ART 250 Study Guide - Fall 2018, Comprehensive Midterm Notes - Marble, City, Ancient Greece
11 Oct 2018
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Department
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ART 250
MIDTERM EXAM
STUDY GUIDE
Fall 2018
Notes 9/13/17
ART 250 01
B.C. and A.D.
- Before Christ and Anno Domini (“year of God”)
- Less politically correct
B.C.E. and C.E.
- Before Common Era and Common Era
- More politically correct
* Both are acceptable, but it’s also important to know both ways of writing it.
* Remember that years before 0 count down, and years after 0 count up.
Prehistoric - everything that happened before people started to write things down
- People were thinking symbolically at this time
How do we know how old art is?
- Scientists and historians study the degrade of isotopes in the object and can figure out
years according to that
(The following are notes on pieces that can be found in the textbook required for this class. The
names or titles of the pieces will be italics.)
Prehistoric Art:
- Paleolithic Period (“old stone age”)
- Lion-Human from Germany
- Ivory, 1 ft long
- C. 30,000-26,000 B.C.E.
- Discovered in 1939
- Would’ve taken around 400 hours of skilled labor (which is a ton of time
for a people whose main concerns are not getting killed and figuring out
what meal to catch next)
- Animals are the most popular thing in this era of art
- Cuts in the surface are for decoration
- Woman from Willendorf from Austria
- Stone (limestone, aka eggstone, which is made from century-old coral
reef)
- C. 24,000 B.C.E
find more resources at oneclass.com
find more resources at oneclass.com
- NOT Venus, the Roman goddess of love, but instead, just a regular
woman
- 4 ⅜ inches tall
- Possibly a depiction of a pregnant woman - with swollen breasts, a large
stomach, and obvious vagina
- Used to be an earthy-red color
- She has no face
- Woman from Brassempouy from France
- Subtractive sculpting
- C. 30,000 B.C.E.
- Has a face!
- She’s very small - would fit on the tip of a pen
- Spotted Horses and Human Hands from France
- Cave art (found in caves that were used as gathering places - more of like
a town hall instead of someone’s home)
- Most people who wrote on caves would use rocks that were
already shaped like the animals, such as this one where the right
edge of the rock is already shaped like a horse
- Generation after generation would add to the art on the walls of
caves
- C. 25,000 - 15,000 B.C.E.
- Are they depicting animals they’re about to kill? Or animals they worship?
Or animals that bring good luck? It’s hard to answer with certainty
- Lots of cave art is done in profile, so you can see the full animal or person
- Colors were made by crushing minerals or rocks and adding water to them
- These peoples also developed a human airbrush technique where they
would put the color into their mouths and spit it out to make it look like a
spray paint design
- Hall of Bulls from France
- C. 15,000 B.C.E.
- Paintings on the ceiling!
- Discovered in 1940
- The original cave is not accessible anymore
- The bulls are incredibly realistic
- These peoples did not paint settings or backgrounds, probably because the
setting was irrelevant to them
- The creatures they drew were free, running, moving creatures
- Bird-Head Man with Bison and Rhinoceros from France
- Rhino gored the bison, man lying down
- Is this a story?
find more resources at oneclass.com
find more resources at oneclass.com
Document Summary
Before christ and anno domini ( year of god ) * both are acceptable, but it"s also important to know both ways of writing it. * remember that years before 0 count down, and years after 0 count up. Prehistoric - everything that happened before people started to write things down. People were thinking symbolically at this time. Scientists and historians study the degrade of isotopes in the object and can figure out years according to that (the following are notes on pieces that can be found in the textbook required for this class. The names or titles of the pieces will be italics. ) Would"ve taken around 400 hours of skilled labor (which is a ton of time for a people whose main concerns are not getting killed and figuring out what meal to catch next) Animals are the most popular thing in this era of art. Cuts in the surface are for decoration.
