Akhenaten and the art of the Amarna period by Kim Jackson

During Egypt’s 18th Dynasty,  the Pharaoh Akhenaten  took the throne. He brought a monotheistic religion into being, based on the worship of the Aten, a sun god. Artistic changes followed political upheaval, although some stylistic changes are apparent before his reign. A new style of art was introduced that was more naturalistic than the stylized frieze favored in Egyptian art for the previous 1700 years. After Akhenaten’s death, however, Egyptian artists reverted to their old styles, although there are many traces of this period’s style in late art.

The Ancient Egyptian art style known as Amarna Art was a style of art that was adopted in the Amarna Period (i.e. during and just after the reign of Akhenaten in the late 18th Dynasty), and it is noticeably different from more conventional Egyptian art styles.

It is characterized by a sense of movement and activity in images, with figures having raised heads, many figures overlapping and many scenes are crowded and very busy. The illustration of hands and feet were obviously thought to be important, shown with long and slender fingers, and great pains were gone to be show fingers and finger nails. Flesh was shown as being dark brown, for both males and females (contrasted with the more normal dark brown for males and light brown for females) – this could merely be convention, or depict the life blood. As is normal in Egyptian art, commoners are shown with 2 left feet (or 2 right feet).

The depiction of the Royal Family is often seen as being informal, intimate and with a family closeness, but this hides the conventions of the style. Central to most scenes is the disc of the Aten, shining down on the Royal Family and literally giving life and prosperity to Akhenaten and Nefertiti. Royalty are shown with left and right feet, each with a big toe. Their heads are elongated.

The statues of Akhenaten which are extant show a long, narrow face with pronounced lips, curved upwards as if smiling. His figure shows a somewhat bloated stomach and rather womanly hips. Scholars have wondered throughout the years why a god-king would allow himself to be depicted thus, since his form suggests weakness and/or illness. However, it appears that Akhenaten was confident enough in himself and his powers as king and his marital happiness to allow himself to be depicted exactly as he was, warts and all. This shows a definite change in the rather stultified art forms of the past to a more relaxed and natural art form.

The decoration of tombs of non-Royals is quite different from previous eras, with fewer agricultural scenes, and the central image is the Pharaoh, rather than that of the actual tomb owner. Obviously, the lack of depiction of gods other than the Aten makes the style of decoration quite different from the standard tomb decoration. Sculptures during the Amarna period show a relaxed quality, a day-to-day quality, lacking in art of the earlier periods.

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Constructivist Artists:. Kasimir Malevich

I reject the soul and intuition as unnecessary. On February 19th, 1914 at a public lecture I rejected reason. I give warning of a danger. Reason has now imprisoned art in a box of square dimensions. Foreseeing the danger of a fifth and sixth dimension, I fled, since the fifth and sixth dimensions form a cube in which art will stifle.

Escape before it is too late.
Dostoyevsky said in his naivete: “What is the mind for if not to get what you want.”
So instead of writing artistic works he wrote clever ones.
A work of the highest art is written in the absence of reason.
A fragment from such a work:

“I have just eaten calves’ feet. It is suprisingly difficult to adjust oneself to happiness having traveled the length and breadth of Siberia.

I always envy the telegraph pole. A chemist’s shop.”

Of course many people will think that this is absurd, but in vain. One has only to light two matches and set up the wash-stand [ i.e.: mind-reason ]

. . . Kazimir Malevich, 1916

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Alfonso Maria Mucha

Alphonse Maria Mucha (1860-1939) is most often remembered for the prominent role he played in shaping the aesthetics of French Art Nouveau at the turn of the century. As a struggling and relatively unknown artist of Czech origin living in Paris, Mucha achieved immediate fame when, in December 1894, he accepted a commission to create a poster for one of the greatest actresses of this time, Sarah Bernhardt. Though the printer was apprehensive about submitting Mucha´s final design because of its new unconventional style, Bernhardt loved it and so did the public. ´Le style Mucha´, as Art Nouveau was known in its earliest days, was born. The success of that first poster brought a 6 years contract between Bernhardt and Mucha and in the following years his work for her and others included costumes and stage decorations, designs for magazines and book covers, jewellery and furniture and numerous posters. Mucha returned to Czechoslovakia in 1910, where he dedicated the remainder of his life to the production of a an epic series of 20 paintings depicting the history of the Slav people, the Slav Epic.

Margaret Macdonald

Margaret MacDonald was a member of the Glasgow Four and was also Charles Rennie Mackintosh’s wife and collaborated with him in several artistic endeavours.

Often overshadowed by Charles Rennie Mackintosh, Margaret remains an artist in her own right and produced a wide range of objects ranging from embroidery, gesso panels, watercolours and glass.

