 |
Volume
II, Issue 10
February 2000 |
|
|
|
Art
and Technology [Part Two] by Kristin Redpath Author's Introduction: In Part One of this series, I proposed the following three premises:
In this installment, I propose a fourth premise: While the art in and of itself was not then, is not now, and, to the great misfortune of those who are missing it, perhaps never will be, culture-saturating, the technology by which it is created becomes demanded by and supplied to the population in general. The law of supply and demand is, in turn, dictated by social and cultural circumstances. Thus, necessity, the parent of invention, might be called the grandparent of art. Part One of this series discussed the Paleolithic paintings found on the walls of caves and the technology necessary to paint them there. Let us now skip forward a few tens of millennia. Again, for purposes of this article, I propose to discuss only two-dimensional art. I reiterate that I have checked facts, names, dates, etc. thoroughly; I arrived at the premises and conclusions on my own. Once the technology is widely available, artists will appear who might not have been artists otherwise. For example, in computer graphics classes I have taught, there have always been a few students who protested at the beginning of the course they could not create anything "artistic," but who finished the semester delighted at their newly discovered abilities to create using the computer. (I hope to show you some of their art later in this series.) What their hand could not, would not, or dared not do their eye could. It simply required the right tool - in this case the computer. But we all know the computer was not invented, nor did it first become generally available, for the creation of art. The technology was in place first; the art followed. The art made the technology its own. New technology is invented; new art form follows. More new technology = more new art forms, throughout history. If I were to include this theory in a lecture, I might draw a diagram like this: At the upper point where art and technology intersect, art follows technology; at the lower point, art has adopted technology and makes a demand for more innovation. Although as we move closer to the present day this fourth premise is easier to show, these cycles can be illustrated throughout history. One of the first well-documented cycles is that of manuscript illumination. If I were to try to picture for my students its development to the high art it became in Medieval Europe, I would make some revisions to the first diagram:
Of course there are too many variables, too many chance occurrences, for any chart or graph to visualize all the complexities. The illustration is oversimplified, and does not try to quantify the development of language and art. Recently, I watched on television the film Dead Poets Society. Those of you who have seen it (those of you who haven't should), will recall the scene in the classroom in which Mr. Keating, played by Robin Williams, ridicules the attempt by the author of the chosen text to plot the importance or value of a poem using Cartesian coordinates. Obviously, the value of literature cannot be plotted mathematically any more than the development of an art form as complex as manuscript illumination can be diagrammed. However, trends can be visualized. The first diagram above does, I suggest, show general trends in the development of art and technology, particularly that art cannot exist without the technology to create it. To illustrate, let us suppose that I wish to create a piece of art. This will not be just any piece of art, but it will be a free-floating sculpture, made of chiffon ribbons and tiny white lights. It will be anchored at either end in two locations - one on the highest point on Earth (the top of Mount Everest) and one on the highest point on Mars (Olympus Mons, I believe). If I were to propose such a creation, I would be viewed as eccentric at the very least. But at what point does my creativity become ludicrous? At the point where the technology does not exist to realize my creative vision. I could create a free-floating sculpture of ribbons and lights, but I can't place it where I envision it. The same is true of art - artists cannot create what they do not have the tools (technology) to create. But art and artists can drive and direct and invent technology for the purposes of their art. (I have no doubt that someday, the ingenuity of evolved humans will find a way to decorate outer space - we seem to decorate everything that does not move and many things that do, including ourselves.) My perception of manuscript illumination, when I thought of it at all, conjured for me a vision of freezing Medieval European monks with strips of cloth wrapped around their frostbitten hands, huddled in blankets in unheated scriptoria, breathing on their fingers to warm them enough to continue their obligation to copy the scriptures. (In many monasteries and nunneries of the early centuries CE, this obligation was considered their primary reason for existence.) Perhaps it was some desperately cold scribe who discovered, while breathing on his fingers to warm them, that the hot moistness of his own breath created a momentary environment on the parchment that allowed liquid gold to adhere to it without flaking. It is often of such chances that technological discoveries are born. Poor fellow; he was just trying to keep warm, but may have discovered a major advance for the art he practiced! We will never know, but I would like to think of just that happening.  Irish
