In Art the Material Used by an Artist to Create

Affiliate 3: Significance of Materials Used in Fine art

Rita Tekippe and Pamela J. Sachant

3.ane LEARNING OUTCOMES

Afterwards completing this chapter, you should be able to:

• Describe the differences amongst valuation of art materials, particularly with regard to intrinsic qualities of raw cloth versus produced objects

• Discuss the differences between monetary and cultural values for works of art

• Discuss the idea of "borrowed" significance that comes with the re-use of components from previous artworks

• Describe the significance of value added to objects past complex creative processes or by changing tastes in different eras

3.2 INTRODUCTION

Amidst the aspects of an artwork that evoke response, aid understanding, and contribute meaning volition be the cloth(s) used in its creation. These materials might get in more or less of import, more or less valuable, or might bring a diverseness of associations that are not inherent in the essential form. For case, yous might recognize a vase not merely every bit a vase, but equally a Louis Comfort Tiffany (1848-1933, USA) Favrile glass vase. (Figure 3.1) Knowing the creator, textile, and special processes involved in the artwork's creation would add together to and might change your perception and appreciation in several important respects. For instance, you could link it to an important creative person, an innovative creative technique, a pregnant period in American décor and manufacturing and marketing, a valuation based on its collectability, and numerous other interesting details virtually its creation and use.

Figure 3.1 | Bowl

Artist: Louis Condolement Tiffany

Source: Met Museum

License: Public Domain

The most credible choices in this regard are for three-dimensional forms such as sculpture and compages, where it is more likely that plush and precious materials such as golden, silvery, gems, marble, or statuary are used in its creation. The distinction among material choices for drawing and paintings will also have certain furnishings for their meanings. For example, if a painter applied gold leaf , 22K gold pounded into extremely thin sheets, to a painting's surface, the monetary and cultural value of the work increases. (Figure 3.2) The monetary value refers to the amount a buyer is willing to pay, which in this instance includes the cost of the materials the creative person factors into the toll of the artwork. The cultural value is the perceived quality or merit of the work: what it is worth according to that civilisation's standards of artistic importance or excellence. If a work of fine art has high budgetary or cultural value, the possessor's reputation and condition are, in plow, elevated.

Figure three.2 | Annunciation to the Shepherds , illumination from the Book of Pericopes (Lectionary) of Henry Ii, fol. 8v, 1002-1012 CE.

Source: Artstor.org

License: Public Domain

Without considering each and every possibility in this regard, we should look at a few pointed examples that will assistance u.s.a. know what to consider when we examine artworks with a view to the choices of materials that the artist (or patron) must accept made. The techniques for many of these is discussed in greater item in other parts of the text, and so our primary focus here volition be on the intrinsic materials, although the ways they are worked, used, and combined are inextricably significant in some of these cases.

3.3 UTILITY AND VALUE OF MATERIALS

The primeval drawings, paintings, vessels, and sculptures were made with whatever the artists could find and turn to their use for creating images and objects; such readily-available material includes mud, dirt, twigs, straw, minerals, and plants that they could use straight or with slight alteration, such equally grinding and mixing minerals with water to apply to cave walls. (Figure 3.iii) Experimentation was surely part of the procedure and, just as surely, much of information technology is lost to us now, although we accept some examples of works, materials, and tools to give us insight into the artistic processes and cloth choices.

Figure 3.3 | Reproduction of a bison of the cave of Altamira

Author: User "Rameessos"

Source: Wikimedia Commons

License: Public Domain

For example, in works such as this earthenware , or baked clay, vessel, the creative person had explored sufficiently to observe that mixing a sure type of earth in certain proportions with water would yield a flexible substance. The resulting clay could be handbuilt , by and large by wrapping and smoothing coils, into a vessel shaped with a conical lesser that would sit down nicely in a coal fire for heating its contents. (Effigy 3.4) A twig or cord might be used to incise marks in the surface, non only to decorate it, but too to make it easier to agree onto than if it were completely smooth. Dating to c. iii,500 BCE, pots such as this from the late Neolithic era in Korea are known equally Jeulmun pottery, meaning "comb-patterned." The clay could be found in unlike colors, textures, density, potential for adherence, etc. It could exist manipulated by mitt to make containers to store, transport, cook, or serve all sorts of goods.