Her work was linear and had a decorative quality and she especially used semi precious gems as decorative elements.  Her works were often used to decorate the interior designed schemes by Charles Rennie Mackintosh, and added to the entire concept of the Gesamtkuntswerk, in which the entire work of art was created.

Margaret MacDonald Mackintosh was influenced by William Blake in her use of linear decoration, rigid symmetry, rows and parallels.  This is also shown in her use of curved bands, lines and stripes.

Her work, although decorative, tended to look to stylised figural representation, and often juxtaposed figural representation with symbolic icons such as the rose, heart and bud motif.  This can be seen in the image on the left which demonstrates a linear decorative quality whilst using symbolism in the female figure and the rose motif.

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Manuscripts

Insular script was a medieval script system used in Ireland and Britain (Latin: insula, “island”). It later spread to Continental Europe in centres under the influence of Celtic Christianity. Irish missionaries also took the script to Continental Europe, where they founded monasteries such as Bobbio. The scripts were in use also in monasteries influenced by English missionaries like Fulda. It is associated with Insular art, of which most surviving examples are illuminated manuscripts.

The script developed in Ireland in the 7th century and was used as late as the 19th century, though its most flourishing period fell between 600 and 850. It was closely related to the uncial and half-uncial scripts, its immediate influences; the highest grade of Insular script is the majuscule Insular half-uncial, which is closely derived from Continental half-uncial script.

Works written in Insular scripts commonly use large initial letters surrounded by red ink dots (although this is also true of other scripts written in Ireland and England). Letters following a large initial at the start of a paragraph or section often gradually diminish in size as they are written across a line or a page, until the normal size is reached, which is called a “diminuendo” effect, and is a distinctive insular innovation, which later influenced Continental illumination style. Letters with ascenders (b, d, h, l, etc.) are written with triangular or wedge-shaped tops. The bows of letters such as b, d, p, and q are very wide. The script uses many ligatures and has many unique scribal abbreviations, along with many borrowings from Tironian notes.

Plautus, Comedies
In Latin
Ninth century

This fine Carolingian manuscript of the Roman comic poet Plautus, like many others of the Latin classics, was brought to Italy by the bookhunter Poggio Bracciolini, who entered notes in it and copied it, as did Niccolo Niccoli. The latter’s copy in turn gave rise to many other manuscripts which were studied, imitated, and performed in Rome and elsewhere. The revival of secular drama in Renaissance Europe largely stems from the discovery of this work. As for this manuscript, Nicholas of Cusa brought it to Rome, where it passed through the library of Cardinal Giordano Orsini into that of the Chapter of Saint Peter’s, who gave it to Pope Leo X.

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Art Nouveau

“An international style of decoration and architecture which developed in the 1880s and 1890s. The name derives from the Maison de l’Art Nouveau, an interior design gallery opened in Paris in 1896, but in fact the movement had different names throughout Europe. In Germany it was known as ‘Jugendstil’, from the magazine Diejugend (Youth) published from 1896; in Italy ‘Stile Liberty’ (after the London store, Liberty Style) or ‘Floreale’; in Spain ‘Modernista’, in Austria ‘Sezessionstil’ and, paradoxically, in France the English term ‘Modern Style’ was often used, emphasizing the English origins of the movement.

“In design Art Nouveau was characterized by writhing plant forms and an opposition to the historicism which had plagued the 19th century. There was a tension implicit throughout the movement between the decorative and the modern which can be seen in the work of individual designers as well as in the chronology of the whole. Its emphasis on decoration and artistic unity links the movement to contemporary Symbolist ideas in art, as seen in the work of the Vienna Secessionists, but the movement was also associated with Arts and Crafts ideas and, as such, Art Nouveau forms a bridge between Morris and Gropius (recognized by Pevsner in his book, Pioneers of the Modern Movement, 1936).

“In Britain the style was exemplified by the architecture of Rennie Mackintosh, and the design work of the Macdonald sisters. The lingering impact of Morris in England slowed down the progress of the new style in design although Mackmurdo, Godwin, Townsend and even Voysey were influenced towards Art Nouveau. It was in illustration that the ideas were most keenly felt, through the new periodicals and presses – the Yellow Book, the Studio, the Savoy, the Hobby Horse – and though the work of Beardsley, Ricketts and Selwyn Image.

