal carvings) or fertility (Venus figurines)
  • Predominant theme was animals
  • Humans are either completely absent or stick figures
• Pre-historic Period: Middle Stone Age (Mesolithic)


  • Dated approximately from 10,000 BCE to 8,000 BCE
  • Humans developed cave paintings, engravings, and ceramics to reflect their daily lives
  • They were nomadic and built temporary houses
  • Wood, bone, and flint were the materials of their tools
  • They fished using dugout canoes
• Mesolithic art


  • Reflected the change to a warmer climate and adaptation to a relatively sedentary lifestyle, population size, and consumption of plants
  • Often represented by rock paintings or petroglyphs, displaying scenes from everyday life, such as hunting and fishing
  • Mesolithic tools were generally composite devices manufactured with small chipped stone tools called microliths and retouched bladelets
• Pre-historic Period: New Stone Age (Neolithic)


  • Occurred approximately around 10,000 BCE to 3,000 BCE
  • Humans began to settle into agrarian societies, which left them enough spare time to explore some key concepts of civilization—namely, religion, measurement, the rudiments of architecture, and writing and art
• Types of Neolithic art


  • Weaving
  • Architecture
  • Megaliths
  • Pictographs
  • Statuary
  • Painting
  • Pottery
• Weaving


  Creating textiles by interlacing two distinct sets of yarns or threads at right angles, using plant fibers
• Megaliths


  Large stone structures, such as Stonehenge, built during the Neolithic period
• Pictographs


  Images, signs, or symbols created to express some idea or information, used by many different cultures throughout history, including the ancient Egyptians, Chinese, and Native Americans
• Neolithic pictographs


  Prehistoric abstract signs (aviforms, circles, claviforms, cordiforms, quadrangles, tectiforms, triangles, and the like) which experts believe functioned as pictographs or pictograms, expressing some simple message
• Statuary, Painting, and Pottery saw many refinements during the Neolithic era
• Egyptian art is known for its architectural monuments, sculptures, paintings, and applied crafts produced mainly during the dynastic periods of the first three millennia BCE in the Nile valley regions of Egypt and Nubia