Art is as old as man is, for as long as man has been on earth he has been using art forms starting with cave paintings and carvings and continuing through to modern day. The earliest known man is from the Old Stone Age of the Paleolithic period (about 30,000 BC to 8,000 BC) and located in France and Spain. Our knowledge of this culture comes from cave drawings, which are believed to be part of a magic ritual that was intended for them to have good luck with the hunt. Art comes from the Latin word “ars” meaning skill, way or method. Until the end of the Middle Ages, all professional trades were known as art. The most common art is visual (fine arts), art which you can see and appreciate. It also includes the graphic arts; some of them are woodworking, etching, engraving, enameling, furniture, architecture, stained glass, carving and jewelry. This list is in no means conclusive. What is Art? There are as many answers to this question, as there are opinions. Some say it is the use of skill and imagination to create objects that are aesthetically pleasing and appreciated for their intrinsic value.
The word “aesthetic” is derived from the Greek term for perceive. Therefore, the beauty in an art form can be different for everyone looking at it. Beauty is defined as the quality of giving pleasure to the senses. In a broad sense, skill is art in the sense of making or doing, including the making of anything with an aesthetic value, i.e. basket weaving, jewelry, pottery. Archaeologists have found on the slopes of Mount Carmel caves providing evidence of human occupation for thousands of years during the Paleolithic Period. This being some of the earliest known evidence of man and the earliest cave carvings and paintings.
Paintings
The earliest western paintings were found in the caves of Southern Europe about 28,000 BC. These caves in Spain and Southern France feature horses, bison and deer. They are painted in bright colors composed of various minerals ground into powder and mixed with animal fat, egg whites, plant juices, fish glue and even blood, then applied with brushes made of twigs and reeds or blown on the cave walls. It is the general belief that these drawings were used in a magic ritual. A cave painting at Lascauz, France depicts a man amongst the animals and includes several dark dots; no one is sure of the meaning of this but it shows that cave men were able to convey what they were thinking using images, signs and symbols. Down through history, paintings are the main art form that everyone considers art. The Egyptians painted the walls of the pharaohs’ tombs with mythological representations and scenes of everyday activities as in hunting, fishing and farming. The Minoans (Greek ancestors) created realistic paintings on the palace walls. Marine life was also a popular subject, as in the “Dolphin Fresco” (1500? BC) on the walls of King Minos’ palace in Knossos. The Romans decorated their villas with mosaic floors and exquisite wall frescoes portraying rituals, myths, landscapes, still life and scenes of daily activities. Roman artists captured the illusion of reality using the technique known as aerial perspective, in which colors and outlines of more distant objects are softened and blurred to achieve spatial effects. In the 3rd and 4th century, fresco paintings in the Roman catacombs and mosaics on the walls of churches were common. Christ was shown as the good shepherd in many churches. Another great church painting is of Jonah being delivered from the whale. In the 6th century in churches in Ravenna, Italy, the churches are noted for their beautiful mosaics depicting both spiritual and secular subjects. In the 7th to the 9th centuries, art in monasteries flourished, it was mainly intricate calligraphic designs. Wassily Kandensky, the pioneer of abstract painting, spoke of art as resembling religion in taking what is known and transforming it, showing it “in new perspectives and in a blinding light.”
Metal Works
This type of art started in 3rd millennium BC and replaced pottery in everyday use items such as plates, cups and bowls. Many metals were used in those times: iron, tin, coppers, lead, gold and silver are a few of them. They had two divisions of metals. The first being precious metals--gold and silver and starting in the 18th century, platinum. Secondly, base metals were iron, copper, tin and lead. Precious metals were used for religious items, jewelry, and ceremonial accouterments of semi-sacred figures as in the Egyptian pharaohs, of kings and queens from Spain to Caucesus. As these metals became more plentiful, they became the icons of status for the elite of society. Many things were now made of gold and silver for the elite, like eating and drinking utensils, weapons and mirror frames. The common people were using the base metals for the same items. The base metals were also being used for their strength in making weapons and tools. Copper, tin and lead were used for their durability as in cooking and for storage. The mixing of metals also became popular when they realized they could mix copper and tin to make bronze, and lead and tin to make pewter. Metal work in the fine arts, objects of artistic, decorative, and utilitarian value made of one or more metals were fashioned by casting, hammering, joining, or any combination of these methods. Metal was the first reusable material in history, since it was made with fire, when something broke they could melt it down and make something else out of it.
