Grade 9 Art - Day 6

Legends of How Art Began

In many ancient societies, reflections and shadows were thought to be the spirit of a person or animal.  As a result, a tradition of drawing lines around shadows and reflections may well have been some of the earliest forms of drawing.  A legend in Buddhism recalls that Buddha could find no one to paint his portrait, he subsequently traced his own shadow and filled in the positive space with colour.  From our text we learn also that sculpture may have come from a young woman of Corinth, who "traced the shadow of her young lover's face cast on the wall by lamplight.  Her father, a potter, filled in the outline with clay, which he then fired." (Adams) This story was captured in the following painting by Joseph Wright of Derby, entitled "The Corinthian Maid".

Excerpts from "Art Across Time", by Laurie Schneider Adams.

Early homo-sapiens were gifted with artistic and abstract understandings.  This differentiated them from their predecessors.   Note the simple shapes, like the shadows we previously discussed, in these ancient cave paintings:

Similar paintings discovered in Indonesia were found to be 40,000 years old.  

Among the hand outline paintings were scenes of the daily lives of the early artists, with objects like abstract pigs and dwarf buffalo.  Similar to the Lascaux paintings we discussed on day one, art was used by our ancient ancestors as a means of decorating their habitations, explaining their existence, and to "Impose order on disorder, and create form from formlessness." (As we previously discussed!) Here is a link to the Smithsonian article on the discovery:
http://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/rockart-ages-indonesian-cave-paintings-are-40000-years-old-180952970/?no-ist

Tomorrow we will talk about images and magic!!