History of Western Art 6: The Alternative Realism of the Ancient Egyptians and the Long Overture to the Aegean Civilization

This article is the sixth episode of the captain's reading and painting "Ten Minutes to Understand Western Art" voice series, and you are welcome to listen to it.

In the history of art, the watershed between the front wave and the back wave— two different styles, different genres, and different aesthetic habits, often does not conform to the conclusions reached by some reckless people after the fact, in a hurry and in a hurry—until time is far away, so far away that the entire human race has completely forgotten it, and when it looks back again because of a fortuitous moment, it can be accurately understood, they are intertwined with each other, complement each other, and shape each other, this long process.

From ancient Egypt to ancient Greece, this evolution of art history is exactly like this.

In this episode, we continue to learn about some of the characteristics of ancient Egyptian painting, and then follow the flow of the Nile River, 300 kilometers north from her mouth in the Mediterranean Sea, to see what the artists are doing at this time, the largest island in the Aegean Sea, Crete.

The Egyptians dared to behave so boldly, one of which was to follow the principle of positive rate introduced earlier. The second is to adhere to another way of creation: "conceptual realism".

The so-called conceptual realism is to draw completely according to the inherent concepts in one's own mind, without drawing according to the actual situation of things observed by the eyes.

Creative ideas such as "positive rate" and "conceptual realism" that are highly refined and generalized on real things also have a profound impact on modern art theory.

For example, the French art philosopher Danner said: Art is more real than real life, it shows the essence of reality, this essence is the most obvious feature of things, and in real life, we face every day, nine to five, in fact, does not have the role of expressing the essence of life.

In addition to the "positive rate" and "conceptual realism", Egyptian painting and relief have the following principles and characteristics, they pay attention to the narrative of the picture in composition, and they arrange the images of people, animals and other images in a straight line, and unfold the story content like a comic strip. Another feature is that in the blank space of the picture, they will write a lot of hieroglyphs.

While the ancient Egyptians on the banks of the Nile followed the norms that had been passed down from generation to generation, drawing brightly colored, formal, but also rigid images of the undead in mausoleums, sarcophagi, and papyrus, these artists were not as conformist as they were on the Aegean Island of Crete, across the sea from the sea.

The purpose of the Cretan people's creation was obviously to lack the Egyptians' sincere fear of the gods and the afterlife, and the admiration that arose from it, and their paintings were more about the interesting life and beautiful nature of the time.

The Egyptians, who worshipped the sun god, liked to use straight lines like sunlight, and painters on the island of Crete in almost the same period learned how to use curves from the gentle waters to make the objects they represent more elegant and vivid.