Focus Of Many Egyptian Paintings And Sculptures example essay topic

The Egyptian culture is one of great beauty and belief. The phenomenal architecture and artwork of this society reflect its culture over the many years. The Egyptians were geographically blessed. Egypt was fairly surrounded by seas making an invasion quit difficult and the land was fertile. Settled along the Nile river, Egypt was incredibly fertile land for farming. Surpluses of food were always available allowing the civilization to grow.

Not every one had to spend all their time hunting farming or gathering, instead new hobbies and traits were adopted. Art and architecture flourished. The Egyptians loved the land so much that they believed in an after-life. This eternal life was a major Hunting belief and much of their architecture and art reflect this. Great time and effort was put into the deceased body in order to prepare it for the after-life. Royalty and king's deaths were glorified by the construction of pyramids.

The pyramids were almost geometrically perfect. Enormous amounts of time were put into the construction of any pyramid to make the large brick slabs interlock precisely. Once completed the pyramids were an eternal tomb for the deceased hunting. Along with their own pyramid a ruling Egyptian prince may be entombed with many pieces of art representing the life of that person. For example a statue of the deceased or an elaborate sarcophagus painting or design would be placed in the tomb. The architecture involved in the construction of a pyramid reflects how important death was to the Egyptian culture.

During the Middle and Old Kingdoms, architecture shifted from pyramids to temples. The temples showed an ever increasing cense of art and architecture by the Egyptians. The temples were often carved right into the sides of cliffs and rock fronts. These structures often had terraced walls, colonnades, relief sculptures, and hundreds of passages. Great works of architecture were not strictly designed for pharaohs. During the Middle and Old Kingdoms temples were constructed for the worship of the many Egyptian gods and goddess.

Great architectural designs such as the pylons and hypostyle halls were created to show the importance and stature of their gods. To better reflect just how skilled the Egyptians were in architecture they used no cement. Every structure was precisely interlocked to be very solid and stable. Egyptian artists were also flourishing. Sculptures of Egyptian gods and pharaohs were abundant and papyrus paintings reflected a huge deal of Egyptian culture.

Sculptures and drawings were very stylized and frontal. Meaning the form and shapes were more important than realism and all figures are facing or partially facing the viewer. For example a figure turned to the side would have the torso facing the viewer and often times the eye would be directly looking at the viewer. Later on realism became equally important in sculpture.

Egyptian drawings very often used Discriptive Perspective. Discriptive Perspective is the idea of making the more important figures in a drawing larger. For example if a pharaoh and an Egyptian god were in the same painting with other figures the pharaoh and god would be the biggest characters. This reflects how important rule and status was in the Egyptian culture.

Another important technique was synthesized figures or figures incorporated from half animal half human. Since the Egyptians held a very high respect and status for many animals, with some even believed to be god like, the focus of many Egyptian paintings and sculptures were that of half animal half human figures to show the god like being of these creatures. Many beliefs and living habits can be observed from the Egyptian culture as well as any great culture. Art will always be a means to portray anything and everything, even the culture of a once great civilization..