Effigy three.4 | Korean neolithic pot, found in Busan

Author: User "Good friend100"

Source: Wikimedia Commons

License: Public Domain

The invention of the potter's bicycle immune artists to "throw" the clay on a rotating platform the creative person operated by paw or powered with a kicking motion. When and where the potter's cycle first appeared is much debated, just it was widely used in Mesopotamia, Egypt, and Southeast Asia before 3,000 BCE. Using a potter's wheel allowed the artist to turn vessels with thinner walls, a greater variety of and more uniform shapes and sizes, and a larger array of painted and incised decorative elements for additional aesthetic appeal. They could, as well, brand molds for series production of commonly used types of pots.

By the time of the Ming Dynasty in China (1368-1644), vases such as this from the Xuande catamenia (1426-1435) painted in royal (cobalt) bluish and white display both the technical innovations and the remarkable degree of refinement accomplished. (Effigy iii.5) The development of such mineral resources as kaolin and petuntse allowed ceramicists to create porcelain, one of the virtually refined and hardest types of pottery, which became known as "china" because of the origins of the materials and processes; chinaware was presently emulated the world over for its dazzler and utility equally tableware and décor. Traders from Portugal returned from Red china with chinaware (porcelain vessels) in the sixteenth century. The semi-translucent cloth, elegant shapes, and drinking glass-like, intricately decorated surfaces of the pots were dissimilar anything produced in Europe at that fourth dimension. The demand for such wares quickly spread throughout Europe, and ceramicists on that continent spent the side by side two centuries trying to unlock the clandestine of how to create such smooth, white, and difficult pottery. Ehrenfried Walther von Tschirnhaus and Johann Friedrich Böttger, both employed for that purpose past Augustus II the Strong, Elector of Saxony (today Germany) and King of Poland (r. 1694-1733), are credited with producing the first European porcelain in 1708. It would get known as Meissen ware considering information technology was produced at the mill prepare in the town by Augustus 2 for that purpose to safeguard the formula and maintain his sectional command over the creation and sale of European porcelain. (Figure three.6)

Figure 3.5 | A Ming dynasty Xuande marking and period (1426-1435) imperial bluish and white vase

Writer: User "Meliere"

Source: Wikimedia Eatables

License: CC By-SA 4.0

Figure 3.half-dozen | Teapot

Creative person: Königliche Porzellan Manufaktur

Author: Walters Art Museum

Source: Wikimedia Commons

License: CC By-SA 3.0

The monopoly held by Augustus 2 was short-lived, however, equally the cloak-and-dagger was sold and a competing manufactory opened in Vienna, Austria, by 1717. From at that place, variations of the formula and the production of porcelain spread throughout Europe as demand increased from the privilege of royalty, to the rich and titled, and eventually to all who could afford the status-giving ware. For example, this nineteenth-century commemorative pitcher fabricated by the American Porcelain Manufacturing Company would have been presented to peculiarly mark an occasion. (Figure iii.7) Although information technology is a distant relative of Chinese purple porcelain ware and the royal courts of Europe, the techniques and materials used in its creation were all the same associated with tradition, wealth, and high social continuing, elevating the cultural value of this mass-produced vessel to the level of a keepsake or fifty-fifty a family heirloom. Objects such equally this are valued beyond their monetary worth or utilitarian purposes, both due to the tactile and artful qualities that come from the physical substance and techniques used and to historical and social associations they agree.

