1.
Prehistoric art
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At this point ancient art begins, for the older literate cultures. The end-date for what is covered by the term thus varies greatly between different parts of the world, from the Upper Palaeolithic through the Mesolithic, cave paintings and portable art such as figurines and beads predominated, with decorative figured workings also seen on some utilitarian objects. In the Neolithic evidence of early pottery appeared, as did sculpture, Early rock art also first appeared in the Neolithic. It also saw the development in areas of artisans, a class of people specializing in the production of art. By the Iron Age, civilizations with writing had arisen from Ancient Egypt to Ancient China, some cultures, notably the Maya civilization, independently developed writing during the time they flourished, which was then later lost. These cultures may be classified as prehistoric, especially if their writing systems have not been deciphered, the earliest undisputed art originated with the Aurignacian archaeological culture in the Upper Paleolithic. However, there is evidence that the preference for the aesthetic emerged in the Middle Paleolithic. Some archaeologists have interpreted certain Middle Paleolithic artifacts as early examples of artistic expression, there are other claims of Middle Paleolithic sculpture, dubbed the Venus of Tan-Tan and the Venus of Berekhat Ram. In 2002 in Blombos cave, situated in South Africa, stones were discovered engraved with grid or cross-hatch patterns and this suggested to some researchers that early Homo sapiens were capable of abstraction and production of abstract art or symbolic art. Several archaeologists including Richard Klein are hesitant to accept the Blombos caves as the first example of actual art, the oldest undisputed works of figurative art were found in the Schwäbische Alb, Baden-Württemberg, Germany. The earliest of these, the Venus figurine known as the Venus of Hohle Fels, monumental open-air art in Europe from this period includes the rock-art at Côa Valley and Mazouco in Portugal, Domingo García and Siega Verde in Spain, and Rocher gravé de Fornols in France. A cave at Turobong in South Korea containing human remains has found to contain carved deer bones. Petroglyphs of deer or reindeer found at Sokchang-ri may also date to the Upper Paleolithic, potsherds in a style reminiscent of early Japanese work have been found at Kosan-ri on Jeju island, which, due to lower sea levels at the time, would have been accessible from Japan. The oldest petroglyphs are dated to approximately the Mesolithic and late Upper Paleolithic boundary, the earliest undisputed African rock art dates back about 10,000 years. The first naturalistic paintings of humans found in Africa date back about 8,000 years apparently originating in the Nile River valley, noted sites containing early art include Tassili nAjjer in southern Algeria, Tadrart Acacus in Libya, and the Tibesti Mountains in northern Chad. Rock carvings at the Wonderwerk Cave in South Africa have been dated to this age, contentious dates as far back as 29,000 years have been obtained at a site in Tanzania. A site at the Apollo 11 Cave complex in Namibia has been dated to 27,000 years, göbekli Tepe in Turkey has circles of massive T-shaped stone pillars dating back to the 10th–8th millennium BCE, the worlds oldest known megaliths. Many of the pillars are decorated with abstract, enigmatic pictograms, Asia was the cradle for several significant civilizations, most notably those of China and South Asia
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Medieval art
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The medieval art of the Western world covers a vast scope of time and place, over 1000 years of art in Europe, and at times the Middle East and North Africa. It includes major art movements and periods, national and regional art, genres, revivals, the crafts. Art historians attempt to classify medieval art into major periods and styles, in addition each region, mostly during the period in the process of becoming nations or cultures, had its own distinct artistic style, such as Anglo-Saxon art or Norse art. Medieval art in Europe grew out of the heritage of the Roman Empire. These sources were mixed with the vigorous barbarian artistic culture of Northern Europe to produce an artistic legacy. Indeed, the history of art can be seen as the history of the interplay between the elements of classical, early Christian and barbarian art. The period ended with the self-perceived Renaissance recovery of the skills and values of art. Since a revival of interest and understanding in the 19th century it has seen as a period of enormous achievement that underlies the development of later Western art. Many regions did not regain their population levels until the 17th century. The population of Europe is estimated to have reached a low point of about 18 million in 650, doubling by 1000, in 1450 it was still only 50 million. To these figures, Northern Europe, especially Britain, contributed a lower proportion than today, and Southern Europe, including France, the increase in prosperity, for those who survived, was much less affected by the Black Death. Until about the 11th century most of Europe was short of labour, with large amounts of unused land. The medieval period saw the falling away of the invasions and incursions from outside the area that characterized the first millennium. The impression may be left by the works that almost all medieval art was religious. Most churches have been rebuilt, often times, but medieval palaces and large houses have been lost at a far greater rate. The situation is similar in most of Europe, though the 14th century Palais des Papes in Avignon survives largely intact. Paper became available in the last centuries of the period, but was extremely expensive by todays standards. Art in the Middle Ages is a subject and art historians traditionally divide it in several large-scale phases, styles or periods
3.
Gothic art
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Gothic art was a style of medieval art that developed in Northern France out of Romanesque art in the 12th century AD, led by the concurrent development of Gothic architecture. It spread to all of Western Europe, and much of Southern and Central Europe, in the late 14th century, the sophisticated court style of International Gothic developed, which continued to evolve until the late 15th century. In many areas, especially Germany, Late Gothic art continued well into the 16th century, primary media in the Gothic period included sculpture, panel painting, stained glass, fresco and illuminated manuscripts. The earliest Gothic art was monumental sculpture, on the walls of Cathedrals, Christian art was often typological in nature, showing the stories of the New Testament and the Old Testament side by side. Increased literacy and a body of secular vernacular literature encouraged the representation of secular themes in art. Gothic art emerged in Île-de-France, France, in the early 12th century at the Abbey Church of St Denis built by Abbot Suger, monastic orders, especially the Cistercians and the Carthusians, were important builders who disseminated the style and developed distinctive variants of it across Europe. Gothic art was often typological in nature, reflecting a belief that the events of the Old Testament pre-figured those of the New, Old and New Testament scenes were shown side by side in works like the Speculum Humanae Salvationis, and the decoration of churches. The Gothic period coincided with a resurgence in Marian devotion. Images of the Virgin Mary developed from the Byzantine hieratic types, through the Coronation of the Virgin, to human and initimate types. Artists like Giotto, Fra Angelico and Pietro Lorenzetti in Italy, and Early Netherlandish painting, brought realism, Western artists, and their patrons, became much more confident in innovative iconography, and much more originality is seen, although copied formulae were still used by most artists. Even in Last Judgements Christ was now usually shown exposing his chest to show the wounds of his Passion, the word Gothic for art was initially used as a synonym for Barbaric, and was therefore used pejoratively. Its critics saw this type of Medieval art as unrefined and too remote from the aesthetic proportions, Renaissance authors believed that the Sack of Rome by the Gothic tribes in 410 had triggered the demise of the Classical world and all the values they held dear. Gothic art was criticized by French authors such as Boileau, La Bruyère, Rousseau, before becoming a recognized form of art. Molière would famously comment on Gothic, The besotted taste of Gothic monuments, These odious monsters of ignorant centuries, in its beginning, Gothic art was initially called French work, thus attesting the priority of France in the creation of this style. Painting in a style that can be called Gothic did not appear until about 1200, or nearly 50 years after the origins of Gothic architecture and sculpture. Then figures become more animated in pose and facial expression, tend to be smaller in relation to the background of scenes, and are arranged more freely in the pictorial space, where there is room. This transition occurs first in England and France around 1200, in Germany around 1220, painting during the Gothic period was practiced in four primary media, frescos, panel paintings, manuscript illumination and stained glass. Frescoes continued to be used as the pictorial narrative craft on church walls in southern Europe as a continuation of early Christian
4.
French Renaissance
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The French Renaissance was the cultural and artistic movement in France between the 15th and early 17th centuries. The period is associated with the pan-European Renaissance, a word first used by the French historian Jules Michelet to define the artistic, the French Renaissance traditionally extends from the French invasion of Italy in 1494 during the reign of Charles VIII until the death of Henry IV in 1610. The reigns of Francis I of France and his son Henry II are generally considered the apex of the French Renaissance, the word Renaissance is a French word, whose literal translation into English is Rebirth. The word Renaissance was first used and defined by French historian Jules Michelet, in his 1855 work, as a French citizen and historian, Michelet also claimed the Renaissance as a French movement. His work is at the origin of the use of the French word Renaissance in other languages, for a chronological list of French Renaissance artists, see List of French Renaissance artists. In 1516, Francis I of France invited Leonardo da Vinci to the Château dAmboise and provided him with the Château du Clos Lucé, then called Château de Cloux, as a place to stay and work. Leonardo, a painter and inventor, arrived with three of his paintings, namely the Mona Lisa, Sainte Anne, and Saint Jean Baptiste. There are a number of French artists of talent in this period including the painter Jean Fouquet of Tours. Marie de Medici, Henry IVs queen, invited the Flemish painter Peter Paul Rubens to France, another Flemish artist working for the court was Frans Pourbus the younger. Outside France, working for the dukes of Lorraine, one finds a very different late mannerist style in the artists Jacques Bellange, Claude Deruet and Jacques Callot. Having little contact with the French artists of the period, they developed a heightened, extreme, and often erotic mannerism, the old Louvre castle in Paris was also rebuilt under the direction of Pierre Lescot and would become the core of a brand new Renaissance château. To the west of the Louvre, Catherine de Medici had built for her the Tuileries palace with extensive gardens and they became an extension of the chateaux that they surrounded, and were designed to illustrate the Renaissance ideals of measure and proportion. Burgundy, the mostly French-speaking area unified with the Kingdom of France in 1477, was the center of Europe in the early. The Burgundian style gave birth to the Franco-Flemish style of polyphony which dominated European music in the late 15th and early 16th centuries. However, by the end of the 15th century, a French national character was becoming distinct in music of the French royal and aristocratic courts, guillaume Dufay and Gilles Binchois are two notable examples from the Burgundian school during the early Renaissance period. The most renowned composer in Europe, Josquin des Prez, worked for a time in the court of Louis XII, Francis I, who became king that year, made the creation of an opulent musical establishment a priority. By far the most significant contribution of France to music in the Renaissance period was the chanson, the chanson in the early 16th century was characterised by a dactylic opening and contrapuntal style which was later adopted by the Italian canzona, the predecessor of the sonata. Typically chansons were for three or four voices, without accompaniment, but the most popular examples were inevitably made into instrumental versions as well
5.
17th-century French art
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In the early part of the 17th century, late mannerist and early Baroque tendencies continued to flourish in the court of Marie de Medici and Louis XIII. Art from this period shows influences from both the north of Europe and from Roman painters of the Counter-Reformation, artists in France frequently debated the merits between Peter Paul Rubens and Nicolas Poussin. There was also a strong Caravaggio school represented in the period by the paintings of Georges de La Tour. The wretched and the poor were featured in an almost Dutch manner in the paintings by the three Le Nain brothers. In the paintings of Philippe de Champaigne there are both propagandistic portraits of Louis XIII s minister Cardinal Richelieu and other more contemplative portraits of people in the Jansenist sect. The Palace of Versailles, initially a hunting lodge built by his father, was transformed by Louis XIV into a marvelous palace for fêtes and parties. Architect Louis Le Vau, painter and designer Charles Le Brun, the initial impetus for this transformation of Versailles is generally linked to the private château Vaux-le-Vicomte built for Louis XIVs minister of Finance Nicolas Fouquet. Having offered a festival for the king in the newly finished residence in 1661. The architects and artists under his patronage were all put to work on Versailles, in his youth, Louis XIV had suffered during the civil and parliamentary insurrection known as the Fronde. Versailles became a gilded cage, To leave spelled disaster for a noble, for all official charges, a word or glance from the king could make or destroy a career. The king himself followed a strict daily program, and there was little privacy, yet the difficult wars at the end of his long reign and the religious problems created by the revocation of the Edict of Nantes made his last years dark ones. French artists of the seventeenth century Baroque painting Classicism Perrault’s Colonnade Anthony Blunt, Art, french Art Vol III, The Ancient Régime ISBN 2-08-013617-8
6.
