Our lecturer for art history the first semester was Marion McEnroy-Higgins.
Art history really is such a vast subject and we were also looking at architecture and authors so you can imagine!
Our first lecture was to do with methods of looking at art and we were given a handout of an extract from a book by Susan Woodford called 'Looking at Pictures' published by Cambridge University Press, 1983. We can look at art and ask ourselves about the purpose for which is was created i.e to tell a story, decoration etc. We can then go on to ask what can we find out about the culture of the time from the piece? If realism is a relevant, how realistic is it? and how is it composed or designed in terms of it's formal elements?
So as an example:
This cave painting of hyenas found in the Chauvet cave in France and thought to be 30,000 years old, what purpose did this art serve? Well of course that's quite a big question in itself because we don't have a definitive answer on it. It could have been for magical purposes, for pleasure, for information...looking at the many cave paintings available to see now I love their depictions of animals and people, the movement and earthy colours; but they maybe did serve other purposes. What does it tell us about the culture?..it indicates a dwelling in and around these caves, a community and a strong connection with what was around them. They are pretty realistic, if they were for identification purposes of species of animals you would be able to make them out; probably not for individual animals/people though. How it is composed in terms of formal design I may not have the full means to describe yet; but giving it a go...the design is composed to fill that space and gives a sense of balance and harmony. One animal seems to interact with the other. The colour seems dependent on the limit of pigment available to the artist; but the line and texture created is very descriptive. The pattern on the animals is probably there to try to show actual animal markings. I'm not sure from looking at the photo of the scale or whether the artist was showing a parent and young hyena or distance, to me from the body language it seems more like the parent and young.
A photo of a modern day hyena:
After each art history lecture I have an art history tutorial, so I will be commenting on that next post......
