Civilisations
I Genesis In Art
Thousands of years ago, one of our distant ancestors traced his outline of his hand on a cave wall. The urge to make things beyond the demands of shelter or sustenance pushed us to build something greater and more lasting than ourselves. All around the world, objects, images, and buildings, that startle us out of daily routine lives, are forming what it feels to be human and to live richly and fully engaged with the world around us, to create civilisations and communities, to build civilisations.
We are going to see how those miracles opened our eyes, moved our emotions.
Art is history!!!
It records the rise and fall of empires, changes to the world around us, trade routes that brought to us new colour's, and new ideas from across the globe. Through art, we have created ideals of harmony, documented the world as it is, and even escaped everyday reality altogether. And thought our lives are short, art can allow us a glimps of something more eternal.
Art is the foundation to civilisation, an expression of humanity.
In Palmyra, the then 81 years old retired curator was be-headed by ISIS by refusing to unveil the hidden place of some historical treasures. He is proclaimed as the "protector of civilisation"!!!
See in the items in museums, we think their relics remain to us. Yet, these symbols of civilisations can be reduced to rubbles in minutes.
But if the record of human history is filled with the rage to destroy, it's also marked by the opposite instinct--our innate need to explore, to grow, the create.
It all began in Africa, more than 200,000 years ago.
Along the cave coast, a shell was found. It had manmade pigment in It. It might be used to decorate body, paint, or sunblock.
A stone plate, decorated by diamond Patten around it.
Animals have their own language; they can make tools also. But it's the art that makes us distinctively!!!
This "cognitive revolution" can be regarded as the first step towards civilisation.
The next step can be found in Northern Spain.
In those caves dating back to 300,000 years ago, red dots, red cycles were on the walls. These red thing were not made by brushes or strokes. They were made by colour swerled in the mouth with saliva and blow to the block.
A hand shape. In an instant, vast millennia of time just collapse, you are in the midst of fellow humans. Their hands were doing what hands do, hailing us from 37000 years distant. But this long distance greeting, somehow, makes us bond with the makersof this. Because they established a presence that is palpable alive.
Those hand shapes are also found on the other lands of countries like Indonesia.
We have the power to repressant and recreate.
In another cave, there are full of life copies of animals. Such marvels of suddenly expended human mind.
Picasso, who self-acclaims the modern primitive, regarded this as the fountain head of creativity. He drawed several pieces of bull, from vivid life figure to his own enormous styles of bulls, which shows the admiration of the genius in caves and the fact that artists' hand never changed.
Apart from paintings on the wall, there are music instruments,like flutes, something spinning overhead to produce sort of sound, found in those caves. This shows these were the places where people came for sacred purpose which can be compared to temples, churches.
But the only thing absent in those caves is the human figure.
South Africa is a piece of land filled with Hunter gathers' past.
While, in Europe, a little female bust, "La Dame re Brassempouy", found in cave southwest Francedatingback to 25,000 years ago, is the deliberate representation of beauty.
Such a tiny female bust or head required fine dexture skills.
The dawn of idea of beauty!!!
Slow growth civilisation demanded at first on practicalities, the domestication of cereal crops and irrigation techniques which began at around 10,000 years ago in Jordan.
Vessels found shows a city was found in 7000 years ago.
5000 years ago, artists created art(the images of Kings, Queens, animals, soldiers, heros, Gods) to pursue beauty and power.
In ancient Egypt, there were golden art to honour the Dead, and those large scale buildings to show power.
2000 BCE, a sea-faring civilisation called the Minoans emerged and flourished, and laid he foundation and inspiration for western modern art.
In this civilisation, "how to be neighbouring" was the political issue.
Bull is the symbol of political power.
1627BCE, across the Aegean sea, Santorini was burned to ash by a massive volcanic eruption, which inspires the myth of Atlantis.
One civilisation can seed another.
In 2015, archaeologists found massive articles and items of Maisini culture. 1500 items burried with warriors.
Through contact and trade, Minoan culture passed on to the mainland of Greece. This bronze age warrior's culture inspired 《Illiad》,《Odysseus》.
Petra was a city, in desert, carved on walls, to trade, pleasure, and beauty.
The city was ruled by Nabataens, who, the nomadic people, arrived in 16the 4th century BCE.
The element to make this city flourish was the incense (for the ceremony and rituals). This commodity had to traveled through vast desert to make the trade between Africa and Persia possible. The Nabataens were the intermedia. They almost played the monopoly. So the city, of 30,000 population coming from all over the nearby land, Jews, Persians, Greeks, etc, was a cosmopolitan, a garden city. The villas outside the city was decorated colourful mosaic, and other fancy things.
The year 106, it was absorbed into Roman rule. Before the muslin invasion, the earthquacks had turned it into a land fill more than a dry empty ruin.
Art is a time machine.
The discovery in 1985 in SiChuan China showed the SanXinDui culture was ther 3000 years ago.
It's thought that Chinese culture was nurished along the Yellow River. But this ancient culture was hundreds miles away from the river.
Those bronze faces and masks have huge ears and eyes, as if they could see and hear Gods.
Turn to Mexico, the Maya culture there is well-known by its art, architecture, astronomy, and constant warfare.
Calakmul, an ancient city bear its name on "the kingdom of snakes"!!! It was a Mmaya city uninhabited for 1000 years, and rediscovered in 1931.
All civilisations want what they can not have--to conquest of time!!! Thus, they built bigger and higher and granderas they built their way out of mortality. But those temples, tombs, markets, were all abandoned. Mother nature came in covering with vegetation. Then, civilisation dies the death of deaths--invisibility.
Illustrations can be found all over the world. The need to create public spaces and artworks that reinforce ourselves of shared identity and kinship. They also make it clear who rules who by making architecture that reinforces hierarchy.
Most Maya items are housed in museum.
The Maya writing system is word pictures. Maya people shared common language but no political unity. So they often made shifting alliance and went through constant wars.
Copan, a place troubling of blood sacrifice.
The layer cake shaped monument has its stairway right up towards the top. On its way up, here were 16 Kings/rulers imposed their own stamp on it.