19th-century French art
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Many of the developments in French arts in this period parallel changes in literature. For more on this, see French literature of the 19th century, for more on French history, see History of France. The French Revolution and the Napoleonic wars brought great changes to the arts in France, the program of exaltation and mythification of the Emperor Napoleon I of France was closely coordinated in the paintings of Gros and Guérin. The comparison is however somewhat false, for Ingres intense realism sometimes gives way to amazing voluptuousness in his Turkish bath scenes, romanticism is a literary language based on feelings. Writers who illustrated this concept included John Keats and Benjamin Constant, auguste Rodin and Camille Claudel are the most famous sculptors of their time. Walter Benjamin called Paris the capital of the 19th century, yet there was also a second Paris at the limits of Haussmanns city on the hill of Montmartre with her windmills, cabarets and vineyards. What is more, the debate in the visual arts is also repeated in the same period in music, dance, architecture. This is the birth of Modernism, Édouard Manet represents for many critics the division between the 19th century and the modern period. Impressionism would take the Barbizon school one further, rejecting once and for all a belabored style, claude Monet with his cathedrals and haystacks, Pierre-Auguste Renoir with both his early outdoor festivals and his later feathery style of ruddy nudes, Edgar Degas with his dancers and bathers. Some of these techniques were made possible by new paints available in tubes and these painters were also to a certain degree in a dialogue with another discovery of the 19th century, photography. From this point on, the thirty years were a litany of amazing experiments. Vincent van Gogh, Dutch born but living in France, opened the road to expressionism, georges Seurat, influenced by color theory, devised a pointillist technique that controlled the Impressionist experiment. Paul Cézanne, a painter, attempted a geometrical exploration of the world. Paul Gauguin, the banker, found symbolism in Brittany and then exoticism and primitivism in French Polynesia, henri Rousseau, the self-taught dabbler, becomes the model for the naïve revolution. List of French artists of the first half of the 19th century List of French artists of the half of the 19th century Félix Louis Leullier Incoherents
7.
20th-century French art
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20th-century French art developed out of the Impressionism and Post-Impressionism that dominated French art at the end of the 19th century. After World War II, while French artists explored such tendencies as Tachism, Fluxus and New realism, the early years of the twentieth century were dominated by Neo-Impressionism and Divisionism, experiments in colour and content that Impressionism, Post-Impressionism and Symbolism had unleashed. The products of the far east also brought new influences, Les Nabis explored a decorative art in flat plains with a Japanese print graphic approach. From 1904 Les Fauves exploded in color, the influence of African tribal masks led Pablo Picasso to his Demoiselles dAvignon of 1907. Cubism in all its phases and divers styles would dominate Europe, World War I did not stop the dynamic creation of art in France. In 1916 a group of discontents met in a bar in Zurich and create the most radical gesture possible, at the same time, Francis Picabia and Marcel Duchamp were exploring similar notions. At an art show in New York in 1917 Duchamp presented a white porcelain urinal signed R. Mutt as work of art, the killing fields of the war had made many see the absurdity of existence. This was also the period when the Lost Generation took hold, rich Americans enjoying the liberties of Prohibition-free France in the 1920s, Paris was also, for African-Americans, amazingly free of the racial restrictions found in America. When Dada reached Paris, it was embraced by a group of young artists and writers who were fascinated with the writings of Sigmund Freud. The provocative spirit of Dada became linked to the exploration of the mind through the use of automatic writing, chance operations and, in some cases. The surrealists quickly turned to painting and sculpture, World War II ended the feast. Many surrealists like Yves Tanguy, Max Ernst, André Breton and André Masson fled occupied France for New York and the States, for a chronological list of artists from the period, go here. The French art scene immediately after the war went roughly in several directions and these artists included Wols, Jean Fautrier, Hans Hartung, Jean-Paul Riopelle, Jean Degottex, Pierre Soulages, Jean Messagier and Georges Mathieu. At the same time, Jean Dubuffet dominated the early years while exploring childlike drawings, graffiti. Meanwhile, François Fiedler went searching for the combination of color. The artist Christo joined the group in 1963, the members of the group saw the world as an image, from which they would take parts and incorporate them into their works. They sought to bring life and art together, and has often been compared with Pop Art. Fluxus artists preferred to work with materials were at hand
8.
Impressionism
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Impressionism originated with a group of Paris-based artists whose independent exhibitions brought them to prominence during the 1870s and 1880s. The Impressionists faced harsh opposition from the art community in France. The development of Impressionism in the arts was soon followed by analogous styles in other media that became known as impressionist music. Radicals in their time, early Impressionists violated the rules of academic painting and they constructed their pictures from freely brushed colours that took precedence over lines and contours, following the example of painters such as Eugène Delacroix and J. M. W. Turner. They also painted scenes of modern life, and often painted outdoors. Previously, still lifes and portraits as well as landscapes were painted in a studio. The Impressionists found that they could capture the momentary and transient effects of sunlight by painting en plein air, the Impressionists, however, developed new techniques specific to the style. The public, at first hostile, gradually came to believe that the Impressionists had captured a fresh and original vision, even if the art critics and art establishment disapproved of the new style. In the middle of the 19th century—a time of change, as Emperor Napoleon III rebuilt Paris, the Académie was the preserver of traditional French painting standards of content and style. Historical subjects, religious themes, and portraits were valued, landscape, the Académie preferred carefully finished images that looked realistic when examined closely. Paintings in this style were made up of brush strokes carefully blended to hide the artists hand in the work. Colour was restrained and often toned down further by the application of a golden varnish, the Académie had an annual, juried art show, the Salon de Paris, and artists whose work was displayed in the show won prizes, garnered commissions, and enhanced their prestige. The standards of the juries represented the values of the Académie, represented by the works of artists as Jean-Léon Gérôme. In the early 1860s, four young painters—Claude Monet, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Alfred Sisley and they discovered that they shared an interest in painting landscape and contemporary life rather than historical or mythological scenes. A favourite meeting place for the artists was the Café Guerbois on Avenue de Clichy in Paris, where the discussions were led by Édouard Manet. They were soon joined by Camille Pissarro, Paul Cézanne, during the 1860s, the Salon jury routinely rejected about half of the works submitted by Monet and his friends in favour of works by artists faithful to the approved style. In 1863, the Salon jury rejected Manets The Luncheon on the Grass primarily because it depicted a woman with two clothed men at a picnic. While the Salon jury routinely accepted nudes in historical and allegorical paintings, the jurys severely worded rejection of Manets painting appalled his admirers, and the unusually large number of rejected works that year perturbed many French artists
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Cubism
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Cubism is an early-20th-century avant-garde art movement that revolutionized European painting and sculpture, and inspired related movements in music, literature and architecture. Cubism has been considered the most influential art movement of the 20th century, the term is broadly used in association with a wide variety of art produced in Paris during the 1910s and extending through the 1920s. The movement was pioneered by Georges Braque and Pablo Picasso, joined by Andre Lhote, Jean Metzinger, Albert Gleizes, Robert Delaunay, Henri Le Fauconnier, Fernand Léger and Juan Gris. A primary influence that led to Cubism was the representation of form in the late works of Paul Cézanne. The impact of Cubism was far-reaching and wide-ranging, Cubism spread rapidly across the globe and in doing so evolved to a greater or lesser extent. In essence, Cubism was the origin of a process that produced diversity. In France, offshoots of Cubism developed, including Orphism, Abstract art, in other countries Futurism, Suprematism, Dada, Constructivism, De Stijl and Art Deco developed in response to Cubism. Other common threads between these movements include the faceting or simplification of geometric forms, and the association of mechanization. Cubism began between 1907 and 1911, Pablo Picassos 1907 painting Les Demoiselles dAvignon has often been considered a proto-Cubist work. Georges Braques 1908 Houses at L’Estaque prompted the critic Louis Vauxcelles to refer to bizarreries cubiques, Gertrude Stein referred to landscapes made by Picasso in 1909, such as Reservoir at Horta de Ebro, as the first Cubist paintings. A second phase, Synthetic Cubism, remained vital until around 1919, english art historian Douglas Cooper proposed another scheme, describing three phases of Cubism in his book, The Cubist Epoch. Douglas Coopers restrictive use of terms to distinguish the work of Braque, Picasso, Gris. Alternative interpretations of Cubism have therefore developed, wider views of Cubism include artists who were later associated with the Salle 41 artists, e. g. John Berger identifies the essence of Cubism with the mechanical diagram. The metaphorical model of Cubism is the diagram, The diagram being a symbolic representation of invisible processes, forces, structures. A diagram need not eschew certain aspects of appearance but these too will be treated as not as imitations or recreations. During the late 19th and early 20th centuries, Europeans were discovering African, Polynesian, Micronesian, artists such as Paul Gauguin, Henri Matisse, and Pablo Picasso were intrigued and inspired by the stark power and simplicity of styles of those foreign cultures. Around 1906, Picasso met Matisse through Gertrude Stein, at a time when artists had recently acquired an interest in primitivism, Iberian sculpture, African art and African tribal masks. Picassos paintings of 1907 have been characterized as Protocubism, as seen in Les Demoiselles dAvignon
10.
Dada
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Dada or Dadaism was an art movement of the European avant-garde in the early 20th century, with early centers in Zürich, Switzerland at the Cabaret Voltaire, in New York, and after 1920, in Paris. The art of the movement spanned visual, literary, and sound media, including collage, sound poetry, cut-up writing, Dadaist artists expressed their discontent with violence, war, and nationalism, and maintained political affinities with the radical left. Others note that it suggests the first words of a child, evoking a childishness, still others speculate that the word might have been chosen to evoke a similar meaning in any language, reflecting the movements internationalism. The roots of Dada lay in pre-war avant-garde, the term anti-art, a precursor to Dada, was coined by Marcel Duchamp around 1913 to characterize works which challenge accepted definitions of art. Cubism and the development of collage and abstract art would inform the movements detachment from the constraints of reality, the work of French poets, Italian Futurists and the German Expressionists would influence Dadas rejection of the tight correlation between words and meaning. Works such as Ubu Roi by Alfred Jarry, and the ballet Parade by Erik Satie would also be characterized as proto-Dadaist works, the Dada movements principles were first collected in Hugo Balls Dada Manifesto in 1916. The movement influenced later styles like the avant-garde and downtown music movements, Dada was an informal international movement, with participants in Europe and North America. The beginnings of Dada correspond to the outbreak of World War I, avant-garde circles outside France knew of pre-war Parisian developments. Futurism developed in response to the work of various artists, many Dadaists believed that the reason and logic of bourgeois capitalist society had led people into war. They expressed their rejection of that ideology in artistic expression that appeared to reject logic and embrace chaos, for example, George Grosz later recalled that his Dadaist art was intended as a protest against this world of mutual destruction. According to Hans Richter Dada was not art, it was anti-art, Dada represented the opposite of everything which art stood for. Where art was concerned with aesthetics, Dada ignored aesthetics. If art was to appeal to sensibilities, Dada was intended to offend, as Hugo Ball expressed it, For us, art is not an end in itself. But it is an opportunity for the perception and criticism of the times we live in. A reviewer from the American Art News stated at the time that Dada philosophy is the sickest, most paralyzing and most destructive thing that has ever originated from the brain of man. Art historians have described Dada as being, in large part, a systematic work of destruction and demoralization. In the end it became nothing but an act of sacrilege, to quote Dona Budds The Language of Art Knowledge, Dada was born out of negative reaction to the horrors of the First World War. This international movement was begun by a group of artists and poets associated with the Cabaret Voltaire in Zürich, Dada rejected reason and logic, prizing nonsense, irrationality and intuition
11.
