World Art Exam #4

Akua'ba

"Akua's child." A Ghanaian image of a young girl.

Karesansui

A Japanese dry landscape (rock) garden.

Pueblo

A communal multistoried dwelling made of stone or adobe brick by the Native Americans of the Southwest. Uppercase Pueblo refers to various groups that occupied such dwellings.

Stupa

A large, mound-shaped Buddhist shrine.

Nkisi n'kondi

A power figure carved by the Kongo people of the Democratic Republic of Congo. Such images embodied spirits believed to heal and give life or to be capable of inflicting harm or death

Lacquer

A varnish-like substance made from the sap of the Asiatic sumac tree, used to decorate wood and other organic materials.

Katsina

An art form of Native Americans of the Southwest, the kat-sina doll represents benevolent supernatural spirits (katsinas) living in mountains and water sources.

Porcelain

Extremely fine, hard, white ceramic. Unlike stoneware, porcelain is made from a fine white clay called kaolin mixed with ground petuntse, a type of feldspar. true porcelain is translucent and rings when struck.

2. Explain the design and intended function of the men's houses of Oceania. Cite examples as part of your answer.

For the Iatmul the men's ceremonial house is the social center of every village. It excludes women and boys and through that the men control the knowledge by confining it to that structure. It also symbolizes the protective mantle of the ancestors and represents an enormous female ancestor. The façade is her face and the rest her body. Entering and exiting symbolizes the reenactment of death and rebirth. The gable ends of men's houses are usually covered and sometimes include a giant female gable mask. The Iatmul placed carved images of clan ancestors on the central ridge-support posts and on the roof-support posts on both sides of the house. They topped each roof-support post with large faces representing mythical spirits of the clans. At the top of the two raised spires at each end, birds symbolizing the war spirit of the village men sit above carvings of headhunting victims. Many meeting houses have three parts—a front, middle, and end—representing the three major clans who built it. The Abelam's ceremonial house is called the tamberan. It has the triangle shaped body and patterns on façade. The door is a small opening in the corner. The Belau call theirs bai. They would put a lot of effort into creating, maintaining, and elaborately painting them. The bai are made entirely out of worked, fitted, joined, and pegged wood pieces contrary to the others made out of posts, trees, saplings, and grasses. Steeped overhanging roofs with geometric patterns on the boards. Painted low relief sculptures. Façade symbolizes many things like the rising sun and the deity Blellek (creeper). Although the bai is only for men, a women figure was positioned on the façade with legs wide open at the base of a painted tree.

3. Compare and contrast Sesshu Toyo's haboku style painting with Kano Motonobu's Kano style.

Haboku style: Also known as splashed-ink. The painter of a haboku picture pauses to visualize the image, loads the brush with ink, and then applies primarily broad, rapid strokes, sometimes even dripping the ink onto the paper. The haboku landscape. Kano style: Motonobu's work displays exacting precision in applying ink in bold out-lines by holding the brush perpendicular to the paper. Zen Patriarch Xiangyen Zhixian Sweeping with a Broom.

Haboku

In Japanese art, a loose and rapidly executed painting style in which the ink seems to have been applied by flinging or splashing it onto the paper.

Underglaze

In porcelain decoration, the technique of applying mineral colors to the surface before the main firing, followed by an application of clear glaze.

Moai

Large, blocky figural stone sculptures found on Rapa Nui (Easter Island) in Polynesia.

Ma-hevehe

Mythical Oceanic water spirits. The Elema people of New Guinea believed that these spirits visited their villages.

1. Explain some of the many rituals and rites and materials employed in sub-Saharan African Masquerades. Be sure to cite examples as part of your answer.