Great art comes at a cost.
Due to drainage, deforestation, and social unstability, plus out of touch of the rulers who were more obsessed with monuments to their own greatness and to the God than the well-being of their subjects. Maya culture collapsed.
Those monumental buildings were descended on Kings that followed, by they were just like a protective shroud.
Beneath the forest canopy, there was a civilisation. Were the summits of the platform pyramids, but only the wheeling birds and the howler monkeys scrambling to the tops of trees would have seen that.
II Human Form
All civilisations rise and fall.
The image of human body is the earliest and most enduring art forms. Our compulsion to create images of ourselves is the most infinite and defining statement on who we think we are.
The body is he most wonderful vehicle for actually expressing our feelings and thoughts about the world back to it.
Not just simple representations of of human form to be admired. The art of the body can question our relationship to each other, project worldly power, even be recruited to fight for us in death.
Sculpture represents the deepest knowledge about what civilisation is.
South Mexico, beneath the jungle which has been harvestly seeded 3000 years ago, lies he remains of a vanished civilisation. One of the earliest to produce sculpted images of human form. A civilisation is so unexpected, proto-culture of Meso-America--the Olmecs.
1862, the first colossal stone head was found there. It's about at least 19 tons. It was transported from 65 miles only by manpower.
Olmecs art is about images after images. They were obsessed by figures.
Apart from those colossal stone heads, there are little figurines in jade.
The massage we get from these is depended on the way we have been taught to look at it.
How different eyes behold different things!!!
In Egypt, the cracked, sand-erosioned Memnon statues could sing century ago due to the wind going through the cracked rock.
How we look changes what we see!!!
In ancient Greece, Phrosiklea, the female state's name meaning "aware of her fame", is famous not for her pank-like moulding plastising figure, not her individualized hand gestures, but for her eyes that are looking straight ahead.
Soon there was the art revolution in Greece.
There were 2000 years old portraited coffins. Hesse coffins were placed in the houses, were involved in people's daily life.
200 BCE, China got its first Emperor who United China and provided social harmony and stability, in terms of currency, language, and other things. But he was an ego maniac who ordered the casting of thousands of hundreds of life like warriors(actually, they are bigger than life size) to confront death with the human form and protect him in the life beyond. A world mirrored the world h3 was left behind.
The terra cotta warriors was discovered in 1974 in ShaanXi province. The individuality of the each and every one of them might strikes viewers. But looking closer, their heads were made independently of the body. Because Confuesis ideology banned human sacrifice. Emperor Qing used fake ones. Anyway, it's the sheer dramatic statement of power. Those warriors are more than passive figurines, they are the personification of power.
Egypt again.
There is a temple complex. The images of power are everywhere. Most of them are of Ramsesses II who asserted his power on these images. He even usurped those predecessors' and put his own name on them. The size mattered so that people then could get the massage that it intended to be.
This kind of image or iconography impulse goes through ages, across the cultures!
1998, "Angel of the North" was erected to mark the industrial heritage of North part of England.
Two key subjects in this kind of human form: the body and the space.
The fascination of body beautiful roots in western culture. No other culture is more obsessed with the body than Greek art. It's not about landscape, not about still life, but the drawings, paintings, and stratum about human being.
Started in 600 BEC, in the city of Athens artists painted human figures on ceramics as vases, cups. The pictures on those utensils depicts man were participating so-called all male symposium and what Athenian wives did--mainly making babies and wool.
In 5th century, Kritios Boy symbolizes the transformation of Greek sculpture. The rigid figure with fixed gaze gave way to daring new experiment in human form. It embodies the interior life within. It's no longer just a body organism, but a soul that can be into your world and be part of your world. Through the movement, the stands, one can psychologize it.
A monumental step made Greeks so proud. And the pride was not created in vacuum.
With a sense of superiority, born out of defeating enemies, many times greater than themselves, Greek sculptors pursued the perfectly human form as the embodiment of harmony and virtue.
They not only invented nude statues, but also phylosophy, theatre (mostly tragedy) and advanced mathematics. A culture very interested in the idea of harmony.
So Greek temples are proportioned in order to reveal the harmony of the cosmos. And of cause, ideal proportioned human body reflects the harmony of the cosmos.
Such culture heritage was taken up by Romans.
"The boxer at rest"
The intriguing point is the realism of how it's been depicted.
Such "living statues" cast a long shadow of Greek art an civilisation. When the Roman Empire fall and collapsed, this kind of art form was revived again and again all over the world. Its influence, through silk road, on Buddha statue; Then, it got into Afghanistan and left it's touch on early Islam art; in Europe, this paragon of beautiful body was revived many times.
The Apollo of Belvedere, built around 300 BCE, survived through warfare and gains its unparalleled fame.
Such Greco-Roman style art form, praised in Wilnkelman's book almost prevailed all over the world--in British, in British colonized India, etc. It had become the expression of political power.
Back to Mexico, 1964, it was in the midst of rediscovering of its own culture. Many museums were built.
The Olmec Westler was, in regards of its different type of basalt/rock and the minor size, analysed as the fake one. Its poise, pose, and proportion reminded the Greco-Roman style.
Aphadidy, the female Greek sculpture was regarded as the milestone of classical art at her time, because a) she was the first nude statue, b) voyeur and erotic way she rose. Is her hand just modestly trying to cover her up, or it's just a tease?
The cult of youth and beauty become even more powerful today!!!
III Landscapes
Civilisation is tied to landscape. Landscapes help defining who we are and where we call home. Yet, landscape art has not always depicted the way world really is. It's often a vision of what could like it to be. A fantasy of utopia or a respite from a rapidly changing world. They can represent our shared values and, sometimes, it can even allow us a glimpse of something transcendent.
1927, Ansel Adam, a young photographer was exploring the Yosemite in California. He had only two glass plates left. Thus, one of the most great landscape painting was born.
《Monolith》, the half face of a half stone cliff.
Adam irradiated with luminous magisty, taller than the highest skyscraper, more powerful than the mightiest business cooperation.
Landscapes was the iconic images of American West in he 1950s.