Surrealism
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Surrealism is a cultural movement that began in the early 1920s, and is best known for its visual artworks and writings. The aim was to resolve the previously contradictory conditions of dream, leader André Breton was explicit in his assertion that Surrealism was, above all, a revolutionary movement. Surrealism developed out of the Dada activities during World War I, the word surrealist was coined by Guillaume Apollinaire and first appeared in the preface to his play Les Mamelles de Tirésias, which was written in 1903 and first performed in 1917. The Dadaists protested with anti-art gatherings, performances, writings and art works, after the war, when they returned to Paris, the Dada activities continued. Meeting the young writer Jacques Vaché, Breton felt that Vaché was the son of writer. He admired the young writers anti-social attitude and disdain for established artistic tradition, later Breton wrote, In literature, I was successively taken with Rimbaud, with Jarry, with Apollinaire, with Nouveau, with Lautréamont, but it is Jacques Vaché to whom I owe the most. Back in Paris, Breton joined in Dada activities and started the literary journal Littérature along with Louis Aragon and they began experimenting with automatic writing—spontaneously writing without censoring their thoughts—and published the writings, as well as accounts of dreams, in the magazine. Breton and Soupault delved deeper into automatism and wrote The Magnetic Fields, continuing to write, they came to believe that automatism was a better tactic for societal change than the Dada form of attack on prevailing values. They also looked to the Marxist dialectic and the work of such theorists as Walter Benjamin, freuds work with free association, dream analysis, and the unconscious was of utmost importance to the Surrealists in developing methods to liberate imagination. They embraced idiosyncrasy, while rejecting the idea of an underlying madness, as Salvador Dalí later proclaimed, There is only one difference between a madman and me. Beside the use of analysis, they emphasized that one could combine inside the same frame, elements not normally found together to produce illogical. The more the relationship between the two juxtaposed realities is distant and true, the stronger the image will be−the greater its emotional power, the group aimed to revolutionize human experience, in its personal, cultural, social, and political aspects. They wanted to people from false rationality, and restrictive customs. Breton proclaimed that the aim of Surrealism was long live the social revolution. To this goal, at various times Surrealists aligned with communism and anarchism, in 1924 two Surrealist factions declared their philosophy in two separate Surrealist Manifestos. That same year the Bureau of Surrealist Research was established, leading up to 1924, two rival surrealist groups had formed. Each group claimed to be successors of a revolution launched by Guillaume Apollinaire, the other group, led by Breton, included Louis Aragon, Robert Desnos, Paul Éluard, Jacques Baron, Jacques-André Boiffard, Jean Carrive, René Crevel and Georges Malkine, among others. Goll and Breton clashed openly, at one point literally fighting, at the Comédie des Champs-Élysées, in the end, Breton won the battle through tactical and numerical superiority
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Art of Europe
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The art of Europe encompasses the history of visual art in Europe. European prehistoric art started as mobile rock, and cave painting art, written histories of European art often begin with the art of the Ancient Middle East, and the Ancient Aegean civilisations, dating from the 3rd millennium BC. Parallel with these significant cultures, art of one form or another existed all over Europe, wherever there were people, leaving signs such as carvings, decorated artifacts and huge standing stones. Before the 1800s, the Christian church was an influence upon European art. The history of the Church was very much reflected in the history of art, in the same period of time there was renewed interest in heroes and heroines, tales of mythological gods and goddesses, great wars, and bizarre creatures which were not connected to religion. Secularism has influenced European art since the Classical period, while most art of the last 200 years has produced without reference to religion. On the other hand, European art has often influenced by politics of one kind or another, of the state, of the patron. European art is arranged into a number of periods, which, historically. Broadly the periods are, Classical, Byzantine, Medieval, Gothic, Renaissance, Baroque, Rococo, Neoclassical, European prehistoric art is an important part of the European cultural heritage. Prehistoric art history is divided into four main periods, Stone age, Neolithic, Bronze age. Most of the artifacts of this period are small sculptures. The oldest European cave art dates back 40,800, rock painting was also performed on cliff faces, but fewer of those have survived because of erosion. One well-known example is the paintings of Astuvansalmi in the Saimaa area of Finland. When Marcelino Sanz de Sautuola first encountered the Magdalenian paintings of the Altamira cave, Cantabria, Spain in 1879, recent reappraisals and numerous additional discoveries have since demonstrated their authenticity, while at the same time stimulating interest in the artistry of Upper Palaeolithic peoples. Cave paintings, undertaken with only the most rudimentary tools, can also furnish valuable insight into the culture, the figures are generally rather sketchily depicted in thin paint, with the relationships between the groups of humans and animals more carefully depicted than individual figures. Other less numerous groups of art, many engraved rather than painted. The Iberian examples are believed to date from a period perhaps covering the Upper Paleolithic, Mesolithic. There are human heads and some fully represented animals, but full-length human figures at any size are so rare that their absence may represent a religious taboo, the Minoan culture is regarded as the oldest civilization in Europe
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Visual arts
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The visual arts are art forms such as ceramics, drawing, painting, sculpture, printmaking, design, crafts, photography, video, filmmaking, literature, and architecture. Many artistic disciplines involve aspects of the arts as well as arts of other types. Also included within the arts are the applied arts such as industrial design, graphic design, fashion design, interior design. Current usage of the visual arts includes fine art as well as the applied, decorative arts and crafts. The distinction was emphasized by artists of the Arts and Crafts Movement, Art schools made a distinction between the fine arts and the crafts, maintaining that a craftsperson could not be considered a practitioner of the arts. The increasing tendency to painting, and to a lesser degree sculpture. The Western hierarchy of genres reflected similar attitudes, training in the visual arts has generally been through variations of the apprentice and workshop systems. Visual arts have now become a subject in most education systems. Drawing is a means of making an image, using any of a variety of tools. Digital tools that simulate the effects of these are also used, the main techniques used in drawing are, line drawing, hatching, crosshatching, random hatching, scribbling, stippling, and blending. An artist who excels in drawing is referred to as a draftsman or draughtsman, drawing goes back at least 16,000 years to Paleolithic cave representations of animals such as those at Lascaux in France and Altamira in Spain. In ancient Egypt, ink drawings on papyrus, often depicting people, were used as models for painting or sculpture, drawings on Greek vases, initially geometric, later developed to the human form with black-figure pottery during the 7th century BC. Painting taken literally is the practice of applying pigment suspended in a carrier, like drawing, painting has its documented origins in caves and on rock faces. The finest examples, believed by some to be 32,000 years old, are in the Chauvet, in shades of red, brown, yellow and black, the paintings on the walls and ceilings are of bison, cattle, horses and deer. Paintings of human figures can be found in the tombs of ancient Egypt, in the great temple of Ramses II, Nefertari, his queen, is depicted being led by Isis. The Greeks contributed to painting but much of their work has been lost, one of the best remaining representations are the hellenistic Fayum mummy portraits. Another example is mosaic of the Battle of Issus at Pompeii, Greek and Roman art contributed to Byzantine art in the 4th century BC, which initiated a tradition in icon painting. Apart from the manuscripts produced by monks during the Middle Ages
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Plastic arts
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Plastic arts are art forms which involve physical manipulation of a plastic medium by moulding or modeling such as sculpture or ceramics. The term has also applied more broadly to all the visual arts. Materials for use in the arts, in the narrower definition, include those that can be carved or shaped, such as stone or wood, concrete. Plastics meaning certain synthetic organic resins have been used ever since they were invented, the term should not be confused with Piet Mondrians concept of Neoplasticism. Visual arts Media Art materials Recording medium Handicraft Plastic in art Barnes, the Art in Painting, 3rd ed.1937, Harcourt, Brace & World, Inc. OCLC1572753 Bukumirovic, D. Maga Magazinovic, biblioteka Fatalne srpkinje knj. br.4. Between the pictorial and the expression of ideas, the plastic arts, enciclopedia de las artes plásticas dominicanas, 1844-2000
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France
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France, officially the French Republic, is a country with territory in western Europe and several overseas regions and territories. The European, or metropolitan, area of France extends from the Mediterranean Sea to the English Channel and the North Sea, Overseas France include French Guiana on the South American continent and several island territories in the Atlantic, Pacific and Indian oceans. France spans 643,801 square kilometres and had a population of almost 67 million people as of January 2017. It is a unitary republic with the capital in Paris. Other major urban centres include Marseille, Lyon, Lille, Nice, Toulouse, during the Iron Age, what is now metropolitan France was inhabited by the Gauls, a Celtic people. The area was annexed in 51 BC by Rome, which held Gaul until 486, France emerged as a major European power in the Late Middle Ages, with its victory in the Hundred Years War strengthening state-building and political centralisation. During the Renaissance, French culture flourished and a colonial empire was established. The 16th century was dominated by civil wars between Catholics and Protestants. France became Europes dominant cultural, political, and military power under Louis XIV, in the 19th century Napoleon took power and established the First French Empire, whose subsequent Napoleonic Wars shaped the course of continental Europe. Following the collapse of the Empire, France endured a succession of governments culminating with the establishment of the French Third Republic in 1870. Following liberation in 1944, a Fourth Republic was established and later dissolved in the course of the Algerian War, the Fifth Republic, led by Charles de Gaulle, was formed in 1958 and remains to this day. Algeria and nearly all the colonies became independent in the 1960s with minimal controversy and typically retained close economic. France has long been a centre of art, science. It hosts Europes fourth-largest number of cultural UNESCO World Heritage Sites and receives around 83 million foreign tourists annually, France is a developed country with the worlds sixth-largest economy by nominal GDP and ninth-largest by purchasing power parity. In terms of household wealth, it ranks fourth in the world. France performs well in international rankings of education, health care, life expectancy, France remains a great power in the world, being one of the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council with the power to veto and an official nuclear-weapon state. It is a member state of the European Union and the Eurozone. It is also a member of the Group of 7, North Atlantic Treaty Organization, Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, the World Trade Organization, originally applied to the whole Frankish Empire, the name France comes from the Latin Francia, or country of the Franks
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Art of the Upper Paleolithic
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The art of the Upper Paleolithic is amongst the oldest art known. Older possible examples include the incised ochre from Blombos Cave, Cave art in Europe continued to the Mesolithic about 12,000 years ago. As this corresponds to the phase of the last glacial period. As a notable aspect of what some call the Upper Paleolithic Revolution, and evidence for behavioral modernity, Art helps define what makes us human – it is part of what we are or can be. Decoration was also made on functional tools, such as spear throwers, perforated batons, common subject matters include the animals that were hunted and predators and other animals that were not, the human form was often expressed – especially female shapes. Men are also depicted, such as the Pin Hole man, shells from Mediterranean species have been found at Gönnersdorf, over 1,000 kilometres from the Mediterranean coast. The higher sea levels today mean that the level and nature of settlements in the Upper Paleolithic are unable to be explored. It is possible that they were used in rituals, or alternatively heated on a fire, either type of use may account for the many broken examples, often with the fragments dispersed over some distance. Many sites have large quantities of flat stones apparently used as flooring, Ice Age art can be naturalistic and figurative, it can also be geometric and non-representational. Some of the oldest works of art were found in the Schwäbische Alb, Baden-Württemberg, the Venus figurine known as the Venus of Hohle Fels, dates to some 40,000 years ago. Other fine examples of art from the Upper Palaeolithic includes, cave painting, incised / engraved cave art such as at Creswell Crags, portable art, and open-air art. There are numerous carved or engraved pieces of bone and ivory and these include spear throwers, including one shaped like a mammoth, and many of the type of objects called a bâton de commandement. One of the most famous pieces of art from Britain is the Robin Hood Cave Horse from Derbyshire. Other examples include the Kendricks Cave Decorated Horse Jaw, many of the finest examples were featured in the Ice Age Art, Arrival of the Modern Mind exhibition at the British Museum in 7 February –26 May 2013. A cave at Turobong in South Korea containing human remains has found to contain carved deer bones. Petroglyphs of deer or reindeer found at Sokchang-ri may also date to the Upper Paleolithic, potsherds in a style reminiscent of early Japanese work have been found at Kosan-ri on Jeju island, which, due to lower sea levels at the time, would have been accessible from Japan. The oldest African petroglyphs are dated to approximately the Mesolithic and late Upper Paleolithic boundary, zimbabwes oldest art finds date to at least 10,000 years. The earliest undisputed African rock art dates back about 10,000 years, apparently originating in the Nile River valley and spread as far west as Mali
