[image_with_animation image_url=”9204″ alignment=”center” animation=”None” box_shadow=”none” max_width=”100%”] Yesterday I posted a fragment of a sculpture and asked you to guess when it was made and who made it. I worded my question to be misleading by asking specifically “who” and “what year.” Some of the guesses I received were:
Brancusi, 1952?
Isamu Noguchi?
Henry Moore late 1800s?
African, or African influenced Picasso?
Ancient Chinese?
Aztec?
Thank you for your guesses! I posted this sculpture because I was so taken aback by how contemporary it looked. In truth, this is a fragment of an ancient Olmec mask, dated 300 BC.
This Jade face might represent the Olmec Maize God. According to the Met Museum, the Olmec Maize God can be identified by his upturned lip. Many of the masks weren’t worn on the face, but were likely used as belt buckles, on headdresses, or as necklaces.
The earliest Olmec sites presently known date to 4000 years ago ( about 2000 BC). By 1400 BC, Olmec artisans were creating amazing earthworks, stonework, and ceramics that still captivate the viewer. To their 19th century discoverers, Olmec cities seemed to have sprouted full-blown out of the earth, complete with sophisticated directional alignment, symbolic writing (which we still can’t decipher), a complex set of spiritual beliefs, and finely crafted stonework, much of which was imitated by the Maya and other peoples who came to prominence after the Olmec faded.
The Seattle Artist League is pleased to announce the extended exhibition “Vivid Shifts,” featuring the work of Alan Byars, a longstanding painting student at the League. After completing his painting “Cool Reflections” (below) which immersed him in meticulous hyper-realism through years of sporadic engagement, Alan decided to find the fun again, with a pivot towards …
Today is the first part of a two part drawing. You can catch up tomorrow if you miss today, but don’t throw out your drawing for today! Thursday is Vocabulary day, and the word is sesquipedalian. The rare time this unusual word is introduced into conversation, it is to describe someone or something that overuses …
“Roy Lichtenstein grounded his inventive career in imitation, beginning by appropriating images from advertisements and comic books in the early 1960s. The source for his painting, Drowning Girl, is “Run for Love!,” the melodramatic lead story of Secret Love #83, a DC Comics comic book from 1962. In the original illustration, the drowning girl’s boyfriend appears in the background, clinging to a capsized boat. …
I know the rain is dreary, especially when our moods are pulled by pandemic, isolation, news. But the rain has rinsed the pollen from the air, and for that I am thankful. In class on Tuesday, Fran O’Neill shared a few of her favorite landscape paintings. She showed the Van Gogh above, one I haven’t …
Mystery Mask
[image_with_animation image_url=”9204″ alignment=”center” animation=”None” box_shadow=”none” max_width=”100%”] Yesterday I posted a fragment of a sculpture and asked you to guess when it was made and who made it. I worded my question to be misleading by asking specifically “who” and “what year.” Some of the guesses I received were:
[image_with_animation image_url=”9212″ alignment=”center” animation=”None” box_shadow=”none” max_width=”100%”]
Map from Misfits and Heroes; New Thoughts on Olmec Art
Olmec Masks
This Jade face might represent the Olmec Maize God. According to the Met Museum, the Olmec Maize God can be identified by his upturned lip. Many of the masks weren’t worn on the face, but were likely used as belt buckles, on headdresses, or as necklaces.
More information is found on Misfits and Heroes; New Thoughts on Olmec Art:
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