Los Angeles Pierce College CH2 Roots of Western Culture Discussion Essay Need a small discussion/ essay answering the the 2 or 3 questions.. attached are t

Los Angeles Pierce College CH2 Roots of Western Culture Discussion Essay Need a small discussion/ essay answering the the 2 or 3 questions.. attached are the instructions and book needed. thanks in advance for all your help . 1
Chapter 2: Roots of Western Culture
Roots of Western Culture:
Prehistoric Cave Paintings, Ancient Sumer,
Classical Greece & The Gothic Middle Ages
2.1 Grotte Chauvet.
2.2 Sumerian fig.
2.3 Greek Apollo.
2.4 Gothic jamb fig.
A single hand stenciled in red paint, from deep inside a cave (2.1).
A bearded man, wearing a long skirt, from atop a stepped pyramid (2.2).
A young athletic god, from the roof of a marble temple (2.3).
A tall thin woman wearing a crown, from beside the door of a church (2.4).
These four images are from Paleolithic Europe, Ancient Iraq, Classical Greece, and
France in the Gothic Middle Ages. Although there is a 30,000-year span between the first and the
last of these images, they all share one significant attribute: each tells us what the people of the
time valued and how they wanted to be represented. They are also significant because they
constitute some of the steppingstones that lead to the threshold of the Renaissance, the period in
which Western art and culture took a decisive and dramatic step toward modern times.
The stenciled hand comes from deep in prehistory, that is, from times so distant we have
no written records. For that reason, our understanding of its meaning and function must remain
Chapter 2: Roots of Western Culture
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speculative.
Once we get to the sculptures, however, we move into time documented by written
records–into history. Typically, histories—particularly art histories—are written as progressive
narratives with one event leading directly into another. The histories presented in this book,
however, do not comprise a single narrative. The stenciled hand did not lead directly or
seamlessly to the bearded man. To continue the analogy from the paragraph above, there were
lots of steppingstones between the hand and the bearded man—and lots more between the man
and the young athlete. Rather than pretending to cover all those steps, this book selects a few
crucial ones and relates a history of ruptures as well as connections.
The wide-eyed face of the Sumerian sculpture looks to the skies with a kind of bright
fear, revealing the Sumerian attitude toward the gods they believed ruled their cities. Faces like
this one stood on rigid bodies locked in an endless ritual of sacred homage. While ordinary
people went about their daily tasks, such statues served a vital function: they watched and
prayed.
By contrast, the face of the Greek statue was portrayed in the midst of heroic action. A
depiction of the Greek god Apollo, it was originally located atop an immense stone temple in the
city of Olympia. Serene and noble, it reflects the Greek balance of naturalistic observation and
geometric idealization of form.
The face of the medieval sculpture is less rational and heroic than the face of the Greek
statue, but something else is there that is entirely new. Even though the face is not more detailed,
it is somehow more personal, more individual. The sculpted face reflects not only confidence but
also belief in a personal soul. It radiates the confidence of salvation, a salvation medieval culture
and art offered to everyone.
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The faces of the three sculptures differ very little in the technical skill required for their
production, despite an interval of over four thousand years. They nevertheless clearly reflect a
striking growth in their relative sense of personality; that is, they impress us with their
increasingly life-like and individual presence. The three cultures represented by the sculptures
reflect changes in communicative technology as well. Ancient Iraq used cuneiform writing on
clay tablets. The Greeks used alphabet writing on papyrus and vellum scrolls. And the Gothic
Middle Ages used manuscripts and early woodcut printmaking.
In the distant historical roots of Western culture, the values manifest in Renaissance icons
and today’s mass media were not always celebrated. We will survey four examples of these roots
to examine some of the technologies developed and the values celebrated in other historical
periods. We will start with images from prehistoric caves in southern France (created more than
30,000 years ago), move east to examples from the Ancient Sumerian period of Iraq (dated
around 3500-2500 BC), travel to Classical Greece (culminating in the fifth century B.C.) and
end, in this chapter, back in France, with art from the Gothic Middle Ages (circa 1200 A.D.)
[MAPS of Iraq & Middle East (2.5); Greece (2.6); France (indicating both Grotte Chauvet &
Chartres. 2.7]
2.5 Map of Ancient Iraq & Middle East.
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Chapter 2: Roots of Western Culture
2.6 Ancient Greece.
2.7 France.
Chapter 2: Roots of Western Culture
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Grotte Chauvet: Prehistoric Cave Art in France
The cave paintings in Grotte Chauvet are probably over 32,000 years old. That means
they are some of the oldest art on the planet. They are also some of the most recently discovered.