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Megalith
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A megalith is a large stone that has been used to construct a structure or monument, either alone or together with other stones. The word megalithic describes structures made of large stones without the use of mortar or concrete. For later periods, the monolith, with an overlapping meaning, is more likely to be used. The word megalith comes from the Ancient Greek μέγας and λίθος, megalith also denotes an item consisting of rock hewn in definite shapes for special purposes. It has been used to describe buildings built by people from parts of the world living in many different periods. A variety of stones are seen as megaliths, with the most widely known megaliths not being sepulchral. The construction of these took place mainly in the Neolithic and continued into the Chalcolithic. At a number of sites in eastern Turkey, large ceremonial complexes from the 9th millennium BC have been discovered and they belong to the incipient phases of agriculture and animal husbandry. Large circular structures involving carved megalithic orthostats are a feature, e. g. at Nevalı Çori. Although these structures are the most ancient megalithic structures known so far, at Göbekli Tepe, four stone circles have been excavated from an estimated 20. Some measure up to 30 metres across, as well as human figures, the stones carry a variety of carved reliefs depicting boars, foxes, lions, birds, snakes and scorpions. Dolmens and standing stones have been found in areas of the Middle East starting at the Turkish border in the north of Syria close to Aleppo. They can be encountered in Lebanon, Syria, Iran, Israel, Jordan, the largest concentration can be found in southern Syria and along the Jordan Rift Valley, however they are being threatened with destruction. They date from the late Chalcolithic/Early Bronze Age, megaliths have also been found on Kharg Island and pirazmian in Iran, at Barda Balka in Iraq, and at Jaintapur in Bangladesh. A semicircular arrangement of megaliths was found in Israel at Atlit Yam and it is a very early example, dating from the 7th millennium BC. The most concentrated occurrence of dolmens in particular is in an area on both sides of the Jordan Rift Valley, with greater predominance on the eastern side. They occur first and foremost on the Golan Heights, the Hauran, and in Jordan, in Saudi Arabia, only very few dolmen have been identified so far in the Hejaz. They seem, however, to re-emerge in Yemen in small numbers, the standing stone has a very ancient tradition in the Middle East, dating back from Mesopotamian times
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Iron Age
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The Iron Age is an archaeological era, referring to a period of time in the prehistory and protohistory of the Old World when the dominant toolmaking material was iron. It is commonly preceded by the Bronze Age in Europe and Asia with exceptions, meteoric iron has been used by humans since at least 3200 BC. Ancient iron production did not become widespread until the ability to smelt ore, remove impurities. The start of the Iron Age proper is considered by many to fall between around 1200 BC and 600 BC, depending on the region, the earliest known iron artifacts are nine small beads dated to 3200 BC, which were found in burials at Gerzeh, Lower Egypt. They have been identified as meteoric iron shaped by careful hammering, meteoric iron, a characteristic iron–nickel alloy, was used by various ancient peoples thousands of years before the Iron Age. Such iron, being in its metallic state, required no smelting of ores. Smelted iron appears sporadically in the record from the middle Bronze Age. While terrestrial iron is abundant, its high melting point of 1,538 °C placed it out of reach of common use until the end of the second millennium BC. Tins low melting point of 231, similarly, recent archaeological remains of iron working in the Ganges Valley in India have been tentatively dated to 1800 BC. By the Middle Bronze Age, increasing numbers of smelted iron objects appeared in the Middle East, Southeast Asia, African sites are turning up dates as early as 1200 BC. Modern archaeological evidence identifies the start of iron production in around 1200 BC. Between 1200 BC and 1000 BC, diffusion in the understanding of iron metallurgy and use of objects was fast. As evidence, many bronze implements were recycled into weapons during this time, more widespread use of iron led to improved steel-making technology at lower cost. Thus, even when tin became available again, iron was cheaper, stronger, and lighter, and forged iron implements superseded cast bronze tools permanently. Increasingly, the Iron Age in Europe is being seen as a part of the Bronze Age collapse in the ancient Near East, in ancient India, ancient Iran, and ancient Greece. In other regions of Europe, the Iron Age began in the 8th century BC in Central Europe, the Near Eastern Iron Age is divided into two subsections, Iron I and Iron II. Iron I illustrates both continuity and discontinuity with the previous Late Bronze Age, during the Iron Age, the best tools and weapons were made from steel, particularly alloys which were produced with a carbon content between approximately 0. 30% and 1. 2% by weight. Steel weapons and tools were nearly the same weight as those of bronze, however, steel was difficult to produce with the methods available, and alloys that were easier to make, such as wrought iron, were more common in lower-priced goods
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Celtic art
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Celtic art is a difficult term to define, covering a huge expanse of time, geography and cultures. Early Celtic art is another used for this period, stretching in Britain to about 150 AD. This is the part, but not the whole of, the Celtic art of the Early Middle Ages. Energetic circular forms, triskeles and spirals are characteristic, another influence was that of late La Tène vegetal art on the Art Nouveau movement. Celtic art has used a variety of styles and has influences from other cultures in their knotwork, spirals, key patterns, lettering, zoomorphics, plant forms. As the archaeologist Catherine Johns put it, Common to Celtic art over a wide chronological and geographical span is a sense of balance in the layout. Curvilinear forms are set out so that positive and negative, filled areas, control and restraint were exercised in the use of surface texturing and relief. Very complex curvilinear patterns were designed to precisely the most awkward. The ancient peoples now called Celts spoke a group of languages that had an origin in the Indo-European language known as Common Celtic or Proto-Celtic. This shared linguistic origin was once accepted by scholars to indicate peoples with a common genetic origin in southwest Europe. Archaeologists identified various cultural traits of peoples, including styles of art. The extent to which Celtic language, culture and genetics coincided and interacted during prehistoric periods remains very uncertain, the term Celt was used in classical times as a synonym for the Gauls. Its English form is modern, attested from 1607, then in the 18th century the interest in primitivism, which led to the idea of the noble savage, brought a wave of enthusiasm for all things Celtic and Druidic. The earliest archaeological culture that is conventionally termed Celtic, the Hallstatt culture, comes from the early European Iron Age, other centres such as Brittany are also in areas that remain defined as Celtic today. Other correspondences are between the gold lunulas and large collars of Bronze Age Ireland and Europe and the torcs of Iron Age Celts, the trumpet shaped terminations of various types of Bronze Age Irish jewellery are also reminiscent of motifs popular in later Celtic decoration. The elites of these societies had considerable wealth, and imported large and expensive, sometimes frankly flashy, objects from neighbouring cultures, some of which have been recovered from graves. The work of the German émigré to Oxford, Paul Jacobsthal, remains the foundation of the study of the art of the period, linguists are generally satisfied that the Halstatt culture originated among people speaking Celtic languages, but art historians often avoid describing Halstatt art as Celtic. A famous example is the Greek krater from the Vix Grave in Burgundy and it is a huge bronze wine-mixing vessel, with a capacity of 1,100 litres
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Gallo-Roman culture
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This article covers the culture of Romanized areas of Gaul. For the political history of the brief Gallic Empire of the third century, the term Gallo-Roman describes the Romanized culture of Gaul under the rule of the Roman Empire. This was characterized by the Gaulish adoption or adaptation of Roman morals, the well-studied meld of cultures in Gaul gives historians a model against which to compare and contrast parallel developments of Romanization in other, less-studied Roman provinces. The barbarian invasions beginning in the fifth century forced upon Gallo-Roman culture fundamental changes in politics, in the economic underpinning. The Gothic settlement of 418 offered a double loyalty, as Western Roman authority disintegrated at Rome, the plight of the highly Romanized governing class is examined by R. W. Mathisen, the struggles of bishop Hilary of Arles by M. Heinzelmann. Into the seventh century, Gallo-Roman culture would persist particularly in the areas of Gallia Narbonensis that developed into Occitania, Cisalpine Gaul and to a lesser degree, the formerly Romanized north of Gaul, once it had been occupied by the Franks, would develop into Merovingian culture instead. Based on mutual intelligibility, David Dalby counts seven languages descended from Gallo-Romance, Gallo-Wallon, French, Franco-Provençal, Romansh, Ladin, Friulian, however, other definitions are far broader, variously encompassing the Rhaeto-Romance languages, Occitano-Romance languages, and Gallo-Italic languages. Over the course of the Roman period, a proportion of Gauls gained Roman citizenship. In 212 the Constitutio Antoniniana extended citizenship to all men in the Roman Empire. During the Crisis of the Third Century, from 260 to 274, in reaction to local problems the Gallo-Romans appointed their own emperor Postumus. The capital was Trier which was used as the northern capital of the Roman Empire by many emperors. The Gallic Empire ended when Aurelian decisively defeated Tetricus I at Chalons, assimilation was eased by interpreting indigenous gods in Roman terms, such as with Lenus Mars or Apollo Grannus. Otherwise, a Roman god might be paired with a goddess, as with Mercury. In at least one case – that of the equine goddess Epona – a native Gallic goddess was also adopted by Rome, eastern mystery religions penetrated Gaul early on. These included the cults of Orpheus, Mithras, Cybele, some of the communities had origins that predated the third-century persecutions. The exhibition of Gallo-Roman silver highlighted specifically Gallo-Roman silver from the treasures found at Chaourse, Mâcon, Graincourt-lès-Havrincourt, Notre-Dame dAllençon, the two more Romanized of the three Gauls were bound together in a network of Roman roads that linked cities. Via Domitia, reached from Nîmes to the Pyrenees, where it joined the Via Augusta at the Col de Panissars, via Aquitania reached from Narbonne, where it connected to the Via Domitia, to the Atlantic Ocean through Toulouse to Bordeaux. Via Scarponensis connected Trier to Lyon through Metz, Lyon, the capital of Roman Gaul, is now the site of the Gallo-Roman Museum of Lyon, associated with the remains of the theater and odeon of Roman Lugdunum
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Ancient Roman pottery