But the earliest version was created in China a thousand years ago.
During the 10th century, states were each battling for dominance. It was a wsr-torn period in China.
Till 960 BCE, Song Dynasty reestablished order.
《A solitary temple amid clearing peaks》by LiCheng. A document that attests to a profound alteration in human sensibility.
Landscape painting with brush and ink. A true and absolute sign of what civilisation is.
Before the 11th century, the landscape was in the painting, while after it, the landscape was the main subject and had it's phylosophic outlook to promoting order and it rises above royal propaganda.
Our approach to it ascends to a higher level. LiCheng changed the wash of the ink. It's lighter, finer, more ethereal. It suggests deep distance about depth of our response as well as physical depths. What's nature? What lies beyond surface apprearance? What truly moves the universe? And how, above all, does the dialogue between flowing water and the adamant face of the eroded rock brings us harmony, happiness and peace.
Licheng's painting depicts a harmonous universe in which every one of us, no matter how humble, how rich, has his role. This is echoing the energy of the nature "Qi" which balances the universe.
In late 11th century, landscape painting put deep roots in China. It was taught in schools. Painting was a part of being Chinese, being civilised.
During this period, while Europe was in its dark age, China had done trading in paper money.
A hand scroll painted by SuShi, a renaissance man and a good chef. Hand scroll is supposed to be viewed intimately just between two people. So it's supposed to be open in he distance between of two hands, one hand rolls in one inch, the other hand rolls out one inch. It's like going through a movie.
In Islamic world, people built heavenly paradise on earth according to what paradise is depicted in Koran: a place sit on hills with water, trees, patogons.
Another art form is the carpet.
It's the art on the floor. It provides both luxurious decoration and protection from the cold nights in desert.
Patten (water, sky, flower, animals) is important in Islamic culture. Every carpet I one of its kind. The 17th century was the golden age of carpet. It's not intended to hold a mirror up to nature. It reflects what we value the most in it, the symbolic idea of what we would appreciate as being best in heaven.
Islam and Christain both believe the garden of Eden.
But Renaissance humanism took a different attitude to the serpent of temptation.
Villa Barbro was built to be the perfect combination of library, farm house, art gallery, and salon. A place of harmony, grace, and pleasure where is the forever summer and where Renaissance ideas of culture and sophistication could meet the earthy pleasures of the country.
What makes it special is the sense of pleasure, a place of intellectual wit and wisdom.
But the plague and riots turned its back on arcadian fantasies of self-indulgent aristocrats. And this teasing fun house was on the verge of abandoned.
Going North, the German landscape art is the physical embodiment of the sense of place.
Albrecht Altedorfor, who devoted his most carrier painting to religious things, produced the first landscape painting. He did it as if the painting flows right in front of the brain to his hand. Nature is the story here.
The conflicts between Catholics and prostatants were very intense. So German sensed they should shared history and identity.
The painting sidestepped the main conflict, and it's a disguised painting. The tree and its extended branches can be incarnated as the crucified Jesus.
It's small scale and portable thing which means it can be carried around. A new kind of art.
In the early 15th century, printing, eching and woodcut were emerged.
People, like Altedorfor, seized this opportunity to unite a devided country with the power of landscapes.
This can be echoed by the Berlin wall in the late 20th century. The wall became a canvas , a site of dialogue and artistic expression.
Peter Bruegel, a Finnish artist. He travelled through Alps into Italy to depict the people there and their life.
《The hunters in the snow》1506.
His painting shows the human condition and our special little place within it.
In 17th century Holland.
People there were responsible for their land. They were physically involved. They made their home land. So their paintings show their national identity.
Ruisdal's Windmill in 1670.
This impulse was taken by British artists who launched a movement of "Romanticism" in the industrialization age.
Turner.
For him, the landscapes became a metaphor to show the Europe that had been ravaged by Napolean's conquests. A place individuals are shown at the mercy of vast overwhelming forces, a sense of awe and terror, the quality of "Sumlime"!!!
His sublime sense of titanic forces shaping human destiny eventually crossed the Atlantic with other British born artists.
Thomas Cole, who painted the America wild.
At that time, Rome was regarded as the centre of art; Swizland had the highest mountains. While the paintings these artists produced made people be so proud of their own land. Americans had the great natural wonders.
Cole's technique is he luminism which highlightens the light effects. The Hudson River School.
This kind of technique leads us back to the Yosemite where the first landscape photo was born to tell photograph is the true art.
1960, Adam's 《This is the American earth》. It's a kind of photo preaching.
1977, his photo was chosen to enclosed in the time capsule carried out into the space by spacecraft.
In Morden time, Misrach chooses those abandoned things as his subjects of photograph.
The space photo Blue Dot shows us the cosmic sublime:"We all move in the fringe of eternity!!!"
IV God and Art
Scince ancient times, arts has been used to express our deepest spiritual longings. It has given us breathtaking masterpieces, enchanting some with a vision one true God, and others with deeply personal revelation about the Devine spirit within them. Some faith see arts as a challenge to God's primacy over creation; others as a celebration and manifestation of a higher calling. The search for spiritual meaning through art, whether in its creation or it's experience, continues to move, captivate, and enthrall humanity.
In northern Spain, deep beneath the rocky peeks lies maybe the oldest sacred places.
In those prehistoric caves, there are art on those walls, from red dots, hand shapes, geometrical pattens to prehistoric animals painted 40,000 years ago.
It's a place that help bring people together.
Art is the civilisation rests on sharing feelings and thoughts.
The little statue of a Lion Man crafted 35,000 years ago and found in a cave in Southern Germany symbolizes the spiritual connection to the God. The one who did it must be a real artist who was set free by his community to do such time-consuming task.
The half man half animal being is the oldest imaginary being. Such figures also can be found in other places.
This shows there was the emerging culture of exchange idea and share of ideology.
In the agriculture society, the connection between art and death can be found everywhere.
During that time, art is helping to preserve both ancestors and soul after death. Examples: the stonehenge, mound on hill, etc.
The Land was the giant canvas for people to express relationship with the Devine world beyond.