Senufo men danced in many masks, mostly in the context of Poro, the main association for socialization and initiation. Maskers also perform at funerals and other public spectacles. Large Senufo masks are composite creatures, combining characteristics of antelope, crocodile, warthog, hyena, and human: sweeping horns, a head, and an open-jawed snout with sharp teeth. These masks incarnate both ancestors and bush powers that combat witchcraft and sorcery, malevolent spirits, and the wandering dead. They are protectors who fight evil with their aggressively powerful forms and their medicines. Some Senufo men also dance female masks. The most recur-rent type has a small face with fine features, several extensions, and varied motifs rising from the forehead. The men who dance these feminine characters also wear knitted body suits or trade-cloth costumes to indicate their beauty and their ties with the order and civilization of the village. They may be called "pretty young girl," "beautiful lady," or "wife" of one of the heavy, terrorizing masculine masks appearing before or after them. Because reasons. Dogon masquerades dramatize creation legends. These stories say that women were the first ancestors to imitate spirit maskers and thus the first human masqueraders. Men later took over the masks. A mask called Satimbe seems to represent all women and commemorates this legend. Satimbe masks consist of a roughly rectangular covering for the head with narrow rectangular openings for the eyes and a crowning element, much larger than the mask proper, depicting a schematic woman with large protruding breasts and sticklike bent arms. In ceremonies called Dama, held every several years to honor the lives of people who have died since the last Dama, Satimbe is among the dozens of different masked spirit characters escorting dead souls away from the village. Kuba masquerades were held at the court of Kuba kings. Three masks, known as Mwashamboy, Bwoom, and Ngady Amwaash, represent legendary royal ancestors. These three characters reenact creation stories during royal initiation ceremonies. The masks and their costumes, with elaborate beads, feathers, animal pelts, cowrie shells, cut-pile cloth, and ornamental trap-pings, make for a sumptuous display at Kuba festivals. The Bamana used stylized/abstact antelope headdresses called Ci Wara for rituals that prepared boys for their future roles as husbands and farmers. They would also have an annual masquerade that two boys would participate in. One dressed as the Ci Wara and the other his female consort. They would perform a dance that involved staffs and acting like they were hoeing the fields. The masks that the Baga dancers wear, one of which was in the collection of Pablo Picasso, are called d'mba and take the form of the head and torso of a woman. Carved from a single piece of wood, the masks have four "legs" so that Baga men can rest them on their shoulders. The dancer thus appears about 8 feet tall and towers over all others in the community. They danced to honor the Mother of Fertility to protect pregnant women and promote abundant harvests. They are worn exclusively by men and are danced at weddings, funerals, and harvest festivals. Unlike the other groups, the Mende's masks and dances were done by both women and men. Women control and dance Sande society masks while men perform the Poro society masks. The black surface of Mende Sowie masks evokes female spirits newly emergent from their underwater homes. The mask and its parts refer to ideals of female beauty, morality, and behavior. A high, broad fore-head signifies wisdom and success. The neck ridges are signs of beauty, good health, and prosperity and also reference the ripples in the water from which the water spirits emerge. Intricately woven or plaited hair is the essence of harmony and order found in ideal households.

4. Compare and contrast the Suzhou gardens with Zen gardens

Suzhou gardens: tightly organized and reflects order but does not look it. Everything is precise and made specifically for the area but meant to look natural/not designed. Zen gardens: Typically a floor of sand or rocks. Bigger rocks are carefully placed in various places and the floor is groomed everyday by a worker.

5. Explain the Asmat belief system as it pertained to head hunting.

The Asmat did not believe that death wasn't natural. It could only result from a direct assault like headhunting or sorcery. This would diminish the ancestral power. To restore the spirit power balance, revenge had to take place. Whatever group beheaded the individual then had to be hunted down and someone of that group had to be beheaded. It was a vicious cycle. Bisj poles would be made as a pledge to avenge a relative's death and would be set up when they got enough manpower to carry out the avenging. The poles were very decorative and had figures of the deceased person. Birds often were portrayed on these as well. This is because the Asmat believed the human body was like a tree and the head as the fruit. So any fruit eating birds would symbolize headhunters.

Gopuras

The massive, ornamented entrance gateway towers of southern Indian temple compounds.

Bieri

The wood reliquary guardian figures of the Fang in Gabon and Cameroon.