Figure 3.7 | Pitcher

Artist: American Porcelain Manufacturing Visitor

Source: Met Museum

License: OASC

Similarly, drawing and painting, apparently first confined to the rock walls of nature, were areas of exploration for artists who subsequently applied color to the built walls of architecture, and then to portable objects of various types. Ceramic ware was decorated with images from nature, pictorial and narrative motifs, and messages of myth, ability, and even everyday life. The same is true of tomb walls of Arab republic of egypt (Figure 3.eight), palace walls in aboriginal Iraq, ( Ashurnasirpal II with Attendants and Soldier ) and Greek vessels used for practical or ritual purposes (Figure 3.9).

Figure three.viii | Egyptian tomb wall painting

Author: British Library

Source: Wikimedia Commons

License: CC0 1.0

Figure iii.9 | Terracotta krater

Source: Met Museum

License: OASC

Eventually such vessels, also as books and other objects, bore written information and pictorial explications of textual content: illustrations. Early on textual works were often inscribed on stone tablets to ensure their durability or on relatively fragile materials like papyrus that required laborious preparation to make information technology suitable for conveying data. In either instance, the materials used added to the work's significance. By the time of the development of the codex (probably in the Roman era), or manuscript with bound pages, the virtually mutual course of modern physical books, the pick material was beast skin, every bit seen in manuscripts throughout Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages, roughly the beginning of the quaternary to the fifteenth centuries, in the Western and the Middle Eastern regions of the world. (Figures 3.10 and three.11) Sheepskin, or parchment, the most commonly used support for written works, was obtained by laborious preparation of the pelts, through scraping and buffing the surface to arrive suitable for utilise by scribes and illustrators who added the words and pictures. The most refined book arts were ofttimes presented on vellum , or calfskin, prized for its smoother and finer surface. When used for especially of import works or those made for majestic purposes, it was often dyed royal or dark blue, with script applied in gilt or silver ink and illustrations that included areas of gold or silver. (run into Figure 3.ii) These lustrous images were known as illuminations , that is, given calorie-free. The viewer would at once recognize the special and distinctive treatment unsaid past the use of such precious materials and know that the patron had paid well for an elegant and important book.

Figure 3.10 | Historiated Letter L, with illustration of the Tree of Jesse, Capuchin's Bible , f. 7v, c. 1180. BNF

Writer: User "Soefrm"

Source: Wikimedia Commons

License: Public Domain

Figure iii.xi | Kitab al-Bulhan: Centre Eastern Business firm and Lifting Auto , Arab scientific manuscript leafage. one. 14th century

Writer: User "Peacay"

Source: Wikimedia Commons

License: Public Domain

3.4 PRECIOUS MATERIALS, SPOLIA, AND BORROWED Celebrity

Objects made for sacred or royal use were often wrought of such lavish and treasured components as vellum, silk, linen, wool, ivory, gold, silver, gems, and rare stones and minerals. Often crafted for further refinement, such works testify their precious properties to reward. In aboriginal Rome/Byzantium, there were quarries for porphyry, a rich purple marble stone (the basis for the association of the colour royal with royalty). Because it was restricted to royal purposes, its very appearance carried connotations of the imperial significance of any work fabricated from it. It was often used for columns and other architectural components that thereby accentuated important structures or parts of them. Once the imperially controlled mines were abased in the fifth century CE, new items could not be made of porphyry, then older monuments were sometimes pillaged and re-used, with the majestic significance transferred to the plunderers, implying not only the replacement of the onetime order by the new, only also the superiority of the conquerors.

Porphyry burial containers were especially prized in antiquity and the Center Ages. Constantina was the eldest daughter of Emperor Constantine the Keen (r. 306-337 CE), the Roman ruler who in 313 CE decreed early Christians could practice their faith without persecution and confiscated land should be returned to the Church. Although Constantine considered himself a Christian, he did not abandon the Roman gods and religious rituals. For case, in 321 CE he stated that Christians and pagans alike should observe the mean solar day of the sunday (later named Sun); the cult of the dominicus god had been popularly observed in Roman culture for centuries, and associations of the sun as the source of calorie-free, warmth, and life had been adopted by those of the Christian religion. Constantine, according to legend, was baptized a Christian on his deathbed in 337 CE.

