Video Review: The Human Form

For this weeks video review I watched “More Human the Human” which showed the history of the human form in art. The first thing I found interesting about this video is how ancient human sculptures depicted by different cultures in different areas in the world are very much alike in their look. They show the same exaggerated features of the female body. Another interesting point is the research into seagulls that showed that the baby chicks are stimulated by a stick with a red stripe on it just as they are by the red stripe on their mother’s beak. This study gives a clue as to why the statues are all the same. Early man, no matter the culture, was stimulated by the same thing. The next part focused on early Egypt, and showed how the Egyptian depiction of the human body was virtually unchanged for thousands of years. Paintings were made with the help of a grid and the proportions of the human subjects are uniform in all paintings. Researchers think this is due to the Egyptian obsession with order and precision. Early Greek works depict the human body in much that same way as the Egyptians, but over time their works evolved. Their work eventually led to the most realistic depictions of the human body ever created. It is believed that this is due to the Greek religious belief that they are created in their gods images. Worshippers expected images of their gods to be realistic, to show perfection of form that was worthy of their deities. The one thing the film stressed was that, even the detailed work of Greek artists, depictions of the human body throughout history and even today are for the most part unrealistic. I found this video to be fairly interesting.  I’ve always been intrigued by ancient Greek and Roman history and this added to my knowledge of the subject.

Because of that interest, I chose three other videos on ancient Greek and Roman art for my additional videos to review. “Beyond the Classical: Byzantine & Later Greek Art” focused on art work created in the latter stages of the Roman Empire. These works are heavily influenced by Christianity. Holy Roman Emperor Constantine helped to usher in the Byzantine period of art. During this period art works moved away from the detail of early Greek and Roman works and revolved around a style that was more rigid and stiff with more two-dimensional elements. During this time the Christianity inspired the Icon form of art. In architecture, the renaissance led to a rediscovery of the classical Greek style.

For the final two videos, I chose; “The Greek Awakening: Art from the 5^th Century BC” and “The measure of all things: Greek Art and the Human Form”. These two videos seemed to be little more than a re-hash of information I learned in the first video. I did enjoy seeing the some of the images again, but aside from that, I didn’t get much more from these two.