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Pottery was produced in enormous quantities in ancient Rome, mostly for utilitarian purposes. It is found all over the former Roman Empire and beyond, fine wares were serving vessels or tableware used for more formal dining, and are usually of more decorative and elegant appearance. For example, dozens of different types of British coarse and fine wares were produced locally and it is clear from the quantities found that fine pottery was used very widely in both social and geographic terms. The more expensive pottery tended to use relief decoration, usually moulded, rather than colour, especially in the Eastern Empire, local traditions continued, hybridizing with Roman styles to varying extents. From the 3rd century the quality of fine pottery steadily declined, partly because of economic and political disturbances and these are not normally classified under the heading pottery by archaeologists, but the terracottas and lamps will be included in this article. Pottery is a key material in the dating and interpretation of archaeological sites from the Neolithic period onwards, in the Roman period, ceramics were produced and used in enormous quantities, and the literature on the subject, in numerous languages, is very extensive. These vessels have fine, fairly hard and well-fired buff to pink fabrics, however the definition of all these terms has varied and evolved over the many generations during which the material has been studied. Technically, red-gloss wares have much in common with earlier Greek painted pottery, African Red Slip ware belonged to the same tradition, and continued to be made much later than Italian and Gaulish sigillata, right through to the Islamic conquest. ARS in turn influenced the production of Phocaean red slip, which is common in the Eastern Mediterranean and also appeared occasionally as far west as Southern France and Britain. Most of these wares were widely distributed and produced on an industrial scale, the names of many potters and factory-owners are known from the potters marks frequently applied to fine wares, and can be highly informative. However, the interpretation of name-stamps can be more complex than it appears at first sight, theoretically, a decorated vessel might bear the mould-makers name, that of the bowl-maker or finisher, and the brand-name of the factory in the decoration. The use of labour in the Italian workshops is unproven. The site of La Graufesenque in South Gaul, near Millau, has extensively studied and excavated. Its products had a wide distribution in the later 1st century AD. In 1895, the German scholar Hans Dragendorff produced a classification of shapes in Roman red gloss pottery that is still used. Other numbering systems used with Italian and Gaulish sigillata include those of Déchelette, Knorr, Curle, Walters, Loeschcke, Ritterling and Ludowici, to name, details could also be added by hand with a stylus. When the decoration was complete in intaglio on the interior, the mould was dried and fired in the usual way, the details varied according to the form. The completed bowl could then be slipped, dried again, relief-decoration of tall vases or jars was usually achieved by using moulded appliqué motifs and/or barbotine decoration
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Merovingian art
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Merovingian art is the art of the Merovingian dynasty of the Franks, which lasted from the 5th century to the 8th century in present-day France, Benelux and a part of Germany. The advent of the Merovingian dynasty in Gaul in the 5th century led to important changes in the field of arts, sculpture regressed to be little more than a simple technique for the ornamentation of sarcophagi, altars and ecclesiastical furniture. Plans often continued the Roman basilica tradition, but also influences from as far away as Syria and Armenia. In the East, most structures were in timber, but stone was more common for significant buildings in the West, most major churches have been rebuilt, usually more than once, but many Merovingian plans have been reconstructed from archaeology. There are no Roman precedents for this Frankish innovation, the Saint Peters church in Vienne is the only surviving one. A number of buildings, now lost, including the Merovingian foundations of Saint-Denis, St. Gereon in Cologne. Some small buildings remain, especially baptistries, which out of fashion and were spared rebuilding. In Aix-en-Provence, Riez and Fréjus, three octagonal baptistries, each covered with a cupola on pillars, are testimony to the influence of oriental architecture. Very different from these Provençal baptistries, except for the one of Venasque. The original building has undergone a number of alterations but preserves in its decoration a Merovingian character. Among the very many crypts, numerous due to the importance of the cult of saints at the time, only those of St. Seurin, Bordeaux, St. Laurent, Grenoble, and the abbey of Jouarre survive. Merovingian masons also employed the opus gallicum extensively and are responsible for bringing it to England and bequeathing it to the Normans, the principal centres were the Abbey of Luxeuil, an Irish foundation, and later its daughter house at Corbie Abbey. A large Merovingian art collection in Berlin was taken by Soviet Occupiers to Russia, migration Period art Merovingian script Merovingian dynasty European Commission, Raphaël Programme. The Normans, a European people, The Norman heritage, 10th – 12th century, architectural Heritage, Italy — the Molise §8 Fortifications and castles, Fortifications — The opus gallicum in the fortifications. The Art Bulletin, Vol.47, No.1, lives of the Holy Abbots of Wearmouth and Jarrow
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Romanesque art
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Romanesque art is the art of Europe from approximately 1000 AD to the rise of the Gothic style in the 13th century, or later, depending on region. The preceding period is known as the Pre-Romanesque period, Romanesque art was also greatly influenced by Byzantine art, especially in painting, and by the anti-classical energy of the decoration of the Insular art of the British Isles. From these elements was forged a highly innovative and coherent style, outside Romanesque architecture, the art of the period was characterised by a very vigorous style in both sculpture and painting. In illuminated manuscripts, for which the most lavishly decorated manuscripts of the period were mostly bibles or psalters, more originality is seen, as new scenes needed to be depicted. The same applied to the capitals of columns, never more exciting than in this period, colours, which can be seen as bright in the 21st century only in stained glass and well-preserved manuscripts, tended to be very striking, and mostly primary. Stained glass became widely used, although survivals are sadly few, monasteries continued to be extremely important, especially those of the expansionist new orders of the period, the Cistercian, Cluniac, and Carthusian, which spread across Europe. No Romanesque royal palace has really survived, the lay artist was becoming a valued figure – Nicholas of Verdun seems to have been known across the continent. Most masons and goldsmiths were now lay, and lay painters such as Master Hugo seem to have been in the majority, at least of those doing the best work, the iconography of their church work was no doubt arrived at in consultation with clerical advisors. Metalwork, including decoration in enamel, became very sophisticated, many spectacular shrines made to hold relics have survived, of which the best known is the Shrine of the Three Kings at Cologne Cathedral by Nicholas of Verdun and others. The Stavelot Triptych and Reliquary of St. Maurus are other examples of Mosan enamelwork, large reliquaries and altar frontals were built around a wooden frame, but smaller caskets were all metal and enamel. A few secular pieces, such as cases, jewellery and clasps have survived. The bronze Gloucester candlestick and the font of 1108–17 now in Liège are superb examples, very different in style. The former is highly intricate and energetic, drawing on manuscript painting, while the font shows the Mosan style at its most classical and majestic. The bronze doors, a column and other fittings at Hildesheim Cathedral, the Gniezno Doors. The aquamanile, a container for water to wash with, appears to have introduced to Europe in the 11th century. Artisans often gave the pieces fantastic zoomorphic forms, surviving examples are mostly in brass, many wax impressions from impressive seals survive on charters and documents, although Romanesque coins are generally not of great aesthetic interest. Like many pieces it was partly coloured. The Lewis chessmen are well-preserved examples of small ivories, of many pieces or fragments remain from croziers, plaques, pectoral crosses
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Italian Renaissance
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The term Renaissance is in essence a modern one that came into currency in the 19th century, in the work of historians such as Jules Michelet and Jacob Burckhardt. The French word renaissance means Rebirth, and the era is best known for the renewed interest in the culture of classical antiquity after the period that Renaissance humanists labeled the Dark Ages. Though today perhaps best known for Italian Renaissance art and architecture, the period saw major achievements in literature, music, philosophy, Italy became the recognized European leader in all these areas by the late 15th century, and to varying degrees retained this lead until about 1600. This was despite a turbulent and generally disastrous period in Italian politics, the European Renaissance began in Tuscany, and centred in the city of Florence. It later spread to Venice, where the remains of ancient Greek culture were brought together, the Renaissance later had a significant effect on Rome, which was ornamented with some structures in the new allantico mode, then was largely rebuilt by humanist sixteenth-century popes. The Italian Renaissance peaked in the century as foreign invasions plunged the region into the turmoil of the Italian Wars. However, the ideas and ideals of the Renaissance endured and spread into the rest of Europe, setting off the Northern Renaissance, the Italian Renaissance is best known for its cultural achievements. Accounts of Renaissance literature usually begin with Petrarch and his friend, famous vernacular poets of the 15th century include the renaissance epic authors Luigi Pulci, Matteo Maria Boiardo, and Ludovico Ariosto. 15th century writers such as the poet Poliziano and the Platonist philosopher Marsilio Ficino made extensive translations from both Latin and Greek, the same is true for architecture, as practiced by Brunelleschi, Leon Battista Alberti, Andrea Palladio, and Bramante. Their works include Florence Cathedral, St. Peters Basilica in Rome, yet cultural contributions notwithstanding, some present-day historians also see the era as one of the beginning of economic regression for Italy. By the Late Middle Ages, Latium, the heartland of the Roman Empire. Rome was a city of ancient ruins, and the Papal States were loosely administered, and vulnerable to external interference such as that of France, and later Spain. The Papacy was affronted when the Avignon Papacy was created in southern France as a consequence of pressure from King Philip the Fair of France, in the south, Sicily had for some time been under foreign domination, by the Arabs and then the Normans. Sicily had prospered for 150 years during the Emirate of Sicily, in contrast Northern and Central Italy had become far more prosperous, and it has been calculated that the region was among the richest of Europe. The Crusades had built lasting trade links to the Levant, the main trade routes from the east passed through the Byzantine Empire or the Arab lands and onwards to the ports of Genoa, Pisa, and Venice. Luxury goods bought in the Levant, such as spices, dyes, moreover, the inland city-states profited from the rich agricultural land of the Po valley. From France, Germany, and the Low Countries, through the medium of the Champagne fairs, land and river trade routes brought goods such as wool, wheat, and precious metals into the region. The extensive trade that stretched from Egypt to the Baltic generated substantial surpluses that allowed significant investment in mining, thus, while northern Italy was not richer in resources than many other parts of Europe, the level of development, stimulated by trade, allowed it to prosper
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Baroque
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The style began around 1600 in Rome and Italy, and spread to most of Europe. The aristocracy viewed the dramatic style of Baroque art and architecture as a means of impressing visitors by projecting triumph, power, Baroque palaces are built around an entrance of courts, grand staircases, and reception rooms of sequentially increasing opulence. However, baroque has a resonance and application that extend beyond a reduction to either a style or period. It is also yields the Italian barocco and modern Spanish barroco, German Barock, Dutch Barok, others derive it from the mnemonic term Baroco, a supposedly laboured form of syllogism in logical Scholastica. The Latin root can be found in bis-roca, in informal usage, the word baroque can simply mean that something is elaborate, with many details, without reference to the Baroque styles of the 17th and 18th centuries. The word Baroque, like most periodic or stylistic designations, was invented by later critics rather than practitioners of the arts in the 17th, the term Baroque was initially used in a derogatory sense, to underline the excesses of its emphasis. In particular, the term was used to describe its eccentric redundancy and noisy abundance of details, although it was long thought that the word as a critical term was first applied to architecture, in fact it appears earlier in reference to music. Another hypothesis says that the word comes from precursors of the style, Giacomo Barozzi da Vignola and he did not make the distinctions between Mannerism and Baroque that modern writers do, and he ignored the later phase, the academic Baroque that lasted into the 18th century. Long despised, Baroque art and architecture became fashionable between the two World Wars, and has remained in critical favour. In painting the gradual rise in popular esteem of Caravaggio has been the best barometer of modern taste, William Watson describes a late phase of Shang-dynasty Chinese ritual bronzes of the 11th century BC as baroque. The term Baroque may still be used, usually pejoratively, describing works of art, craft, the appeal of Baroque style turned consciously from the witty, intellectual qualities of 16th-century Mannerist art to a visceral appeal aimed at the senses. It employed an iconography that was direct, simple, obvious, germinal ideas of the Baroque can also be found in the work of Michelangelo. Even more generalised parallels perceived by some experts in philosophy, prose style, see the Neapolitan palace of Caserta, a Baroque palace whose construction began in 1752. In paintings Baroque gestures are broader than Mannerist gestures, less ambiguous, less arcane and mysterious, more like the stage gestures of opera, Baroque poses depend on contrapposto, the tension within the figures that move the planes of shoulders and hips in counterdirections. Baroque is a style of unity imposed upon rich, heavy detail, Baroque style featured exaggerated lighting, intense emotions, release from restraint, and even a kind of artistic sensationalism. There were highly diverse strands of Italian baroque painting, from Caravaggio to Cortona, the most prominent Spanish painter of the Baroque was Diego Velázquez. The later Baroque style gradually gave way to a more decorative Rococo, while the Baroque nature of Rembrandts art is clear, the label is less often used for Vermeer and many other Dutch artists. Flemish Baroque painting shared a part in this trend, while continuing to produce the traditional categories