Aeroplics of Athens. The purpose of this vast land and those temples on it is religion. 2500 years ago, this was a feast for the imagination. Those Devine figures might walk there, religious offerings, and dainty temples.
In the Cambodia jungle, an ancient temple--AngkorWat is still in use today. Every twice a year, at the spring equinox, in this brief moment in time, the main tower lines perfectly with the dawn sun.
AngkorWat is a monument to Hindu Saints and faith. Five scoring towers are decorated with carved icons and images. Inside is he intrictly carved story of God and the parallel King.
Yet, this temple was built to proclaim the certainty of Hindu faith, this colossal artistic monument soon became a Buddhist shrine.
It's not for public spectacle, but for silence and solitude, the Ajava Cave, built in 200 BEC, has the earliest images of Buddha.
Buddhism makes you follow your feelings, be true to yourself, be clean to your mind.
Inside the cave, there is mural of incarnation of Buddha. The mural was done deliberately obscure.
Actually, it's the Jakata Tales. It has no start and no end. It's massage is to appreciate viewers to step out from everyday life, to go through the darkness.
The cave had been home to monks for nearly 800 years.
At the other side of the world, another civilisation was harnessing the religion for a different reason.
Italy was bewildered by a philosophical puzzle: If Jesus was born as a man, how can he be a God?"
In a pagan Roman church, Biblical figures are illustrated in glittering golden mosaic.
The answer is the figures of Jesus himself.
In apex: the beardless, young Jesus, the son of God;
At the centre of the ceiling: the lamb of God, Jesus sacrificed himself on behalf of humanity;
At the top of entrance arch: the old, bearded Jesus.
So, one should never doubt that He and God are one in the same being!
In the early middle ages, due to the downfall of the West Rome Empire, a new religious force emerged--the Islam.
Those ancient villa-dwelling Romans didn't believe in God. They were spiritually starved.
So the Christain's relation to art had changed. The Power Of art is a challenge to his authority.
In the 7th century, Islam transferred the map.
In Estanbul, a new modern mosque was just finished in 2012. It's just a space where people coming together pray for peace.
The simple design is filled with motives from very foundation Islam. A religion in someway artless!!!
《Koran》
Around it, there was a debate: the Greek side thought it was created to remember your Lord much; the more conserved side thought it is the word of God.
To beautify the Devine words through pan, Calligraphy is highlightened to express Koran. This religious art of ornate written word gives Islam the vintage that set itself from other rival religions.
The Blue Mosque, the last, lavish, grand mosque finished in 1616 by Ottoman Empire whose purpose was to divert public attention, during the period of suffering defeats, that things were not going so badly and the idea that Islam was still grand.
The interior decoration is the Koran words. It's as if a great library of Islam script printed on the wall all around. It has the difficulty in seperating the words and the image of God. Even those could read may be obscured by the ornamation of the words. The writing is equal to the image of God.
The Kemican Hebrew Bible, 1476. A book danced with innovative and vivid images of animals.
It's the testment to Spanish history, a time when Muslin, Jewish, Christain came together in a rich and fertile way.
It's profane in the 15th century.
The last Morish kingdom in the Iberian Peninsula, Granada, surrendered to Catholic Spanish in 1492, the same year Columbus voyaged to a new world.
They were searching gold and glory God.
In Mexico, they found both.
Spanish conquest in America established the greatest country in he world. But hundreds of thousands people were under its sway.
With it comes a renewed sense of the Catholic faith power, a vision captures the Baroque art of counter reformation.
The conquestor wanted to erase and eradicate all. But some glimmer of the past remained.
The Day of the Dead.
Local people create shrine for the deceased. Evangelistic supported by new converts in the new world incorporated it in the All Saints Day.
One common thing in both of them is the shedding of blood to redeem and renew the world. But Aztec culture shed blood from people, Christain gives blood for people.
The cult of Virgin Mary, a substitute Christain image to fight against Prostitantism in 17th century.
In Seveillion, for 300 years, the statue of virgin Mary has been lamenting the death of her son.
In the marching, the atmosphere is charged with emotion.
Here comes the question: What are the worshipers worshipping???
Are they worshipping the idea of Virgin Mary or the statue itself?
This question of idolatry is all religions faced.
Is it the faith in Christain or the veneration of ritual?
In India, effigies in strew and mud permeate everyday life.
The first temple inDali was built in 1192. It's 72.8m tall and is the tallest of its kind in the world.
It's decorated with Hindu Gods and images. But why are thay all de-faced or rip up side down?
Because it's a mosque reshaped by the invading Muslin army.
One thing in common in those iconoclasts is: they come along and say: we have the purer faith than the one current one being practiced.
So, maybe, when strip all these images, when get rid of all these statues, you just worship the object not the Devine!!!
10 years after the first parade in Spain, in Puritan England, the Ely Cathedral, which was shattered in 16th and 17th century, with its neogothic style, was restored by the Victorians.
But these minus heads and arms are the artful narrative of religious conflicts!
New art form can be found in St. Paul Cathedral.
The video art of 《The Maytors》 emphasizes the togetherness and shareness.
And later the 《Mary》, which activates the Pieta of Michelangelo's master piece.
While other art forms capture only the static image, frozen linear time, their work fragments, extends, and colleges images in all sorts of different timelines. The effect bears poralles of spiritual art of Buddhist caves of Ajanta, whose confused images force viewers to find their own enlightenment!!!
V Renaissance
In the 15th and 16th century, Dome dominated the architecture style. You could see them almost everywhere. There were constellations of them. They were the work of model.
Humanity had become it's centre of the universe.
Artists and architects began to emulate the achievements of classical past. This culture phenomenon, the Renaissance, was more exclusive Italian than exclusive European.
But if we want to feel the pulse of one of the great moments, the surge of inventiveness, when civilisation bounded forward, we need to look mush further than that--the East.
Through the centuries followed, the outpouring of creativity would flow both ways: the Islamic East and the Christain West.
Roles of the artists, both ends of these changes, would be changed.
In 1550, Michelangelo in Rome and Mimar in India were both intended to outdo the greatest Dome of the Hegia Sophia-- the God of the world then.
