What is humanism?

Humanism:
The word "humanism" has a number of meanings. And because authors and speakers often don't clarify which meaning they intend, those trying to explain humanism can easily become a source of confusion. Fortunately, each meaning of the word constitutes a different type of humanism—the different types being easily separated and defined by the use of appropriate adjectives. So it is relatively easy to summarize the varieties of humanism in this way.

                                                          

1.    Humanism is one of those philosophies for people who think for themselves.       There is no area of thought that a Humanist is afraid to challenge and explore.
2.    Humanism is a philosophy focused upon human means for comprehending reality. Humanists make no claims to possess or have access to supposed transcendent knowledge.
3.    Humanism is a philosophy of reason and science in the pursuit of knowledge. Therefore, when it comes to the question of the most valid means for acquiring knowledge of the world, Humanists reject arbitrary faith, authority, revelation, and altered states of consciousness.

Archaic Period Greek art History

The Archaic period is the name given to generalized hunter-gatherer societies in the American continents from approximately 8,000 to 2000 years BC.
Archaic lifestyles includes a dependence on elk, deer, and bison depending on where the site is, and a wide range of plant materials. In coastal areas, shellfish and marine mammals were important food sources, and fish weirs were an important technological advance.
                                          

                                                       

Archaic Advances
Important advances of the later Archaic period include earthworks at sites such as Poverty Point and Watson Brake (both in Louisiana), and the first pottery in the Americas, a fiber-tempered ware named after Stallings Island South Carolina were an important invention. During the Altithermal, Archaic peoples dug wells to stay alive in the high plains of west Texas and eastern New Mexico.
The Archaic period people are also responsible for the domestication of such important New World plants as bottle gourd, maize and cassava, the use of which plants would flourish in later periods.

                                                        

Regional Archaic
The term Archaic is quite broad, and covers an enormous area of North and South America. As a result, several regional archaic groups have been recognized.
A striking change appears in Greek art of the seventh century B.C., the beginning of the Archaic period. The abstract geometric patterning that was dominant between about 1050 and 700 B.C. is supplanted in the seventh century by a more naturalistic style reflecting significant influence from the Near East and Egypt. Trading stations in the Levant and the Nile Delta, continuing Greek colonization in the east and west, as well as contact with eastern craftsmen, notably on Crete and Cyprus, inspired Greek artists to work in techniques as diverse as gem cutting, ivory carving, jewelry making, and metalworking (1989.281.49-.50). Eastern pictorial motifs were introduced—palmette and lotus compositions, animal hunts, and such composite beasts as griffins (part bird, part lion), sphinxes (part woman, part winged lion), and sirens (part woman, part bird). Greek artists rapidly assimilated foreign styles and motifs into new portrayals of their own myths and customs, thereby forging the foundations of Archaic and Classical Greek art art.

Greek artists rapidly assimilated foreign styles and motifs into new portrayals of their own myths and customs, thereby forging the foundations of Archaic and Classical Greek art art.

Gothic Art describe late medieval art and architecture

Gothic was used as a term of ridicule by Giorgio Vasari to describe late medieval art and architecture; it was "monstrous and barbarous," invented by the Goths. The early Renaissance artist Lorenzo Ghiberti characterized the Middle Ages as a period of decline. Humanists of the Italian Renaissance, who placed Greco-Roman art on a pedestal, considered the uncouth Goths responsible not only for the downfall of Rome but also for the destruction of the classical style in art and architecture.

                                                           

Contemporary commentators in the 13th and 14th centuries considered Gothic buildings opus modernum (modern work). The great cathedrals displayed an exciting and new building and decoration style. Although Gothic Art became an internationally acclaimed style, it was, nonetheless, a regional phenomenon.
The whole design of the cathedral reflects the builders' confident use of the complete High Gothic structural vocabulary: the rectangular-bay system, the four-part rib vault, and a buttressing system that permitted almost complete dissolution of heavy masses and thick weight-bearing walls. At Amiens, the concept of a self-sustaining skeletal architecture reached full maturity.
Amiens Cathedral is one of the most impressive examples of the French Gothic obsession with constructing ever taller cathedrals with a height reaching 144 feet above the floor. The tense, strong lines of the Amiens vault ribs converge to the colonnettes and speed down the shell-like walls to the compound piers. Almost every part of the superstructure has its corresponding element below. The overall effect is of effortless strength, of a buoyant lightness one normally does not associate with stone architecture. Viewed directly from below, the choir vaults seem like a canopy, tentlike and suspended from bundled masts. The light flooding in from the clerestory makes the vaults seem even more insubstantial. The designers reduced the building's physical mass by structural ingenuity and daring, and light dematerializes further what remains.
Statues of Old Testament kings and queens decorate the jambs flanking each doorway of the Royal Portal. They are the royal ancestors of Christ and, both figuratively and literally, support the New Testament figures above the doorways. They wear 12th century clothes, and medieval observers regarded them as images of the kings and queens of France, symbols of secular as well as biblical authority.