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Neoclassicism
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The main Neoclassical movement coincided with the 18th-century Age of Enlightenment, and continued into the early 19th century, laterally competing with Romanticism. In architecture, the style continued throughout the 19th, 20th, European Neoclassicism in the visual arts began c.1760 in opposition to the then-dominant Baroque and Rococo styles. Each neo-classicism selects some models among the range of classics that are available to it. They ignored both Archaic Greek art and the works of Late Antiquity, the Rococo art of ancient Palmyra came as a revelation, through engravings in Woods The Ruins of Palmyra. While the movement is described as the opposed counterpart of Romanticism. The case of the main champion of late Neoclassicism, Ingres, demonstrates this especially well. The revival can be traced to the establishment of formal archaeology, the writings of Johann Joachim Winckelmann were important in shaping this movement in both architecture and the visual arts. With the advent of the Grand Tour, a fad of collecting antiquities began that laid the foundations of many great collections spreading a Neoclassical revival throughout Europe, Neoclassicism in each art implies a particular canon of a classical model. In English, the term Neoclassicism is used primarily of the arts, the similar movement in English literature. This, which had been dominant for decades, was beginning to decline by the time Neoclassicism in the visual arts became fashionable. Though terms differ, the situation in French literature was similar, in music, the period saw the rise of classical music, and Neoclassicism is used of 20th-century developments. Ingress coronation portrait of Napoleon even borrowed from Late Antique consular diptychs and their Carolingian revival, much Neoclassical painting is more classicizing in subject matter than in anything else. A fierce, but often very badly informed, dispute raged for decades over the merits of Greek and Roman art, with Winckelmann. The work of artists, who could not easily be described as insipid, combined aspects of Romanticism with a generally Neoclassical style. Unlike Carstens unrealized schemes, the etchings of Giovanni Battista Piranesi were numerous and profitable and his main subject matter was the buildings and ruins of Rome, and he was more stimulated by the ancient than the modern. Neoclassicism in painting gained a new sense of direction with the success of Jacques-Louis Davids Oath of the Horatii at the Paris Salon of 1785. Despite its evocation of republican virtues, this was a commission by the royal government, David managed to combine an idealist style with drama and forcefulness. David rapidly became the leader of French art, and after the French Revolution became a politician with control of government patronage in art
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Venus of Brassempouy
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The Venus of Brassempouy is a fragmentary ivory figurine from the Upper Palaeolithic. It was discovered in a cave at Brassempouy, France in 1892, about 25,000 years old, it is one of the earliest known realistic representations of a human face. Brassempouy is a village in the département of Landes in southwest France. Two caves near the village,100 metres from each other, were among the first Paleolithic sites to be explored in France and they are known as the Galerie des Hyènes and the Grotte du Pape. The Venus of Brassempouy was discovered in the Popes Cave in 1894 and these may be an example of unfinished work, as if the artist or artists carved several figurines at the same time. P. E. Dubalen first explored the Grotte du Pape in 1881, followed by J. de Laporterie, since archaeological excavation techniques were then only starting to develop, they paid little attention to the stratigraphy of the site containing the remains. In 1892 the site was pillaged and disturbed almost beyond reconstruction by a trip of amateurs from the Association française pour l’avancement de la science. Nevertheless, Piette described layers attributed to the late and middle Solutrean and he termed the bottom levels he reached as éburnéen, in reference to the copious amounts of ivory works which they contained. Modern reanalysis of the site has been undertaken under the direction of Henri Delporte, in 1894, one of those strata, today recognized as Gravettian, yielded several fragments of statuettes, including the Lady with the Hood. Piette saw the figures as closely related to the representations of animals of the Magdalenian and he developed a hypothetical chronology that was later refuted by Henri Breuil. The Venus of Brassempouy was carved from mammoth ivory, according to archaeologist Paul Bahn the head is unsexed, although it is usually called a Venus or a lady. The head is 3.65 cm high,2.2 cm deep and 1.9 cm wide, the face is triangular and seems tranquil. While forehead, nose and brows are carved in relief, the mouth is absent, a vertical crack on the right side of the face is linked to the internal structure of the ivory. Although the style of representation is essentially realistic, the proportions of the head do not correspond exactly to any human population of the present or past. Since the mid-twentieth century, interpretative questions have shifted from race to matters concerning womanhood and fertility, more precisely, they place the figurine in the Middle Gravettian, with Noailles burins circa 26,000 to 24,000 BP. It is more or less contemporary with the other Palaeolithic Venus figurines, such as those of Lespugue, Dolní Věstonice, Willendorf, nonetheless, it is distinguished among the group by the realistic character of the representation. At Brassempouy, a variety of objects excavated in the Grotte du Pape are on display at the Maison de la Dame and this exhibition space, primarily devoted to regional archaeology, also displays a fine set of casts of palaeolithic sculptures. In 1976, the Venus of Brassempouy was depicted on a 2.00 franc stamp and it has also been the motif of a 15-franc stamp of the Republic of Mali
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Upper Palaeolithic
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The Upper Paleolithic is the third and last subdivision of the Paleolithic or Old Stone Age. Very broadly, it dates to between 50,000 and 10,000 years ago, roughly coinciding with the appearance of behavioral modernity, modern humans are believed to have emerged about 195,000 years ago in Africa. Although these humans were modern in anatomy, their lifestyle changed very little from their contemporaries, such as Homo erectus, about 50,000 years ago, there was a marked increase in the diversity of artifacts. In Africa, bone artifacts and the first art appear in the archeological record, between 45,000 and 43,000 years ago, this new tool technology spread with human migration to Europe. The new technology generated an explosion of modern humans which is believed to have contributed to the extinction of the Neanderthals. The Upper Paleolithic has the earliest known evidence of organized settlements, in the form of campsites, artistic work blossomed, with cave painting, petroglyphs, carvings and engravings on bone or ivory. The first evidence of fishing is also noted, from artifacts in places such as Blombos cave in South Africa. More complex social groupings emerged, supported by more varied and reliable food sources and this probably contributed to increasing group identification or ethnicity. By 50, 000–40,000 BP, the first humans set foot in Australia, by 45,000 BP, humans lived at 61° north latitude in Europe. By 30,000 BP, Japan was reached, and by 27,000 BP humans were present in Siberia above the Arctic Circle, at the end of the Upper Paleolithic, a group of humans crossed the Bering land bridge and quickly expanded throughout North and South America. Both Homo erectus and Neanderthals used the same crude stone tools, archaeologist Richard G. Klein, who has worked extensively on ancient stone tools, describes the stone tool kit of archaic hominids as impossible to categorize. It was as if the Neanderthals made stone tools, and were not much concerned about their final forms and he argues that almost everywhere, whether Asia, Africa or Europe, before 50,000 years ago all the stone tools are much alike and unsophisticated. These new stone-tool types have been described as being distinctly differentiated from each other, the invaders, commonly referred to as the Cro-Magnons, left many sophisticated stone tools, carved and engraved pieces on bone, ivory and antler, cave paintings and Venus figurines. The Neanderthals continued to use Mousterian stone tool technology and possibly Chatelperronian technology and these tools disappeared from the archeological record at around the same time the Neanderthals themselves disappeared from the fossil record, about 40,000 years ago. Settlements were often located in valley bottoms, possibly associated with hunting of passing herds of animals. Hunting was important, and caribou/wild reindeer may well be the species of single greatest importance in the anthropological literature on hunting. Technological advances included significant developments in flint tool manufacturing, with industries based on fine blades rather than simpler and shorter flakes, burins and racloirs were used to work bone, antler and hides. Advanced darts and harpoons also appear in period, along with the fish hook, the oil lamp, rope
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Aurignacian
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The Aurignacian culture is an archaeological culture of the Upper Palaeolithic. It is the earliest modern human culture in Europe, and is associated with the immigration of anatomically modern humans from the Near East and it first appeared in Eastern Europe around 43,000 BP, and in Western Europe between 40,000 and 36,000 years BP. It was replaced by the Gravettian culture around 28,000 to 26,000 years ago, the name originates from the type site of Aurignac, Haute-Garonne, which is a town in the south-west of France near Toulouse or Andorra. The oldest undisputed example of figurative art, the Venus of Hohle Fels. It was discovered in September 2008 in a cave at Schelklingen in Baden-Württemberg in southern Germany, the Bacho Kiro site is one of the earliest known Aurignacian burials. The Aurignacian tool industry is characterized by worked bone or antler points with grooves cut in the bottom. Their flint tools include blades and bladelets struck from prepared cores rather than using crude flakes. )The people of this culture also produced some of the earliest known cave art, such as the animal engravings at Trois Freres. They also made pendants, bracelets, and ivory beads, as well as three-dimensional figurines, perforated rods, thought to be spear throwers or shaft wrenches, also are found at their sites. The sophistication and self-awareness demonstrated in the work led archaeologists to consider the makers of Aurignacian artifacts the first modern humans in Europe, human remains and Late Aurignacian artifacts found in juxtaposition support this inference. Although finds of human remains in direct association with Proto-Aurignacian technologies are scarce in Europe. At least three robust, but typically anatomically-modern individuals from the Peștera cu Oase cave in Romania, were dated directly from the bones to ca, although not associated directly with archaeological material, these finds are within the chronological and geographical range of the Early Aurignacian in southeastern Europe. On genetic evidence it has argued that both Aurignacian and the Dabba culture of North Africa came from an earlier big game hunting Aurignacian culture of the Levant. Many 35, 000-year-old animal figurines were discovered in the Vogelherd Cave in Germany, one of the horses, amongst six tiny mammoth and horse ivory figures found previously at Vogelherd, was sculpted as skillfully as any piece found throughout the Upper Paleolithic. The production of ivory beads for body ornamentation was also important during the Aurignacian, there is a notable absence of painted caves, however, which begin to appear within the Solutrean. Typical statuettes consist of women that are called Venus figurines and they emphasize the hips, breasts, and other body parts associated with fertility. Feet and arms are lacking or minimized, one of the most ancient figurines was discovered in 2008 in the Hohle Fels cave in Germany. The figurine has been dated to 35,000 years ago, the oldest undisputed musical instrument was the Hohle Fels Flute discovered in the Hohle Fels cave in Germanys Swabian Alb in 2008. The flute is made from a wing bone perforated with five finger holes
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Solutrean
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The Solutrean industry is a relatively advanced flint tool-making style of the Upper Palaeolithic, from around 22,000 to 17,000 BP. The term Solutrean comes from the type-site of Cros du Charnier, dating to around 21,000 years ago and located at Solutré, the Rock of Solutré site was discovered in 1866 by the French geologist and paleontologist Henry Testot-Ferry. It is now preserved as the Parc archéologique et botanique de Solutré, the eras finds include tools, ornamental beads, and bone pins as well as prehistoric art. Solutrean tool-making employed techniques not seen before and not rediscovered for millennia, the Solutrean has relatively finely worked, bifacial points made with lithic reduction percussion and pressure flaking rather than cruder flintknapping. Knapping was done using antler batons, hardwood batons and soft stone hammers and this method permitted the working of delicate slivers of flint to make light projectiles and even elaborate barbed and tanged arrowheads. Bone and antler were used as well, the Solutrean may be seen as a transitory stage between the flint implements of the Mousterian and the bone implements of the Magdalenian epochs. Faunal finds include horse, reindeer, mammoth, cave lion, rhinoceros, bear, Solutrean finds have been also made in the caves of Les Eyzies and Laugerie Haute, and in the Lower Beds of Creswell Crags in Derbyshire, England. The industry first appeared in what is now Spain, and disappears from the record around 17,000 BP. The migrants arrived in northeastern North America and served as the culture for what eventually developed into Clovis tool-making technology. The idea of a Clovis-Solutrean link remains controversial and does not enjoy wide acceptance, in 2014, the autosomal DNA of a male infant from a 12, 500-year-old deposit in Montana was sequenced. The DNA was taken from a referred to as Anzick-1. The skeleton was found in association with several Clovis artifacts. Comparisons showed strong affinities with DNA from Siberian sites, and virtually ruled out any close affinity of Anzick-1 with European sources, Clovis and Solutrean, Is There a Common Thread. by James M
