While I have taken an AP Art History class previously, there
were in fact some parts of this course that introduced things either completely
new to me, or more in depth than I had before learned. One such instance
occurred in the section about early Christian and Byzantine art leading into
medieval art and architecture. While this period was certainly covered in my AP
class, there wasn’t nearly as much depth to it, and because of my previous
teacher’s fondness for architecture, that was the greater emphasis. Granted, I
also particularly like good architecture, but I found this time around, that
this class expounded much more on how Greek and Roman art sort-of transformed
into, and still had an effect on, what would become medieval art. One that I
had not really paid attention to before. In all, focusing more on its origins
and relationship to past art, I have begun to see how medieval art is not only
more than just architecture, but also an evolution of its own style far more
related to the times and history than I had thought.
It was interesting beginning with the catacomb paintings,
that clearly had a large Roman influence simply because of the times in which
the artists were living, and then moving to wall paintings in larger and more
public places of worship once Christianity became a force to be reckoned with,
and accepted. After that, mosaics and smaller panel paintings joined the mix along
with illustrated manuscripts and sculpture sculpted into architecture. When we
looked at these in class, their influences and visual style were expanded upon
and their ties to Roman and Greek artistry pointed out as well, making me
realize that what had once seemed such a leap backwards in skill around this
time period, was more of a difference in world-view and artistic value at the
time. So while the training of medieval artists may have been less based on the
idea of photo-realism, or even naturalism, they were not necessarily ignoring
what came before them, nor were they strictly “unskilled”.
Along with the discussion on influences, the piece we
watched about how cultures tended to produce art emphasizing and exaggerating their
most important cultural aspects and ideals related even more to me the
reasoning behind the change in focus and seeming skill after the fall of Rome,
and through the Middle Ages. This helped explain to me that what I had
generally assumed before, that there was a loss of knowledge on technique and skill,
was in fact more of a shift in what society preferred the artists to focus on
and emphasize.
