Week 4: Egyptian Art

Egyptian art has a very distinctive style, especially when it comes to depicting and portraying people. They had an interesting standard they used when depicting people, both men and women. When Egyptians interpreted people, they had many different outlets to describe who those people were. They also had a specific way to measure and draw out their art. All these different aspects combined make the Egyptians very creative in their art.

They used size, realistic imaging, position, and symbols to show who a person was. First off, the Egyptians used size in their art. The bigger the person was in an image, picture or carving, the more important they were. For example, in the Tomb of Ti, the fifth Dynasty government official, therefore very high in rank was made much bigger than his men on the “Watching a Hippopotamus Hunt” painting (pg. 61 in the art history book). This is showing that this government official was more important than his men. They also used realistic imaging; a pattern is seen in Egyptian art. People of high importance are done less realistically then the people of lower importance in a government based scale at their time. An example of this pattern is seen with a statue of a ruler and a statue of a common Butcher. The Khafre (pg. 59 in the art history book) is a statue of crowned king, therefore very important. His is tall, at a sitting range his is 5’6 1/8’’ and his build is lifelike, yet perfected. He does not seem to have blemishes, making him look very much god-like. Because the royalty and people with high political power were all big, and god-like, it gives the impression that they were blessed by the gods and the gods were on their side. One the other hand, the common person was typically made much smaller. The sculpture “Butcher” (pg. 60 in the art history book) is a common person. He is 14 5/8’’ and he is made in a very realistic form, not at all “god-like”. His muscles are not defined to the point of unnatural, and he has blemishes him the skin.

The canon of proportions that they Egyptians used, I personally think is completely fine, and can be considered creative, as well as mathematical, and organized. Although it may make some of their artwork seem formal, and too organized, I feel it is really just a style the Egyptians had and thought was pleasing to the eye. I also think creativity was valued in ancient Egypt because they had created their own artistic identity. But I am thinking maybe going outside of that realm was not looked brightly upon in those times because there is such a predictable style to ancient Egyptian art and not much art or history telling that doesn’t fit into the typical ancient Egypt art.

In order for ancient art to be valued today, I don’t think it necessarily has to be a “manifestation of creativity” mostly because we seem to be interested not only in the artistic elements of work, such as composition, color, and materials. But also we are intrigued by the meaning and the history of the art. People all throughout history have been creative in their own stylistic ways of art and symbolism to show what happened in those times, and what was important to the people. I do not think art in the past really has to be a huge display of creativity today to be valued. The expectations of creativity are constantly changing, it would be unfair to hold the people of ancient times to our exceptions of creativity today, even though I think most of the art work is just as creative.