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Gravettian
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The Gravettian was an archaeological industry of the European Upper Paleolithic that succeeded the Aurignacian c.31,000 BC. It is archaeologically the last unified European culture, and lasted until c.22,000 BC, at this point it developed into the Epigravettian in Italy, the Balkans, and Russia, and was replaced abruptly by the Solutrean in France and Spain. The origins of the Gravettian people are not clear, they seem to appear all over Europe. Like their Aurignacian predecessors, they are well-known for their Venus figurines, the culture was first identified at the site of La Gravette in Southwestern France. One typical artefact of the industry, once considered diagnostic, is a pointed blade with a straight blunt back. These were used to hunt big game including bison, horse, reindeer, Gravettians also used nets to hunt small game. Archaeologists usually describe two regional variants, the western Gravettian, known namely from cave sites in France, Spain and Britain, and the eastern Gravettian in Central Europe and Russia. The eastern Gravettians — they include the Pavlovian culture — were specialized mammoth hunters, whose remains are found not in caves. The Aurignacian and Gravettian cultures are featured in Earths children, a series of set in prehistory. In this piece of fiction, the Venus figurines play an important role at the center of a fertility rite
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Magdalenian
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The Magdalenian refers to one of the later cultures of the Upper Paleolithic in western Europe, dating from around 17,000 to 12,000 years ago. It is named after the site of La Madeleine, a rock shelter located in the Vézère valley, commune of Tursac. The culture was geographically widespread, and later Magdalenian sites have found from Portugal in the west to Poland in the east. It is the epoch of Gabriel de Mortillets cave chronology system. The Magdalenian epoch was a one, represented by numerous stations, whose contents show progress in the arts. It was characterized by a cold and dry climate, the existence of humans in association with the reindeer, the use of bone and ivory for various implements, already begun in the preceding Solutrian epoch, was much increased, and the period is essentially a Bone age. The bone instruments are varied, spear-points, harpoon-heads, borers, hooks. Most remarkable is the evidence La Madeleine affords of prehistoric art, numbers of bones, reindeer antlers and animal teeth were found, with rude pictures, carved or etched on them, of seals, fishes, reindeer, mammoths and other creatures. The man is naked which, together with the snake, suggests a warm climate, the fauna of the Madelenian epoch seems, indeed, to have included tigers and other tropical species side by side with reindeer, blue foxes, Arctic hares and other polar creatures. Madelenian humans appears to have been of low stature, dolichocephalic, with low retreating forehead, the culture spans approximatively from 17,000 to 12,000 BP, toward the end of the last ice age. The Magdalenian tool culture is characterised by regular blade industries struck from carinated cores, typologically, the Magdalenian is divided into six phases which are generally agreed to have chronological significance. Similarly, finds from the forest of Beauregard near Paris often have been suggested as belonging to the earliest Magdalenian, the earliest Magdalenian sites are all found in France. The Epigravettian is a similar culture appearing at the time in Italy, the Balkans, Moldavia, Romania. The later phases of the Magdalenian are also synonymous with the human re-settlement of north-western Europe after the Last Glacial Maximum during the Late Glacial Maximum, research in Switzerland, southern Germany, and Belgium has provided AMS radiocarbon dating to support this. Being hunter gatherers, Magdalenians did not simply re-settle permanently in north-west Europe, however, as they often followed herds, by the end of the Magdalenian, the lithic technology shows a pronounced trend toward increased microlithisation. The bone harpoons and points have the most distinctive chronological markers within the typological sequence, as well as flint tools, the Magdalenians are best known for their elaborate worked bone, antler, and ivory that served both functional and aesthetic purposes, including perforated batons. Cave sites such as the world famous Lascaux contain the best known examples of Magdalenian cave art, in northern Spain and south west France this tool culture was superseded by the Azilian culture. In northern Europe a slightly different situation exists, with different variants of the Tjongerian techno-complex following it
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Cave painting
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Cave paintings are painted drawings on cave walls or ceilings, mainly of prehistoric origin, to some 40,000 years ago in Eurasia. The exact purpose of the Paleolithic cave paintings is not known, evidence suggests that they were not merely decorations of living areas since the caves in which they have been found do not have signs of ongoing habitation. They are also located in areas of caves that are not easily accessible. Some theories hold that cave paintings may have been a way of communicating with others, the paintings are remarkably similar around the world, with animals being common subjects that give the most impressive images. Humans mainly appear as images of hands, mostly hand stencils made by blowing pigment on a hand held to the wall. The earliest known cave paintings/drawings of animals are at least 35,000 years old and are found in Pettakere cave on the island of Sulawesi in Indonesia, previously it was believed that the earliest paintings were in Europe. The earliest non-figurative rock art dates back to approximately 40,000 years ago, nearly 340 caves have now been discovered in France and Spain that contain art from prehistoric times. But subsequent technology has made it possible to date the paintings by sampling the pigment itself, the choice of subject matter can also indicate chronology. For instance, the reindeer depicted in the Spanish cave of Cueva de las Monedas places the drawings in the last Ice Age. The oldest date given to a cave painting is now a pig that has a minimum age of 35,400 years old at Pettakere cave in Sulawesi. Indonesian and Australian scientists have dated other non-figurative paintings on the walls to be approximately 40,000 years old, the method they used to confirm this was dating the age of the stalactites that formed over the top of the paintings. The art is similar in style and method to that of the Indonesian caves as there were also hand stencils and this date coincides with the earliest known evidence for Homo sapiens in Europe. Because of the cave arts age, some scientists have conjectured that the paintings may have made by Neanderthals. The earliest known European figurative cave paintings are those of Chauvet Cave in France and these paintings date to earlier than 30,000 BCE according to radiocarbon dating. Some researchers believe the drawings are too advanced for this era, the radiocarbon dates from these samples show that there were two periods of creation in Chauvet,35,000 years ago and 30,000 years ago. In 2009, cavers discovered drawings in Coliboaia Cave in Romania, an initial dating puts the age of an image in the same range as Chauvet, about 32,000 years old. Some caves probably continued to be painted over a period of thousands of years. This was created roughly between 10,000 and 5,500 years ago, and painted in rock shelters under cliffs or shallow caves, though individual figures are less naturalistic, they are grouped in coherent grouped compositions to a much greater degree
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Pech Merle
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Pech Merle is a cave which opens onto a hillside at Cabrerets in the Lot département of the Occitania region in France, about 35 minutes by road east of Cahors. It is one of the few prehistoric cave painting sites in France that remain open to the general public, extending for more than a mile from the entrance are caverns, the walls of which are painted with dramatic murals dating from the Gravettian culture. Some of the paintings and engravings, however, may date from the later Magdalenian era and this area once had a great river flowing through it, cutting underground channels which were later used by humans for shelter and eventually for mural painting. The cave art located in the areas of the cave was discovered in 1922 by Andre David and Henri Dutetre. The walls of seven of the chambers at Pech Merle have fresh, lifelike images of woolly mammoth, spotted horses, single colour horses, bovids, reindeer, handprints, and some humans. Footprints of children, preserved in what was once clay, have found more than half a mile underground. In 2013 the Tracking in Caves-project tested experience based reading of prehistoric footprints by specialised trackers of Ju/hoansi San with great success. Within a six-mile radius of the site are ten other caves with prehistoric art of the Upper Palaeolithic period and it is supposed that, at some point in the past, rain and sliding earth covered the cave entrances with an airtight seal until the 20th century. The cave at Pech Merle has been open to the public since 1926, visiting groups are limited in size and number so as not to destroy the delicate artwork with the excessive humidity, heat and carbon dioxide produced by breathing. Pech Merle, website of the Centre de Prehistoire du Pech Merle Genetic tests throw new light on French cave painting RFI English
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Lot (department)
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Lot is a department in the southwest of France named after the Lot River. Lot is one of the original 83 departments created during the French Revolution on March 4,1790 and it was created from part of the province of Quercy. In 1808 some of the original southeastern cantons were separated from it to form the department of Tarn-et-Garonne and it originally extended much farther to the south and included the city of Montauban. Lot is part of the region of Occitanie and is surrounded by the departments of Corrèze, Cantal, Aveyron, Tarn-et-Garonne, Lot-et-Garonne, for a full list, see Communes of the Lot department. Settlements in the Lot include, Cahors - The prefecture of the department and it lies in a wide loop of the Lot River and is famous for its medieval bridge, the Pont Valentre. Figeac - a medieval town where Champollion, the first translator of Egyptian hieroglyphics, was born, figeac is a sub-prefecture of the department. Gourdon - a medieval town with a well preserved centre. There are many painted caves nearby, notably the Grottes de Cougnac. Gourdon is also a sub-prefecture of te department, cantons of the Lot department Communes of the Lot department French singer-songwriter Léo Ferré lived in the Lot for a while
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Languedoc
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Languedoc is a former province of France. Its territory is now contained in the region of Occitanie in the south of France. It had an area of approximately 27,376 square kilometers, the traditional provinces of the kingdom of France were not formally defined. A province was simply a territory of common traditions and customs, today, when people refer to the old provinces of France, they actually refer to the gouvernements as they existed in 1789. Gouvernements were military regions established in the middle of the 16th century, however, in some cases, small provinces had been merged with a large one into a single gouvernement, so gouvernements are not exactly the same as the traditional provinces. Historically, the region was called the county of Toulouse, a county independent from the kings of France. The county of Toulouse was made up of what would later be called Languedoc, but it included the province of Quercy. After the French conquest the entire county was dismantled, the part of it being now called Languedoc. The gouvernement of Languedoc was created in the middle of the 16th century, in addition to Languedoc proper, it also included the three small provinces of Gévaudan, Velay, and Vivarais, these three provinces being to the northeast of Languedoc. Some people also consider that the region around Albi was a province, called Albigeois. This decision was intentional, to avoid reviving the independently spirited county of Toulouse. In the rest of the article, Languedoc refers to the territory of this gouvernement of Languedoc, the governors of Languedoc resided in Pézenas, on the Mediterranean coast, away from Toulouse but close to Montpellier. The kings of France became fearful of the power of the governors, thus the gouvernements became hollow structures, but they still carried a sense of the old provinces, and so their names and limits have remained popular until today. The generality of Toulouse is also referred to as Upper Languedoc, while the generality of Montpellier, the intendants of Languedoc resided in Montpellier, and they had a sub-delegate in Toulouse. Montpellier was chosen on purpose to diminish the power of Toulouse, whose parlement was very influential, the intendants replaced the governors as administrators of Languedoc, but appointed and dismissed at will by the king, they were no threat to the central state in Versailles. By 1789 they were the most important element of the administration of the kingdom. For judicial and legislative matters, Languedoc was overseen by the Parlement of Toulouse and it was the first parlement created outside of Paris by the kings of France in order to be the equivalent of the Parlement of Paris in the far-away southern territories of the kingdom. The Parlement of Toulouse was the court of justice for this vast area of France
37.
