A Brief Art History

hello and welcome to the first and only episode of a brief history art edition while be covering the major features and artworks of the periods studied and professor Frazier's art history one class ready set go first off is a prehistoric period or the period before recorded history which lasted until about 4000 BCE why BCE while an art we use BCE and C II instead of BC and AD that's because BC and AD have religious connotations meaning before Christ and on O Domini the year the Lord prospectively in order to hold respect to all religions we use the simple acronyms BCE and C meaning before Common Era and Common Era respectively so make sure to use them when writing dates now back to prehistoric times Austria 28,000 BCE cavemen began making rock carvings of women these carvings were rather simplified in shape I had no facial features this one in particular is named Venus of Willendorf historians believe these small statues were meant to symbolize prehistoric man's idea of an ideal woman the shapely hips and breasts mean the woman is fertile and we'd be able to birth children easily as well as surviving harsh winters it's also a possibility it was the world's first source of pornography as all men needed to procreate as much as possible with only a hundred thousand humans on earth next southwestern France in the caves at last cow 15,000 BCE we find paintings on the walls of the cave kind of look like the ones from Ice Age huh well these are real and have more of a purpose than in just drawings they were using a process known as sympathetic magic which is a primitive ritual using animals or actions drawn by men and women resembling the men's hunt for food they would plan out how the hunt will go paying specific attention to the details of a single animal in particular and then the men would go out to hunt for said animal and bring back the spoils however the women made sure as to leave the men in the drawings as stick figures to make sure their likeness wouldn't be captured in the magic as well it was the first time men and women were known cooperate with each other to such an extent for survival and would later prove effective for even larger architectural projects Wiltshire England from 3000 BCE the 1500 BCE men would come together to build the largest scale construction project that isn't named the Great Wall of China stonehenge stonehenge was a sign of an organized society as the project took almost 2,000 years not to mention the rocks used for the project had to be hauled hundreds of miles just to bring them to the construction site not even taken to account how they were erected with the tools they had at the time well somehow they did it and is the oldest tourist attraction of all time and brought about one of the first architectural techniques known as post and lintel post and lintel was done by taking two structures side by side and placing another structure on top of them forming somewhat of a bridge this is how the stones are easily held and have been standing for so long while we don't know for certain how the cavemen built Stonehenge we do know it was meant to be an agricultural calendar using the Sun as a form of measure when they can plant and collect crops the second period we learn of is in Mesopotamia which began with the invention of the Cunha form writing style in 4000 BCE to about 400 BCE it's also worth noting that most of Mesopotamian civilization took place in modern-day Iraq from here are now civilization succeeded each other looking to take and improve what the other did before enter the ash none of statuettes created in 2700 BCE discovered deep underground of the temples used for worship these statues embody the very essence of the worshiper so that the spirit would be present when the physical body was not that were usually carved with the hands clasp right over left at the chest or waist with eyes wide open in a gesture of attentiveness standing figures often step forward with the left foot to show their civilization was an improvement and always looking to move forward not to mention some statues particularly the male ones were placed upon pedestals showing off their importance and power the male's heads are frequently shown bald but sometimes wore beards while the females can have a variety of hairstyles or headdresses however facial characteristics didn't show a lot of variation from one statute to the next tell me does this look like a human being to you the statues were stiff cylindrical and columnar pretty much motionless if not for the suggestion of moving forward it would take some time before the human form was done correctly for the first time speaking of something done for the first time we have Hammurabi's written law code when I say written I mean one of the first works of art to take advantage of the invention of Qunu form which I mentioned earlier another first it had was it being the first form of written law for a group or civilization in 1754 BCE the sixth Babylonian king Hammurabi wished to create a law for his people to follow so that justice can be dealt more easily he believed in and coined the phrase an eye for an eye which means if you commit an act that's against the law the same will be dealt to you if someone goes out and murders your wife guess what their wife goes with her while the lock code seems fair and just it also invented the thing most middle-class families dread to do every year taxes Hammurabi's rigidly centralized system prospered from taxes both used to compensate and finance state irrigation and building projects however these projects place a big load on subject territories and created a sense of bitterness with the state I can't imagine why Hammurabi dies the bureaucracy was expanded and everything went downhill in the end Hammurabi successors became figureheads dependent on locally controlled goods and resources and so now we make like the bangles and walk like an Egyptian Southwest to our next civilization third in our line of study is Egypt which if you didn't know is in Northeast Africa which explains its dried desert landscape yes some people don't know it's actually a part of Africa moving similarly alongside Mesopotamia the time period for Egypt was