Three French spelunkers—Jean-Marie Chauvet, Eliette Brunel and Christian Hillaire—
discovered the caves in December 1994. (See
http://www.culture.gouv.fr/culture/arcnat/chauvet/fr/ for a tour of the site.)
More than three hundred paintings and engravings (images created by carving shallow
lines into the rock surface) are scattered over the surfaces of the Grotte Chauvet chambers. The
animals, which are depicted moving and often overlapping, include: bears, bison, horses, hyenas,
ibex, owls, rhinoceros, and large spotted felines, possibly panthers. There are also numerous
abstract symbols from dots to lines to geometric shapes that are arrayed around and over the
animals. And there are the handprints, probably created by the artist placing his/her hand against
the cave wall and blowing pigment through a hollow straw-like cane to spray it around the
spread fingers.
The cave walls were scraped with stone tools to prepare then for painting. Colored dirt
was mixed with animal fat and applied with sticks. The colors of prehistoric cave paint are
usually red from iron oxide, yellow from ochre and black from manganese. There is evidence of
possible digging for these pigments inside Grotte Chauvet. There are also fire pits, stone tools,
fragments of torches, and ceremonially aligned bear skulls.
Although it is certain (from bone remains) that the animals in the paintings were those the
Paleolithic people of Grotte Chauvet hunted, we can only hypothesize about how the images
functioned. Some scholars have suggested that the geometric symbols connected to the animal
images comprise a kind of mathematical recordkeeping. The more common theory is that the
Chapter 2: Roots of Western Culture
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paintings depict hunting techniques and rituals. Such rituals may have been performed by a
shaman, a non-institutionalized religious practitioner who used art, music and dance to lead
her/his people across the threshold that separates the seen from the unseen, and to facilitate their
communion with the spirit realm.
Connie Hitzerotoh-Ohlman suggests that the Grotte Chauvet paintings were the
predecessors of today’s animated films.1 Moving the light of torches over the otherwise darkened
surfaces of the caves made the painted images appear to move. The visuals may have been
accompanied by the recounting of stories and myths. Hitzeroth-Ohlman suggests that the
painting rituals may have offered early humans a respite from the hardships of the Ice Age.
Concentrated in the back galleries of large dark caves, the paintings and attendant rituals offered
instruction and entertainment—not unlike Hollywood movies today. Another analogy might be
made between the ancient experience of being surrounded by lively images in a cave and the
contemporary experience of being submerged in virtual reality art.
Ancient Sumer
The ancient culture that developed between the fertile Tigris-Euphrates River beds of
Modern-Day Iraq is usually called Mesopotamia. The early phase of Mesopotamia, Sumer, was a
loosely associated group of city-states that began over six thousand years ago. By at least 3500
BC, the Sumerians had built complex city-states in sites like Uruk and Tell Asmar (the former to
the south and the latter just northeast of modern Baghdad).
Ancient Sumer was apparently the first culture to make the leap from village to city. The
origins of the Sumerians and the stages of development of the city-state, with its particular myths
and heroes, are historical puzzles only partially solved. What is clear is that with the Sumerian
city-state a qualitatively new kind of human experience—the urban experience—came into
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Chapter 2: Roots of Western Culture
existence.
The ancient cities of Sumer had
massive buildings, and the Sumerian social
organization was based on specialized
bureaucracies. The Sumerians not only
invented a form of writing, they also had a
rudimentary mass media technology, in the
2.8 Sumerian cylinder seal.
form of written and pictorial messages printed by rolling carved cylinder seals over clay
tablets (2.8). These inventions contributed to
an orderly and predictable way of life directed towards the gods, whose presence and importance
was indicated by the most important structure of the Sumerian city, the massive stepped
pyramidal platform known as a ziggurat that stood at its center (2.9). The sacred structure was
heavily fortified, with thick walls protecting concentric rings of higher and higher elevations.
2.9 Sumerian Ziggurat.
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Chapter 2: Roots of Western Culture
The ancient Sumerian city formed an organic unity, an arena in which the mythic life of
the king with the gods became—through ritual and art—the experience of the people themselves.