When his girl Constantina died in 354 CE, she was entombed in a porphyry sarcophagus , or stone bury, that was richly carved with motifs from both the pagan Roman and Christian faiths. (Figure iii.12) There are small, winged cupids gathering grapes among garlands of grape vines with peacocks and a ram below on the front end and back of the coffin, and cupids treading on grapes on both ends. In Roman mythology, such scenes were associated with Bacchus (known to the Greeks as Dionysus), the god of the wine harvest and wine making who equally a infant was reborn subsequently having been slaughtered past the Titans. Interpreted as Christian motifs, the cupids, who became known as putti or small, winged angels, are seen equally preparing the grapes for the Eucharist , the sacrament commemorating the Last Supper by consecration of the bread and wine as the Body and Blood of Jesus Christ. Such re-imaging and re-purposing of motifs and their meanings were frequently seen at this time of transition from paganism to Christianity; farther, having been adopted by Constantine and his family, they were associated with imperial ability and carried connotations of the Christian conquest of paganism.

Figure three.12 | Sarcophagus of Constantina

Author: User "Jean-Pol GRANDMONT"

Source: Wikimedia Commons

License: CC By-SA iii.0

Later, in the eighth and ninth centuries CE, Charlemagne (r. 768-814 CE) used pillaged porphyry columns inside arches on the upper level of his purple chapel, a building intended for his own entombment. (Figure three.13) The Palatine Chapel (c. 796-798 CE, consecrated 805 CE) was office of the palace circuitous Charlemagne had built at Aachen, in what is now Germany. The interior of the chapel is an octagon topped by a dome supported by heavy piers with arches on the 2d level, where the imperial throne is located, with a view to the high altar (the table or other surface where religious rituals are carried out) located beyond the church building on the first floor below. (Figure three.fourteen) The pattern of the edifice is modeled on mausolea , or buildings containing tombs, and churches from the tardily Roman, early Christian, and early Byzantine periods (fourth-7th centuries), such as San Vitale (526-647 CE) in Ravenna, Italy. (Figure 3.15) Charlemagne, who was not merely King of the Franks and King of the Lombards just was as well crowned as the first Holy Roman Emperor in 800 CE, used that design and the plundered columns to signify the revival and replacement of the former Roman Empire with his own reign every bit a Christian world ruler.

Figure iii.thirteen | Aachen, Palace Chapel of Charlemagne. c. 800

Writer: User "Velvet"

Source: Wikimedia Commons

License: CC Past-SA 3.0

Figure 3.14 | Cross-sections of the Palace Chapel of Aachen

Author: User "Sir Gawain"

Source: Wikimedia Commons

License: Public Domain

Figure iii.15 | San Vitale, Ravenna

Author: User "Väsk"

Source: Wikimedia Commons

License: Public Domain

Among others, Holy Roman Emperor Henry (or Heinrich) Two (r. 973-1024) similarly borrowed and supplanted Charlemagne's glory by adopting his palace complex at Aachen and calculation to its structure and furnishings with his ain statements of imperial power. Henry Ii deputed a lavish pulpit for the chapel that was completed in 1014. (Figure 3.xvi) The semi-round pulpit has a smaller semi-circle to either side, a shape known as a trefoil . The center is made up of 9 rectangular panels covered with chased aureate copper that has been formed by hammering into low relief images of the Four Evangelists. The panels are adorned with gemstones and embellished with enamel , powdered glass fused to the surface by oestrus, and grid , beads or threads of gilded or silver arranged in designs on a metal surface. The three ivory panels on each of the smaller semi-circles draw pagan mythological figures; the panels were made in Egypt in the sixth century CE. Re-used parts such equally the porphyry columns, gemstones, and ivory panels are known equally spolia , remnants that had been taken from older art and architecture and incorporated into new art objects and places with the implications of conquest, superiority, and heritage for the new patrons.