from about 3,600 BCE to 400 BCE and as a coexisting civilization it's only natural that the Egyptians wanted to improve on with the Mesopotamians were doing take for example the Statue of Mancari and his queen carved out of slate and dating 225 48 to 2530 BCE like the Mesopotamians did with the eshnunna statuettes the farrell Mancari is stepping forward as advancement and willingness to be better than other civilizations while will somewhat of a ripoff they did improve on the realism factor notice how it actually looks closer to a human being also as a side note we have men Kerry's wife openly holding his arm something that wasn't expected of women at the time and then the most important Egyptian work of art the appear I mean the book of the Dead emerging from around 1580 to 1350 BCE this scroll became the most essential piece of parchment in Egyptian culture so much so that everyone owned one kind of like everyone having a Bible somewhere in the house the point of the scroll was to tell the story of what judgment is like in the afterlife this storytelling an art is known as narrative register moving from one side of the artwork to the other if your heart was pure and you lived a good life you would become what is known as an ancestral spirit Ruby then your role in the afterlife would be to follow and support your family forever however if your heart was not pure you would be slowly eaten by the waiting chimera creature on it composed of a deadly crocodile lion and hippopotamus he actually looks kind of oh jeez from an artistic standpoint the Book of the Dead popularized composite pose which is basically the type of pose you all know Egyptians make showing the entire body but in a sideways motion other than that we still have the wide attentive eyes Kings on pedestals and beards to help differentiate men from women just to show you how influential this artwork is about 72 percent of the world's population so believed in ancestral spirits now we're moving to some of the most important works of art you'll learn in our history one and they're taken from the forth time period in Greece which spanned from about 1100 BCE to 146 BCE the reason Greece is so important is because it took the idea of realism and turning on a Ted into perfect idealism and from this Came Polly Clyde OSes spear bearer he looks darn near close to a perfect human athlete right we'll take a closer look notice the enlarged and exaggerated side and chest muscles his arms and legs are practically bulging however a few things stand out from this for one his genitals are almost non-existent for the more you think a guy as early as this wouldn't look this common collected his active yet relaxed pose is known as contrapposto this is where the perfect idealism goes deeper polykleitos set a standard for men the Greeks one is strong powerful men to defend their civilizations but at the same time they needed to be calm and ready for battle to protect their home and family as for the ding-a-ling that's because at the time it didn't matter how big you were so long as it worked and you can still have sexual intercourse one last bit of info is the size of the man's head it's 1/7 the size of his body but I'll explain why in a little bit next up is the Parthenon constructed by a Tino's calico eighties and phidias atop of the capitol of athens from 447 to 432 BCE this building stood as a symbol of democracy and a victory against the persian army to show how powerful they really were it was built in such a way that the sides were curbed and formed an optical illusion moving towards the back actually curves downwards so it's actually not perfectly flat and straight the most notable feature of the Parthenon however is the inclusion of the two main types of columns Doric and ionic Doric columns were simple and rigid placed around the outside of military buildings to symbolize strength and democracy just like the role of men defined by polykleitos ionic columns were more slender and decorated placed only on the inside like they needed to be protected yet we're still supporting the inside these relate to the roles of women as they were expected to never leave the house and to simply take care of the children and the household ionic columns would be used on the outside of educational and government buildings acting as a peaceful welcoming committee of sorts what really solidified the role of woman would be spear bearers female counterpart Praxiteles Aphrodite of Canaan OHS sculpted in 350 BCE the woman is similar to the man as she is still in a contrapposto state yet her body is exaggerated in different ways she has curves an hourglass form growing around the waist that is because it symbolizes the sole use of women at the time having children and caring for them the wider waist is a sign of childbearing hips and the bigger breasts show that she is fertile and could feed her children bringing back the earlier comment about spear bearers head being 1/7 of his body aphrodite's head is 1/8 of her body this difference is to show that men were smarter thus their heads and brains were inherently bigger for women it also defined the waist ratio that we use even today to judge the perfect women like Beyonce or Marilyn Monroe unfortunately these ideal human forms wouldn't say the Greeks from an invasion which takes us to our fifth civilization the Roman Empire the period of the Romans spanned from about 500 BCE to 500 CE being the first group we learn of that crosses into the Common Era the Romans were perfectionist they always looked for the best method to build architecture and art the first work we look at comes in the form of aqueducts commissioned in 312 BCE by Roman politician Appius Claudius cacus these man-made waterways were meant to filter and transport clean drinking water from mountain springs to Roman cities however supporting them was no easy task even using post and lintel technique and so came the invention of the arch built by stacking stones and a semicircular formation and sealing it with a key stone bringing all the weight downward yet all pushes together evenly the arches were successful in holding the aqueducts up for thousands of years and proved efficient in the need to use less material