module 8: humane humans being human

Chloe Carr
Module #8


1. I chose to watch The Measure of All Things: Greek Art and the Human Figure from the list of videos because I've always found Greek mythology to be very interesting. I've always found Greek study to be interesting as well so I really wanted to know about Greek art and the human figure so that I could compare it to Greek history as well as the timeline of art in American history.

2. The video How Art Made The World 1 - More Human Than Human was very informative. I think it was really centered around the effect of art on people in general. Art has been around since our ancestors and instead of fading away like most concepts have as time went on, art has only flourished. Art, the video says, has become a legacy. There are artistic cultures that carry secrets of civilizations. If there is one universal or ageless depiction in art it's the human body. The way the body has been shown thorugh art is different but alike all at the same time. We can see pictures and paintings and drawings of bodies and know what time period it was from but also know that it is a body. Different aspects of the human body have been valued since the beginning of time, which is why there is more emphasis on a specific body type in all of history.
     In The Measure of All Things: Greek Art and the Human Figure I learned that the Greeks used to value realistic art rather than stylstic art. Ancient Greeks valued the human body in a very specific form. They valued chisled, fit bodies and encouraged their people to excercise and go to the gym. Not only was art something that inspired and motivated them, but the people around them were also something to be motivated by. The form of the Greeks became an obsession for them, as well as what the video called "nobility of soul." To the greeks, there was great value put in the bodies of people. The way you were supposed to look is the way they created their art, and in order for their art to be realistic, people had to basically become their art.

3. The videos can relate to the text because chapter 14 focuses on the history of the way the human body is depicted in art. Figure 14.2 is of a stone figure of a woman with something over her head. Her head is covered which gives me the impression that the artist of the stone did not want the face to be the central point of the figure itself. What holds more detail is the body of the woman, the heavy size of her and the emphasis on her breasts, stomach/torso, and thighs. Because of this I think the ideal body type of women during the time this stone was created was just like the body portrayed in the stone. The way the chapter put it, in a way that can connect to the videos, is that we should alwasy study art of the past so that we may understand their values, even in something as simple as the human body.

4. I really enjoyed watching the videos. Like the readings, they helped me understand the differences in history. I never really thought that there would be such a difference when it came to doing art of the human body because I always thought that a body was a body regardless of how it is shown, but after watching the videos I have a better understanding of the different kinds of emphasis that can be seen in the depictions of the human body throughout time.