The History of Art-Part 1

Art History Timeline

Art Periods or Definition Characteristics Chief Artist and Historical Events

Movements Major Works

Stone Age

Mesopotamian

Stone Age
30,000 B.C.-2500 B.C.

Definition

 The stone age was the earliest known period of human culture.
There are three periods within this period of history known as
the Paleolithic, Mesolithic and the Neolithic. Stone age art was
art that was created during any of these 3 periods. This type of
art is often referred to as prehistoric art.

Characteristics of Stone Age

 All tools are made of stone, wood, clay, or animal parts like
bone, skins and sinew. Other characteristics is a mostly hunter
gatherer based society, with little, or no agriculture.

Oldest Art during Stone Age Period

 The oldest known form of art was found on every

continent expect Antarctica dating from at least 290,000
BCE.
 This art was named "Cupules". This was invented by
archeologist Robert G. Bednarikto to describe simple,
round hemispheric cavities, used to be known as "pits",
"hollows", "cups", "cupels", "cup stones", "pitmarks",
"cup marks" and "pot-holes.

Cave Painting

 Certain caves were reserved as prehistoric art galleries,

where artists began to create a series of extraordinary
 paintings of animals, hunting scenes and other graphic illustrations of prehistoric life, as well as
symbolic pictographs and patterns of abstract art.

 The cave, or rock art can generally be divided into either Petroglyphs (carvings into stone
surfaces), Pictographs (rock and cave paintings) and Petroforms (art made by aligning or piling
natural stones).

Fertility Goddesses

 Fertility Goddesses represent one of the main aspects of the

Mother Archetype. Archaeological finds of the earliest
Goddesses, from around the world, show her as the Great
Mother Goddess and creator.
 The fertility Goddesses embody the fertile nature of the earth
itself, these female archetypes are also usually mothers of
other
deities and so seen as patrons of motherhood.

Megalithic Structures

 Megalith is a large, often undressed stone, that

has been used in the construction of various
types of Neolithic, Chalcolithic or Bronze Age
monuments, during the period 4500-1000 BCE.
 Megalithic monuments were typically decorated
with a variety of Stone Age art, including
petroglyphs, various abstract signs and symbols,
pictographs, motifs, cupules, cup and ring
marks, and other incised imagery.

Chief Artists and Major Works

Lascaux Cave Painting

 Is a Palaeolithic cave situated in southwestern France

which houses some of the most famous examples of
prehistoric cave paintings. Horses are the most numerous, but deer, aurochs, ibex, bison, and even
some felines can also be found.

Women of Willendorf

 Venus of Willendorf, also called Woman of

Willendorf or Nude Woman, Upper Paleolithic
female figurine found in 1908 at Willendorf, Austria.
It has been suggested that she is a fertility figure, a
good-luck totem, a mother goddess symbol, or an
aphrodisiac made by men for the appreciation of
men.

Stonehenge

 Stonehenge is one of the world’s most

famous monuments. It stands on Salisbury
Plain, in Wiltshire, and its giant stones can
be seen from miles around.
 The name of the monument probably
derives from the Saxon stan-hengen,
meaning “stone hanging” or “gallows.”
 English antiquarian John Aubrey in the
17th century and his compatriot
archaeologist William Stukeley in the 18th
century both believed the structure to be a
Druid temple.

Historical Events

Ice Age Ends

10,000 B.C-8,000 B.C

 The Earth was in an Ice Age—a period of colder

global temperatures and glacial expansion.
  About 14,000 years ago, Earth entered a warming period. Many of the large Ice Age animals
went extinct and rising sea levels and climate change that eventually caused
man to migrate.

New Stone Age

 Neo is a root we use in the English

language, it comes from the Greek
word neos, which means new or
recent. So, Neolithic means "New
Stone.“
 The New Stone Age was a time
when the Earth's climate was
warmer than the climate in the Old
Stone Age.
 The people of the New Stone Age
also learned how to train animals to
be useful to humans. The training of crops and animals is called domestication.

First Permanent Settlements

8,000 B.C-2,500 B.C

 By adopting a sedentary way of life, the Neolithic groups increased their awareness of
territoriality.
 Living in permanent settlements brought new ways of social organization. As the subsistence
strategies of Neolithic communities became more efficient, the population of the different
settlements increased.

Mesopotamian
3,500 B.C-539 B.C

Definition

 The word “mesopotamia” is formed from

the ancient words “meso,” meaning
between or in the middle of, and “potamos,”
meaning river.
  Mesopotamia was a collection of varied cultures whose only real bonds were their script,
their gods, and their attitude toward women.

Characteristics of Mesopotamian

 The artwork to come out of this civilization is reflective of its rich history, whose subject matter
was heavily influenced by its sociopolitical structure,
military conquests, organized religion, and natural
environment.
Warrior Art and Narration in Stone Relief
 The art consisted of warrior art and stone relief work.
These are slabs of clay that were used as architectural
elements like wall facings.
 On these sculptures, there were names of rulers, sort of
like hieroglyphic inscriptions. Many rulers that were
carved into these slabs are on different monuments.

Standard of Ur

 The Standard of Ur is a box, the two large

sides of which show aspects of life in early
Mesopotamia.
 One side shows scenes of peace and the
other scenes of war.
 At the top there is a royal banquet. The
ruler, wearing a woollen fleece skirt, is
seated before his guests who are also
dressed similarly, though less extravagantly.
 The peace side of the Standard shows how
the city, and in particular the ruler, draws
upon the agricultural and natural resources
of its territory.

Gate of Ishtar
  The Ishtar Gate was constructed by the Babylonian King Nebuchadnezzar II circa 575 BCE. It
was the eighth gate of the city of Babylon (in present day Iraq) and was the main entrance into the
city.
 The Ishtar Gate is named so, because it was dedicated to the
Babylonian goddess Ishtar.
 The animals represented on the
gate are young bulls (aurochs), lions, and
dragons (sirrush).

Stele of Hammurabi’s Code

 Stele is a term that

archaeologists use to describe large wooden or stone slabs that
were carved with images and information about a particular
society. Usually, a stele was taller than it was wide and was
placed in a public location.
 A stele is a vertical stone monument or marker often inscribed with text or with relief carving.

Historical Events

Sumerians invent writing (3,400 B.C)

 The Sumerian invention of cuneiform—a Latin

term literally meaning “wedge-shaped”— dates
to sometime around 3400 B.C. In its most
sophisticated form, it consisted of several
hundred characters that ancient scribes used to
write words or syllables on wet clay tablets
with a reed stylus.
Hammurabi Writes his Law Code
1,780 B.C

 The Code of Hammurabi was one of the earliest and most complete written legal codes and was
proclaimed by the Babylonian king Hammurabi.
 The Hammurabi code of laws, a collection of 282 rules, established standards for commercial
interactions and set fines and punishments to meet the requirements of justice.

Abraham founds Monotheism

 Abraham was the first person to teach the

idea that there was only one God; before
then, people believed in many gods.
 Abraham is an extraordinary figure in that
almost alone of the Biblical characters he
unites, or has the potential to unite, the
three great monotheistic religions:
Christianity, Judaism and Islam.