than making a solid wall aqueducts allowed cities to live closer to one another and form mega cities as drinking water fountains were then placed all over Rome next we have what can be considered Rome's own spear bearer augustus of primaporta sculpted in 20 BCE which is a portrait of Rome's first emperor Augustus Caesar this artwork first of all is important because it broke away from something other sculptures did before it see if you can figure it out get it he's clothed the Romans were trying to be more conservative and more realistic no one nowadays would want to see their country's leader naked anyway while I can be compared to spear bearer I guess this leans more towards realism not really having any exaggerated body parts furthermore it almost seems like you can see the raw details of his face like wrinkles and other blemishes this style is known as bearer ISM where portraits of people were done as accurately as possible taking every curve of the face into account literally augustus brought about the orators gesture which is the pointing of the index and middle finger outward this stands for leadership and power and it's something we still see today from winston churchill modifying it into the peace sign to the way Disney employees guide guests throughout the park you can also see that Gustus is holding a staff in his left hand it is said that this staff was given to him by God when he formed the Roman Empire and it would be handed down every great leader after him in fact the great US of A has our own staff we used to face that every day at the beginning of first period in high school the American flag crazy right speaking of crazy let's look at the great Roman Colosseum built by architects Vespasian and Titus and a BCE jumping into the Common Era this arena was used for gory and military entertainment slaves or war captives would be thrown in to fight each other or even animals for everyone's amusement they'd be placed in the center in what kind of looks like how our sports arenas looked like now circular seats facing downward into the center and a hollowed-out area for all action takes place besides continuing the use of arches the Coliseum also brought about another invention which if you're having this class in the M building probably use every day instead of taking the stairs the elevator while there were more primitive and harnessed weights and police to move loads it was an imperative move towards building much bigger architecture and finally we have the Pantheon which means all of the gods built by Apollodorus of Damascus in 125 C II as the name entails this grandiose building was meant as a worshipping space for the gods it signified Roman Republic as well as a symbol of the separation of church and state as Roman politicians had meetings in the outside courtyard with the Pantheon came the invention of several architectural techniques first we look at the giant dome sitting on top as you can see as a giant hole inside of it this is known as an oculus signifying an eye towards the sky and the gods it also had a practical use as the Romans had trouble finishing the top part of the dome it would have collapsed should they have filled it in but due to the height of the ceiling and perfect circular form the dome held up as well as introducing the Coriolis effect which basically prevents nearly all rain from coming inside through the top bite spinning around the hole and exiting back out creating a vacuum in the roof also on the dome we see two other architectural techniques but sources and coffers the buttresses are built up against the wall and are used as reinforced support while the coffers were used to empty out unneeded space in the dome as well as looking stylish and now we move into our sixth and final time periods the medieval times which was around 900 to 1300 C II during these times the Roman Catholic Church was becoming more dominant so most of the features and advancements in the arts were done in their chapels and basilica's to represent the early Gothic style we look at the Basilica of Saint Denis designed by William have sentence in 1140 C II and finally completed in 44 C similar to the Pantheon the floor plan had a geometric layout forming a cross symbolizing the one Jesus Christ died on with this layout came the application of a choir set beside the altar they also reinvented buttresses to become flying buttresses which were used to resist the downward forces pushing a wall outwards by redirecting them to the ground Gothic churches were much more dramatic than Romanesque ones though here we have the Royal Santa Chapel commissioned by King Louie the ninth of France to be built from 1242 to 1248 C II the goal of the Gothic style was to make people fear God and mentally forced them to go to church the outside world was considered hell and only in their churches where you offered safety and salvation a way they utilized this fear was in their gargoyles placed outside on the roof people will be scared of these lovely monsters and find cover inside and so then once you were inside it was beautiful the two-tire facade offered wholly vertical emphasis and the sense of almost weightlessness when you looked above and the light shining in through the stained glass window symbolized divine light washing the inside of the church along with this came the use of pointed arches and another supporting technique known as vaults there were two types ribbed and groin ribbed looked like well ribs and groin involved two arches crossing each other perpendicularly now stop thinking about groins because we're done that's all I have to say about our history one hopefully I kept mostly awake definitely make sure you know all the stuff like the back of your hand if you plan on doing well on our history - good luck future historians graphic designers and our this

Channel: Roman Garcia

Views: 104,205

Rating: 4.6393833 out of 5

Keywords: art, history, roman, greek, mesopotamia, prehistoric, brief, egyptian, gothic, architecture, spear bearer, aphrodite of knidos, pantheon, parthenon, venus of willendorf, book of the dead, stonehenge, lascaux, sympathetic magic

Id: cwBoP-zw17A

Length: 17min 30sec (1050 seconds)

Published: Wed Apr 13 2016