Lascaux
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Among some of the best-known Upper Paleolithic works of art depicted are primarily large animals, typical local and contemporary fauna that corresponds with the fossil record. The paintings are the combined effort of many generations, and despite continuing debate, Lascaux was inducted into the UNESCO World Heritage Sites list in 1979, as element of the Prehistoric Sites and Decorated Caves of the Vézère Valley. On September 12,1940, the entrance to the Lascaux Cave was discovered by 18 year old Marcel Ravidat, Ravidat returned to the scene with three friends, Jacques Marsal, Georges Agnel, and Simon Coencas, and entered the cave via a long shaft. The teenagers discovered that the walls were covered with depictions of animals. Galleries that suggest continuity. Those include the Hall of the Bulls, the Passageway, the Shaft, the Nave, the Apse, the cave complex was opened to the public in 1948. By 1955, carbon dioxide, heat, humidity, and other contaminants produced by 1,200 visitors per day had visibly damaged the paintings, as air condition deteriorated fungi and lichen increasingly infested the walls. Consequently the cave was closed to the public in 1963, the paintings were restored to their original state, a full range of Lascauxs parietal art is presented at the Centre of Prehistoric Art at Le Parc du Thot. Ochroconis lascauxensis is a species of fungus of the Ascomycota phylum, in May 2012 officially described and named after the locality of its first emergence, the Lascaux cave. It was along with a closely related second species Ochroconis anomala, first observed in 2000 inside the cave, no official announcement on the effect and/or progress of attempted treatments has ever been made. As of 2008, the cave contained black mold, in January 2008, authorities closed the cave for three months even to scientists and preservationists. A single individual was allowed to enter the cave for 20 minutes once a week to monitor climatic conditions, in 2009 it was announced, Mould problem stable. In 2011 the fungus seemed to be in retreat after the installment of an additional, in its sedimentary composition, the Vézère drainage basin covers one fourth of the département of the Dordogne, the northernmost region of the Black Périgord. Before joining the Dordogne River near Limeuil, the Vézère flows in a south-westerly direction, at its centre point, the rivers course is marked by a series of meanders flanked by high limestone cliffs that determine the landscape. The Lascaux valley is located some distance from the concentrations of decorated caves and inhabited sites. This is the highest concentration in western Europe, the cave contains nearly 2,000 figures, which can be grouped into three main categories, animals, human figures, and abstract signs. The paintings contain no images of the landscape or the vegetation of the time. Charcoal may also have used but seemingly to a sparing extent. In other areas, the colour was applied by spraying the pigments by blowing the mixture through a tube, where the rock surface is softer, some designs have been incised into the stone
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Montignac, Dordogne
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Montignac, also called Montignac sur Vézère or Montignac-Lascaux, is a commune in the Dordogne department in Nouvelle-Aquitaine in southwestern France. It is a town situated on the Vézère river and has been the capital of the canton of Montignac since 1790. In 2015 it became the capital of the newly created Canton de la Vallée de lHomme, the poet Pierre Lachambeaudie was born in the village. Montignac is a commune and small town in the department of Dordogne and it is situated in the historic region of Périgord noir, just below the confluence of the River Vézère and the Laurence, a small river which rises near the town of Thenon. Montignac is 11 km southeast of Thenon,13 km southwest of Terrasson-Lavilledieu, the D704 district road from Brive-la-Gaillarde passes through the town where it intersects with the D65, D704e and D706. The area of the commune is 3,715 hectares, the highest point is in the northwest and the lowest point in the southwest where the Vézère leaves the commune. Montignac is situated at a site with a fine bridge over the Vézère. Their Château de Montignac now lies in ruins, though some wall bases, terraces, Montignac was the home of the nineteenth-century French writer Eugène Le Roy, who was a district tax collector and wrote two celebrated novels about rural life in eighteenth-century Périgord. There is a museum in the town dedicated to him. Montignac is the centre for visiting the prehistoric sites in the Vézère valley. The modern part of the town to the south of the river has several hotels, to the north of the river lies the old town, where there are a maze of streets with fourteenth- to sixteenth-century timbered houses. A market is held twice weekly and there are restaurants where visitors can sit beside the river under medieval timbered beams. Montignac has a bridge, from which fireworks are launched on holidays such as Bastille Day and during the summer festival of world folklore and dance. The main attraction of the region is the Lascaux Cave, actually a complex of caves containing Upper Paleolithic painted art discovered in 1940 and estimated to be 17,300 years old. The cave was put on show in 1948, but it was found that the paintings were being damaged by the carbon dioxide exhaled by visitors, and in 1963, the cave was closed to the public. A replica cave, known as Lascaux II, was opened nearby in 1983, in 1979, Lascaux was added to the UNESCO World Heritage Sites list along with other prehistoric sites in the Vézère valley. Communes of the Dordogne department INSEE
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Dordogne
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Dordogne is a department in southwestern France, with its prefecture in Périgueux. The department is located in the region of Nouvelle-Aquitaine between the Loire Valley and the Pyrenees, and is named after the great Dordogne river that runs through it and it roughly corresponds with the ancient county of Périgord. The county of Périgord dates back to when the area was inhabited by the Gauls and it was originally home to four tribes, the name for four tribes in the Gaulish language was Petrocore. The area eventually known as the county of Le Périgord. The Petrocores took part in the resistance against Rome, the earliest cluzeaux, artificial caves either above or below ground, can be found throughout the Dordogne. These subterranean refuges and lookout huts were large enough to shelter entire local populations, according to Julius Caesar the Gauls took refuge in these caves during the resistance. After Guienne province was transferred to the English Crown under the Plantagenets following the remarriage of Eleanor of Aquitaine in 1152, the county had been torn apart and, as a consequence, that modeled its physiognomy. During the calmer periods of the late 15th and early 16th centuries, the finest Gothic and Renaissance residences were built in Périgueux, Bergerac and Sarlat. In the countryside, the nobility had the majority of the more than 1200 chateaux, manors, at the time, Bergerac was one of the most powerful Huguenot strongholds, along with La Rochelle. and even Josephine Baker. A number of ruins have retained the memory of the tragedies took place within their walls. Several of the castles and châteaux are open to visitors and some of such as Bourdeilles and Mareuil. Saint-Léon-sur-Vézère, Connezac, Saint-Jean-de-Côle, La Roque-Gageac and many others are real jewels of architecture, as for the old quarters of Périgueux or Bergerac, restored and developed into pedestrian areas, they have regained their former charm. A number of towns, such as Brantôme, Issigeac, Eymet. A special mention should be made in respect to Sarlat. Dordogne is one of the original 83 departments created on 4 March 1790 during the French Revolution and it was included from the former province of Périgord, the county of Périgord. Its borders would continue to change over the subsequent decades, in 1793 the communes of Boisseuilh, Coubjours, Génis, Payzac, Saint-Cyr-les-Champagnes, Saint-Mesmin, Salagnac, Savignac, Saint-Trié and Teillots were transferred from Corrèze to Dordogne. In 1794 Dordogne ceded Cavarc to Lot-et-Garonne, later in 1794 Dordogne gained Parcoul from Charente-Inférieure. Following the restoration, in 1819, the commune of Bonrepos was suppressed and merged with the adjacent commune of Souillac in Lot, but at some stage the victim died, and following a trial four individuals identified as culpable were in turn condemned to die by guillotine
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Chauvet Cave
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It is located near the commune of Vallon-Pont-dArc on a limestone cliff above the former bed of the Ardèche River, in the Gorges de lArdèche. Discovered on December 18,1994, it is considered one of the most significant prehistoric art sites and its paintings, along with those of Lascaux and the Cave of Altamira, have been dubbed a prehistoric Sistine Chapel. The cave was first explored by a group of three speleologists, Eliette Brunel-Deschamps, Christian Hillaire, and Jean-Marie Chauvet for whom it was named, Chauvet has a detailed account of the discovery. In addition to the paintings and other evidence, they also discovered fossilized remains, prints. Further study by French archaeologist Jean Clottes has revealed much about the site, the dates have been a matter of dispute but a study published in 2012 supports placing the art in the Aurignacian period, approximately 32, 000–30,000 years BP. The cave is situated above the course of the Ardèche River before the Pont dArc opened up. The gorges of the Ardèche region are the site of numerous caves, the Chauvet Cave is uncharacteristically large and the quality, quantity, and condition of the artwork found on its walls have been called spectacular. Based on radiocarbon dating, the cave appears to have used by humans during two distinct periods, the Aurignacian and the Gravettian. Most of the dates to the earlier, Aurignacian, era. After the childs visit to the cave, evidence suggests that due to a landslide which covered its historical entrance, the footprints may be the oldest human footprints that can be dated accurately. The soft, clay-like floor of the cave retains the paw prints of cave bears along with large, fossilized bones are abundant and include the skulls of cave bears and the horned skull of an ibex. A set of prints of a young child and a wolf or dog walking side by side was found in this cave. This information suggests the origin of the dog could date to before the last Ice Age. Hundreds of animal paintings have been catalogued, depicting at least 13 different species, there are also paintings of rhinoceroses. Typical of most cave art, there are no paintings of human figures. Above the Venus, and in contact with it, is a bison head, there are a few panels of red ochre hand prints and hand stencils made by blowing pigment over hands pressed against the cave surface. Abstract markings—lines and dots—are found throughout the cave, there are also two unidentifiable images that have a vaguely butterfly or avian shape to them. This combination of subjects has led some students of art and cultures to believe that there was a ritual, shamanic
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Portable art
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Portable art refers to the small examples of Prehistoric art that could be carried from place to place, which is especially characteristic of the Art of the Upper Palaeolithic. It is one of the two categories of Prehistoric art, the other being the immobile Parietal art, effectively synonymous with rock art. Engraved or Painted Stone As many as 1,000 sites with instances of decorated stone have been discovered, sandstone, limestone, slate, or stalagmite were the most common types of material employed, and were usually adorned with animal figures or symbols. Such pieces have been interpreted by archaeologists to be predecessors serving as sketches to a later. Engraved or Painted Bone Similar to engraved or painted stone works, unlike their stone counterparts, however, decorated bone works are often much smaller in scale and are seen less frequently, as bone is much more difficult than stone to engrave. As a result, a belief among archaeologists is that such works were crafted in the hopes of bringing good luck on a hunt. The vast span of time, as long as 40,000 years in cases, separating the creation of portable art. A common solution to this problem has been to study instead the stratigraphy of the piece within the deposits of its surroundings. In many cases, however, even stratigraphical dating is impossible, the destruction of a datable stratigraphy also commonly occurred as a result from ransacking and illegal digs focused not on the study of the material they discovered, but on its re-sale value. All disruptions of the stratigraphy destroy the provenance from which a date could be established, also posing a difficulty to stratigraphical analysis is the possibility that the time of an objects creation and final deposit can vary greatly. Many portable objects are believed to have served as ritual objects, being passed down generation to generation. Through the migration of prehistoric man, it is possible that the resting place of an object is hundreds or even thousands of miles from the point of its original creation. Though difficult, dating portable objects provides an important link in building a chronology of the art, and thus evolution of prehistoric man
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Venus figurines
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These figurines were carved from soft stone, bone or ivory, or formed of clay and fired. The latter are among the oldest ceramics known, in total, some 144 such figurines are known, virtually all of modest size, between 3 cm and 40 cm or more in height. They are some of the earliest works of prehistoric art, most of them have small heads, wide hips, and legs that taper to a point. In contrast, arms and feet are absent, and the head is usually small. Depictions of hairstyles can be detailed, and especially in Siberian examples, the original cultural meaning and purpose of these artifacts is not known. It has frequently been suggested that they may have served a ritual or symbolic function, the use of the name is metaphorical as there is no link between the figurines and the Roman goddess Venus, although they have been seen as representations of a primordial female goddess. The term has been criticised for being more a reflection of modern western ideas than reflecting the beliefs of the original owners. Vénus impudique, the figurine that gave the class its name, was the very first Paleolithic sculptural representation of a woman discovered in modern times. It was found in about 1864 by Paul Hurault, 8th Marquis de Vibraye at the archaeological site of Laugerie-Basse in the Vézère valley. The Magdalenian Venus from Laugerie-Basse is headless, footless, armless, four years later, Salomon Reinach published an article about a group of steatite figurines from the caves of Balzi Rossi. The famous Venus of Willendorf was excavated in 1908 in a deposit in the Danube valley. Since then, hundreds of similar figurines have been discovered from the Pyrenees to the plains of Siberia. The ivory carving, found in six fragments in Germanys Hohle Fels cave, represents the features of Venus figurines, including the swollen belly, wide-set thighs. The majority of the Venus figurines appear to be depictions of females, many of which follow certain artistic conventions, most of them are roughly lozenge-shaped, with two tapering terminals at top and bottom and the widest point in the middle. In some examples, certain parts of the anatomy are exaggerated, abdomen, hips, breasts, thighs. In contrast, other details are neglected or absent, especially arms. The heads are often of small size and devoid of detail. Some may represent pregnant women, while others show no such signs, the absence of feet has led to suggestions that the figures might have been made to stand upright by inserting the legs into the ground like a peg
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Landes (department)
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Landes is a department in southwestern France. Landes is one of the original 83 departments that were created during the French Revolution on 4 March 1790 and it was created from parts of the provinces of Guyenne and Gascony. During the first part of the century large parts of the department were covered with poorly drained heathland which is the origin of its name. The vegetation covered rich soil and was burned off, leaving excellent pasturage for sheep. The sheep were managed by shepherds who moved around on stilts, most of the sheep departed during the second half of the nineteenth century when systematic development of large pine plantations transformed the landscape and the local economy. The Nobel Prize–winning novelist François Mauriac set his novels in the Landes, Landes is part of the current region of Nouvelle-Aquitaine and is surrounded by the departments of Gironde, Lot-et-Garonne, Gers, and Pyrénées-Atlantiques, as well as the Atlantic Ocean on the west. With an area stretching over more than 9000 km², Landes is, after Gironde and it is well known for the Côte dArgent beach which is Europes longest, and attracts many surfers to Mimizan and Hossegor each year. The President of the General Council is Henri Emmanuelli of the Socialist Party, in terms of agriculture, Landes is known for its large pine forests which are the raw material for a timber and resin industries in the region. The forests were planted in the nineteenth century to prevent erosion of the regions sandy soil by the sea. Cantons of the Landes department Communes of the Landes department Arrondissements of the Landes department Prefecture website Conseil Général website Landes at DMOZ
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Venus of Lespugue
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The Venus of Lespugue is a Venus figurine, a statuette of a nude female figure of the Gravettian, dated to between 26,000 and 24,000 years ago. It was discovered in 1922 in the Rideaux cave of Lespugue in the foothills of the Pyrenees by René de Saint-Périer, approximately 6 inches tall, it is carved from tusk ivory, and was damaged during excavation. The Venus of Lespugue resides in France, at the Musée de lHomme, art of the Upper Paleolithic List of Stone Age art http, //www. hominids. com/donsmaps/lespuguevenus. html http, //www. arthistory. sbc. edu/imageswomen/lespugue. html
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