“In France, despite Guimard’s famous glass and iron Metro designs, the movement was best expressed in the applied arts, especially the glassware of Lalique (1860-1945) and Galle (1846-1904). In Belgium, the style was promoted through the Societe des Vingts (Les Vingt) established in 1884, and including Ensor as well as the more characteristically Art Nouveau architects Horta and Van de Velde in its members. In Spain the style was concentrated in the eccentric hands of Gaudi in Barcelona. In Vienna, architects like Wagner, Hoffmann and Olbrich, and artists such as Klimt gathered to promote the style through the Secessionist magazine Ver Sacrum. In Germany, the movement split between the decorative tendencies of Otto Eckman (1865-1902) and the Pan magazine, and the streamlined design of Behrens. In America architects like Sullivan and Wright were influenced by European ideas but conceived Art Nouveau in different terms, whilst designers like Tiffany enthusiastically embraced the movement:.

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Gustav Klimt

He has been called the preeminent exponent of ART NOUVEAU. Klimt began (1883) as an artist-decorator in association with his brother and Franz Matsoh. In 1886-92, Klimt executed mural decorations for staircases at the Burgtheater and the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna; these confirmed Klimt’s eclecticism and broadened his range of historical references. Klimt was a cofounder and the first president of the Vienna Secession, a group of modernist architects and artists who organized their own exhibition society and gave rise to the SECESSION MOVEMENT, or the Viennese version of Art Nouveau. He was also a frequent contributor to Ver Sacrum, the group’s journal.

Among the important decorative projects undertaken by Klimt were his celebrated Beethoven frieze (1902; Osterreichische Galerie), a cycle of mosaic decorations for Josef Hofmann’s Palais Stoclet in Brussels (1905-09), and numerous book illustrations.

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Art in Italy

This is about art in Italy. It is from the book of Alois Riegl’s ”Historical Grammar of the Visual Arts.”

ALDUS MANUTIUS (1449-1515)

The famous “Dolphin and Anchor” device of Aldus appeared for only the second time in the second state of the 1502 Dante, and was used subsequently in all his editions. It is the symbol of the ancient proverb “Festina lente” (Hurry up slowly) which Aldus had taken as a motto as early as 1499, and seems to have regularly expounded to his friends.

A grammarian and humanist, Aldus’ fame is above all connected to his greatness as a typographer and editor. Aldus began his career as a humanist teacher and became known to the most important humanist circles of the time before coming to Venice around 1490. In 1493 Aldus established a printing house together with Andrea Torresani da Asolo. Aldus’ publishing activity, in contrast to the vast majority of printing during the incunable period, was inspired by clear cultural and intellectual goals in addition to economic ones. Founder of the Philhellenic Academy, he contributed in a decisive manner to the study and cultivation of Greek letters inItaly. He himself edited splendid Greek, Latin and vernacular editions,and had other editions prepared for him by the best scholars in these languages.

The revolutionary impact of Aldus’ editions is readily apparent when the elegant portable octavo of his 1502 Dante, printed in beautiful italic type without commentary, is compared to the ponderous incunabula of the previous decade which buried Dante’s text beneath exegetical commentary. Aldus’ editions invited the reader to encounter the classics directly, in an unfiltered state. In addition, the portable format and unencumbered presentation of the text appealed to the expanding public demand for Dante and the vernacular classics. In the cities among the middle classes, and in the courts, vernacular poetry was flourishing among both gentlemen and gentlewomen — giving rise, for the first time in the Italian tradition, to a distinguished group of women poets.

The italic type, which has come to be associated with Aldus’ name more than any other, was first used in an octavo edition of Virgil in 1501. Francesco Griffo, who designed the type for Aldus is said to have imitated the elegant cancelleresco script of the calligrapher Bartolomeo Sanvito. Sanvito reportedly wrote the final page of the Purgatorioin The Newberry library copy displayed in the photo [not yetavailable]. The lavishly illuminated Newberry copy illustrates how even the Aldine octavo might still be treated as a prestigious objet d’art by contemporary bibliophiles.

After studies in Rome and Ferrara, Manutius reached Venice in 1490 and gathered around him a group of Greek scholars and compositors. In March 1495 he issued his first dated book, the Erotemata of Constantine Lascaris. During 1495–98 he printed five volumes of Aristotle; in 1495, the Idylls of Theocritus and De Aetna of Pietro Bembo; and in 1498, works by Aristophanes and Politian. Francesco Griffo, who was his type cutter, was responsible in 1500 for the first italic typeface, first used in the Virgil of 1501. The Hypnerotomachia Poliphili (1499) of Francesco Colonna, with its outstanding woodcuts by an unknown artist, was Manutius’s most famous book. In 1501 he printed Juvenal, Martial, and Petrarch’s Cose volgari; in 1502, works by Gaius Valerius Catullus, Lucan, Thucydides, Sophocles, and Herodotus; and in August 1502, La divina commedia of Dante, which first showed the famous colophon of the Aldine anchor and dolphin. In the Sophocles of 1502 occurred the first mention of the Aldine academy, an organization of scholars founded by Manutius to edit classical texts. Between 1503 and 1514 his production included works by Xenophon, Euripides, Homer, Aesop, Virgil, Desiderius Erasmus, Horace, Pindar, and Plato.

