Art 110 Study Guide
The arch has many virtues. In addition to being an attractive form, it enables the architect to open up fairly large spaces in a wall without risking the building's structural soundness. These spaces admit light, reduce the weight of the walls, and decrease the amount of material needed. As utilized by the Romans, the arch is a perfect semicircle, although it may seem elongated if it rests on columns. It is constructed from wedge- shaped pieces of stone that meet at an angle always perpendicular to the curve of the arch.
Because of tensions and compressions inherent in the form, the arch is stable only when it is complete, when the topmost stone, they keynote, has been set in place. For that reason, an arch under construction must be supported from below, usually by a wooden framework. In addition, an arch exerts an outward thrust at its base that must be contained.
About 1833, in Chicago, the technique of balloon- frame construction was introduced. Balloon-frame construction is a true skeleton-and-skin method. It developed from two innovations: improved methods for milling lumber and mass-produced nails. In this system, the builder first erects a framework or skeleton by nailing together sturdy but lightweight boards(the familiar 2-by-4 "stud"), then adds a roof and sheathes the walls in clapboard, shingles, stucco, or whatever the homeowner wishes.
Glass for windows can be used lavishly, as long as it does not interrupt the underlying wood structure, since the sheathing plays little part in holding the building together.
After stacking and piling, post-and-lintel construction is the most elementary structural method, based on two uprights (the posts) supporting a horizontal crosspiece (the lintel, or beam). This configuration can be continued indefinitely, so that there may be one very long horizontal supported at critical points along the way by vertical posts to carry its weight to the ground. The most common materials for post-and-lintel construction are stone and wood.
Since neither has great tensile strength, these materials will yield and cave in when forced to span long distances, so the architect must provide supporting posts at close intervals.
The principal message of Egyptian art is continuity-a seamless span of time reaching back into history and forward into the future. The Greek philosopher Plato wrote that Egyptian art did not change for ten thousand years; although that is an exaggeration, there were many features that remained stable over long periods of time. The Sphinx, the symbol of this most important characteristic of Egyptian art, is the essence of stability, order, and endurance. Built about 2530 B.C.E. and towering to a height of 66 feet, it faces into the rising sun, seeming to cast its immobile gaze down the centuries for all eternity.
The Sphinx has the body of a reclining lion and the head of a man, thought to be the pharaoh Khafre, whose pyramid tomb is nearby. Egyptian kings ruled absolutely and enjoyed a semi divine status, taking their authority from the sun god, Ra, from whom they were assumed to be descended. Both power and continuity are embodied in this splendid moment.
In ancient Greece, the design of post-and-lintel buildings, especially temples, became standardized in certain features. Greek architects developed and codified three major architectural styles, roughly in sequence. We know them as the Greek orders. The most distinctive feature of each was the design of the column. By the 7th century B.C.E., the Doric style had been introduced. A Doric column has no base, nothing separating it from the from the floor below; its capital, the topmost part between the shaft of the column and the roof or lintel, is a plain stone slab above a rounded stone.
The ionic style was developed in the 6th century B.C.E. and gradually replaced the Doric. An Ionic column has stepped base and a carved capital in the form of two graceful spirals known as volutes. The Corinthian style, which appeared in the 4th century B.C.E., is yet more elaborate, having a more detailed base and a capital carved as stylized bouquet of acanthus leaves.
When we use the word "Classical" in connection with Western civilization, we are referring to the two cultures discussed next in this chapter-ancient Greece and ancient Rome. The term itself indicates an aesthetic bias, for anything "classic" is supposed to embody the highest possible standard of quality, to be the very best of its kind. If true, this would mean that Western art reached a pinnacle in the few hundred years surrounding the start of our common era and has not been equaled in the millennium and a half since then.
This controversial idea that many would dispute vehemently. Few can deny, however, that ancient Greeks and Romans intended to achieve the highest standards. Art and architecture were matters of public policy, and it was accepted that there could be an objective, shared standard for the best, the purest, the most beautiful.
A dome is an architectural structure generally in the shape of a hemisphere, or half globe. One customary definition of the dome is an arch rotated 360 degrees on its axis, and this is really more accurate, because, for example, the dome based on a pointed arch will be pointed at the top, not perfectly hemispherical. The stresses in a dome are much like those of an arch, except that they are spread in a circle around the dome's perimeter.
Unless the dome is buttressed-supported from the outside-from all sides, there is a tendency for it to "explode," for the stones to pop outward in all directions, causing the dome to collapse.