Figure 3.16 | Ambon (11thcentury) of Henry Ii, Holy Roman Emperor. Aachen Cathedral, Germany.

Author: User "HOWI"

Source: Wikimedia Commons

License: CC Past-SA three.0

Some other, later on Holy Roman Emperor, Frederick I (r. 11551190), and his wife, Beatrice, commissioned a chandelier to hang below the octagonal dome in the chapel. (Figure 3.17) This was called the Barbarossa chandelier, reflecting the emperor's nickname after his ruby beard; it was installed between 1165 and 1170 in honor of the Virgin Mary and as a tribute to Charlemagne. The chandelier'southward forty-eight candles bandage a tremendous spread of light in an age when artificial illumination was costly, emphasizing its association with earthly wealth and heavenly light.

Effigy 3.17 | The Barbarossa chandelier

Author: User "Lokilech"

Source: Wikimedia Commons

License: CC By-SA three.0

Every bit a continuation of the piece of work undertaken by his gramps Frederick I, which likewise included exhuming Charlemagne's bones, Frederick II (r. 1220-1250), following the plans Barbarossa had made, completed the creation of a lavish, new jeweled and gilt shrine for the remains of Charlemagne, seeking to drag him to the rank of sainthood. These statements in rich cloth forms, imply the surpassing glory of their majestic predecessor, shared by those who followed in his lineage. Moreover, the associations of royalty and honor for earthly rulers was ofttimes intertwined in very pointed ways to artwork associated with the Christian God and saints. Notable in this regard is the shrine for Charlemagne—clearly a statement of imperial ability—made of rich materials that reflect popular Christian notions of the Heavenly Jerusalem, where these saintly rulers were thought to human activity every bit intercessors for the believer. (Figures 3.18 and 3.19) Often such imperial works actually featured objects or meaning decorative details from royal Roman works, such as the antique cameo of the Roman Emperor Augustus that was practical to the Cross of the Emperor Lothair 2 . (Figures 3.xx and 3.21) The aureate cross, dated to c. 1000, is covered with 102 gemstones and 30-two pearls and has a rock crystal seal nearly its base begetting a portrait of Lothair 2 (r. 835-869). Including the portraits of earlier emperors farther emphasized the wealth and power of the ruler who had it fabricated, believed to be Otto Iii (r. 983-1002). In improver, gemstones on such devotional works were selected for their qualities associated with healing, skilful fortune, the ability to ward off evil, and their mystical translucence, that fostered spiritual illumination.

Figure 3.18 | Shrine of Charlemagne, Interior of palatine chapel in Aachen Cathedral, Germany.

Author: User "ACBahn"

Source: Wikimedia Commons

License: CC BY-SA 3.0

Figure 3.19 | Shrine of Charlemagne

Writer: User "HOWI"

Source: Wikimedia Commons

License: CC Past-SA three.0

Effigy 3.xx | Cantankerous of Lothair

Author: CEphoto, Uwe Aranas

Source: Wikimedia Commons

License: CC BY-SA 3.0

Effigy 3.21 | Augustus cameo

Author: User "Absalypson2"

Source: Wikimedia Commons

License: CC By-SA 3.0

3.v LIQUIDATION OF TREASURES

Works such as these oftentimes implied the storing of riches as heavenly treasure and likewise represented a means of storing material wealth that could exist used for mundane purposes in time of need. We take records of a number of extravagant shrines and liturgical (relating to worship) effects that have not survived because they were taken apart and sold to feed a famine-stricken community or to provide for a new edifice project or an updated expression of devotion. Such works as the sumptuous Screen of Charlemagne (Figure 3.22) and the enormous Stavelot Altarpiece (Figure 3.23) are known to u.s.a. merely from drawings and small-scale fragments that remain from the original objects. The disappearances of such works indicate that their rich material components, while once intrinsic to their not bad spiritual implications, at some point came to be seen as an important source of wealth that could be put to other apply.

