week 11/12

http://www.bbc.co.uk/sn/tvradio/programmes/howart/images/logo3.jpg

Movie - HOW ART MADE THE WORLD

"How do the images we surround ourselves with today come from a world that is thousands of years old?"

Over time artists have been obsessed with the human form. Throughout history there is a variety of artworks incorporating the human form, all with one thing in common; not one is realistic. Scientists believe it has something to do with the inner workings of our brain;

"Our brain is hard-wired to focus upon parts of objects with pleasing associations."

Exaggerated statues like the Venus of Willendorf reveal the fixation that artists over the years have had with accentuating certain parts of the body that appeal to them, an exaggerated beauty. The makers of the Venus lived in a harsh ice-age environment, therefore the tiny statue has great significance for their time and reality, they exaggerated what was important to them. (fatness and fertility)

http://www.utexas.edu/courses/classicalarch/images1/willendorf-large.jpg

Ancient Egyptians created a stylised human figure based on the grid work of their wall art, while the Greeks created heroic statues almost to a naked perfection, yet still unrealistic.

As a race, human beings have always been obsessed with fantasy and dreams of perfection, this links us all with our ancient ancestors and explains our "more human than human" images, statues and designs of the human body.

In our everyday life we see many lines and shapes that we interpret as symbols, the question is raised how one could ever recognise an image if one has never seen one before? What archeologists have called the 'creative explosion' created this movement into what we rely on hugely today, that is symbols that we recognise as representations for certain things.

http://www.collegenews.org/Images/Altamira-Cave.jpg

http://blogs.guardian.co.uk/art/rockart460.jpg

The first prehistoric paintings ever to be discovered were in a cave in the hillside of Altamira, in Spain and give an insight into why we felt it necessary to make shapes of what we saw in reality. Most prehistoric cave paintings were of animals and consisted of black or red circles and strokes, searching over continents and strangely enough this was the same. It was discovered that the paintings inside the caves away from any admiration were painted because of a deep trance that the people would go into. They were not just of the physical world but of a spiritual world that they experienced in this trance. These hallucination were so strong and inspiring and lead them to painting them onto the cave walls. The spots and lines were due to the lack of light in the caves, the altered state of consciousness made the brain produce this pattern. They felt compelled to paint their visions and from this we can live our lives highly relying on symbols for direction and classification.

http://www.safetysignsupplies.co.uk/images/product_imgs/full/1024_1_1_s.gif

http://www.freefoto.com/images/41/04/41_04_97---Give-Way-Roundabout-Road-Sign_web.jpg

http://www.pbs.org/howartmadetheworld/episodes/human/