October 21, 2012
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Art History
The book I read to research this post was Art History: A Very Short Introduction by Dana Arnold which is a very good book which I bought from kindle. This book takes a long hard look at what art is and tends to talk about the history of art in general terms. The author is sympathetic to the contributions of women & non westerners to the art movement. Did you know there is a complex and diverse art tradition in Africa that is 5 thousand years old and predates the ancient egyptians. Egypt of course is a part of Africa & Cairo is the biggest african city. The ancient egyptians used egg tempera in there pictures which gave a very smooth finish and of course oil painting didn't come along until the 16th century. They mixed egg whites with water and added various pigments to get colour, the egg enabled the paint to set. In china which often gets culturally ignored they have the 7,000 strong terracota army which is a huge artistic achievement. Another good example of nonwestern art is Easter Island with its thousands of sculptures. The island could only support a small number of people in terms of food etc so it's a mystery how thousands of people could make these sculptures. Another mystery is how they got these huge rocks on top of one another. Stonehenge in Britain which is a form of art would of presented the same problem and also the mind boggles at how they transported these huge monoliths from Wales over a hundred miles away.
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