Figure 3.22 | Screen of Charlemagne

Artist: Piersac

Source: www.medart.pitt.edu

License: Public Domain

Figure iii.23 | The mid-12th-century silver chantry piece surrounding the shrine of Saint Remaclus

Author: User "Kleon3"

Source: Wikimedia Commons

License: Public Domain

3.half-dozen WOOD, INLAY, AND LACQUER

Sculptures, objects, and architectural components of woods were likewise fashioned with a view to their monetary and cultural value. Some varieties of wood are more rare, others accept qualities that make them easier to piece of work in certain types of process, and at that place have been waves of "fashion" in woods choices at many eras. For example, lindenwood and limewood are associated with the Centre Ages, mahogany with eighteenth-century England and Scotland, oak with the Arts and Crafts work of the mid-nineteenth to early twentieth centuries, and delicately lacquered wooden goods with Yuan Dynasty Red china.

Wooden sculpture was a far more predominant fine art form than painting in northern Europe during the Romanesque (c. one thousand-1200) and Gothic periods (c. 1200-1500) in that region. The material favored was lindenwood or limewood due to the fineness of the wood's grain, which allowed the sculptor to carve intricate detail. More often than not, the sculpture was so polychromed , or painted, to increase the lifelike quality of the figure. Suggesting that spark of life was important in works such every bit The Throne of Wisdom because Mary, the compassionate and merciful Female parent of God and Queen of Sky, was believed to have the power to intercede with her Son, the babe Christ, on behalf of the faithful. (Figure 3.24)

Figure three.24 | Throne of Wisdom

Author: User "Okapi07"

Source: Wikimedia Commons

License: CC BY-SA 3.0

Mahogany was discovered as a marketable wood past European explorers and traders in the Caribbean islands, Key America, and South America past the seventeenth century. The naturally ruddy-chocolate-brown wood was prized for its dazzler and strength and, throughout the 1700s, was frequently used in England and Scotland to create fine piece of furniture for the market in that location and in the American colonies. A tabular array such equally this was a status symbol indicating the owner's wealth and taste, which was further enhanced by its utilise: this was not a utilitarian piece but a brandish tabular array for chinaware. (Figure 3.25)

Effigy 3.25 | China table

Source: Met Museum

License: OASC

The Arts and Crafts move began in England in the heart of the nineteenth century, simply apace spread throughout Europe and to the The states. In a time of growing industrialization, with an ever greater number of people moving to urban areas, working in factories, and consuming motorcar-fabricated goods, some felt the need to reclaim the handmade. With romantic associations of simpler times, greater authenticity, and individual labor, furniture and decorative objects fabricated equally part of the Arts and crafts movement were prized for their workmanship, design based on forms from nature, and respect for the natural materials used. For example, this cabinet is thought to have been fabricated by Daniel Pabst (1826-1910, Germany, lived United States), one of the leading furniture makers of his day. It features elaborately carved surfaces and inlay , where one cloth is cut and fit into another in complex patterns. (Figures 3.26 and 3.27) Although the types of wood used—walnut, maple, and white pino—are not exotic or rare, the mastery with which they have been painstakingly cutting and applied conveys a sense of preciousness. Inlay techniques were often used to provide visual contrast and to emphasize both the distinctive and diverse qualities among the materials brought together and the refined craftsmanship involved. A piece of furniture made with such skill was prized for its singularity and for the intricacy of the arts and crafts involved in its creation.

