Through the Eras

OVERVIEWof Visual ArtsANCIENT VIEW OF ART. The ancient Egyptians hadno word that was an equivalent for “visual art,” thoughthey clearly created many objects that modern peoplerecognize as art. In the modern world, art is the productof an individual’s creative expression. But this viewof art is bound to modern, Western culture. An ancientEgyptian artist would not have understood the value ofindividual originality. For the Egyptian artist, the creatorgod Ptah had ordained the proper form for representingthe world in both two- and three-dimensionalart. According to Egyptian myth, these forms had existedsince the time that Ptah created everything in theworld at the beginning of time. The artist’s task was toapproximate Ptah’s pre-ordained pattern as closely aspossible. Egyptian artists could be creative within theconfines of the patterns that Ptah had created, but thepatterns could not be ignored. Thus the basic representationof a man in two dimensions could not change.But within the basic pattern there was room for artiststo exercise creativity in the details.NATURALISM. Egyptian art mirrors an idealized visionof nature. The art was more or less naturalistic indifferent periods of Egyptian history, but this naturalismwas always restrained within a certain idealism andstylization. The most common Egyptian subject is humanityand all of its activities. Though modern audiencestend to think of colossal Egyptian sculpture as thenorm, most statues were rather small. They were usuallyless than life-size. Relief sculpture of people was usuallyabout twelve to eighteen inches tall (30.4 to 45.7 centimeters).Humanity almost always exists in Egyptian artin an ordered and rational universe. This order is especiallyapparent in the common scenes of family groups,religious rites, and even in daily activities. Though historicalscenes sometimes included the chaos of battle,these scenes are meant to stand in contrast to the orderly,idealized world that the Egyptians believed wasgoverned by maat (“correct order”).EGYPTIAN WORLD. The Egyptians viewed theworld as a box. The natural world had two axes: the Nile,which ran from south to north, and the sun, which ranthe axis from east to west. The sky itself was a canopysupported by poles at either side. The earth was a flatfloor beneath the canopy. Egyptians reproduced thisworldview in two-dimensional painting and relief. Theartist composed scenes in rectangular registers with aclear base on which humans stood and a clear dividingline between what was above and below them.MOVEMENT. The Egyptian artist had no interest incapturing a transitory moment as did classical Greek andRoman artists. The Egyptian artist aimed to capture aneternal and idealized vision of humans that would bevalid for all time. Especially in portraiture, the Egyptianartist tried to create a static world. The artists had no interestin depicting motion or emotion as the importantelements in a composition. Though a particular posemight signal walking or even running, Egyptian artistshad no interest in depicting the illusion of movement invisual art.INTEGRATION OF VIEWS AND SYMBOLISM. Thepattern that the Egyptians believed that Ptah had createdfor two-dimensional art integrated more than oneview of each object or person. In an Egyptian architecturaldrawing, the building could be represented as afaçade or front view with the plan view attached aboveit. A hieroglyphic label in the middle of the plan couldthen identify the specific building that the artist intendedto represent. When artists represented people, a similarsystem for integrating views was nearly always followed.The head was in profile, but the whole eye was visible.This defied visual reality; it would be impossible in life.Both shoulders were visible as if the artist drew from thefront, but the torso twisted unnaturally so that a sideview of the hips and legs was visible. This representationwas a symbol of a man, not an attempt to present visualreality. This style of drawing relates art to hieroglyphs.Each drawing, just as was true for each hieroglyph, wasan easily recognizable symbol of the object that the artistwanted to represent. The shapes of most objects inEgyptian drawing also closely resemble the hieroglyphused for writing the word for that object in Egyptian.Perhaps the same need for clear outlines to make hieroglyphsinstantly recognizable influenced artists to standardizethe outline of most types of figures. This standardoutline allows the viewer to “read” a drawing in the sensethat each outline symbolizes something already defined inadvance. The artist’s dependence on a pre-ordained outlinefor figures and objects led to a stable iconographyor symbolic representation. For example, a child nearly266 Arts and Humanities Through the Eras: Ancient Egypt (2675 B.C.E.–332 B.C.E.)