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Home / How Art Made the World With Nigel Spivey Dvd

How Art Made the World With Nigel Spivey Dvd

2005 BBC documentary television series

How Art Made the World
Genre Documentary
Presented by Nigel Spivey
Country of origin Britain
Original linguistic communication English
No. of series i
No. of episodes 5
Production
Executive producer Kim Thomas
Producer Mark Hedgecoe
Running time 60 minutes
Distributor BBC
Release
Original network BBC I
Original release 26 June (2005-06-26) –
24 July 2005 (2005-07-24)

How Art Made the World is a 2005 five-function BBC Ane documentary serial, with each episode looking at the influence of fine art on the electric current day situation of our society.[i] [2]

"The essential premise of the evidence," according to Nigel Spivey, "is that of all the defining characteristics of humanity equally a species, none is more basic than the inclination to make art. Keen apes will smear pigment on canvas if they are given brushes and shown how, but they exercise not instinctively produce art any more than than parrots produce chat. We humans are alone in developing the chapters for symbolic imagery."[iii]

Episodes [edit]

Images boss our lives. They tell usa how to behave, even how to feel. They mould and ascertain the states. But why do these images, the pictures, symbols and the art we see around us every 24-hour interval, have such a powerful hold on us? The answer lies not hither in our time only thousands of years ago. Because when our ancient ancestors kickoff created the images that made sense of their world, they produced a visual legacy which has helped to shape our own.

In this series we'll exist travelling effectually the globe, discovering the world'southward most stunning treasures. We'll see how the struggles of early artists led to the triumphs of the world's great civilisations. Our journeying will take usa through a hundred thousand years of history. We'll be witnessing some of the extraordinary ceremonies of the earth's oldest artistic cultures. And we'll reveal how they unlock the deepest secrets of aboriginal art, We'll be hearing from the people who fabricated these discoveries. And we'll exist using scientific discipline to uncover how thousands of years ago the human mind drove us to create astonishing images, You'll never look at our world the same manner again, for this is the epic story of how we humans fabricated art and how art made united states human.

—Nigel Spivey'southward opening narration

Episode ane: More than Human Than Human... [edit]

The first episode asks why humans surround themselves with images of the body that are so unrealistic.[iv] [five]

The fact is people rarely create images of the torso that are realistic. What's going on? Why is our globe so dominated by images of the torso that are so unrealistic?

—Nigel Spivey's opening narration

Dr. Spive begins his investigation past travelling to Willendorf, where in 1908 3 Austrian archaeologists discovered the Venus of Willendorf, an xi cm (iv.3 in) high statuette of a female effigy, estimated to take been made betwixt 24,000 and 22,000 BCE. Spivey travels to the Naturhistorisches Museum in Vienna to examine the Venus'southward grotesquely exaggerated breasts and abdomen, also as its lack of arms and face, which shows the want to exaggerate dates back to the very first images of the human body created by our ancestors. Spivey speculates that, The people who fabricated this statue lived in a harsh ice-age environment where features of fatness and fertility would have been highly desirable, and several similar statuettes collectively referred to as Venus figurines show that this exaggerated body image continued for millennia.[half-dozen]

Neuroscientist Vilayanur S. Ramachandran speculates that the reason for this lies in a neurological principle known as the supernormal stimulus, which Spivey demonstrates past replicating Nikolaas Tinbergen's experiment with Herring gull chicks. When the chicks are shown a yellowish stick with a single red line made to represent their mother's beak, they tap on it every bit they are programmed to do to need food. However, when they are presented with a stick with 3 red lines they tap on it with increased enthusiasm even in comparing to the original beak. Ramachandran concludes, "I recall in that location'due south an analogy hither in that what'due south going on in the brains of our ancestors, the artists who were creating these Venus figurines were producing grossly exaggerated versions, the equivalent for their brain of what the stick with the three red stripes is for the chick's brain."[7]

Spivey next travels to Egypt to observe if the gross exaggerations of hard-wired herring gull instincts of the nomadic artisans survived into the era of civilization. The Egyptian images of the human being body, which he discovers at the Tomb of Pharaoh Rameses VI and the Karnak Temple Complex, were regular and repeated, and nothing well-nigh them was exaggerated. Mapped onto the wall at the unfinished Tomb of Amenhotep III'due south vizier Ramose he discovers the grid which dictated the precise proportions and composition of these images for three yard years. The Egyptians created images of the trunk this way, Spivy concludes, non because of how their brains were difficult-wired just considering of their civilization. [eight]

Spivey finally travels to Italy, where Stefano Mariottini relates his extraordinary discovery off the declension of Riace, about Reggio Calabria. Equally revealed in an antique copy of Herodotus in St John'south Higher Erstwhile Library, Greek sculptors learned the Egyptians' techniques and initially created truly realistic depictions of the homo body, like Kritian Boy at the Acropolis Museum in Athens, Greece. However, according to Ramachandran, the problem with the Kritian Boy is it was too realistic, that makes it boring, and the style was presently abased. Spivey states that, the Greeks discovered they had to exercise interesting things with the man course, such as distorting it in lawful means, and examines the pioneering piece of work of a sculptor and mathematician called Polyclitus, as exemplified in the Riace bronzes at the Museo Nazionale della Magna Grecia. Spivey concludes that the first civilisation capable of realism had used exaggeration to become further, and it'due south that instinct which still dominates our world today. [nine]

This is the answer to our mystery. This is why the bodies in our modern world expect the way they do. The reality is nosotros humans don't like reality. The shared biological instinct to prefer advisedly exaggerated images links united states of america inexorably with our ancient ancestors, and yet what we choose to exaggerate is where scientific discipline gets left behind. That's where the magic comes in.

