Art/ Unit 5

Japanese Folding Screens

were used as movable walls in Japanese homes, palaces, and temples. Scenes of the changing seasons symbolize the transience of life, a Buddhist teaching The idea of depicting nature's beauty comes from Shinto beliefs. Conventions of Japanese screen painting include bold brushwork and ambiguous space Cranes, pine trees, and bamboo symbolize long life in the Buddhist religion

Navajo

wove blankets from sheep's wool on upright looms colored artworks with natural dyes from plants and insects lived in the deserts of the southwestern United States

Inca

wove fabrics with certain colors and patterns that identified that group They built structures from stone and made stone carvings. Machu Picchu in the Andes mountains was a prominent city They made ponchos of alpaca wool and offered them to their gods.

Mihrabs

A mihrab is a niche that marks the direction of Mecca and is the most important part of the mosque. The mihrab of the Great Mosque has a symmetrical design, and calligraphic script depicting passages from the Qur'an borders the pointed arch. Decorative tile work incorporates complex arabesques, interlacing lines, and floral and geometric patterns.

Himeji Castle

Architects created functionality in watchtowers and moats. They made the structure beautiful by building graceful, upturned roofs and covering the walls with white plaster. The plaster covering the walls strengthens the building and makes it more resistant to fire.

Art of India

Artists of India created sculptures to honor gods such as Brahma, Vishnu, and Shiva . Rather than depicting the human form realistically, sculptors combined the godly with the human and created idealized forms. They used the same conventions for sculpting both gods and humans. Symbolic gestures represent important facets of the Hindu religion.

Benin brass plaque of oba

Benin sculptors used techniques on brass plaques to emphasize the importance of the oba: They made him much larger than other figures, who had a lower rank in society, and they placed him in the center of the composition.

Imperial Seals

Both seals combine writing and images and are used to mark official documents and other objects: Suleyman's tughra is on coins and architecture, and the presidential seal marks aircraft, china, and the Kennedy half dollar. The tughra has complex patterns made of arabesques, interlacing lines, and floral motifs, but the presidential seal has a simpler design that includes the national symbol of the bald eagle.

Bronze vessel Shang dynasty

Bronze vessels were both functional and ritual. They had carved reliefs of animals like birds and dragons, and geometric patterns.

Chinese paintings

Chinese paintings often depict figures in expansive nature scenes to show that humans are one small part of the natural world. Paintings were often done on silk and handmade paper in the form of horizontal scrolls that the viewer unrolled slowly. Reading a painting helped the viewer appreciate it and connect with the past .

Islamic Carpets

Islamic carpets are both decorative and functional. Carpet motifs may be geometric, calligraphic, or vegetal (plant designs), and have symmetrical balance. Persian carpets are the most elaborate type and may incorporate images inspired by the Qur'an's descriptions of paradise, such as gardens, fountains, and animals.

Japanese Artists

Many Japanese artists were inspired by the landscapes of Buddhist painters from China. They adopted the expressive brushwork of Chinese paintings, but they preferred color over the black ink of Chinese paintings.

Art of Plains Indians

Plains Indians were nomads, so their art often focused on portable objects like clothing, pouches, and moccasins. Women decorated the items with shapes that stood for things in nature, and they used natural materials like porcupine quills, feathers, fringe, elk teeth, beads, and natural dyes.

Chinese porcelain

Porcelain is made from pure white clay and feldspar, and is exceptionally strong Some of the best porcelain was made during the Ming and Qing dynasties Dragon images on porcelain ware symbolized imperial power.

Porcelain jar Ming dynasty

Porcelain items were functional. They had designs such as dragons and monsters painted with different colors of glaze.

Pueblo Pottery

Pueblo Indians are known for their pottery, and pottery from each Pueblo has its own style, symbolism, and colors. Acoma pots, for example, have a white background and black or orange designs of birds and flowers or geometric patterns. The Zuni Indians painted the background white and decorated the pot with symbols.

Art of China

Shang dynasty nobles used bronze vessels in rituals and placed them in tombs as offerings to their ancestors. Artists used conventional zoomorphic designs, creating highly stylized animals. One animal often morphs into another. Sometimes animal designs are obvious, other times they are highly abstract .

