Wednesday, March 2, 2011

Zeus



First Zeus: www.theoi.com/Olympios/Zeus.html
Second Zeus: www.wikigallery.org/wiki/painting_254325/Anton-Losenko/Zeus-and-Thetis-1769
Third Zeus: www.occultopedia.com/z/zeus.htm

Poseidon

http://www.theoi.com/Gallery/K2.3B.html
http://www.bestofalltopics.com/poseidon-pictures-and-info/

- Ancient Greek Poseidon is flat, with no 3D-ness, face turned side on. They both have a beard, symbol of power, and a trident, of different designs, but with the same symbolic meaning.
- Both have an angry, powerful expression on their faces
- Newer one has minimal clothing, and ancient one has war gear on, both showing strength

Questions for 90250 internal

1. How were the Greek Gods portrayed in ancient art and how has that depiction changed over time?
2. How was symbology used in ancient Greek art and has it affected later artworks?
3. How significant is Greek mythology in more modern art?

Second Load of Notes





Great Modern Masters

Edgar Degas
- Painted mostly with rough brush strokes, faces faded and slightly blurred
- Features a lot of music playing and dancing, having fun
- A few paintings depict normal scenes, and show the calm and contentment of the people in them
- Aspects of mythology used, like hard work, good people in Greek mythology were hard workers...

examples:
- 'The rehearsal' (http://www.poster.net/degas-edgar/degas-edgar-the-rehearsal-on-stage)
- 'The orchestra' (http://www.nga.gov/feature/artnation/degas/thepainting_1d.htm)
- 'The cotton market, New Orleans' (http://hubpages.com/hub/Edgar-Degas---French-Impressionist)
- 'Girls combing their hair' (http://steveartgallery.se/picture/image-37722.html)

Monday, February 28, 2011

First batch of notes for the Internal

From the book 'Art, the definitive visual guide' by Andrew Graham-Dixon

Ancient Greek Art - All pot painting figures side on, or mostly side on with torsos' weirdly twisted to front.
- All faces side on
Baroque - life like
- no angry expressions, all calm
- Instead of angry, more disturbed/disturbing facial expressions
- Mostly clothed people except sculptures
- religious
- Bernini - sculptures
- Lots of angels
- "Bernini strove with everything in him to make resplendent all the conceptual beauty inherent in whatever he was working on" - Filippo Baldnucci
- Salvador Rosa (Google)
- Guido Reni (Google)
Rococo - Still life like, more frivolous than baroque
- About having fun, gods about having fun
- elaborate clothes like gods
- ^ might not be related but could have been based on some kind of gods even if not the ancient Greek ones. The ones that have fun and play tricks, not Jesus kind of god.
- Sculptures like ancient Greek with laurel wreaths in hair and flowing, unadorned cloth instead of clothes. Simple, like sculptures (not of gods) like ancient ones.
- Giambattista Tiepolo - 'Apollo conducting Beatrice of Burgundy to Frederick Barbarossa
- 'Neptune offering gifts to Venice'
- Also painted about Christ.

Saturday, February 19, 2011

Mythology in religion today

In ancient mythology there was a strong belief about death and the afterlife, and most modern religions are based around that too. Like in Christianity, if your good you go to heaven, if your bed you go to hell. In Greek mythology there isn't a heaven and hell, but the basic idea of rewarding people or punishing them for their lifestyle before they died is there. Tartarus was like hell, where the people or monsters that did nothing but sin went, and were tortured.
The Asphodel fields were for people in between, and Elysium was the equivalent of heaven.
Also, the Greek gods were used to explain things the people couldn't explain, like earthquakes and the reasons behind why people acted as they did. In Christianity, God created everything, which is like using him to explain what Christians didn't understand at the time.

Sunday, February 6, 2011

Very First Classics Blog of 2011!!!

This blog is the end of loose paper! Never again shall we not be able work due to lost notes! These blogs will enable us to heighten our home learning capacity, as we can take our work home with us without the fear of it getting all crumply in our bags. We can use photos without having to drag ourselves to the nearest printer, laboriously cut around it, leaving as little whiteness as possible. Then unsticking the lids from the glue sticks, smothering the back in stickiness and trying to line up the edges with the side of the page. Which nearly always fails miserably and we end up with a wonky mess of glue and a hopelessly crumpled photo from google images (tm) that we don't even have the ability to say we photographed.
In short, this blog will help our learning for this subject immensly :)