Human Art in Ancient Mediterranean Worlds

Video One: More Human Than Humans The key concept of this video was that in art humans rarely created the human form realistically. The video when through why that possibly was. And even when the ancient Greeks were able to show that they were capable of creating a realistic human, they went back to exaggerating the body. It's been noticed as well that as culture changes, what we humans exaggerate in art changes as well. The book too discusses Venus of Willendorf like the video, as the foundation of human form in art. This was probably my favorite video during this class so far, I learned so much about how the human form in art changes throughout history and why. It makes me want to go back to an art museum soon to look for things mentioned in the video.

Video Two: The Greek Awakening: Art from the 5th Century BC I chose this video because the link to the one I actually wanted to watch wasn't working (A World Inscribed: The Illuminated Manuscript) So I chose this one because I love Greek art, it's very beautiful. They mentioned in the video that the ancient Greeks were the first to show humans, Gods, and animals depicted in realistic action, as if they had been frozen in motion. This was called the Great Awakening. In the reading, similar to the video they went in depth about the Parthenon in Athens. I don't think this video added too much interesting information if any. The first video is the one that overshadowed this one completely.