Hegia Sophia was built in 537 AD. It was the greatest achievement. So great that, when Ottoman conquered the Istanbul in 1453, he, instead of demolished it, decided to converted it into a mosque.
However, that conversion was superficial. The newly crowned King of India turned the table.
Ironically, Sinan, the military engineer, the master, was born as a Christain. His travels contributed a lot to his work.
He was given the task to build a mosque to eclipse Sophia--the paradigm of architecture.
The dome he built is magnificent. When you get in, the lit space opens itself as if the dome opens itself.
Meanwhile, in Rome. The rebuilding of St. Peter's was undergoing as well.
Built in the 4th century, the membership of the Rome church, St.Peter's had fellen apart.
Renaissance means rebirth, which also means what had been reborn was classical antiquity or to rebuild the classical past.
Donato Bramanto, inspired by Roman pagan temple ruins, built a miniature site first. It's a freestanding shrine to St. Peter's at where St.Peter was crucified upside down. But he died before the magnified one started.
The job was succeeded by Michelangelo whose fame rest on his paintings and sculptures.
And he did it. It's the tallest, with the height of 136m, and greatest Dome on earth. It has the seamless union of the dome and the columns. It's a Christain temple flooded with light.
Michelangelo, throughout his life, valued those so-called "ars"--the artisans who had hand-on skills.
In 1552, he held a lavish party for his ars.
It's more emphasized on workpieces in midevial times, but during Renaissance period, artists were regarded as superman.
A metalworker, a goldsmith, put that to another level.
Cellini wanted to be talked about in the same breath as the man he both revered and envied--Michelangelo.
There is a bronze statue named Judith commitioned by Medici family in 1464 in Florence. A female warrior. While, the then government overthrew the Medici family. A century later, the Medici family was back and they wanted a male version.
Perseus was the male warrior Cellini wanted to cast. And he wanted to cast the body in one piece, instead of following the traditional way of casting each part and putting them together.
But he was deathly ill by a fever, and he was sure he were to die.
And there was the storm. Pouring rain and wind. The cover of the furnace was exploded. Temperature of the Milton bronze started to lower. The premature coagulation of the alloy caused the caking.
By informed this, he jumped off the deathbed, grab everything in pewter as he could, throw them into the furnace. His deep knowledge of alchemy and metallurgy paid off. Soon, the melting pewter transform the alloy into fluid one once again.
In his own words, "I revived a corpse!!!"
The statue Perseus, holding Medusa's head, captured the hot moment of his triumph. The impute gesture.
And the Medusa stares directly at Michelangelo's cold hard stone David!!!
Among them, the Medusa's head in glass.
In Asia, the art of craft produced much richer sets of art piece.
The fusion of art and architecture was aimed to create something new.
The Akbar of the Moghul dynasty built a city made it his capital. There were Indon temples with Persian roofs.
In terms of paintings, those miniatures are the portles into another world. A combination of historical and mythological elements. The application of using shading and local colours.
His son, Jahanjar, born in that secure vast kingdom, brought art to its new height of beauty and elegance. He got rid of some less artists. But still out-put more paintings and books. The painting is like one-hair brush anatomy.
In a picture, he was sitting upon a hour-glass throne. Beneath him, the English King in shabby clothing. Two European angels writing inscription as May the King live thousands of years. And the painter himself holding a painting as the reward and receiving honour.
With the cosmopolitan awearness of the world, he wanted to make sure this the and his empire is superior to other ones.
Another example: Jahanjar commissioned a wall of Persian mosaic. 17m×450m. On it, there are Chinese dragons and European angels.
In Europe then, Rome was flourishing. Art taste required new demand--the vividness.
Caravaggio, a bad boy who act like devil, but painted like angel.
He remodelling the reality to its limit. He broke through the fourth wall I the name of making the Christain message true, physically true.
In the painting 《St. Mary》, we don't get remote, heavenly apparition that's granted to us by he intercession of some priests. No, we're physically in the company of Madonna and childjust as much as if we are walking down the street and look around and there they are, standing in a doorway.
Atemichi. A female painter.
She was raped by her tutor. But she carried on her painting, working in many different places, Rome, Napole, England, etc.
Here was a common allagory of female painter: black hair, gold chain around the neck, holding a brush and plate in the hand, and the bandage around the mouth.
In her painting, she refused to shut her mouth. This is, also, he defence of the sovereign of painting.
Velasquez
He defied the art in his famous 《Las Meninas 》,which is a huge brain teaser. It's mirrors within mirrors within mirrors.
The point is who controls the way we look.
In Holland, great freedom allowed artists went further to protect or to provoke civic pride.
Rembrandt's 《Night Watch》
A picture moves out of two dymentions. Everybody in it is in motion, marching from the pitch dark into the brilliant front space. It even has soundtrack, the gun shooting, the dog barking. As if the Armstadem was not only beating drum, but also beating chest and saying: watch out, England, we can be free, we can be republican!!!
Well, thanks to trading, Holland imported many Indian Moghul paintings.
In the early 1630s, Rembrandt painted his self portrait in eastern dressing; in 1650s, he copied some Moghul pictures.
The tide of artistic inspiration flew from East fo West, the links which had been forged during the time of Michelangelo and Cellini had, a few generations later, resulted in a shared visual culture.
The new height of art's perfection was demonstrated by the Indian tomb.
But there was another one built ten years earlier designed by a woman revealed the real perfection--the colourful inside painting as if there was he eternal spring time.
Many critics were and still are thinking the Eastern art is just a culture ornament, a decorative one; the Western one is the real one, the magnificent one.
While the Western one had to re-pick it's glorious past, the Eastern one never lost the touch of its ancient past.
VI Human Encounters
In the 15th century, thanks to the European sellers started a new age of exploration, cultures previously vast oceans apart met for the first time.
This period was labeled. Before, it became the story of conquest, plunder, and empire, but forgot it was the era of discovery. It's the golden age of curiosity, mutual respect and the exchange of goods and ideas were recorded in the art of countless human encounters.
Bein Bronzes, used to decorate the royal palace in Africa in the 19th century is Africa's the first encounter with other civilizations.
