Egyptian Art
Egyptian are seems to be one step above the hieroglyphic. Each figure is a frozen profile
of standardized movements. By a convention similar to punctuation, royalty was chiseled
in larger sizes than commoners, having no regard for the rules of perspective and visual
realism. “Egyptian civilization is often regarded as the most rigidly conservative ever
known.”1 It had a caste system where each son had to take up the same occupation as his
father. There was little sophistication in the area of creature comforts. Works of art were
largely to decorate the inside of tombs and preserve corpses.
The ancient Egyptian civilization existed with little change from 3000 until 500 B.C.
and the book of its art tells us much. Egypt was basically a slave state and society was
layered much like a pyramid with the Pharaoh or god-king on top. Just as with the
pyramid, each level rests on the backs of the lower levels. As you drop down the levels,
more heavily laden and closer to the dust you go.
Truth and law came out of the pharaoh’s mouth. There was little need for thought on
the part of lesser mortals. Career and occupation was handed down from father to son as
was place in society. Art quickly reflected the immobility within society that would bind
a great grandson to the societal rung of his great grandfather. It seemed to enter a
stylistic prison and was preserved there just as mummified corpse were preserved.
Man cannot live on bread alone. He needs so motivating principle, or noble cause to
direct his life through the doldrums of present day existence. Appeals to the nobler self
took the form of providing for the Pharaoh’s life in the spirit word after his death. The
colossal monuments and enormous statues of the pharaohs would cause on-lookers to feel
small and insignificant. They could live on vicariously in the great burial chambers of
the kings.
Minimalistic art works truncates thought to what is essential or the main point, just as
in politics, complex questions are truncated into slogans. The main focal point of
Egyptian society seems to have been to raise a stairway to heaven so that the pharaoh
might ascend there, at least metaphorically. Alongside this impossible quest was the
attempt to maintain the royal egos, lifestyle and amenities in death as well as in life, to
preserve corpse, in short to maintain the national pyramid scheme beyond the grave.
There are mummies in modern day that might give us an insight into the psychological
backdrop of Egyptian society Lenin, the first communist leader of the former Soviet
Union lay in an air sealed coffin in a mummified state, similar to Egyptian mummies.
His brain had been extracted and the members of the lower classes gathered to
ceremonially mourn the loss of the semi-deified leader. In the more modern example,
the mummy was meant to preserve the spirit of the dead leader in the sense of motivating
and inspiriting those that came after him in the task of building a workers’ paradise. It
also illustrates how the communists, how after declaring God did not exist, deified there
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H.W. Janson, A Basic History of Art, Page 19
rulers, much like the Egyptians. However, in the case of the Egyptian mummies the
thought was not so much to keep the departed influence in the here and now but to equip
him for a serene existence in the afterlife.
In Egyptian painting, royal persons were always drawn much bigger than lesser
mortals. Faces were always drawn in profile as if the figures existed in another world.
The bodies were always twisted with shoulders facing the front and legs and feet
sideways. Egyptians only used yellow, green and blue. With a simplified color scheme,
stylistic distortions and repetitive shapes, Egyptian art is minimalistic and almost like
hieroglyphics. The static and controlled art style that always portrays aristocrats shows
an unchanging hierarchical culture.
Fowling Scene from Nebamun's Tomb 1400 BC. New Kingdom, Painted plaster wall 31cm British Museum, London
www.mystudios.com/art/ancient/egypt
The tremendous man-power expended on the construction of the pyramids may have
been a ways of subjecting the populace. The Mosaic account of the slavery of the Hebrew
people in Egypt does seem to suggest that much. And history seems to repeat itself.
Time and time again politicians have re-directed the scrutinizing gaze of masses away
from themselves towards mud bricks as in the case of Egyptians, the great leap forward
and five year plans in the case of Chairman Mao in Communist China.
