Art and the State

It is clear from looking at the earliest civilizations on the planet that art was used as way to enforce values and norms among the people, the found art and cultural artifacts re-enforce this concept and show us how they used to live compared to us in the present day.

When you look at egyptian art you can see they used symbols and images to show that the people idolised their leader, the pharaoh. The egyptians worshiped the pharaoh as a god and leader of the people, they did everything to please him and this shows through in the art work found in burial tombs and pyramids across Egypt. The egyptians clearly had better drawing skills than the earliest humans on the planet, the images where in  a 2D side on view style, also low relief was added to the carvings to show slight depth to the images.

In culture Ancient Greece eventually replaced the egyptians as the main massive civilisation taking over Egypt, however both art and religious cultures mixed in the process and formed a newer more advanced concept of art. In Greek art it is clear that relief has still remained from the egyptian art but it is stronger making the images look more realistic than ever before. Greeks developed art called mosaics were they painted images on to small tiles and this was very popular throughout Ancient Greece.

The Greek society was more concerned about art, science and philosophy which shows in many of the Greeks artifacts, buildings such as the Parthenon show that the Greeks were concerned with symmetry in their buildings. This shows that they were looking into new things and trying to understand and develop the culture around them.

Another new force of people came along known as the Romans and basically overtook and merged with the Greek society to create Ancient Rome, like before this formed a new culture and along came new art.
The Romans like the Greeks/Egyptians had gods or leaders of their civilisations, but the romans were not so concerned about making art to please them, the artifacts found show that the romans were exploring into power and conquest trying to conquer other countries around the world, and having the greatest army at the time. Roman art shows powerful men with exaggerated limbs and body features to show their own strength and power, they clearly wanted to be remembered as one of the most dominant civilisations on the planet. Along with the art and sculptures buildings much like the Greek style of buildings were made, the romans built a new building called a colosseum where people used to fight and compete against each other to see who was the strongest man, this further enforces how obsessed Ancient Rome was into becoming the most powerful society.

Going back to the women in cultural history, in the roman society had changed the view of women radically compared to the earlier civilisations, before women were seen as the mothers of the families and carers for all people, providing for the children. Whilst now women where seen in a more sexual light, as seen in much roman artwork to be wearing limited clothes or even none, and with muscle packed bodies, this shows the romans looked at women in a different way than past communities.

Artists at in this time period had clearly become alot better at actually creating art, skills had been learnt from past civilisations and the culture around them had formed the way for the kind of artifacts being produced, Rome was a very colorful, interesting place to live in.