Libraries must really be struggling when they are sending their staff out to go on line and promote them. I was going to remind you were I live and make some lame joke about language barriers...but (art history books by language): Language: English (224) Swedish (32) Finnish (30) German (19) Danish (2) It's the benefit of being an ex-pat in a country with only 5 million people who speak an undecipherable language.
I'll try to find the title of my textbook for you. The CD that came with it is this: http://www.amazon.com/Art-Study-Version-2-1-Through/dp/0534630049 There are interesting images there from the ancient world's art.
Ahh...what a coincidence. As I was going through some unpacked moving boxes looking for PhillyRapperSauce's bonsai photo, I happened to come across the textbook that was used when I took an art history survey course at Uni: Art Through the Ages I : Ancient, Medieval and Non-European Art Eighth Edition. Yep ... copyright 1986, lol. As I recall, I enjoyed the course. Not being an arty-crafty type, I was prone to nod-off on that sort of thing. Something or someone must've awoken me halfway through the quarter as I picked up enough to still be able to identify various Greek architecture and sculpture when I see it. There's some short but fairly comprehensive sections on early Indian and East Asian art as well. Cave painting to early African art, if you fancy it.
Update: this is the book I had to use (though this is a more recent edition)- http://www.amazon.com/Gardners-Thro...r=8-1&keywords=Gardner's+art+through+the+ages
lol I am the artsy type, and I found the super-ancient history sleep-inducing as well. It doesn't really get interesting till classical art and architecture where linear perspective is introduced. ETA: Well, Byzantine art is interesting, but you have to learn from someone who actually understands it to study it in an interesting way. (which doesn't really exist in Western unis, AFAIK. I learned about it from a pro iconographer-my godmommy )
Super-ancient primitive art has its moments. A few years ago my kids had discovered my old art history text book and had looked through it. Not long afterwards we were standing in line at a store and the tiddlers still being quite innocent suddenly announced "Da!! Lookit, that woman looks just like the goddess in your art book!" They've always had loud, projecting voices, and of course, the woman in front of us to whom they were referring overheard them. I could see she was glowing at the seeming compliment...but I knew what the kids were referring to when they said "goddess" - it was a picture of an ancient fertility goddess - which was essentially a little round stone with a round shelf carved in front and an even larger round shelf carved in back. And she did look just like the figure, lol.
I love "primitive" art. Not sure how the mods would feel about me posting pics of stuff like the Cerne Abbot Giant, or Sheela Na Gigs, but lots of it is far from primitive:
Ya sweir beasties would pry a bob from your wallets, there's a place in the member's section where you could post your dodgy relic poses - they let Hannibal run about in TapOut thongs in there, for god's sake, I don't see any issues with posting scantily clad cave-dwellers would be a problem.
I think it's sufficient to get people to search for "sheela na gig" and "cerne abbot giant". I love them particularly, because they provide a window to a time when we weren't so hung-up, prudish, neurotic and full of shame. Sometimes the past can give hope for the future.
I've never heard the pre-Columbian art of the Sun Kingdoms,such as that Aztec rendering of a calendar you showed,referred to as primitive. Or does this category now simply include all ancient civilizations? Or simply all pre-Raphaelite art? ()
We could always pick our own favourites works and discuss them? Make this a MAP art appreciation thread? Would no doubt open up all sorts of avenues. I can think of 3-4 I'd like to share.
Go ahead! Maybe a general art thread would be nice? I thought of asking for an art forum but I don't know if it would generate enough interest. Hey, we have Philo and his S&M trees!
I have, though thinking about it it's not very PC. If you search for "primitive art definition" you will find a couple of pages in the first few hits that reference pre-Columbian Americas. When I've read that phrase it's been in relation to basically anything that's not post-Christian or classical, as far as I could tell. I'm guessing it's avoided in academic circles these days.
The BBC does an excellent series of videos that cover the history of individual artists... I've recently watched two that are well done. On J.M.W Turner and the other one on John James Audubon. For books I'll dig some examples and post them up.
what i discovered. I googled Pablo Picasso once on the web and found an unfinished painting of a harlequin that rocked my world. Might I suggest simply googling artists you like and growing their work online : gustav klimpt, albrecht durer, Thomas Gainsborough, rembrandt, sorry my range is limited to these guys, but you might like georgia o'keefe. i'm not even sure what picasso was doing? was he rebelling, resisting someone who was transparently imprisoning him and to get back he started painting in the abstract ? i really don't know, sometimes bizarre social factors can have a profound impact on what an artist's work looks like, but without understanding the dynamics you think he was just being creative, not if he was saying, "i'm in prison and i can't get out. this kind of thing happens to people all the time, every day, and nobody pays any attention to it and only a few who are aware of it can even see it in my artwork. i'm screaming : "help! i'm in prison transparently and this is the most frustrating thing in the world because if i put it in letters, it would be censored and you would never even know."
