Renaissance Era

During this week we studyed the Renaissance Era. The Renaissance, meaning "rebirth" in Italion was from the 14th century to the 17th century. In the art world, linear perspective became a popular style for painting. Leonardo de Vinci was one of the many artists to begin perfecting the human anatomy. One of the many paintings that portrayed this was Michelangelo's "The creation of Adam".

Byzantine Art

Byzantine Art work was very religious and structured. Constantine was the first emperor to leagalize christinanity. There were many religious pieces of art work with angels and people with halos around their heads. Like most artwork, people of high importance were always higher, put in front, or bigger then other subjects in the artwork to symbolize their importance. There were many significant arcitectures like the Hagia Sophia which was a dome temple that was supported by piers. It was combined by Roman engenierring and Greek design.

Asian Art

The Great wave off Kanagawa, by Katsushika Hokusai was published in 1832 and is one of many art works with mount Fuji in the background. The style of art is woodblock print.

There were many different styles in chinese art as well. The Shang Dynasty, which was the first dynasty of the Bronze Age had many elaboarate bronze vessels that were used in sacrifices and funerary ceremonies. Hanging and hand scrolls were very popular throughout the dynastys. For instance, Travelers Among Mountains and Streams by Fan Kuan was a hanging scroll that showed chinese landscape and very small people. Chinese artist believe that nature was a better teacher than anything else. Artists would study landscape and effects of sunlight. Terracotta soldiers were another important chinese aspect in art. They were clay figurines that were life sized and meant to protect the leader's grave.

Greek & Roman Art

Greek art is generally broken up into three time periods, the Archaic, the Classical and the Hellenistic period. Their architecture had three different styles as well. Greek colomns were either made up of Doric, Ionic, or Corinthian. Greek art forms mainly consisted up of statues of different God's and Goddesses. In the picture to the left, is a statue of the Greek God Zeus, which was said to be the God of all Gods. He controls the sky and uses lightning as his weapon to punish other Gods. The class had an assignment to choose a God or Goddess that interested them. I choose the Goddess Nyx. The Goddess Nyx is night personified. Many people believe that she is evil because she gave birth to dark Gods and Goddess like Moerae (the three Fates), Nemesis (justice and divine retribution), winged Hypnos (Sleep) and His brother Thanatos (Death), Moros (Doom), The Keres (goddesses of violent death), And Oizys (Misery).

African Art

During the week of 10/14 & 10/20 we studied African Art. African Art consisted of many masks, elaborate costumes, and sculptures. Each piece of artwork had a deep meaning behind why it was made. Also, we learned about symmetry and how everything that was African Art was symmetric. The most interesting thing learned during this week was scarification., which was the process of scratching, or cutting your skin so that the scars would create a design. Many African Kings and Queens did this to show their status in society.

Egyptian Art

Egyptian Art was during the week of 9/22-10/10. During this week we learned about the process it took to mummify a body, why and how the pyramids were made, and the belief system of the Egyptians. Egypt was broken up into three periods, the Old Kingdom, The middle Kingdom, and the New Kingdom. Some vocab words we learned were Pharaoh, embalming, and sarcophagus.

Prehistoric Art

During the week of Prehistoric Art (9/15), we learned about the many different types of cave drawings around the world. Some people believed that the reason behind the cave paintings was a religious purpose. One theory was that the drawings were used as a spell that was put on the animals to weakin their spirts when the cavemen went out to hunt. Also, everything the cavemen used was all organic materials that could be found on earth. The most interesting fact about the Prehistoric Art was that some of the images were the same but in different caves across the world.