Tapestry
Historically, it is hand woven cloth or textile weave, decorated with figures. They were used as curtains, wall hangings, carpet and furniture coverings. What differentiates tapestry from other cloths of the day is that it has no wefts (horizontal threads that are carried all the way through the full width of the fabric). Discontinuous colored wefts are used in limited areas to create patterns. Tapestry can be done in a weave or on a loom. The different weaves are slit, dovetailing, interlocking and twill. The loom has two rollers and the wraps are stretched around them, each wrap is caught in a loom that is fastened to one of the two bars. One bar is attached to the even numbered threads and the other to the odd numbered threads. The weaver pulls the bars forward alternately to pass the wefts between the wraps to form the patterns of the tapestry.
Pottery
In its earliest form (24th and 25th millennia BC), pottery was made with dirt and straw and mud baked in crude ovens, then in later years they used different kinds of clay. In Syria around 6000 BC, a form of dark-faced burnished ware was being used for common items, cups, bowls, etc. Even with the earliest pottery it was either hand carved or painted with decorations, later they used enamel instead of paint. Pottery was widely used for utensils in the kitchen until the 3rd millennium, when metal utensils replaced it.
Enameling
This medium dates back to 13th century BC and was used to decorate jewelry instead of gems. They also used enamel on kitchenware, brick, glass, metal, ceramics, vases, bathtubs, etc. Enamel consists of a mixture of silica (from quartz or sand), soda or potash and lead. These ingredients are usually made opaque by adding other metallic oxides. In making the enamel, the ingredients are first formed into lumps that are ground into a fine power. The powder, dry or mixed with water or oil, is applied to the surface to be covered. Decorative enamel is applied by hand or dipping, then fired in a furnace until the enamel fuses with the surface. Enameling must be fired off at least a constant temperature of 1832 degrees F to fuse to ceramic or glass and is called a glaze.
Jewelry
Ornaments of precious metal, it can be adorned with gems. Jewelry has been used by all cultures for personal adornment, as emblems of religious or social standing, as badges of social or official rank or political affiliation. Jewelry includes objects made of many organic and inorganic material such as hair, feathers, leather, scales, bones, shells, wood, teeth, ceramics, metals, etc. However, the term is normally referring to the mounting of precious or semi-precious stones on and in valuable or attractive metals. In the broadest sense, jewelry is any decorative accessory worn from head to toe, including head pieces, hat pins, hair combs, brooches, clasps, rings, bracelets, belts, pins, anklets, rings, earrings and many more.
Sculpture
The oldest sculptured objects were from circa 31000 – 25000 BC and were cut from ivory, horn, bone and stone. The Latin word “sculpere” means “to carve,” being three-dimensional art. There are two main types of sculpturing. They are free standing sculpture in the round and relief sculpture. Almost any organic or inorganic substance can be used to sculpt. The three methods of sculpting are carving, modeling, and casting. Carving dates back to prehistoric man and is when the artist starts with a hard material and cuts it away until it is what he desires it to be. Modeling is using a soft, easily shaped material that can be molded and worked into the desired shape. Casting is when you make a mold of the design that you want and then pour the casting material in it to make the piece of art. The two materials used for the finished product are lost wax and sand.