Although archaeological remains are fragmentary (and constantly threatened by the ongoing
warfare in that part of the world), it appears that the Sumerian cities were comprised of densely
packed mud-brick dwellings surrounding a central temple complex, which was elevated on the
ziggurat. The ziggurat was a symbolic mountain on top of which was the temple, the house of the
city’s patron deity, where—on behalf of the people—the Sumerian priests and kings communed
with the divine. Uruk was dominated by the White Temple, so named because its external brick
walls were elegantly whitewashed.
Inside Sumerian temples, either
standing on top of a stone altar or sheltered
in an architectural niche, were figures of
local deities (2.10).2 Prominent would be the
patron deity of that city-state, the divine
being for whom the local ruler acted as a
temporal representative. Rulers and priests
served as intermediaries between the people
and their powerful gods. Political decisions
were thereby given religious authority.
2.10 Sumerian votive figures.
The largest deity figure from Tell Asmar is a 30” tall standing male carved from pale
alabaster (probably 2700-2500 BC). Dignified and formal, his arms are folded at his waist in a
prayerful or offertory pose. Looking critically at the figure tells us something about what the
Sumerians so valued that they portrayed it as divine. First, the figure is presented as a male
Chapter 2: Roots of Western Culture
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humanoid, indicating that the Sumerians imaged their gods in human form. (Remember that
other cultures, for example, the Aztecs, portrayed their gods in much less anthropomorphic
ways.)
The greatest artistic attention is paid to his large eyes, circled in black stone, and to his
long, curling beard. His portrayal recalls the saying “The eyes are the windows to the soul,”
suggesting that he should be seen as a spiritual or “soulful” figure. His long beard indicates that
he is an older man–quite a bit older than the norm in a society with an average life span of
around thirty years. He is, by implication, a wise old man, a revered elder. His body is presented
as simple geometric forms, specifically the cone (conical skirt) and cylinder (tube-like arms). He
stands quietly, one might even say passively, in a static meditative repose. The Ancient
Sumerians may have believed that the gods were actually present in their statues, that the stone
forms functioned as temporal abodes for the divine. Timeless and static, formal and dignified,
they were quiet centers of the sacred sanctuaries they inhabited.
Ruler-priests approached temples on processional pathways that followed the angular
circuit of the architectures. Worshippers remained below, as distant witnesses of the religious
spectacles in front of and inside the temples. Such a ritual is portrayed in the Standard of Ur.
The Standard of Ur
Found in one of the largest graves in the Royal Cemetery of Ur, the Standard is a large
(8” x 19”) wooden box covered with elaborate mosaic of shell, red limestone, and lapis lazuli
(2.11). Both sides of the box—which may have served as part of a musical instrument, perhaps a
lyre–are organized into three registers. One side depicts war: above, soldiers lead prisoners of
war to their king; below, infantry and charioteers do battle with an unnamed enemy. The “Peace”
side of the box depicts what may be a victory celebration. Servants wait upon the king and his
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Chapter 2: Roots of Western Culture
guests at a banquet. In two registers below them, commoners parade to the court, bearing gifts
for the ruler.
2.11 The Standard of Ur.
2.11a The Standard of Ur, “War” and “Peace.”
[SIDEBAR: Centuries later in Central America, the Maya Indians at Bonampak painted
murals inside a temple that portrayed a battle and a victory celebration (2.12). Both cultures used
art to depict the official history of their rulers’ military exploits.]
2.12 Detail of Bonampak mural.
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Chapter 2: Roots of Western Culture
Cylinder Seals
We are not limited to inference in
“reading” the sacred images of Ancient
Sumer. The people of the Sumerian cities
developed a writing system, called
cuneiform, done with pointed sticks pressed
into wet clay tablets. Most of these tablets
are economic and administrative in
2.13 Cuneiform on baked clay.
nature; many document the economic
activities of the temple (2.13). They provide records of the sheep, grains and other goods brought
to the priests in honor of the divine
overseers. But other cuneiform inscriptions
are poetic accounts of the culture’s myths.
From these, we learn that the city of Uruk
was probably ruled by Inanna, the powerful
Queen of Heaven, Goddess of the Moon and
of seasonal regeneration (2.14). The main
figure at Tel Asmar may have been Abu,
God of Vegetation.
2.14 Inanna, Queen of Heaven,
Goddess of the Moon and of
seasonal regeneration.
Many of the clay tablets covered with cuneiform inscriptions were “signed” with imprints
from cylinder seals. Such seals were small stone tubes carved in relief so that, when pressed into
the wet clay tablets, they created miniature images narrating the sacred stories of the Sumerians.
