Materials and Techniques Used to Create Prehistoric Aegean Art and Architecture

Effigy from the Cyclades, popularized by its appearance at the Athens 2004 Olympic games opening ceremony. Early Cycladic II (2700 BC–2300 BC).

Aegean fine art (2800–1100 BC) is art that was created in the lands surrounding, and the islands within, the Aegean Sea during the Bronze Age, that is, until the 11th century BC, earlier Ancient Greek art. Because is it mostly institute in the territory of modern Hellenic republic, information technology is sometimes called Greek Statuary Age art, though it includes not but the art of the Mycenaean Greeks, but as well that of the not-Greek Cycladic and Minoan cultures, which converged over time.

Cycladic art is known for its elementary figurines carved in white marble; Minoan art for its palace complexes with frescos, imagery of bulls and bull-leaping, and sophisticated pottery and jewellery; and Mycenaean art for its lavish metalwork in aureate, imagery of combat and massively-constructed citadels and tombs. These are very unlike arts, reflecting very different cultures. For this reason, many art historians consider the term "Aegean art" inappropriate, as it reflects mere geographic proximity and non cultural or artistic unity.^{[ citation needed ]} Others point to the many communalities, particularly following the "process of Minoanization from c. 1700 upwardly" over the other parts of the region, and the difficulty at several times and places in deciding whether excavated objects were imported or made locally.^[1]

In the Bronze Age, nigh 2800–1100 BC, despite cultural interchange by fashion of merchandise with the contemporaneous civilizations of Egypt and Mesopotamia, the Aegean cultures developed their ain highly distinctive styles. After the Greek Bronze Age civilizations collapsed, the early on office of the Greek Dark Ages saw minimal creative production until the Protogeometric style in pottery emerged nigh 1050 BC, which is taken as the outset phase of "Ancient Greek fine art". This traditional disjunction was to some extent a result of the uncertainty equally to whether the Mycenaean Linear B script recorded a form of Greek or not. This was settled when the script was decoded in the 1950s, confirming it was Greek. The Minoan Linear A is clearly non Greek, however.

The elegant art of the Aegean daidala figurines has recently been used at the 2004 Summer Olympics, held at Athens; specifically, during the opening ceremony and every bit the original idea behind the games mascots: Athina and Fivos.

The Athens 2004'southward mascots were based on this dirt model at the National Archaeological Museum

. This type of figurines are furthermore particularly intriguing, because of the loftier resemblance they have with modernistic sculptures (e.g. Henry Moore's works).

Minoan art [edit]

Minoan culture was disrupted at intervals past natural disasters and perhaps invasions, before somewhen becoming controlled by the Mycenaens. Minoan fine art is very elegant, rhythmic and full of movement.

Compages [edit]

The Minoan civilization is known for constructing several big and great palaces, most commonly Knossos, Phaistos, and Malia which were destroyed around 1700 BC and rebuilt and and then suffered some destruction again around 1500 BC. The "new" palaces are the chief source of information on Minoan architecture. The palace of Knossos called the Palace of Minos is the most elaborate and ambitious of the three. It is characterized past a vast number of rooms over a large amount of country. It has currently been excavated and partially restored. Minoan architecture is defined by its numerous porticoes, staircases, storerooms, workshops, and air shafts that would have provided the structure with an open feeling. Interior rooms are typically small with low ceilings, but accept richly busy walls. Although none have survived, by depiction in painting and sculpture it is known that columns in the Minoan palaces were constructed of wood. Minoan architecture are thought to exist a place of not only royal residence but the administrative center and commercial action.

Paintings, pottery and reliefs [edit]

Between 2000 and 1700 BC Minoan pottery is defined past its technical perfection and dynamic swirling ornament and its art is characterized by its naturalistic and rhythmic motility. Many murals and reliefs were scenes from nature depicting animals, birds, and sea creatures in lush vegetation; marine life being favored. Most images are apartment in grade and silhouetted confronting backgrounds of solid color. Forms from this era typically portray a weightlessness as they seem to float or sway. Human figures are painted as slim-waisted and athletic in trunk blazon for both male person and female person differentiating only in pare colour; females are lighter in skin tone.

