Thursday, January 29, 2015

The Story of Painting

The Difference between thinking and feeling could confuse pictures with real things.
Art is always as much concerned with the way people feel about things as it is with the way things really are.Usually both knowing and feeling go to make a picture, and so paintings are different from one another, depending on whether the artist was more interested in what he saw or knew , or in what he felt, so how much he saw ans knew and felt.

How Painting Began:

Cave age: France
In the cave age era mans main source of food was by hunting animals. They had no knowledge of farming and domesticating cattle and depended totally on wild animals for food. small animals meat was always less and therefore to kill a large animal was a need. As the animal like wild buffalo, boars and deers  were big and like any animal psychology man was scared of them as they were of Man.In this situation Man started painting hunting these animals with spears and other weapons used them.This gave him the confidence to go and kill his prey for food. He started believing in the magic of putting these painting and started following this before every hunt. This is evident in the Caves in France they did not paint the caves for decoration but for the power and confidence they got through these painting as these painting were done way inside the cave which did not have much of ambient light and were not found at the entrance as in case would be if for decoration. Even there are instances of overlap of these painted animals as it would be the case after the purpose of that particular kill was over the next kill to be was drawn on the walls over the previous one.





Egypt:
Than as Man evolved he learned to farm and domesticate cattle for food, hunting became more of a game and paintings were made to document and tell a story. Picture alphabets were developed for scripting . These alphabets over time became symbolic representation as we use them today. As need of painting became recording and farming occupation changes urged humans to follow the cycle of crop when to plant and harvest and thus calender was developed by these humans. Even in these circumstances there were force beyond their control the natural calamities which affected their food supply. In this conditions they started believing in the power of spirits after death , that would be helpful or harmful to them.The more important of these natural spirits came to be worshiped as Gods. The Egyptians thought of them as greater rulers like their Kings only to be wiser and who lived for ever.
Similarly they felt the Kings, the rich and wealthy amongs them had an vital soul inside them and after their death they might need their bodied to come back and therefore they started preserving their bodies and making mummies in their tombs and also place their statue in case something happens to the real body. They also belief that the dead will need all his material things aswell so they furnished the tomb as a regular household but they could not keep all,  the rich mans wealth in form of land , animals and servants in the tomb, so they began to paint of the walls with  the images of  servants, the farm lands, cattle etc.






Crete and Greece
Between 2200 and 1100 B.C
Cretans were bold traders and pirates who made up for their poor soil. From the ruins from their palaces it can be seen that they were the richest and the happiest of the western nations.Here the walls had paintings of boar hunting and scene which showed hunting was a sport and painting was done not for the hunt magic or as service to the death but for pleasure and not with fear. The gay and graceful shapes, colors must have made it great decoration for the walls.








Greek and Romans
Cretans were conquered and destroyed by the warlike tribes that came into Greece from North.
Athens - Greek civilization and what is left of their painting is beautiful painted pottery from which we can imagine the lost wall paintings. The Greek paintings were more realistic and round like developed not flat like the earlier Egyptians paintings (rules- face side, body front and stiff and flat figures )







The Roman empire grew as they conquered the Greeks but they had great respect for Greek art and so you can find great Greek influence on Roman Art.

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