Then, Africa was ruled by Obec. Nearly only the bronze casting/artifact skills remained. The skill, learnt from other West Afican countries around 10th century, goes down generation to generation. The material was from somewhere across the Sahara desert.
Among those exploring sailors, the Portuguese were the famous ones.
African people traded with Portuguese on food, slaves, and art. Lisbon was the vital port.
《King' s Fountain》depicts an trading Empire. Then, almost one in ten people in Lisbon were African people. They were infiltrated into almost every vibe of city. In the picture, black knight, white and black slaves. This was the first sign of Globalization, first world trade networks.
The Spanish conquest.
The Aztac culture left us their calendar, their writing, their Jewry.
When the Aztac chief met his Spanish counterpart, he gave him a gift--a double-headed snake covered in the shimmering feathers. The chief thought him as the returning God.
But he was wrong. Aztac culture was swiftly, brutally conquered or melted down to fill the appetite of Spain.
In the name of "Down with the devil worshipping culture of human sacrifice!" Temples and statues toppled and burned. On their ruins, churches were raised.
But, the Aztac culture did not vanish at all.
In fact, the very people tasked with the erasing it from history were the ones who inadvertently preserved it.
Motivated both by the combination of curiosity and the fear of being deceived by their new converts, Christain prayers commissioned Aztac people to create book called"Cotex"! The Cotex contains the details of Aztac life.
The city Maxico became Catholic.
Actually, it's the "Christ's blood is shared for the salvation of all!!!" It observed indigenous beliefs into Christain ritual.
Spain transformed not only materially but also spiritually by a new art form--Spanish Broque art.
Aztac culture and Broque art are both about blood. So, it's a visceral, passionate, ecstatic kind of faith which produces some visceral power of art.
《The Disrobing Of Christ》
Different from Aztac culture. Japan then was a wealthy, formidable power.
On the Namban Screens, one can see different peoples, and animals. There was a global circus then. The arrival of the Western people got a stir among Japanese. They could not agree on something like Western hygen standards, and table manners.
The then ruler called Shogun who knew the story of Aztac rejected western culture. Instead, he reinforced the local culture by form the soldiers famous for their strict self-discipline, and Zen idealology, and tea ceremony, etc. All these are featuring in calm, self-control, respect.
In that case, Dutch traders recognized the Shogun as the master, and paid tribute to him and swore aligence.
While there was only one place where Portuguese and European traders could live. The island called Dejima, with only one bridge connection it to he mainland. For the Japanese part, this was the only lifeline to the outside world.
They traded something like "Dutch glass" and other novelty items, which transferred and transformed Japan.
《Cracked Ice》, painted on paper, framed as screens. Such subtle, minimal thing. A ephemaral culture synthesis. The effect is three dimension space (in Europe,they use the vanishing point).
17th century Holland.
A golden age for Holland. Amsterdam wss filled with items from China, Japan, and slaves from Africa. And the first art market was born there.
A new type of realism.
Jar Vermear
He captured the simple fleeting moment and everyday life. But he also sees the details. In his paintings, items like porcelain from China, human figure wearing Japanese robe, etc. They are the infusion with globalization of the Dutch golden age.
Maria Sibylla
A German entomologist explained insects' life cycles and painted them in water colour (because authority didn't allow women to paint by oil.)
1699, aged 52, she went to Soouth Africa for a two-year expidition. During that time, she produced lots of scientific illustration books on insects.
India
Started in mid 17th century, British people did trade with Indians, sent army there, set private cooperation there.
At the beginning, they could only do trading at the borders.
A painting done in 1796 depicted a scene of cock fight which embedded a pun: the British figure was impotent known by all, and he was engaged in the cock fight.
150 years later, one descendent of William Fraser devotes herself to painting miniature painting of abstract motif and spiritual theme.
India in 1803 was different.
So many buildings in Greek and Roman style were erected followed by Richard Wellesley's governor house.
A political theatre featuring the idea of European reason and nationality is the supior.
After all, the European culture overlooks the achievement of other cultures!!!
VII The Power Of Colour
For different places of the world, colour, once, illuminated the divine. Over centuries, artists have paid for their pigment 17th century Holland more than the weight of them in gold, and glorified the colour's ability to evoke love and passion. They created artworks that proclaim a new era in golden hues. Even abundant colour in despair.
In the modern world, colour is available to all. So, is it the merely decoration or something spiritual???
Chartre Cathedral was decorated by rows of saints and angels painted in colours outside. Inside, the columns, volts make you assent up into the heaven.
The stained window glass is a vessel incasing this coloured lights. In this blazing colour, all professions are depicted under the eyes of the God.
Though colour was the gate way to the paradise, it comes from this world.
The colour blue in the coloured glass making thousands years ago was imported from East.
In medieval Europe, most pigment, dye, colour, were made from easy accessing ingredients from he natural world, like roots, berries, minerals, even crushed insects.
The most expensive colour was imported from the city that always facing east--Venice.
The Venice then was undergoing a revolution.
This exposure to the colours made Venisian artists approach a different way of painting.
Renaissance artists thought drawing came first, and then they filled in everything with colour. The high art of hard lineage, but the low art of decoration.
But Venisian artists thought differently: the majestic of painting lies in the loaded, saturated brush and colour could model composition quite effectively as drawing lines.
In an alter painting done by Beline, the priceless ultra marine blue applied on the dress of Virgin Mary pinned its status.
The ultra marine was applied on sacred figures since the 13th century.
But this privilege was broken by Beline's pupil--Titain who used he colour to paint the sky the piece of painting he did in 1523.
Another precious colour was vermilion red. It used in porceline vessels that handed into Chinese imperial court. It applied in the Bindi on the forehead of Indian people during rituals.
Mugual, a painting of celebration scene. This form of painting was restricted to the court elites, showing the good overcomes the evil, the spring time, and some playing act. These noisy, colourful scenes make you feel you are part of it. Some have the sexual elements in it, because the sexual pleasure is the essential goal of spiritual life.