Chinese Sculptures

Some conventions that Chinese sculptors used to convey spirituality are a traditional meditation pose, idealized and simplified features, a calm facial expression, exaggerated body proportions, and concentric circles and angular lines to indicate clothing

Great Stupa at Sanchi

The Great Stupa at Sanchi is a Buddhist shrine and place of worship that was built over a period of centuries. It consists of an earthen dome surrounded by a fence and four gates, or toranas. Carvings reflect Buddhist beliefs.

kuba ngady amawaash mask

The Kuba use masks to tell their creation story. The ngady amwaash mask represents the wife of the first nyim . Bold, geometric patterns fill the face. Diagonal lines running from the eyes represent tears , and cowrie shells symbolize royal wealth and power.

Navajo Weaving

The Navajo weave blankets and other items from sheep's wool. Early Navajo designs were simple stripes colored with natural brown dyes; later versions have more complex designs and bolder colors. Geometric patterns such as stripes, diamonds, triangles, and zigzags are common designs.

Taj Mahal

The Taj Mahal is an Islamic mausoleum and place of worship. It is built of white marble and has onion-shaped domes, minarets, and pointed arches. The Taj Mahal incorporates many architectural features that symbolize Muslim beliefs.

Bamana chi wara mask

The male chi wara mask represents the sun, the female mask represents earth, and the raffla clothing represents rain. These are the three forces of nature essential to successful farming.

Mughal school

The meticulously rendered trees, branches, rocks, and flowing water show that the artist carefully observed nature and attempted to depict it accurately. You can even distinguish specific types of trees by their unique trunk patterns and leaf shapes. Rather than following conventions of previous manuscript artists who depicted flat, linear figures, this artist gave the figures volume and placed them in natural-looking poses. The painting has a sense of energy, as seen in the rolling water and Hamza's active pose.

Shen Zhou painting

The mountains are flat areas of ink thinned with water to make it lighter. The solid lines of the figures are also made with thinned ink, and are curved to make rounded forms. A variety of brushstrokes create the plant forms: some are long and thin; others are small dots. The brushwork is expressive and uses more concentrated ink to build up the layers.

Aztec

Their stone sun calendar tells the history of the four creations of the world They built structures from stone and made stone carvings. Temples built on top of stepped pyramids were dedicated to their gods and rulers Spanish explorer Hemán Cortés seized their gold artworks and other treasures.

Maya

They built structures from stone and made stone carvings. Temples built on top of stepped pyramids were dedicated to their gods and rulers Conventions of portrait sculptures included an elongated curved nose and forehead

Tlingit Totem Poles

Tlingit totem poles are carved from a single cedar tree. Symbols, typically animal or mythical figures, represent a clan's social status and history. Animal carvings are abstracted shapes that fit the contours of the pole. Artists use color for different purposes: black indicates the most important things; red the next important, and green or blue-green for less important areas.

Mosque

a structure that is the Muslim place of worship

Yoruba portrait sculpture of oni

When a Yoruba oni died, artists created a sculpture of him. They placed it on a throne and used it in ritual ceremonies until they chose the next oni. Portrait sculptures of the oni, made with the lost-wax casting technique, are very lifelike , yet the facial features are often idealized .

minaret

a tower of a mosque where a crier calls Muslims to pray

Japanese woodblock prints

Woodblock prints from the late Edo period often depicted idyllic landscapes, as well as images from Japanese history and theater. Those pleasant subjects represented the peaceful society of the period. . Ukiyo is a term that means "floating world" and refers to the Buddhist idea that the pleasures of life are fleeting or transient. Japanese followers of Buddha believed in cherishing the joys of life while they lasted.

tughra

a calligraphic signature or seal of an Ottoman sultan

mihrab

a decorated niche in a mosque that marks the direction of Mecca

arabesque

a decorative floral motif

Plains Indians

artistry focused on portable items like clothing, shields, and tepees colored artworks with natural dyes from plants and insects nomads who moved between the eastern woodlands and Rocky Mountains

Pueblo

built adobe homes and created pottery with clay dug from the earth colored artworks with natural dyes from plants and insects known for their tradition of beautiful and distinctive pottery lived in the deserts of the southwestern United States

Tlingit

inhabited the rugged forests of western Canada and Alaska colored artworks with natural dyes from plants and insects master woodcarvers who created totem poles that had symbolic figures