This document summarizes key differences between Egyptian and Islamic architecture and art. It notes that unlike Egyptians, Muslims did not create statues or idols in their mosques due to Islamic doctrine prohibiting images of animate beings. Instead, Islamic architecture used geometry and plants in designs like the Egyptian pyramids. Mosques featured grand designs incorporating textiles, brick, ceramics and calligraphy. A popular example is the Cordoba mosque in Spain, which utilized Roman and Byzantine architectural techniques like arches and domes. Overall, Islamic art and architecture focused more on imagination than depicting history visually like Egyptian art.

1. 100 word response to the following. Must cite properly in MLA.
Unlike the Egyptian culture that created statues of themselves
as gods and pharaohs. Muslims did not worship false idols or
statues so no pictures or statues or gods are present in their
mosques. According to Geitlein (2010), “The Qur’an contains a
stern warning against the worship of idols, and in time this led
to a doctrine forbidding images of animate beings in religious
contexts” (p. 410). Instead the Muslims of the Islam culture
used geometry and plants to design buildings, like the Egyptian
pyramids, Muslims built beautiful mosques with grand designs.
Islam became a world religion, like Christians, they needed a
place of worship and prayer. They also used fine textiles, sun
dried brick, and ceramics to create their designs. An example
would be the popular Cordoba mosque of Spain. A lot of
mosques use the arch and dome technique like that of the
Romans and Byzantine architecture. Arabic script also became
popular and appeared inside the mosque temples. Islam used
calligraphy as art and to illustrate writing. Egyptians were also
big on scripting but theirs was called hieroglyphics, which not
only had letters, but pictures were a big part of their writing
system as well. The Egyptians didn’t technically worship false
idols at all times, at some times they had statues created of
themselves but there wasn’t really a religion in Egypt until the
one god religion began there. Egypt gave you a visual of the life
and world of Egypt, Islam leaves it more up to the imagination
with no pictures of what any of the past history looked like.
References
Getlein, Mark. Living With Art. 9th ed. New York: McGraw-
Hill, 2010. Print.
100 word response to the following. Must cite properly in
MLA:
Realism was a mid to late 19th century movement in which

2. artist should represent the world at it is regardless of artistic
and social understandings. Realist were seeking to free art from
social regulation and depicting how society shapes the lives of
people (Little, page 80).
In his Fur Traders Descending the Missouri, American-born
George Caleb Bingham a self taught artist and the first major
painter to live and work west of the Mississippi River illustrates
the realism of life for a French trapper and his son on the
Missouri River hunting from a dugout canoe. The painting is
simple to understand, it represents the calmness of a time to me
when life was simple.
Abstract Expressionism was a movement that got its start
following World War TWO. Developed in New York and often
referred to as the New York School or Action Painting it is
characterized to depict universal emotions. Additionally this
was the first American movement to gain international
recognition (Little, page 122).
Jackson Pollock’s perfected Abstract Expressionism through his
“drip technique”, a technique in which you apply paint to a
canvas on the floor indirectly from a brush. Pollock the
youngest of five boys in a family that moved around a lot and
created an unstable upbringing that most likely led to signs of
alcoholism in his mid-teens. This type of art appears to be done
through anger and that is what I see when viewing Pollock’s
Number 1.
I chose the two works of art because the two represent the
extremes in life to me, the calm peacefulness of nature where
everything has a place an purpose to the abstract where the
craziness of life intersects, nothing fits together but it all fits
together.
Little, Stephen. -isms, Understanding Art. New York: Universe
Pub, 2005. Print.