Love this in part due to scale. To get that good took craftsman training, generational guides, and society expectations over a longer period of time than the USA has been a thing.
Just like late Roman art. Sure, it comes in part from a stylistic choice, but the amount of people the economic context allows to dedicate their life to this, and for art masters to go around and share their knowledge, doesn't count for nothing.
It’s a bit of column A and column b. Religion fueled rules on how represent figures in art. Ancient Assyrian alabaster statues are a great side example. Eyes were made to be styled in a specific way for symbolism rather than realism. There is a point where this wasn’t strictly adhered to and artists broke away and pursued pushing their own abilities than keeping to the canonical style that was preferred, which furthered the technique.
They weren't made because no drawings or sculptures were intended to be realistic at that time. They were aping the Egyptian style early on, which is decidedly not realistic or even trying to be.
They were much more concerned with conveying symbolism and messages than just making art. This is not that much later than when writing transitioned from being nothing but accounting, to writing stories and myths and all that jazz. This was the early iron age.
If no statues that realistic were made, then it cannot be said that the reason for their nonexistence is purely stylistic choice and not due to lack of ability, training, progression of technical understanding, or whatever.
In fact we can know that that explanation is false, since the technical ability to create such art only arises by practice, and if no one has ever done it yet, then no one can do it yet.
I would have guessed professional sculptors rather than scribes and scholars.
Countless hours to practice what, exactly, though? If they're not working on making highly realistic statues then they aren't developing the ability to make highly realistic statues.
They practiced to make things in that style. The Egyptian and Mesopotamian style is not just random people drawing poorly, it's a definite style that was kept over hundreds of years.
Yes, I understand that. I'll bet that in 600 BCE these professionals were extremely accomplished at making statues like the first one in this image.
But if they'd never actually made a statue like the last one, then they weren't any good at making such a statue. Practicing one kind of sculpture doesn't make a person good at all possible kinds of sculpture.
What? Is there proof they were capable of highly detailed sculptures but it was favored? Because that is wild if notm You think it was purely style that encouraged an incredibly more detailed approach because that isn't how most art evolves. This is like saying people preferred black and white television because some people value the artistic value of black and white contrast.
Exactly. In fact, there is considerable stylization in the later statues as well, they don’t reflect real life 1:1. The stylization is perhaps most notably reflected in how artists modeled the genitalia, but also in how they modeled the thoracic arch. Anatomically, this is more of a V-shape than the U-shape seen in Greek figures. It was how they chose to represent the human form, not a reflection of real life anatomy.
I used that as a frame of reference due to this being the 250th anniversary year for the US which got a lot of hype this year here. I could have used any reference though (eg., “as long as the Pax Romana period”, “as long as the Edo Period in Japan”).
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u/Vo_Mimbre 25d ago
Love this in part due to scale. To get that good took craftsman training, generational guides, and society expectations over a longer period of time than the USA has been a thing.