The simplicity with those images with their blocks of colour is deceptive, because, unlike western art which is focus in capturing a single moment in lineage time, in these paintings, time is cyclical. The same character can appear multiple times in the same picture as it tells story. The colour becomes the medication with power to symbolise the deepest metaphysical truth of the universe.
The is the piece of three panels: one of them is the emptiness in gold colour, the other one appears a God figure, the third one adds some sort of silver colour. It can be interpreted as it's from nothing to God to earthy matters. But it can also be viewed in reverse.
It's the cycle of time. A trance that trancense time and space.
Charisculo. A technique used in oil painting in mid 15th century. Painters paid attention to shading and shadow. In other words, the light and shade.
Ram Brown gave the light the upper hand.
A fresco on the ceiling of a grand manor depicts the God Applo and the people from America, Asia, and Africa pay homepage to him.
Goya painted peaceful heaven and harmony almost 40 years before he did a series of painting of world in chaos. As if he turned the lights off, and sent us into the tar, pitch dark, slush of the hell. All these was because the Napolean's invasion into Spain.
At his end of this game of black painting, Goya came to the conclusion that God is absent, without leave.
The last one which, in essence, is the least likely to have that horrifying pessimistic eloquence, but it dose!!! There is just a dog, a mutt. For this dog, the master is gone, dead, slaughtered, missing. He is no longer to be fed. He is simply faced with his drowning inside this formless Brown vacuum. It all comes down to this then. A dog without a master. Spain without it's God. Humanity absolutely without civilisation!!!
In Japan, economy was booming.
Pictures of the floating world. Calling card of prostitutes catering to highly paid customers.
Some painted colour and landscape. 《The Great Wave》, actually, is painted with the least colour, just some shades of blue.
19th century France.
Monet borrowed Japanese idea of painting. He painted the same subject in different shades of light in series.
It's the sansation of just looking at them in terms of the harmony of light, eyes, stone. It's the painting of the colour of time.
In mid 19th century, chemists could produce the whole range of colour.
Impressionist wanted to recreate the light of nature.
Van Gogh. His complimentary colours, the red and yellow, the green and orange, is his crown. The contrast, the electricity of colour.
The cosmic painting restores life and colour to their right place.
Matise.
January, 1912, in Marocco, torrential rain confined him to his room, which sparkled his idea of pure colour, thus the abstractionism.
In his later tears, he pushed the boundary of shape and colour. Confined to his wheelchair, he was like the paper sculptor who let the colour build the form.
Mark Rothco.
He painted in colour, nothing but the colour to reach the artistic spiritual.
Pure colour can be used to express metaphysical.
It's a screen for us to project our own thoughts on it. It's the deepest spiritual impulse of art!!!
In the 19th century, the world was transformed by the industrial revolution.
Both frontiers of science and Modern civilisation were advanced.
Adaptation was unavoidable. Traditional art was the victim, but some were more successful than others.
Artists then were in the time of great tension: on the one hand, they were facing the exhilarating dream of brighter world, on the other hand, the strangle of ordinary people's lives.
Some embraced the new impressionistic art that capture the truth in a moment; others rejected the civilised world all together to return to nature and an ersatz past full of wonder and gentility.
In Europe, the new barbarism that brought the cult of process to an end!!!
In 18th century, harnessing the power of nature was in radical new ways. The industrial revolution, left no place untouched by it, started in the English midland--the first cotton mill which was driven by water to activate its looms was built in 1770.
This is the birth place of mass production.
Josiff Wright of Derby was commitioned a painting of the cotton mill in 1796.
It was not machine, not labour, but the ideas that drove the revolution.
The painting 《bird》is the mixture of fascination and horror.
Now, science was the new religion. And it had the cost of it.
When the 18th century drew to a close, the cost emerged.
In the summer of 1798, Napolean, with his men, invaded Egypt--the birth place of civilisation. It's in the Egypt where our civilisation was born and stretched its influence downwards ancient Greece, Roman Empire, to the Renaissance, and to the Enlightment France.
The ones with Napolean into Egypt were not only his army, but also scholars who observed and took notes to require the knowledge, and, later, produced the multi-volume book 《The Discription of Egypt》 which exerted great Egyptian culture impact on art, design, and clothing.
This was the forey into Islamic world scince the Crusade.
To the western point of view, civilisation was something stood in contract to Barbarism. The westerners thought their arrival was progress.
The 《Orientalism》1830, is 18th first portrait of ordinary life Islamic life. It was based on a visit the painter paid to a local household. But it was finished in Paris. All the women in it were Parisian models. The painter just fabricated the scene. A Parisian reverie.
《Bath》《slave》
That's the time of European artists' fantasy for oriental world, an exotic sexuralry world to escape the turmoil and anomie of life in dark industrial Europe.
Just settled himself on the land of America in 1818 and, later, in New York City in 1825, Thomas Cole found his adopted homeland was filled with constant floks, noise, insult. "Undfied work of Gods!!!" was what he described America.
Wild America, so favoured by European artists, would be destroied by the progress of building a new country.
1830, 《The Rise and Fall Of An Empire》, were well received by American audience. But they thought: That's not us. Things will be different here. We are democracy, it does not apply here.
American self-declared moral duty to take its superior civilisation to the furtherest edge of the continent.
The journey to the West marked the beginning of the end of native American's resistance against the conquers and the disappearing of Indian culture.
The hypocrtic attitude towards native American took a step forward. Even pushed ever westward.
George Catlin did individual portraits of native Americans. But he kept their mouths closed, which indicated their resign to their fate. He thought these noble savages, though have their own tradition and culture, were doomed and must be perished.
There is a piece of painting done by native people left. It's a victory scene. A piece of war deed.
New Zealand at that time was another scene.
1874, a Czech artist went there to document a vanishing people. But he found that the Maori tribe there had having learnt English from priest missionaries.
So he got a highly-paid commition: to paint portraits for successful business people.
Having a portrait was the mark of status.
Another art the Maori people are so proud of is the tattoo. They wear it almost all over their body. They think the dealing with blood is the sacret thing.
Back in Europe, the life here changed as well beyond all recognition.
