Some key concepts from African Art: Legacy of Oppression were that there is a huge range in African art styles, and African art that is most effective in the West is abstract, startling, and exaggerated. Artists of Central African glorified the "motherness" of their own mothers, and the "chiefness" of their chiefs. Artists also gave a granger to everyday objects such as combs, wooden cups, and beds, and overly decorated them. The most common art objects of all were masks. Rubber was in demand in central Africa because of the invention of bicycle tires, so Belgium's King Leopold sent his soldiers to get as much as they could. Bullets used for the invasions were very expensive, and were used to kill mutinous workers, and with every life taken, the soldiers had to sever the right hand of the victim off. In many cases, the bullets missed their targets, so the right hands of the living would be severed, as proof of a bullet not wasted in the Kongo/Congo.
In the second African Art video I learned that a strong aesthetic sense is apparent in every day objects and homes and many forms of art were made of wood or straw. With climates such as those that were in Africa, the medium rapidly deteriorated. Ceremonial African art is preserved in dramatic recreations of sound, color, and movement. The oldest existing African art is found in drier regions, like the ones that held the rock art and paintings. Egyptian ideas and cultures influenced Africa. Great Zimbabwe was the focus of a sophisticated political economic system. The site displays a well developed sense of architecture. African art was relatively unknown to the Europeans until the 19th century. Pablo Picasso was the modernist artist who was influenced by African art. The key to understanding African art lies in two basic approaches of artistic expression- the perceptual and the conceptual.
The Buddhism video described that Buddhist teaching is taha, which means the extinguishing of all desires, possessions and all the preoccupations that feed the ego and obstruct enlightenment. With in a hundred years after Buddha’s death, Buddhism split in tow, it also brought flowering to art and architecture. The largest Buddha shrine in the world is called Borobudur, and is located in Indonesia. It took close to 100 years to build, and was later buried by a volcanic eruption. It was standing proof of the spread of Buddhism in Asia. The video described a lot about the religion itself, with commentary on the arts. The focus was mainly on the religion however,
The Hinduism belief was a system of life, death, and rebirth. Hindus invest so much in elaborate decoration in their architecture, to portray their beliefs. The video showed a lot about the funerary practices, and how simple they were. They would “baptize” the bodies in the Ganges River, and cremate them along the river, hoping that their spirit would be freed. Everything in Hinduism is symbolic in some way, and Hindu sculpture typically combines epic and ordinary, and fantastic and familiar, side by side. They began their artistic practices underground, with rock sculpture and cave art. The source of life for all Hindu people is Brahma, and Hinduism teaches that there are many ways to Brahma God, and the many gods are symbols of these ways. Those exact symbols also show bewildering variety of expression in art and architecture.
The videos relate to the text in the fact that they reinforce it through images and further explanation. For example both the videos and the text explain the importance of art in the religious cultures, and shows how the people express their religion through art and architecture.
These videos add depth and understanding because of the deeper discussions of history and descriptions of the different cultures. Instead of just going over the aspect of art, like the text did, the videos described more about the history, which added depth and understanding.
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