Effigy 3.26 | Cabinet

Creative person: Daniel Pabst

Source: Met Museum

License: OASC

Figure three.27 | Detail of Cabinet

Artist: Daniel Pabst

Source: Met Museum

License: OASC

Lacquer has been used in fine art throughout Asia since Neolithic times, but carved lacquer is created in Cathay only. Lacquer is resin from trees establish in continental Asia that hardens to a natural plastic when exposed to the air; it is resistant to water and durable. The base of a lacquered object is wood, to which the liquid resin is applied in up to 200 layers. This tray was made in the fourteenth century, during the Yuan Dynasty, when lacquer was most oft tinted ruby-red past adding cinnabar, powdered mercury sulfide. (Figure 3.28) Once hardened, the lacquer was carved away to create detailed scenes of court life, such as we see here, floral motifs, nature scenes, dragons or abstracted patterns. While the resin itself is of piffling monetary value, the laborious procedure and loftier level of skill required for such delicate carving meant the completed objects had, and however take, significant cultural value.

Figure iii.28 | Tray with women and boys on a garden terrace

Source: Met Museum

License: OASC

Some of the materials prized by artists and patrons become more valuable because of these artistic uses; others are valuable for their intrinsic worth equally raw substance. From the earliest times, metals such as gold, silver, fe, and copper were used and traded in their natural states, as they came from the earth. They were mixed with other materials to create alloys, used for minting coins and forming sculptural objects. Among the most prominent metallic materials first used for art were iron and bronze; forging and casting them were among the primeval complex artistic processes devised. Brass (copper alloyed with tin can, lead, and/or other metals) and the harder, more durable bronze accept been widely used for one thousand public monuments that take fine detail, weather well, and tin can exist hollow cast to reduce the amount of metal used. (Figures 3.29 and three.30). Because forging and casting are circuitous and highly skilled processes, a viewer should know that an object fabricated of this material was a significant statement for the artist or patron to make, 1 involving considerable planning and staging to achieve the work.

Figure 3.29 | Statuary statue of Buddha

Author: User "Dirk Beyer"

Source: Wikimedia Commons

License: CC Past-SA 3.0

Effigy 3.30 | The Minute Homo

Creative person: Daniel Chester French

Writer: User "Flying Jazz"

Source: Wikimedia Commons

License: Public Domain

three.eight RARE MATERIALS AND PROHIBITED USES

The economical and ecological factors involved in some materials have sometimes moved consideration of their utilize far across the give-and-take of creative production. An instance is work in ivory, especially that obtained from elephants, although it was as well taken to employ for sculpture from their kin, the extinct mammoth, equally well every bit from walruses and other mammals. Its rarity and workability led to its valuation for finely carved works, often for aristocratic patrons and very special purposes, such as the devotional objects ( The Virgin and Child , Unknown ) and personal toilet articles ( Attack on the Castle of Dear , Unknown ) that were pop amongst the court ladies of the late Middle Ages. Its exploitation has led to scarcity and, ultimately, at present threatens the very existence of elephants, since they have been savagely hunted and their herds decimated in the interest of profit. Consequently, both the sale and buy of ivory objects, even those considered antiques and historical treasures, are now widely boycotted in the interest of preservation of the species.

3.9 MATERIAL CONNOTATIONS OF Form OR STATION

Other more mundane materials and appropriated components might also take potent political connotations that intensify the meaning of the artwork. Korean artist Do Ho Su chose and assembled military dog tags to create a larger-than-life figural impression of an imperialistic robe with a hollow core. Information technology carries connotations of the political strength of his native land being built upon such things every bit the dehumanizing mandatory military service he had performed, and the relationships between individuals and the collectives they grade. ( Some/One , Do Ho Suh ; Some/One detail, Do Ho Suh )

3.ten BEFORE You MOVE ON

Cardinal Concepts

One of the basic artistic choices for any creation is the material from which it volition be made and so should exist an area for careful attention in our assay of any artwork. Deliberate choices can also involve the pointed spurning of rich resources in favor of humbler stuff, as in the robe created by Practise Ho Su, and less refined surfaces, such every bit cardboard or burlap for paintings; things that are simply more recently available than those traditionally used, like plastics for sculpture, titanium for architecture; and the technologically evolved media that move into the realms of the physically immaterial. Choices and implications have expanded exponentially, and our examination of them should exist broad, deep, and conscientious.