1830s, a machine was created a Paris--the camera. Driven by the desire of image of ourselves, it ushered in the new age of camera and photograph.
The first photo was《Parisian street》
It's empty because the light exposure was too slow to capture the moving horses and pedestrians.
It's also empty because of its failure of capturing the overcrowding, the disease, and the social unrest of rapidly industrialised Paris.
1853, a architecture designer was commissioned to turn the crammed medieval streets into grand bolavours and uniformed apartments--the symbol of modernity.
《Balloon》, an airy photo.
People then started to worry about the balance between painting and photograph.
The photograph, by using natural light, is a documentoral approach. There are some portraits for celebrities.
The camera imposed both inspiration and challenge towards artists.
The Impressionism was born.
The Impressionists applied bold use of stroke, colour, and light. They depicted what life was instead of what it should be.
They turned back on the art establishment and its obsessions with grand historical themes and classical mythology.
Rather than compete with the camera, they set out to explore what the camera couldn't: our human subjective experience of the world and how they affected by light, colour, and emotions, feelings.
They, by avoiding attempting to capture the fleeting moment, revealed society in all its real life complexity rather than it's ideal form.
《Dance at la Moulin de la Galette》
Monet. A master in ambiguity and visual subversion. No bear close scrutiny.
Some paintings for trains.
Capture the fluidity of time. Painting the time.
Gaogan.
He turned back on Parisian life. He went to Tahidi--a place beyond the contamination of West civilisation where he could be reborn, where people were all contented and led simple, unspoiled way of life.
But the fact was: it's a colony of barbaric civilised world that he was hoping to leave.
Anyway, he found beauty in the landscape, and, also, in the people there.
A mistress became his model.
His paintings are radical, vivid, stunningly beautiful when showing the myth and legends of the country!!!
Photogragh were doing well during war time.
It show the urban poor during the American civil war. A form of documentary art.
Picasso.
A piece of nude women. Inspired by a museum visit where he saw some man made masks.
The subject is conventional, and nothing else is.
His work is an unconscious barbarism looking at the very heart of supposedly modern society.
1914, Otto Dicks
A painting of a trench warfare. Gas mask. The barbarism was unleashed.
IX Vital Sparks
What does art do in horror times when civilization itself is on the risk???
Terezin, C was occupied by evil sharade.
1941, the little town was filled with Jews. Nazis filmed people there having games, attending operas, thus making people outside believe they were treated humanely. But, the reality was hanging and beating and starving. Children were the first bunch to gather in the gas chamber.
1942, Dec, Two suitcases were found belonging to a Jewish teacher who was killed on 9th Oct 1944. In the suitcases, there were 4500 pieces of art made by children. Those pictures are full of fancy, and so profoundly moving.
What was art to do in the face of a century of total genecide, a century of revolution , and of social and technology change??? The rules of art and civilization tore up and thrown aside.
The answer is art is buzz, fashion of the rich, the light of humanity's vital spark.
A Zen answer from Japan.
1987, an entrepreneur made a city alienated and away from ugliness, violence of contemporary life and upheaval of modern world of consumerism. People come and immerse themselves in aesthetic power and spiritual pure. For many, it's a shrine for modern art. It's not nostalgia, not dogma, but the earthly heaven.
The renewals of the civilization is dependant on cĺear away the clutter of the past!!!
Modern art is bargaining with wrapping the slake clean a century ago, and turns its back on the old rule of human figure and face.
The drama of natural abundance and the endless treasury of stories sacred and profane.
Modern art puts it in the place just things intrinsic to ,a King art itself--line, form, and colour.
Dutch Modernism
XXX in the early 20th, painted lighthouse,sanddune. Feeble idea of copying nature.
1912, in Paris, he got interested in cubism.
1914, autumn, in Holland. With only scatchbook and the sea and the solitude, something dramatic happened. The vertical and horizontal lines. Great boundless space of abstract vision.
When back in Paris, he simplifies and modified it into grids. It's a medication exercise in this self-contained universe.
1940, in New York, the city was built on grid. His works pulsed with jumping flickering energy, and shine.
Jackson Paullock
monumental is scale ferociously physical in execution. Modern art' s calculated finess should be swept aside by instinctive whiplash dripping and staining.
Rhythmically orchestrated web of line and colour.
Pop art
"Anything can be art of labeled as art!!!"
Iconagraphy, the visual greenness, along with the quality of artists not compromised by playfulness, makes contemporary art from one end of the world to the another.
Enjoy pop art does not mean surrender to the abstract machine.
Everything of all this feeds into the spectacular art universe of today.
While some want to return to the original, morally charged mission of modernism, to rescue us from the numbing routine of daily life.
The human figure, nature, endless haunting stories which never ever go away.
One example can be found in the Waha Palace built by King Ludwig in 1842. The palace and those busts of historically significant German figures boast the pantheon culture and have the function of keeping the past from oblivion.
Another one is in America.
Artists there create art reflecting the American violent past and present.
Some metal like bottle tops, urban waste but glowing, shimmering tiles, are waved in a fabric way! It represents the beehive swarm of modern life.
These artists, instead of holding nose at beauty, reinvent the modern art.
An artist from Taiwan is famous for playing with fire!!! His fireworks art is like the choking storm of soots.
One more art form is taking advantage of the modern technology. The casting moving human figures, seemingly ceaseless wondering on the unforgiving arid landscape, are sending 18th massage:"settlement denied!!!"
Over the 50,000 years, human have been setting those images down. Images and patterns on every conceivable material and in every imaginable style. Great art breeds the time and space that seperates us from its moment of creation. It makes us pause, reimagin the world and ourselves 8n countless unanticipated ways.
Civilization is such a grand word. It's true strength lies as much in simple gifts, pots, prints, rugs, carvings, as it does in mighty buildings and fine paintings. Those things spring less from officious demands of state, the state hunger of rich, than they do from he unruly urges of gifted artists from one end of the world to the other to make something for everyone. Those things are not dependant on the fate of empires, whether moneyed or military, they will endure. Things that being made by liberated thought, the acute vision, unquanchable creative fire of our shared humanity!!!
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