There are three main epochs in Egyptian Art
The Old Kingdom, from 3000 to 2185 B.C., was the golden age of Egyptian art. All the
enormous pyramids and the great Sphinx were completed during this epoch. The
pharaohs were considered divine and their power was emphasized in enormous, stoic
statues and national endeavors in building mausoleums.
Examples of artistic monuments from this era
include the Great Sphinx completed around
2600 B.C. It is carved from rock, the body of
a reclining lion and head of a Pharaoh. This
massive undertaking, that must of eaten up
enormous amounts of man-hours stands 65 ft
high or the height of 10 tall men. The
features of the Great Sphinx show a kingly
bearing that does not display any concern for
the affairs of lesser men. The observer is
made to feel his smallness in relation to the
monument
The pyramid building evolved from smaller, mud brick beginnings like the Step Pyramid
of King Zoser completed in 2750 B.C., to the largest man made structure ever made, the
Pyramid of Khufu, in Giza, completed in 2650 B.C.
.
Sculpture from the Old Kingdom, like
both the Great Sphinx and the pyramids,
seemed to have the double purposes
put a manifesting the awesome godlike power of the pharaohs and
preserving them bodies in the afterlife.
Sculptures of Pharaohs were
constructed out of hard diorite stone to
provide a place for the Ka or spirit to
live, were the mummy be destroyed.
These statues shown here, dating
around 2600 B.C. were meant to
preserve spirit of the Pharaoh Kafre
(sometimes called Kheops or Khufu)
and his wife. Two thousand years
after Kafre, the Greek historian
Herodotus described the pharaoh as a
heartless and oppressive tyrant who let
his own daughter work in a brothel in order to fund the construction of her pyramid.
Herodotus recounts “Kheops brought the country into all kinds of misery. He closed the
temples, forbade his subjects to offer sacrifices, and compelled them without exception to
labor upon his works. The Egyptians can hardly bring themselves to mention Kheops so
great is their hatred."
The Middle Kingdom lasted from 2133 to 1786 B.C.
and was a time of political unrest and misfortune. The
myth of divine kingship was broken. Statues had more
realism and portrayed more of the humanity of the rulers
Here is the Head of Sesostris III who ruled 1887-49BC.
Here the ruler has chosen to have his care-worn, aging
humanity represented rather and idealized image of his
eternal kingship.
The New Kingdom began around 1500 B.C. and lasted till the Greek conquest in 332
B.C. The New Kingdom exhibits a great diversity of styles from a delicate refinement
harking back to the Middle Kingdom to rigid conservatism reflecting the mind-set of
Old Kingdom. The power of the Pharaohs decreased and a caste of priests assumed more
dominance. Egyptian art remains primarily a funeral art but in now decorates the tombs
of priests, bureaucrats and lower functionaries, not just the tombs of the Kings. The
constructions of pyramids gives way to massive temples with the hidden, funeral
chambers of the pharaohs near-by. Examples include the Temple of Ramses the II in the
Valley of the Kings (c 1300B.C. and
the temple of Amon-Re, in Karnak built
around 1280B.C. As with the pyramids,
the shear massiveness of the stone statues
and columns serve to convince the viewer
of his smallness in comparison to those
immortalized by these massive structures.
Our humanity further is further alienated
the sculpted figures by the ceaseless
repetition of the same corpse like forms
and lifeless expressions. It seems that the
broken record technique is being used to
drum home the inherently inhuman
message that God’s image does not reside
in every human being. Rather, for the
ancient Egyptians, God is a distant alien
residing either in the ghosts of dead
monarchs and their habitations or in the
faceless bureaucrat par excellence,
currently reigning monarch sitting on top
of a grand pyramid scheme.
Below are shown the bust of Queen Nefertiti (c 1360 B.C.) and the golden mummy Mask
of Tutankhamun (1334 B.C.) These display a greater appreciation of the shared
humanity of all, rather than the gloried deification of the politically powerful few.
.
Assignment:
Draw a sketchbook page or poster to capture the feel of Egyptian Art or to spoof it by
combining modern and ancient elements.