Cylinder seals may have functioned as official signatures, confirming temple gifts or
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Chapter 2: Roots of Western Culture
authenticating elite decrees. Pressing the seals into numerous clay tablets allowed the production
of multiple identical images. The imprints of the seals, however small, can be seen as early forms
of multiple original artworks. As such, they anticipate printmaking technologies and, ultimately,
other mass media. It is important to note that the seals were exclusive possessions; specific
dignitaries “owned” the images and thereby the right to reproduce them. This was not exactly the
same as individual ownership; specific social roles gave individuals the right to “own” certain
images and, by extension, the related cylinder seals.
Some of the seals depict the deities residing atop mountains or in the skies (2.15). They
are approached by rulers or priests, who come in supplication or gratitude. Simplified and
schematic, the cylinder seal images convey beliefs echoed for millennia in Western culture: the
divine resides in the heavens, takes human form when visible, and can be accessed by powerful
earthly residents. The idea of climbing the mountain to access the divine was ritually replicated
in processions up the ziggurat to honor the deity images in the temple.
[SIDEBAR: The idea of climbing the
mountain to encounter the sacred was shared
with the ancient Jews. In the biblical book
Exodus, we are told that Moses climbed
Mount Sinai to talk to God and there
received the tablets of the Ten
Commandments, which were carved on
large stone tablets. We are also told that
2.15 Deities amongst the stars.
mountains were sacred precincts, restricted to elite access. Exodus 19:23 reads “And Moses said
unto the Lord, The people cannot come up to Mount Sinai for thou chargedst us, saying Set
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Chapter 2: Roots of Western Culture
bounds about the mount, and sanctify it.”]
The belief in divine encounter on a mountaintop was continued in a later phase of
Ancient Mesopotamia, as we can see in the Victory Stela of Naram-Sin (2.16) The victorious
ruler climbs the mountain to meet the solar deities indicated by the many-spiked abstract forms
at the top. He climbs the mountain to thank the gods for the victory they have led him to. Below,
his troops continue the massacre of their foes. The stela is one of the earliest known monuments
erected to glorify a conqueror, a function that art takes many times later in history. The sculptural
portrait of Sadam toppled during the 2002 Desert War is only one of many, many later examples.
[SIDEBAR: The ancient Maya also carved stelas to commemorate important victories (2.17).
Shared cultural needs—not contact between peoples—led to similar art forms among the
Sumerians and Mayans.]
2.16 Victory Stela of Naram-Sin.
2.17 Mayan stela of 18-Rabbit.
Chapter 2: Roots of Western Culture
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Classical Greece
Like the Ancient Sumerians, the Ancient Greeks of the Classical Period (around the fifth
century BC) were politically organized into city-states.
The center of the Greek city or polis, was not a massive building; it was an empty
space—the arena where public life took shape (see 2.18). The Spanish writer Ortega y Gassett
explained the decisive significance of this new urban space:
“The ‘polis’ starts by being an empty space…[it] is not primarily a collection of habitable
dwellings, but a meeting place for citizens…a space of the most novel kind, in which man frees
himself from the community of the plant and the animal, leaves them outside and creates an
enclosure apart which is purely human a civil space.”3 The separation of culture (“man”) and
nature (“the community of the plant and the animal”) is a fundamental bipolar opposition in
Greek thought. As we shall see, it is depicted in sculptural form as well as architectural spaces.
2.18 Outline of a polis.
Chapter 2: Roots of Western Culture
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The Greek city-state was set up for citizens to gather and participate in urban discourse.
Greek citizenship was restricted to free adult males. Neither boys nor women nor slaves could
participate fully in the culture. As Andrew Stewart notes, “In general Greek men thought of
themselves as the first, privileged member of a set of antinomies [i.e., what we are calling bipolar
oppositions in this text]: Greek/barbarian, male/female, free/slave, human/animal. Therefore,
opposite Greek male free humans one could theoretically align barbarians, females, slaves and
animals in a fairly indiscriminate and interchangeable way.”4
Greek temples were particularly restrictive; they were not to be entered by average
citizens. Like the temples atop Sumerian ziggurats, Ancient Greek temples functioned as potent
visual backdrops for the public rituals enacted in front of them.5
The Parthenon
The sacred precinct in the Ancient Greek city-state of Athens was an artificially-leveled
mountaintop known as the Acropolis (literally, the city on a mountain). The center of the
Acropolis was the plaza-like space in which the citizenry gathered. On t…
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