                                                        

The figures stand rigidly upright with their elbows held close against their hips. The linear folds of their garments--inherited from the Romanesque style, along with the elongated proportions--generally echo the vertical lines of the columns behind them. Despite this architectural straitjacket, the statues display the first signs of a new naturalism. The sculptors conceived and treated the statues as three-dimensional volumes, so the figures "move" into the space of observers. The naturalism is noticeable particularly in the statues' heads, where kindly human faces replace the masklike features of most Romanesque figures.

Hellenistic Age period History and Art

The transition from the Classical to the Hellenistic period occurred during the 4th century BCE. Following the conquests of Alexander the Great (336 to 323 BCE), Greek culture spread as far as India, as revealed by the excavations of Ai-Khanoum in eastern Afghanistan, and the civilization of the Greco-Bactrians and the Indo-Greeks. Greco-Buddhist art represented a syncretism between Greek art and the visual expression of Buddhism.

                                                               

Discoveries made since the end of the 19th century surrounding the (now submerged) ancient Egyptian city of Heracleum include a 4th century BCE, unusually sensual, detailed and feministic (as opposed to deified) depiction of Isis, marking a combination of Egyptian and Hellenistic forms beginning around the time of Egypt's conquest by Alexander the Great.
Hellenistic sculpture was also marked by an increase in scale, which culminated in the Colossus of Rhodes (late 3rd century BCE), which was the same size as the Statue of Liberty. The combined effect of earthquakes and looting have destroyed this as well as other very large works of this period.

                                                                             

During this period, sculpture became more and more naturalistic. Common people, women, children, animals and domestic scenes became acceptable subjects for sculpture, which was commissioned by wealthy families for the adornment of their homes and gardens. Realistic portraits of men and women of all ages were produced, and sculptors no longer felt obliged to depict people as ideals of beauty or physical perfection. At the same time, the new Hellenistic cities springing up all over Egypt, Syria, and Anatolia required statues depicting the gods and heroes of Greece for their temples and public places. This made sculpture, like pottery, an industry, with the consequent standardisation and some lowering of quality. For these reasons many more Hellenistic statues have survived than is the case with the Classical period.

What is Caryatid and It's History

Caryatid:
A caryatid (/kæriˈætɪd/; Greek: Καρυάτις, plural: Καρυάτιδες) is a sculpted female figure serving as an architectural support taking the place of a column or a pillar supporting an entablature on her head. The Greek term karyatides literally means "maidens of Karyai", an ancient town of Peloponnese. Karyai had a famous temple dedicated to the goddess Artemis in her aspect of Artemis Karyatis: "As Karyatis she rejoiced in the dances of the nut-tree village of Karyai, those Karyatides, who in their ecstatic round-dance carried on their heads baskets of live reeds, as if they were dancing plants" (Kerenyi 1980 p 149).

                                                           

Some of the earliest known examples were found in the treasuries of Delphi, dating to about the 6th century BC, but their use as supports in the form of women can be traced back even earlier, to ritual basins, ivory mirror handles from Phoenicia, and draped figures from archaic Greece. The best-known and most-copied examples are those of the six figures of the Caryatid Porch of the Erechtheion on the Acropolis at Athens.
One of those original six figures, removed by Lord Elgin in the early 19th century, is now in the British Museum in London. The Acropolis Museum holds the other five figures, which are replaced onsite by replicas. The five originals that are in Athens are now being exhibited in the new Acropolis Museum, on a special balcony that allows visitors to view them from all sides. The pedestal for the Caryatid removed to London remains empty. As of 2011, they are being cleaned by a specially constructed laser beam, which removes accumulated soot and grime without harming the marble's patina. Each Caryatid is cleaned in place, with a television circuit relaying the spectacle live to museum visitors. Although of the same height and build, and similarly attired and coiffed, the six Caryatids are not the same: their faces, stance, draping, and hair are carved separately; the three on the left stand on their right knee, while the three on the right stand on their left knee. Their bulky, intricately arranged hairstyles serve the crucial purpose of providing static support to their necks, which would otherwise be the thinnest and structurally weakest part.

