Visual Culture studies: The renaissance in Europe

The renaissance in Europe

Just the first two paragraphs of my visual culture studies for the renaissance im going to borrow a book from the library to finish it off.

For my focused research I decided to look at the artist Hieronymus Bosch. The renaissance was a period of time where a lot of advances in technology and science were happening. This caused a lot of dispute between scientists and the church. There was also the on-going conflict of the Catholics and the Protestants.

All of the artists at this time created images based on heavenly images depicting scenes from the bible, Bosch turned this idea on its head with his paintings. Bosch’s paintings seemed to have a more Gothic theme depicting themes such as hell, demons and things that might often be linked to nightmares. This had never been done before therefore Bosch was the creator of the surrealism genre. His works of art were extremely extravagant for that period of time.

Visual culture studies: Ancient Egyptian visual communication

I started my research into the aincient egyptians so here is what i have so far.

Research further examples of Ancient Egyptian visual communication- especially relating to spiritual or religious beliefs and how they were expressed.

The ancient Egyptian civilisation began around 3100 bce. The Egyptians were based along the river Nile the reason that this civilisation lasted so long was because of how fertile the land was along the banks of the river. The fertile land enabled the people to grow healthy crops to sustain healthy lives. This is the reason why their civilisation lasted for over 3,000 years[1].

The Egyptians created most of their art for tombs which implies that this art was never intended to be looked at[2]. Therefore it wasn’t a recreational thing to create art; it had a deeper meaning to it. A lot of the art was created for religious and spiritual reasons. An example of this is the book of the dead. This was seen as a magical book full of spells, chants and illustrations that is thought to lead the deceased to a better afterlife. 

The art that was created for tombs, temples and scrolls was often representative of everyday life in ancient Egypt. It was like a form of visual documentation. Although their drawings show what happened in real life their representations of life are far from realistic. People didn’t have a general sense of drawing perspective till later centuries so the Egyptians tried to depict all of the most important parts of a human in one drawing. For example they would draw the body and the head represented in profile (side on) and the limbs and shoulders and eyes shown straight on. Their images of people also came across very stylised and cartoon like.

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[1] ‘Explore / World Cultures Ancient Egypt’ http://www.britishmuseum.org/explore/cultures/africa/ancient_egypt.aspx, (November 03,2013)

[2] Dr. Amy Calvert ,‘Egyptian art’ https://www.khanacademy.org/humanities/art-history/art-history-400-c-e--ancient-cultures-1/ancient-egypt/a/egyptian-art (November 04,2013)