Professional Documents
Culture Documents
I. FOOD
A. Securing the Food Supply
1. In Prehistoric cultures, hunters, gatherers, and early farmers linked art and
ritual to accomplish tasks like bringing rain.
2. These paintings may have been part of ancient rituals linked to the bounty of
nature.
3. This is “sympathetic magic”. Food, art, and ritual.
4. Paleolithic hunters and gatherers eventually became Neolithic farmers.
5. In Australia we see a similar phenomenon that links food, art and ritual.
6. The patterns and symbols in this painting are part of the Aboriginal belief
system of the origin of life and the sustenance of everyday existence.
7. Tyi Wara dancers are wearing headdresses of the mythic antelopes that brought
agriculture to their community
8. The use of masks, dance, and ritual help ensure successful crops by the Bamana
people of Mali.
9. Crops antelope, and ancestors are united in this ritual.
10. Today, few people hunt and process the meat they eat.
11. British artist Sue Coe’s, There Is No Escape, is a harsh indictment of the
contemporary meat industry.
7. Intricate weaving, precious feathers, and beads mark this vessel made by
mothers for their daughters.
8. Gourds are basic containers for liquids in many African cultures.
9. This bead-covered gourd was for display, ritual, and royal use. It held palm
wine, a common social drink in the area.
10. Like water, salt is essential and at times, has been a form of wealth.
11. European nobility used elaborate saltcellars as a status symbol.
12. This saltcellar was carved by African artists for export to Europe.
13. Andy Warhol’s, Heinz 57 Tomato Ketchup and Del Monte Freestone Peach
Halves, are silk-screened wooden sculptures that look like mass- produced
cardboard packing cartons.
14. The work blurs the distinction between art and commercial packaging,
celebrates simple colors, bold graphics, and clean layout of advertisements.
15. Wqrhol created these during the Pop Art movement, noted for glorifying
popular culture items into art icons.
a. religious
b. political
c. agricultural traditions
9. Incans made life-size replicas of plants and animals from gold and silver.
a. The metals were symbolic :
b. Gold = the sun’s sweat
c. Silver = the moon’s tears
10. 20th C. photographs of food were often vehicles for abstraction and
experimentation with media.
11. Weston’s photograph reveals the complex design and grace of natural forms.
12. It also shows the technical achievement of photography.
13. Six Persimmons - reflects inner spiritual beauty Artichoke, Halved - looks at
inner physical beauty.
14. We eat for nourishment, but how we eat is full of meaning.
15. Leonardo da Vinci’s, Last Supper, depicts a meal as a religious ceremony.
16. The potlatch is a ritual feast from the Native Americans of the Northwest
Coast.
17. The potlatch was the formal mechanism for establishing social order.
18. The Japanese tea ceremony, a ritualized partaking of tea, is influenced by Zen
Buddhism, the same philosophy behind Six Persimmons.
19. In Zen, the path to enlightenment can include the most common activities.
20. Some artwork references a ritual meal, although no food is shown.
21. The Dinner Party, is an imaginary meal to celebrate significant women in
Western culture.
22. The design referenced Leonardo’s Last Supper reinterpreted in feminist terms.
23. Most meals are informal, everyday events but even the most casual meals
reveal social habits.
24. Contemporary art represents a break with traditional approaches to eating.
25. Replacing the traditional hammer and chisel with her mouth, Janine Antoni
transformed the act of eating into an artistic process in her installation, Gnaw
Jones 4
I. SHELTER
A. Domestic Architecture
1. Over the centuries people have developed a wide range of houses, all serving
the broad function of shelter.
2. Shelters were done in different styles, due to:
a. need for protection historical necessity availability of materials aesthetic
choice
b. need to follow precedent desire to imitate a foreign style symbolic
importance
c. need to express self-identity
B. Individual Homes
1. The designs of individual homes embody:
a. Airy courtyards, gardens, and artworks distinguished the villas of the
wealthy in the ancient Roman Empire.
b. The harmonious geometric shapes of Villa Rotonda represent
c. Renaissance philosophical principles of orderliness and hierarchy.
d. All parts of the Villa Rotonda are worked out in mathematical
relationships to the whole.
2. In China, houses for the wealthy were modeled after the palaces of the first
emperor, Shi Haungdi.
a. Traditional Chinese house design reflects cultural values and responses
to the environment.
b. The timber frame house had non-load- bearing walls of compressed
earth, wide eaves protected the walls from rainfall.
c. The emphasis is on verticality and roof design.
3. In Indonesia, wooden houses were designed in response to:
a. tropical climate heavy rainfall thick vegetation heat insects
4. Parts of the Toba Batak House have symbolic meaning:
a. internal spaces = maternal the house itself = body stilts = legs
b. roof = head
c. trapdoor = navel
5. Housing is also shaped by necessity.
a. Native Americans of eastern and central North America were a stable
population of hunters and gatherers.
b. Tipis were portable housing that Native Americans of the Great Plains
adopted once they were forced from their original homelands.
6. Wright believed that houses should be unified wholes that merge with the
natural setting and use local materials.
a. Fallingwater has cantilevered porches, which were influenced by
Japanese and Chinese architecture.
Jones 6
C. Commercial Architecture - provides shelter for the needs of business and trade.
1. The Markets of Trajan was a multistoried complex that held administrative
offices and over 150 shops.
2. The design was likely influenced by the souks of the Middle East. Reminiscent
of today’s shopping malls.
3. Today, stores and businesses are often located in high-rise buildings.
4. One of the first innovative tall buildings in the 20th C. was Carson Pirie Scott
and Co.
5. Architect, Louis Sullivan, exploited the design possibilities of steel frame
construction, coupled with the invention of the elevator.
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D. Late 20 C. Public Structures
1. R. Buckminster Fuller believed that technology could provide more affordable
shelter.
a. His geodesic domes were spherical networks of steel-frame
tetrahedrons.