Britannica

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Incunabula

The Latin word incunabulum (plural incunabula, and often anglicized as incunable) literally means cradle, and more loosely refers to the infancy, birthplace or origin of something. It is most often used in reference to early printed books, and in this sense an incunabulum is further defined even more specifically as being a book printed using moveable type prior to the year 1501 AD.

Illuminated Manuscript (c. 1440)

Before the invention of printing using moveable type, books were copied by hand, word for word, letter by letter, by scribes, generally onto parchment or vellum. Obviously, this was an extremely laborious and time-consuming method, and the level of production was minimal — not to mention the potential for errors during transcription. Later, the method of block printing was devised (i.e. in Europe, as this method had been used for centuries in the Orient) wherein the entire text for a page was cut into wood and thus printed, although even this method was rather labour-intensive as well. However, great care was often undertaken in the reproduction of books in both of these ways, and the pages were often subsequently “illuminated” with wonderful illustrations and ornaments. Some of the most beautiful books ever made come from the time before the invention of printing with moveable type, and the first books which were printed using this latter method endeavoured to emulate that beauty and form.

Masterpieces of the Printer’s Art

The art of printing is virtually unique in the human experience in that it emerged fully formed. The works of the pioneering master printers are absolutely breathtaking in their technical and artistic perfection. They set standards for excellence that remained unrivaled until the rise of the modern “art” printing house a century ago; and yet these works are still unequaled, when it is taken into account the laborious, entirely manual processes of their manufacture. The power and the charm of Incunabula are quite as unique as their impact on human history was profound.

Printing was such an immense improvement over the hand copying of books that it caught on immediately and within two generations the art of the illuminated manuscript had become all but extinct. The earliest printers, however, continued many of the traditions of the scribes, making use of textual contractions and elisions to reduce the volume of matter to be printed. In addition many incunabula were designed to be rubricated by hand, that is, to be decorated with flourishing initial letters and other embellishments, done by the now underemployed and presumably discontented scribes. Book illustrations in the Incunabula period were prepared from woodcuts, that is, printed from blocks of wood hand engraved with their subjects by skilled artists and artisans. This form of illustration allows great artistic expression, and the results of this technology are eagerly collected today, and appreciated for what they are, the first commercial art to be available to all people.

Printing Changes the World

There was a flood tide of demand for the new printed books. In the forty five years of the incunabula period tens of thousands of titles were printed, amounting to millions of copies of books on all topics. Now knowledge, the key to power, became available at a tiny fraction of the cost of a handwritten book. This development proved an enormous impetus to literacy, and banished forever the dark days when only a few Church officials and noblemen held the key to deciphering the magic letters of the old parchments. The printed book arrived just as an emerging middle class of tradesman and artisans was rising in social, political, and economic power, further challenging the institutions that had held Europeans in their absolute control for a thousand years. This explosion of knowledge, coupled with the new humanist world view of the Renaissance, swept away the lingering intellectual darkness of Medievalism, and ushered in the centuries of social and technological progress that have made possible the unprecedented prosperity of the modern world.

Where It All Began

Printing began in Mainz, Germany, with Gutenberg, in the 1450′s. After the city was sacked in 1459, many of Gutenberg’s followers removed to Cologne. From there printing spread across Europe with remarkable speed. In 1470 there were fourteen printing houses on the continent; in 1480 there were more than a hundred. From the German states printing moved almost immediately into France and the Italian Kingdoms, then arrived in Holland in 1472, Belgium in 1473, Spain in 1474, finally reaching England in 1477.

How Books Were Originally Sold

A visit to an early printer to buy books was nothing like a modern trip to a book shop. The earliest books lack titlepages and were presented for sale undecorated and unbound. The browser would be greeted by the sight of a display of sample books whose signatures (groups of pages) were loose, just tied together with string, with the author and title of the work on a small attached slip of paper. When the book pages were purchased, the new owner would have them embellished and bound according to his means. Many printers kept an in-house staff of rubricators (also called “rubrishers” in old books) and binders, as well as printers, type-cutters and sometimes paper-makers. Because of this tradition copies of the same work may be found today in the simplest of vellum (sheepskin) bindings with no decoration, or lavishly rubricated in color and even gold leaf, and bound in the most sumptuous tooled and gilt leather, perhaps even fitted with clasps of chased silver.

