III. Neolithic Art
Early Cities and Ancestor Cults
Periods of Art History I:
from Prehistory to Trajan
“VENUSES”
Venus of Willendorf, limestone,
c. 28,000–25,000 BCE
Venus of Dolní Věstonice,
ceramic, c. 29,000–25,000 BCE
Venus of Lespugue, ivory,
c. 26,000–24,000 BCE
Bison figure on ivory, 10 cm,
from cave "La Madeleine”,
France
NATURALISM vs. ABSTRACTION
(or likeness)
LIKENESS and PRESENCE
Artwork LOOKS like the original,
tries to capture its appearance in
real life
Artwork is meant to convey the
essence or the presence of an
object
These concepts are not exclusive, sometimes presence is conveyed through
likeness and sometimes by abstraction
NATURALISM vs. CONVENTION
Representing something that you
really see in nature or in reality
An artistic device to convey what
one knows to be true or what the
artist wants the viewer to see
Absolutely no art is purely naturalistic,
every representation employs some
form of convention, abstraction or
symbolism
Neolithic: The New Stone Age
Ice Age ends at about 9 000 BC
From ca. 10 000 BCE: relative dating, not all cultures develop at the same pace
Animal domestication and agriculture
Invention of bow and arrow, ceramics and fiber art (textile, baskets etc.)
Tassili n'Ajjer, Algeria, Rock paintings, c.a. 6000 BCE to 1000 BCE
TASSILLI N’AJJER, Algeria
Rock paintings
c.a. 6000 BCE to 1000 BCE
“This borderland between the desert and
the mountains is a kind of cultivable fringe
of the desert, – a Fertile Crescent […]. It
forms roughly a semicircle with the open
side toward the south. Its western end is at
the southeastern corner of the
Mediterranean, the center lies directly north
of Arabia, and the eastern end is at the
northern end of the Persian Gulf”.
James Henry Breasted, Ancient Times: A History of the
Early World. An Introduction to the Study and the Career of
Early Man, Boston 1916.
“Fertile Crescent”
Çatalhöyük, c. 7,100 BCE
Göbekli Tepe, c. 9,900 BCE
Jericho, c. 9,600 BCE
Göbekli Tepe, Turkey
Dates back to the Pre-Pottery Neolithic period
(c. 9600 - 8000 BCE)
one of the oldest monumental structures known.
A series of sculpted heads found around the site of Göbekli Tepe
Klaus Schmidt: ”First came the temple, then the city”
Çatalhöyük, c. 7,100 BCE
Göbekli Tepe, c. 9,900 BCE
Jericho, c. 9,600 BCE
Çatalhöyük archeological site, c. 7,500 – 6,400 BCE
Seated woman of Çatalhöyük, clay and ceramic, c. 6,000 BCE Woman figure from Çatalhöyük, stone carving, c. 6,000 BCE
Deer hunt, detail of a wall painting from level III, Çatalhöyük, Turkey, c. 5750 BCE
Çatalhöyük, c. 7,100 BCE
Göbekli Tepe, c. 9,900 BCE
Jericho, c. 9,400 BCE
Tell es-Sultan, archeological site of ancient JERICHO
c.a. 9,400 BCE
Jericho skulls, human skulls decorated with plaster and shells, found near Jericho (Palestine), c. 8,200–7,500 BCE / British
Museum, London, and National Museum, Damascus
A facial reconstruction based on the human remains found inside
the Jericho Skull
Plastered skulls from Tell Aswad, Syria, ca. 8,000–7,700 BCE
Stone masks, from Hebron (Israel, West Bank), c. 7000 BCE Israel Museum, Jerusalem
“There is much evidence that the cult of the dead
predates all other cults and religions. Masks affixed to
corpses can be found as early as prehistoric cultures. In
such cases the ancestors were not presented as part of a
mask ritual, but rather represented by a likeness. It goes
without saying that masks were appropriate for the dead
after their faces had been lost. If one wanted to restore a
face to them it could only be in the form of a mask,
which took the place of a living face. In this we can see
the roots of the human habit of producing images
in general.
Hans Belting, Face and Mask. A Double History, Princeton 2017, p. 34
Statuette of human shape, Ain Ghazal (Jordan), gypsum plaster, bitumen eyelids and pupils, c. 7,000 BCE / Musée du Louvre, Paris
Plaster sculpture of a head, Jericho , c. 7000 BC
Plumbed cover of human skull, 5th -
6th dynasty, ca. 2514–2191 BCE, Giza,
Egypt
A mummy with inserted painting of a
face from Fayoum, Egypt, 1st century
CE