Woman from Willendorf

Willendorf, Austria

24,000 BCE / Paleolithic

Limestone

- Exaggerated breasts, stomach

- No face + feet = believed to be self portrait of pregnant woman (stomach) 

- Fertility symbol = breeding with other clans

- Small size = meant to be held 

- Inset stone quality used as belly button

Spotted Horses and Human Hands: Cave Painting

Pêche Merle Cave

25-24,000 BCE / Paleolithic

- Technique: charcoal chewed + blown between fingers; moss used to dobb the spots of the horses

- Making more important than final product

Hall of Bulls: Cave Painting, Lascaux Cave

15,000 BCE

600 paintings, 1500 engravings

Limestone / Dordogne, France / Paleolithic

- Use of composite pose: mix of perspectives, shifting of profile so distinct aspects are shown

- Cave = not flat surface = describes animals

- Surface encloses you = hunter's perspective

Stonehenge

Salisbury Plain, Wiltshire, England

2900-1500 BCE

Neolithic

- Megalithic architecture ("large stone") / stones brought from far away

- Complex society=large figures=hierarchy

- Shows social structure, community

- Association with death (public perfance, social cohesion)

Plan of Stonehenge and its Surrounding Settlements

- "stone henge" = circle of stone

- human compass technique used to make embankment/ditch

- stones brought in from Wales (precious/religious significance); large, heavy

- post-lintil architecture = most simple type

- mortis and tenon joint (legos)

- on the verge of the bronze age [2300-800 BCE] (weapons, tool, stone to metal)

3-D image or design whose flat background surface is carved away to a certain depth, setting off the figure

Reduction of shapes and appearance to basic yet recognizable forms that are not intended to be exact replications of nature.