Slides accompanying Dick Nelson's art history seminar lecture on March 12, 2009.

1. Nature and Man In Art
• BELIEFS shape art.
&
• The GIVENS shape art.

2. Beliefs?
What does the painting tell us?
Givens?

4. EGYPTIAN ART
The Significance Of Reality
through the Law Of Frontality.

6. Post and Lintel Architecture

7. Minoan Palace of Knossos
Crete

9. Minoan Fresco: Knossos

10. Giant Pottery: Knossos

11. Nature Inspired

12. Mycenaean Gold Celature: The Vaphio Cup

13. Mycenaean Celature
Agamemnon

14. Lion Gate: Mycenae

15. Greek Geometric

16. Greek Archaic Kouros Figures

17. What’s the Given
How would you
paint black figures
on this empty surface?

19. Archaic Classic & Hellenistic

21. Greek Classic
Idealized perfection

22. Greek Architecture: Man imposes his will on nature

24. Classic: Idealized - Poetic - Reason Hellenistic: Reality - Prose
Passion

25. Man as he is. Man as he would like to be.

26. Classic Greek
The IDEAL.
From vertical inhibition to
vertical/horizotal breakout.
Man
The measure of all things!
Archaic Greek Hellenistic Greek
The Arrested Walk The Reality.

27. Beliefs?
Givens?

28. What have we learned?
This portrait is…
l. Paleolithic 2. Egyptian
3. Minoan. 4. Greek Classic
4. Greek Hellenistic.
Its interpretation favors…
1. The significance of reality.
2. The appearance of reality.
3. Classicism.
4. Poetic stylization.
The work suggests a society in
which… 1. Nature dominates.
2. Man dominates.