—Nigel Spivey's endmost narration

Episode two: The Solar day Pictures Were Built-in [edit]

The 2nd episode asks how the very first pictures ever made were created and reveals how images may accept triggered the greatest change in human history.[4] [10]

I could draw almost anything in the world and y'all'd probably guess what information technology was, But there must have been some indicate in our human story when nosotros first got this ability, some moment in fourth dimension when nosotros began to create pictures and to understand what they meant. So what happened back then? How did nosotros first get this ability to create images? To find the answer, we need to go way back in fourth dimension.

—Nigel Spivey'southward opening narration

Dr. Spivey begins his investigation past travelling to the Cavern of Altamira most the town of Santillana del Mar in Cantabria, Spain, where in 1879 a immature daughter'southward exclamation of Papa. Look, oxen. to her father, local apprentice archeologist Marcelino Sanz de Sautuola, is explained to have meant that Maria had simply become the first mod human to set up optics on the starting time gallery of prehistoric paintings ever to exist discovered. The find revealed that, About 35,000 years agone, we began to create pictures and to empathise what they meant. French priest Henri Breuil believed that, prehistoric artists painted animals to increase their chances of a successful hunt, but the animals painted here and at other sites such as the Pech Merle in France, also visited past Spivey, did not friction match the bones discovered and abstract patterns revealed the artists weren't merely copying from real life.

Spivey next travels to the Drakensberg Mountains of South Africa, where rock painting made 200 years ago by the San people and similarly dismissed as hunting scenes, are revealed by anthropologist David Lewis-Williams to contain many of the aforementioned unusual features. 19th century interviews with the San past High german linguist Wilhelm Bleek reveal the importance of trance within their culture, an ascertainment confirmed by Spivey subsequently watching a shamanistic ritual performed by their present-twenty-four hour period descendants in a village near Tsumkwe, Namibia far from the mountains. Lewis-Williams theorises that, the paintings were not just pictures of everyday life, only they were about spiritual experiences in a trance state.

Media information [edit]

DVD release [edit]

Released on Region 2 DVD by BBC DVD on 30 May 2005.[11]

Companion volume [edit]

The 2005 companion book to the serial was written by presenter Nigel Spivey.[12]

Selected editions [edit]

  • Spivey, Nigel (28 April 2005). How Fine art Fabricated the Globe: A Journey to the Origins of Fine art. BBC Books (hardcover). ISBN978-0563522058.
  • Spivey, Nigel (eight November 2005). How Art Fabricated the World: A Journeying to the Origins of Art. Bones Books (hardcover). ISBN978-0465081813.
  • Spivey, Nigel (7 November 2006). How Art Made the Earth: A Journeying to the Origins of Art. Basic Books (paperback). ISBN978-0465081820.

References [edit]

  1. ^ "How Art Made the World". BBC Science & Nature. Retrieved 12 June 2012.
  2. ^ "How Fine art Made The Globe – part of a rich summer of arts on BBC Television". BBC Press Office. 31 March 2005. Retrieved 12 June 2012.
  3. ^ "How Fine art Made the World: About the Serial". PBS. Retrieved 12 June 2012.
  4. ^ a b "How Art Fabricated the Globe: Programmes". BBC Science & Nature. Retrieved 12 June 2012.
  5. ^ "How Fine art Made the World: More Human Than Human". PBS. Retrieved 12 June 2012.
  6. ^ "The Venus of Willendorf: Exaggerated Beauty". PBS. Retrieved 12 June 2012.
  7. ^ "5.Due south. Ramachandran: The Herring Dupe Test". PBS. Retrieved 12 June 2012.
  8. ^ "Arab republic of egypt: Obsessive Society". PBS. Retrieved 12 June 2012.
  9. ^ "Ancient Greece: Naked Perfection". PBS. Retrieved 12 June 2012.
  10. ^ "How Fine art Made the Globe: The Day Pictures Were Born". PBS. Retrieved sixteen June 2012.
  11. ^ "How Art Made the World". BBC Store. Retrieved 16 June 2012.
  12. ^ "How Art Made the Earth: A Journey to the Origins of Art". BBC Shop. Retrieved sixteen June 2012.

External links [edit]

  • How Art Made the Earth at BBC Online Edit this at Wikidata
  • How Art Fabricated the World at IMDb

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Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/How_Art_Made_the_World