Cycladic art [edit]

Cycladic art was produced by the Cycladic civilisation between 3000 BC, or fifty-fifty earlier, and 1100 BC, and then covering both part of the Neolithic and the whole of the Bronze Age in the Greek islands. The most famous and distinctive type of Cycladic art is a large number of marble figures, nigh all representing a continuing female nude figure, with artillery folded beyond chest, and a blank face apart from the nose. However, there are signs that they were originally painted. Some 1400 of these are known, most taken from unknown tombs to satisfy the fine art market place.

The female figures are thought to represent the female parent and fertility goddess. Cycladic nude figurines are highly stylized and distinctive to the surface area. They are defined by very flat, wedge shaped bodies, columnar necks and oval featureless faces apart from well defined noses. Figures have very subtle curves and subtle markings of knees and abdomen.

Cycladic pottery was frequently elegantly shaped and painted, with a concentration on pouring vessels similar jugs, often with raised spouts. There are also kernoi stands for offerings or lamps. There are some creature figurines or beast-shaped rhyta and vessels including minor boxes were made, besides as distinctive decorated round discs, effectually 20 cm across, that are nicknamed "frying pans" by archaeologists. The part of these is uncertain; possibly a concave side was filled with fluid and used as a mirror. There was much influence from Minoan pottery. Some very early kernoi and Frying pans had been made of stone.

Mycenaean fine art [edit]

Mycenaean fine art is well-nigh prominently dated between 1600 and 1100 BC during the Late Helladic menstruation of Greece. Mycenean art is named afterward the inhabitants of Mycenae descending from early Greek tribes of 2000 BC and approximately 3000 to 1100 BC. Mycenaean pottery is much the most common type of art to survive, and was oft exported to Italy. The Warrior Vase is an unusually fine vase with painted figures.

In many portable forms of art, and for painting, the Mycenaeans relied on the Minoan art of Crete, which probably sometimes reached them in the form of imported objects, sometimes by imported artists and trainers of Greek artists.

Metalwork [edit]

Several important pieces in gilded and other metals come from the Aureate grave goods at Grave Circles A and B at Mycenae, including the Mask of Agamemnon, Silver Siege Rhyton, Bulls-head rhyton, and gold Nestor'southward Cup. The Theseus Band, found in Athens, simply probably Cretan, is one of the finest of a number of gold signet rings with tiny multi-figure scenes of high quality, many from the princely Grave Circles A and B at Mycenae. These "raise in an acute course the related questions of how to distinguish mainland from Cretan work, and the significance of whatever distinction that may exist".^[2]

Architecture [edit]

Mycenaean palaces were mostly placed on hilltops surrounded by defensive walls constructed of large stone blocks. The Lion Gate is one of the few remaining busy structures of Mycenaean architecture. Gates such equally the latter functioned as guardians of the gate. At the center of the palaces were regal audience halls called the Megaron defined by a round hearth in the heart and four columns supporting its roof. Structures always featured roofs of fired tiles.

Sculpture [edit]

There is trivial large or monumental sculpture from Mycenaean Hellenic republic; what there is comes mainly from palaces, or reliefs on grave stelae, in detail the group of Grave stelai from Grave Circle A, Mycenae. These show similar subjects to the metalwork from the graves, just with rather cruder workmanship.

Great numbers of sites produce pottery figurines, mostly very stylized, such equally the Psi and phi blazon figurines. There are small sculpted scenes, reliefs or intaglios, of high quality in various media, including metal, hardstone carving, and ivory. The remarkable Pylos Combat Agate seal, found in an aristocracy grave on the mainland, was perhaps fabricated in Crete.

Notes [edit]

1. ^ Hood, 17-18
2. ^ Hood, 226

References [edit]

• Hood, Sinclair, The Arts in Prehistoric Greece, 1978, Penguin (Penguin/Yale History of Fine art), ISBN 0140561420

External links [edit]

• Aegean Page
• Sideris A., Aegean School of Sculpture in Antiquity Cultural Portal of the Aegean Archipelago, Foundation of the Hellenic World, Athens 2007.
• Greek art of the Aegean Islands, Issued in connection with an exhibition held November ane, 1979 – February 10, 1980, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, sponsored past the Government of the Republic of Hellenic republic, complemented by a loan from the Musée du Louvre.

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Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aegean_art

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