Author: vvj5056

My Art History teacher had let us know that we were supposed to meet in the project room instead of our usual classroom, which seemed a little odd at first but also filled me with curiosity to see what my teacher had in hand for us. Impressively, it was way more than I expected, being an Art History junkie, the sight of interacting with alabaster, lapis lazuli, ochre and porphyry, which were the mediums used in Pre Historic cave paintings and Ancient Mediterranean art, struck me.

First, I tested the different hardnesses of rocks, alabaster is incredibly smooth and buttery compared to the marble. Both of these rocks can be struck at a side angle, unlike, porphyry which is a rock that is so incredibly hard that one must sculpt it completely perpendicular to the stone. Which is why the Portrait of the Four Tetrarchs is a stunning and jaw dropping piece of art, accomplishing a full sculpture on porphyry must have been of highly praised and talented sculptors.

 Tetrarchs on the corner of San Marco, Venice walls. Notice the intricate design and think of  level of skill need to achieve this with such a hard stone.

Then, I moved on to the  next station, where our teacher had set up for us a lapis lazuli grinding station. The beautiful blue pigment of lapis lazuli looked stunning on a Sumerian Bull Lyre. They created this pigment by grinding the lapis lazuli with mortar and pestle in order to create a plaster of ground stone, that plaster is the drained several times in order to separate the color from the plaster that keeps the impurities of the actual lapis lazuli stone. Through this process the most percentage of pigment that could and still can be extracted is 10% of lapis lazuli’s actual pigment.The stone originated in a remote Afghan province, the pigment extracted from the lapis lazuli is actually called Ultramarine pigment.

 Great Sumerian Bull Lyre with gold pleated and lapis lazuli bull head.

IMG_2499-1d2z4vk —– Check this out! This is a video of me actually grinding the lapis lazuli with mortar and pestle.

Lastly, and my favorite part of the whole hands-on experience, the ochre paint mixing. Looking at cave findings, have you ever felt the urge to jump on a time machine and see how these people produced these works of art with only the resources of the land? Well I do, and today I felt like I caught a glimpse of how these people felt and what it smelled like as they were mixing the dry pigments with oils in order to create actual liquid paint. Today in class we got to see the different types of pigments mixed with oils to create different colors of paint, texture, and even thickness. I will attach. picture below so you can check them out. Not only did we get to see the pigments, but we mixed ochre with Gum Arabic which had other oils to prevent the molding of the paint and tried it out with water ( In order to dilute the very thick ochre paint) on our own paper.

  — Different pigments and Iron ores.

IMG_2495-1tn577b – Check this out! Super cool video of gum arabic being added into the pigment.

 Working station

   Working Station up close.

EXTRA MEDIA:

 My own work of art using my DIY ochre paint.

So mysterious that people actually theorize that ancient aliens built it. Stonehenge is one of the most impressive, if not the most, architectural feats of the prehistoric era. There is such a compelling thing about how it was built as a massive monument whose meaning still remains rather undefined.

The main reason this arrangement of simply rocks is so impressive to us, Homo sapiens sapiens, is that the MASSIVE slabs that compose the monument, (sarsen and bluestone) are brought all the way from Wales, England to Wiltshire, England which is almost 135 miles apart. What is most impressive of this is the fact that this was all before the invention of the wheel, so these peoples had to come up with the most clever way to move these around. After arduous research done by many, many researchers, one, Andrew Young, deciphered a way in which these stone slabs could have been moved around.

TRACKS! ball bearing tracks. which were probably made of oak with granite and wooden balls. He came to this odd but very true conclusion by studying these granite balls found in large quantities around the Stonehenge site. So this finally rules out these ancient aliens theories, because there is also an explanation to what was the purpose to this monument.

Aside from the granite balls and bluestone slabs, there were also findings of a cremated cemetery called the Aubrey Holes under the smaller slabs that line the inner circle in Stonehenge. These were actually discarded the first time they were dug out and were reburied at the site. One archeologist believed that there had to be some clues in these bones, and there were! They could trace the gender and the health of the people that were buried there, which opened way to knowing a little more about this Stonehenge mystery.

The bones belonged to healthy men, which meant that this was a cemetery for the elite and the important in prehistoric society. Knowing this burial site was for elite males, this meant that these people were settling and had to have a place to live nearby. Given this theory they found that the river between the Durington Walls and Stonehenge was a connection between the two, making it seem as a connection between the realm of the living and the dead. An astronomer noticed that these two connected during the winter and summer solstices, the sun shone through the middle of each monument going directly though the middle of the other during these days.

Overall, Stonehenge is simply ideas, theories, and research, but the actual story and reality of the feat still remains unclear. It could be said that Stonehenge is one of the earliest signs of the beliefs of the dead being in a realm and the living being in theirs, the river being the carrier to the afterlife, and the exclusivity and eliteness of burial.

STONEHENGE DURING SUMMER SOLSTICE!! AMAZING RIGHT??

SO YOU CAN SEE HOW HUGE THESE SLABS REALLY ARE, AND CAN VISUALIZE THESE PEOPLE PUSHING THEM ON TRACKS WITH SIMPLY GRANITE BALLS.

Where it all started… I needed an elective to fulfill my senior year credits. Psychology? Done. Drawing? Done. Even photography, done. But art history? Interestingly not done. So, basically that is how I embarked on a journey that made me fall in love with the mystery and uncertainty of prehistoric art and what it narrates about the earliest peoples. There is a void in this specific time period that allows for the interpreter and apprentice to imagine, analyze, and critically develop theories or ideas in order to find an explanation to something that cannot be explained, read, or researched anywhere. This is what makes me passionate about prehistoric art, every time you are appreciating a piece, it gives you an imminent urge to jump in a time machine and travel back to where it all started.

From cave paintings deep down in the caves of Lascaux, France, the tiny Woman of Willendorf figure, to the mystery of Stonehenge in England, these art pieces do not only represent what we can see in surface but carry with them the culture of the earliest peoples, their life styles, their beliefs, and they way the innovated and evolved to become the newer and modern version of the Homo sapiens sapiens, well, us. Even-though, prehistoric art is so questionable due to its lack of written information, it manages to explain many aspects of daily life during the Paleolithic, Mesolithic, and Neolithic time periods.