Art Made The World

Intro How Art Made The World is a five part video series put out by PBS that walks the viewer through different aspects of art and how they play a role in today’s world. Dr. Nigel Spivey is the host for all the videos and does a wonderful job keeping you intrigued with the videos. I have done a summery on four out of the five videos and have tried to link artwork from our textbook Gardner’s Art Through the Ages Vol 1 fourteenth edition into the main points of the videos.

More Human than Human In this first video of the five part series to How Art Made The World, it starts you off wondering why we as humans today view the human body the way we do. We seem to have an act of viewing it a certain way and most of the time we view it in such an

Dr. Spivey starts out talking about the finding of the Altamira cave painting in Spain. The gentleman’s daughter, Maria, turned out to be the one who shows the cave paintings to her father, Sautuola. Sadly the video says that Sautuola ended up dying before anyone ever believed him that the cave paintings were real. Dr. Nigel Spivey goes on to explain how it seems like our ancestors were obsessed with painting animals, from bison, to horses, to reindeer. It makes one wonder why would our ancestors paint these animals in the dark depths of caves. A man, David Lewis Williams, seems to have the answer from studying the San rock art. He suggests that these people were painting the images that they saw when they went into trances. These trances, which are still a common part of the San people’s religion, provide them with visions. David Lewis Williams believes that they people painting in the caves were not painting the animals they saw around them, but the visions that they were experiencing. Dr. Spivey does a light experiment with these googles that have LED lights in them. He put them on, with his eyes closed, and the other man had a computer that would change the light that caused the flickers. Dr. Spivey says that he could see imagines of shapes and colors on the backs of his eye lids. The man controlling the computer informs us that

How politicians have used and still use art to shape the way we see them and see what they want us to see. These politicians have shown their power in their monuments and artwork. Such as the man, who Dr. Spivey said they thought inspired those to build Stonehenge, had power from the gold he was buried with. The film said that this man wanted to show his power with a massive monument, such as Stonehenge, and only someone with great power could have brought together the people to build such a place. For thousands of years the film says that politicians have used art and their faces to entice people to vote for them or follow their rule without starting a war. The King Darius wanted to keep peace over the large number of people he had taken control of. He wanted the people to know that he did not want to be cruel but a fair king. Darius instilled this by using art to show peace for all the people since most couldn’t read. Just like Darius before him, Alexander the Great used art to instill trust and win the hearts of his people. Alexander the Great used his face on busts to show that he was a kind man and a great ruler. Augustus used the same technic in Rome to gain trust from his people, but unlike Alexander the Great, Augustus was a cruel ruler. He did not use his art to be honest and gain trust, he used it to deceive the people. We still today have