Meets the following requirements: AD HS HY

This course, the first in a three part sequence including Greek Art and Renaissance Art, focuses on the creations of our earliest ancestors from the Paleolithic, Neolithic, and early high civilizations of Europe and the Middle East.  This early art was created by people with a religious, nonlinear mentality and was based not on aesthetic but on magical principles whose intent was the recreation of the sacred in the cosmos.  The visual acts were integrally connected to rituals and performances that included music, dance, and singing.  In order for us to comprehend these sacred enactments from cultures as distant in time and as varied as the paleolithic hunters of France and Spain and the Minoans of Crete, readings such as Primitive Mythology by Joseph Campbell, The Sacred and the Profane by M. Eliade, and The Eternal Present by Sigfried Geidion are included.  On occasion, reference to the arts of contemporary traditional societies from Africa, the Americas, and Oceania are introduced to underscore and illuminate these earlier arts.  Topics to be discussed include:  the evolution from goddess to god centered religions, the beginning of rational scientific thought, and the relationship of war and crime to high civilization. 

Level:  Introductory.  Class size: 20.  Offered every other year.  *HS*  *HY*
*AD*