Stained Glass
In the early Middle Ages around the 11th century, 1122 to 1151, the art of working with piecing glass together for windows emerged, and by 1200, stained glass attained a prestige in the religious world and amongst the elite. A combination of pieces of glass held together with a lead channel and painted. In the early stained glass they used very large pieces of glass and fit them together, then they painted them and fired them off in furnishes. They were then put together with the lead; they normally used a very large lead channel because they were unable to fit the pieces together closely. Then the window was cemented to keep the glass from rattling when the wind went through. This is the method that was used for thousands of years until Louis C. Tiffany, Duran and John LaFarge came along and pioneered the way to making stained glass an art form without the use of overlays or painting. Louis C. Tiffany led the way into the development of colors with metallic oxides to the basic glass to achieve brilliant colors that would stand on their own. It was also at this time that Tiffany developed the foil method of stained glass which enabled smaller pieces of glass to be put together creating more delicate pieces of work. This also created a new technical skill of soldering; this skill was highly regarded. Again, this also marked the beginning of stained glass in not only the home of the elite but also in the residence of the common person.
There are three basic kinds of glass, antique, cathedral and opalescent. The glass also comes in many textures, some of which are rippled, granite, hammered and seedy. Glass can also be coated with an iridized finish that will cast different colors off the glass surface. The glass is actually impregnated with color in raw chemical form, metallic oxides are added to the batch while it is molten and with the use of different color metallic you get the different colored glasses. Stained glass today is composed of silica sand with about one percent iron, soda ash, limestone and borax. In medieval times, the glass was hand blown and then rolled out and cooled; in modern times only a small percent of glass is hand blown. The technique of coloring glass was first known in Egypt and Mesopotamia in the 3rd millennium BC and by the 1st century AD; glassmakers had mastered blown glass. The earliest surviving stained glass depicts the head of Christ; it is from the Lorsch Abbey in the Rhineland in the 9th to 11th century.
Architecture
It is the practice of building design and its resulting products. Architecture must satisfy its intended uses, it must be technically sound and convey an aesthetic quality at the same time. When civilization moved out of caves and started building houses and towns, they first used dirt and dried mud blocks, stone, marble and then used wood, which created the craft of carpentry. Building with stone and brick is called masonry, using a mortar made of lime and sand to hold the building together and relying on gravity to keep everything in place. As time passed man developed blocks and bricks by baking the different clays. Metals were beginning to be developed; they were also introduced into architecture, thus making the buildings stronger so they could build them wider and taller. The main form of construction from the beginning of architecture is a method called post-and-lintel construction and has continued through to modern time. In post-and-lintel construction, lintels or beams are laid horizontally across the tops of posts, or columns, additional horizontal spans from beam to beam, forming decks that can become roofs or be occupied as floors. A good example of this is in Stone Hedge in Salisbury Plain, England, which was built around 1800 to 1400 BC.
Article Sources
Encyclopedias:
Academic American
Vol. 2, 1992
Americana
Vol. 2, 1998
Britannica
Vol. 2, 1998
Colliers
Vol. 2, 1996
Encarta Microsoft 98
The World Book
Vol. 2, 1995
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A History of Art and Music
H.W. Hanson & Joseph Kerman
Prentice-Hall
Englewood Cliffs, NJ
Archaeology in the Holy Land
Kathleen M. Kenyan
Thomas Nelson Publishers
Nashville, Camden, N.Y.
Art a History of Painting Sculpture Architecture
Frederick Hartt
Harry N. Abrams, Inc.
New York
Art and Civilizations
Edward Lucie-Smith
Harry N. Abrams, Inc.
New York
Atlas of Medieval Europe
Edited by Graham Speake
York
Facts on File, Inc.
New York, New History of Art
H.W. Janson
Harry N. Abrams, Inc.
New York
How to Work in Stained Glass
Anita and Seymour Isanberg
Chilton Book Company
Radnor, PA
Prehistoric Art in Europe
N.K. Sanders
Penguin Book
40 West 23rd Street
New York, New York 10010
The History of Art
General editors Bernard S. Myers and Trewin Copplestone
Exeter Books
New York
The Oxford Illustrated History of Christianity
Edited by John McManners
Oxford University Press
Oxford, England & New York, USA
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