Test Yourself

1. Discuss the differences between materials that are intrinsically precious, and those that are made more than valuable by the processes or creative ideas in works of art, past considering specific examples.

2. Consider the use of spolia in at least iii specific examples and discuss how they changed the significance of the fine art work to which they were applied.

3. Review and describe a specific process for creating artwork that involved procedures for combining diverse materials into the production.

4. Because such common materials every bit dirt or woods, hash out the ways in which an creative person might apply information technology for making an object of much greater value than the inherent worth, and what factors, other than the creation process, might lead people to value it highly.

iii.11 KEY TERMS

Codex: the volume form in which pages (or leaves) of material such equally parchment, vellum, or newspaper, are gathered into bundles and bound together—initially by sewing, at present usually by glueing— and then provided with a cover to protect the sheets. Its ancestor was the ringlet, in which the sheets were joined into a long continuous roll that was opened out from ane side, rolled upward at the other, for viewing the contents.

Cultural value : the perceived quality or merit of the piece of work: what it is worth according to that culture's standards of artistic importance or excellence.

Earthenware , or objects made from clay: such as vessels that are formed for specific uses and hardened either past drying in the air or past baking in high heat. Often, earthenware goods are distinguished from more than refined dirt-based objects that are creating with additional processing of the cloth or different/more than complex firing methods. Encounter porcelain

Gilded leafage : 22K gold pounded into extremely thin sheets, to be applied selectively to areas of 2-d or 3-d objects.

Handbuilt: clay objects that are shaped by hand, often by wrapping and smoothing coils of clay into the desired course. These are distinguished from wheel-thrown or mold-fabricated goods .

Illumination : literally, given low-cal, specifically through the use of golden or silver for letting of illustrative touches in a manuscript. The term is also sometime used to describe manuscripts that have images added to them, as opposed to simply including lettered text

Manuscript : literally, hand-written presentation of script and/or images. The course was supplanted by books produced with a printing press, although the term is nonetheless used for a singular copy of a written work.

Mausolea, plural of mausoleum : a building designed to business firm 1 or more tombs, normally for an of import person. These were most often centrally-planned, with a design that pivoted around the burial site. In Christian usage, these were sometimes attached to a larger, congregational structure, but sometimes stood alone. They might house more one tomb.

Monetary value : the worth of materials or objects, in terms of "market value." This might exist determined past the value of the materials use or of the finished art object, considered differently from the cost of the materials.

Parchment: sheepskin, prepared for use in manuscripts—less refined than vellum , used for finer and more expensive works.

Polychrome: painted in several colors.

Porcelain : highly refined ceramic ware, initially produced in China, with select materials like petuntse and kaolin, to create semi-translucent material, with elegant shapes, and glass-like, intricately busy surfaces, and high-temp fired for hardened finishes.

Potter's wheel, cycle-thrown : pottery made with the use of a potter's wheel, a device for turning the clay body on a rotating platform for a more uniform shape. These were first turned past hand, knee, or pedal motion, after electrified.

Putti plural of putto : a small winged infant angel, a cherub.

Spolia : bounty taken from and original context, equally in the "spoils of war." Ofttimes, items of spolia were re-used in subsequently works to imply the conquest (and superiority) of the new possessor over the original.

Vellum: calfskin, prepared for employ in luxury manuscripts, more than highly prized than the rougher, less expensive parchment.

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Source: https://alg.manifoldapp.org/read/introduction-to-art-design-context-and-meaning/section/5796880d-cc97-4690-883b-2b116186f68d

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