                                                        

The Romans also copied the Erechtheion caryatids, installing copies in the Forum of Augustus and the Pantheon in Rome, and at Hadrian's Villa at Tivoli. Another Roman example, found on the Via Appia, is the Townley Caryatid.

What is Mosaic and It's History

Mosaic Definition:
Mosaic is the art of creating images with an assemblage of small pieces of colored glass, stone, or other materials. It may be a technique of decorative art, an aspect of interior decoration, or of cultural and spiritual significance as in a cathedral. Small pieces, normally roughly quadratic, of stone or glass of different colors, known as tesserae, (diminutive tessellae), are used to create a pattern or picture.

                                                                               

History:
The earliest known examples of mosaics made of different materials were found at a temple building in Abra, Mesopotamia, and are dated to the second half of 3rd millennium BC. They consist of pieces of colored stones, shells and ivory. Excavations at Susa and Chogha Zanbil show evidence of the first glazed tiles, dating from around 1500 BC.[1] However, mosaic patterns were not used until the times of Sassanid Empire and Roman influence.
The history of mosaic goes back some 4,000 years or more, with the use of terracotta cones pushed point-first into a background to give decoration. By the eighth century BC, there were pebble pavements, using different coloured stones to create patterns, although these tended to be unstructured decoration. It was the Greeks, in the four centuries BC, who raised the pebble technique to an art form, with precise geometric patterns and detailed scenes of people and animals.

                                                               

By 200 BC, specially manufactured pieces ("tesserae") were being used to give extra detail and range of colour to the work. Using small tesserae, sometimes only a few millimetres in size, meant that mosaics could imitate paintings. Many of the mosaics preserved at, for example, Pompeii were the work of Greek artists.
The mosaic here shows the god Neptune with Amphitrite (on the right) and is in Herculaneum, Italy. It is a wall mosaic which uses pieces of glass to give the vivid colours and reflect light. Glass was not suitable for floor mosaics. Here, the tesserae were mainly small cubes of marble or other stone. Sometimes bits of pottery, such as terracotta, or brick were used to provide a range of colours.
Greek figural mosaics probably copied or adapted paintings, a far more prestigious artform, and the style was enthusiastically adopted by the Romans so that large floor mosaics enriched the floors of Hellenistic villas, and Roman dwellings from Britain to Dura-Europos. Most recorded names of Roman mosaic workers are Greek, suggesting they dominated high quality work across the empire; no doubt most ordinary craftsmen were slaves. Splendid mosaic floors are found in Roman villas across North Africa, in places such as Carthage, and can still be seen in the extensive collection in Bardo Museum in Tunis, Tunisia.

What is Amphora and it's History

Definition:
An amphora is a two-handled Greek vase, generally with a swollen belly, narrow neck, and a large mouth. In antiquity, an amphora was often used to transport wine or oil. Some amphorae have pointy bottoms. . One contained olive oil and oregano.
An amphora (English plural: amphorae or amphoras) is a type of container of a characteristic shape and size, descending from at least as early as the Neolithic Period. Amphorae were used in vast numbers for the transport and storage of various products, both liquid and dry, but mostly for wine. It is most often ceramic, but examples in metals and other materials have been found.

                                                                 

History:
ancient vessel form used as a storage jar and one of the principal vessel shapes in Greek pottery, a two-handled pot with a neck narrower than the body. There are two types of amphora: the neck amphora, in which the neck meets the body at a sharp angle; and the one-piece amphora, in which the neck and body form a continuous curve. The first is common from the Geometric period (c. 900 bc) to the decline of Greek pottery; the second appeared in the 7th century bc. The height of amphorae varies from large Geometric vases of 5 feet (1.5 meters) to examples of 12 inches (30 centimeters) or even smaller (the smallest are called amphoriskoi). The average normal height is about 18 inches (45 centimeters). Amphorae, which survive in great numbers, were used as storage and transport vessels for olives, cereal, oil, and wine (the wine amphora was a standard Attic measure of about 41 quarts [39 litres]) and, in outsize form, for funerals and as grave markers. Wide-mouthed, painted amphorae were used as decanters and were given as prizes