2,000 B.C.
The Fertile
Crescent
Tower of Babel
The Hanging Gardens of Babylon
The land between the rivers/ Euphrates and Tigris/
now Iraq
The birth place of
formal religion, writing,
math, law ,and to a
large extent,
architecture.
The original inhabitants of this area
Mastered irrigation and flood control
They created what is known as The
Fertile Crescent located in what is now
Iraq
The wheel
Written language/ cuneiform
First legal codes
Ur the home of Abraham
The First Urban Planners
Ziggurats( stair to heaven)/ to build on a raised
area. The gods were believed to live in a temple on the
top. Only the chief priests were allow in the temple to
care for the god’s needs. Ziggurats were built of sun
baked bricks and had a pyramidal shape
The Perennial Pyramid
Art Fundamentals Slide
• Line/ the path of a point moving through space.
There are 5 kinds of lines:Vertical, Horizontal,
Diagonal, Zigzag, Curved
• There are 5 ways lines can vary: Length, width,
texture, direction, degree of curve.
• Shape/ area enclosed by one of the elements.
Shapes have two dimensions: height and width
• There are different types of shapes/ organichaving irregular sides (free form, natural)
geometric/ having regular sides
Questions
1. Mesopotamia: known as the____________.
2. Mesopotamia was located in modern
day_____________.
3. Describe the types of pyramids we examined.
4. Define Bas Relief Sculpture.
5. What period of Art history did we talk about
today
Pictorial identification
Choose the best term to id the
following images/ line, organic
shape, or geometric shape
Word bank
•
•
•
•
Venus of Willendorf
Menhir
Ziggurat
Cave painting at
Lascaux France
• Dolman
• Bas Relief
• Directions:
• Copy word bank
Answer the following
1. Define Bas Relief
Sculpture.
2. What 2 periods of
Art history have we
covered?
3. Paleolithic peoples
were known as:
4. Neolithic peoples
were known as:
5. List 2 types of subject
matter.
6. What 6 pieces of
information can you
get from the credit line
7. Define shape
8. There are two types
of shape list them.
Choose the best term to id the
following images/ line, organic
shape, or geometric shape
Give examples of the following
words describing textures.
•Glossy
•Matte
•Rough
•Smooth
Review 4/15
• texture: refers to how something feels or looks
like it might feel; 2 types: simulated, real
• Regular/ 1111; Alternating/121212; Progressive/changing motif
• Random/cracks in a sidewalk; Flowing/hair; Radial/radiating out from a
center point
• Matte, glossy, rough, smooth
• Visual Rhythm: repetition of any of the elements
to create a pattern Random/cracks in a sidewalk;
Flowing/hair; Radial/radiating out from a center point
• Shapes are 2 dimensional and created when an
area is enclosed in some way.
• Test tomorrow over Prehistoric and
Ancient notes ( leave out Egypt).
Word bank
• Venus of
Willendorf
• Menhir
• Ziggurat
• Cave painting at
Lascaux France
• Dolman
• Stele of
Hammurabi
•
•
•
•
•
•
Flowing
Regular
Alternating
Random
Progressive
Radial
•Every organized religion has traces
to Babylon
•Nimrod built a city and established a
common religion /descendent of Ham
•Tower of Babel
•Hammurapi gathered laws into a
unified code
 king of Babylon
Code of Hammurapi set up a
social order based on the rights
of the individual
Eye for an eye and tooth for a
tooth
The strong shall not injure the
weak
The stone slab on which the code
was carved was discovered in Susa,
Iran in l901. A relief carved above
the code shows Hammurapi before
Shamash, the sun god, being
commanded to establish just laws.
He abolished the worship of other
gods.
Writing
Invention of zero ( meant completeness)
Blood letting and perhaps human sacrifice
Hierarchical city-state unions
Mesoamerican calendar
Mesoamerican ball game played with rubber balls. The object was to get the ball in a stone
basket using knees, elbows, hips, or heads. It was so difficult to achieve the goal that the game
was over when a goal was made.
•System of writing
•Genius for mathematics/astronomy
•Refined form of architecture
.
The lost Inca city
Of Machu Picchu, high
in the mountains of
Peru
Of all the urbanized people of the Americas, the Incas were the most brilliant engineers. The HuariTiahuanaco performed amazing feats of fitting gigantic stones together, and the Nazca designed
mind-numbingly huge earth-drawings that still exist today. But the Inca built massive forts with
stone slabs so perfectly cut that they didn't require mortar—and they're still standing today in
near-perfect condition. They built roads through the mountains from Ecuador to Chile with tunnels
and bridges. They also built aqueducts to their cities as the Romans had. And of all ancient
peoples, they were the most advanced in medicine and surgery.
Native American Art
• Much native American art was inspired by
visions. The shaman (priest-healer) would
reproduce objects the gods communicated
to him during a trance. Among the results of
drawing on such subconscious impulses
were extremely distorted Eskimo masks,
among the most original art ever seen.
Shaman’s mask with the sun, moon
and dog spirits.
Mound builders/ the first environmentalists?
• Native Americans believed in unity
with nature.
• Tribes constructed mounds, some 100
feet high, from Florida to Wisconsin.
Some imitated the shape of a tribe’s
totem animal, such as an enormous ,
bird with spreading wings. Others
were simply shaped like domes, but in
each case, the builders hauled millions
of tons of earth in baskets then tapped
it down. The volume of the largest one
near St. Louis is greater than that of
the great Pyramid. In some cases,
inner burial chambers, contained
treasures, like the body of an
aristocrat clothed entirely in pearls.
•Mound builders partly inspired
Earthworks, movement that emerged in the late
1960’s, to make the land itself a work of art.
Robert Smithson’s “Spiral Jetty” (now
underwater in Great Sale Lake, Utah) is one of
the better known examples of the movement.
•Southwest tribe
•Geometric design rugs
colored with herbal and
mineral dyes/ carmine red
•Shamans created sand
paintings for healing, fertility,
hunting
Sand painters still use natural pigments, like powdered
rock,corn pollen, and charcoal, to produce temporary works
on a flat bed of sand.
•Carved and painted Kachina dolls out
of cottonwood roots to represent gods
and teach religion.
•Decorated underground kivas in
Arizona with elaborate mural paintings
of agricultural deities.
•Northwest tribe
•Totem poles
•Masks
•Decorated houses
•canoes