{"id":1896,"date":"2015-11-08T11:28:17","date_gmt":"2015-11-08T16:28:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.allida.com\/wp\/?p=1896"},"modified":"2024-08-25T11:31:59","modified_gmt":"2024-08-25T15:31:59","slug":"contrapposto-cantilevers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/allida.com\/wp\/?p=1896","title":{"rendered":"Contrapposto Cantilevers"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Much like we like to take pictures and make sculptures of each other, the Egyptians tried to portray the human figure in sculpture and paint.\u00a0See this example below, which is in the Metropolitan Museum of New York, AKA the Met. She is tall and slim, with great posture and huge eyes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Estate Figure, Wood and Gesso. 1981- 1975 BCE At the Metropolitan Museum of Art.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

QUESTION: What words would you use to tell me about this picture?
FOLLOW-UPS TO GET THE IDEA OUT: How does the picture feel? \u00a0What do you notice about the figure?
WORDS WE EXPECT: Stiff, uptight, bored, regal, upset, tense, a little weird<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Ancient Egyptians were trying to figure out a bunch of stuff all at once: how to carve stone, and other technical ideas; how to observe the world around them; and how to make the images they created fit into a symbolic belief system. The textures on the dress are very stylized as is her pose.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Ancient Egyptians made art because they had a very complex religious system and these images served a variety of purposes in that system. That is why the figure is stylized.\u00a0But there is more going on here. This figure is made of wood and is around 4,000 years old.\u00a0It survived because it\u00a0was buried with it’s master and preserved in a hot dry environment underground. A pyramid or other burial location. She represents a member of the\u00a0estate of the person who was buried.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This next figure was Greek and it is (only) 2200 years old. Let’s look at some similarities and differences between the two. We will look at the stylistic as well as the<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Victoire<\/a>
Nike of Samothrace, Greek 200-190 BCE, Louvre Museum, Paris France<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Ok, let’s talk about this one. It is\u00a0The Nike of Samothrace<\/a>. She is on display at the Louvre Museum in Paris.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

QUESTION: What words would you use to describe it, just like we did for the first image?
(SAME Follow-up if needed)
WORDS WE EXPECT: cool, relaxed, natural… etc.
PUT PRINT OUTS OF BOTH IMAGES.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

OK, so let’s look at how these images are the same and different.
(SAME: subject is a woman, shifting her weight from one foot to the other)
(DIFFERENT: Aesthetic stuff, Time period if they know, color painted, incidentally the Greek statues were probably painted but being kept above ground instead of in hermetically sealed pyramids, the paint has long since peeled. Some have traces though. The Egyptian Statue is wood, the Greek is stone)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

DRAW IN THE HIP and SHOULDER lines… THEN THE S CURVE for the body.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Egyptian figure has almost perfectly horizontal hips and shoulders even though her foot is forward, so the lines on the hip and shoulder end up making a sideways “H.” The Greek Figure the shoulders and hips are very slanted. When you connect the dots and trace the legs, you end up with what we call an S curve.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It’s more a more natural pose because when we put a foot forward, we actually shift our weight from one foot to the other. But it is harder to balance an asymmetrical figure when you are carving\u00a0a stationary object because once you take away or reduce stone or wood from a block, you cannot put it back, so if you take away too much from someplace the whole thing falls over and you could lose hours and hours of work.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The fluidity of the style and the reason the Classical statue looks more “cool” is because of the way the artists figured out how to balance that shifting of weight that we do naturally with our moving bodies. The S curve creates movement because some of the body is relaxed and some of it is tensed to support the weight.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

ACTIVITY:<\/h3>\n\n\n\n