Incunabula as Collector’s Items

The study and collecting of Incunabula has been actively pursued for centuries. The great majority of these early works have perished over time, victims of hard use and the incessant warfare that scourged Europe. The collecting of individual leaves from defective or incomplete works has been an accepted part of the bibliophile’s world for an equally long period. Leaves from the Gutenberg Bible are of course the ultimate collectible Incunabula leaves and are avidly collected. A bookseller broke a defective copy of this great classic in 1923, marketing the leaves as “A Noble Fragment”, at $300. Today the market value of a Gutenberg Bible leaf is between twenty thousand and thirty five thousand dollars depending on the quality of the rubrication. Fortunately most Incunabula are far less costly, with specimens available for as little as $10. The factors determining an Incunabulum’s collectibility are its appearance, printer, and rarity. The more artistic the piece the greater is the collector demand, and hence its value. Leaves with illustrations and fine decoration are currently collectors’ favorites. Among the more noted printers, works of the great Venetian printer Aldus Manutius are very popular for the superb quality of their style and execution. The prolific Nuremberg printer Anton Koberger produced many works that are highly esteemed today, including the sumptuous Nuremberg Chronicle of 1493, the world’s first fully illustrated printed book. Works by William Caxton, the first to print books in English, are not only superbly executed but are also so rare as to be virtually non-existent in today’s collector market.

Today these leaves are extremely popular for decorating. Housed in suitable mats and frames they remain lovely works of art and the most affordable artifacts from the Renaissance era. The mats in which they may be housed for display should always be made of archival quality materials, to ensure that their contents will remain undamaged.

Preservation

Briefly, the enemies of all old documents are heat, humidity, and sunlight. To maintain their fine condition, they should be kept in a stable storage environment free of excess fluctuation in temperature and humidity. There should limited contact with air and strong light. To accomplish these goals, select a dry, cool place in your home to store your collection. Any room suitable for habitation will generally be satisfactory for the preservation of this material.. Never leave it in the basement or attic, where change of temperature and humidity occur regularly and can cause deterioration.
If you frame your collection, include an ultraviolet filtering screen between them and bright light. Secondly, select only archival quality acid free containers for permanent storage. These can be fairly costly if purchased already made up, but with a little ingenuity, some Mylar, and double-sided adhesive tape, you can make your own custom holders at a considerable savings. Documents maybe treated with acid-neutralizing chemical agents, though it is suggested that amateurs do not attempt this process as the solvents can be harmful and the results erratic.

The World Wide Web is a gold mine of helpful information of all kinds for the collector, archivist, and historical hobbyist. Here are a few suggested links for further information on the care and preservation of collectibles of all kinds.

Source:.Psymon

Historicpages

Book of Kells

The Book of Kells is a stunningly beautiful manuscript containing the Four Gospels. It is Ireland’s most precious medieval artifact, and is generally considered the finest surviving illuminated manuscript to have been produced in medieval Europe. Origins and History: The Book of Kells was probably produced in a monastery on the Isle of Iona, Scotland, to honor Saint Columba in the early 8th century. After a Viking raid the book was moved to Kells, Ireland, sometime in the 9th century. It was stolen in the 11th century, at which time its cover was torn off and it was thrown into a ditch. The cover, which most likely included gold and gems, has never been found, and the book suffered some water damage; but otherwise it is extraordinarily well-preserved. In 1541, at the height of the English Reformation, the book was taken by the Roman Catholic Church for safekeeping. It was returned to Ireland in the 17th century, and Archbishop James Ussher gave it to Trinity College, Dublin, where it resides today. Construction: The Book of Kells was written on vellum (calfskin), which was time-consuming to prepare properly but made for an excellent, smooth writing surface. 680 individual pages (340 folios) have survived, and of them only two lack any form of artistic ornamentation. In addition to incidental character illuminations, there are entire pages that are primarily decoration, including portrait pages, “carpet” pages and partially decorated pages with only a line or so of text. As many as ten different colors were used in the illuminations, some of them rare and expensive dyes that had to be imported from the continent. The workmanship is so fine that some of the details can only be clearly seen with a magnifying glass. Modern Reproduction: In the 1980s a facsimile of the Book of Kells was begun in a project between the Fine Art Facsimile Publisher of Switzerland and Trinity College, Dublin. Faksimile-Verlag Luzern produced more than 1400 copies of the first color reproduction of the manuscript in its entirety. This facsimile, which is so accurate that it reproduces tiny holes in the vellum, allows people to see the extraordinary work which has been so carefully protected at Trinity College.

Source: About.com

Source:Newadvent

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