manuscript illumination, early 8th Century Manuscript illumination is far older than the Medieval years and it has never completely disappeared. There are artists working today who take pride in illuminating manuscripts in much the same way as in all the centuries before them, with, of course, some concessions (we can hope) to central heating. One of the earliest extant examples of manuscript illumination is the Egyptian Book of the Dead, probably written circa 1310 BCE. In the early days of manuscript illumination in Egypt, the Book of the Dead and similar manuscripts were commissioned by those who could afford them - royalty, religious, courtiers. Eventually manuscripts of the Book of the Dead became available pre-copied, to those who could pay for them, with a place for the purchaser to fill in his name. The Book of the Dead described ceremonies for burial, prayers to be recited, and instructions for the deceased as to how to conduct himself in the nether regions. The frequent appearance of the illustration showing the weighing of the heart indicates its importance in funereal rites. Even when copies of the Book of the Dead became more widely available to the general (i.e., wealthy, free) populace, the theme was religious in nature. Secular books were few. Papyrus scrolls were used in commerce for recording contracts, inventorying goods, government documents, and the like, but generally not for secular art or literature. Given the nature of artists and writers, we can assume there were some, even if they have not survived. We cannot, however, discuss the pictures that decorated and enriched manuscripts without mentioning the writing that accompanied the pictures. Which of the two was more important was, just as today, in the mind of the beholder. All aspects of the creation of manuscripts were highly valued, closely related arts. The literate might have considered the words more important; the unlettered could gain enlightenment and enjoyment from the illustrations, and each, as today, enriched the other. The earliest writing examples from the Far East, India, Egypt and Sumeria, the Islamic countries, all indicate that writing - calligraphy - was already a respected art form. Calligraphy, (kalligraphia) from the Greek kalli, meaning "beautiful" and graphon meaning "writing," remains today an art form in itself, taught and practiced as art. The hand script we call writing and use daily without thought, emerged much later. It is particularly significant to this series that, at least in the West, writing evolved from calligraphy which, in turn, many scholars believe evolved from the early cave paintings such as those at Lascaux in France. [See Resources, below, for Part One of this series, and more on the Lascaux caves. Ed.] Without going into great detail (since this article is rapidly becoming a book in itself), the technology of manuscript illumination was dependent on the "paper" it was written on, the "ink" and "paint" with which it was written and decorated, and the tools to manipulate them. As it does today, ancient paper derived from plants: papyrus was made from the reed of the same name (Cyperus papyrus), grown in Egypt, in the valley of the Jordan River, in Sicily, and other warm, moist locations around the Mediterranean. The small variety of plants growing naturally in the oases of river valleys in countries with little arable land were explored for all their possibilities: various parts of the papyrus plant were used for boats, sandals, rope, fuel, even food. To make paper, slices of the pith were laid out in crosswise patterns, dampened, then smoothed with a tool - a stone, shell, or piece of ivory or bone. After Alexander the Great's conquest of Egypt, papyrus became known to the Greeks, although there is some evidence they may have used it even earlier. The Greeks and Romans wrote on papyrus until about the Fourth Century CE, when parchment began to supplant it. (Papyrus documents have been found dated as late as the Eighth or Ninth Century CE.) Parchment and vellum, which ultimately replaced papyrus, were used extensively in the West for what might be the best known type of manuscript illumination - Medieval sacred manuscripts. Parchment was the coarser of the two, made from the skins of older animals, and used for such purposes as record keeping. The finer vellum, made from the skins of young animals -- kids, lambs and calves -- was used for the more expensive and delicate copying and illuminating of the scriptures. Inks and paints were made from natural substances available locally. For example, blue colors found on Middle Eastern illuminated papyrus scrolls of the pre-Grecian period were far more likely to be made from ground lapis lazuli than from the woad or indigo plants found in western Europe. Writing and painting tools were brushes made from locally available materials, or pens cut from river reeds. Illuminated copies of the Egyptian Book of the Dead were produced through the First Century BCE. The illuminators working in the great library at Alexandria may have used such Egyptian illuminations as inspiration. They continued the art into the Greek and Roman periods, during which more secular manuscripts were produced, notably a copy of the Iliad now resident in the Vatican, and some of the earliest medical treatises. Undoubtedly, the art of illumination begun in Egypt and its environs was the model for the elaborate illuminations of Byzantine and other early Christian manuscripts, which were, in turn, models for Western manuscript illumination. In the West, Medieval European illuminators had at their disposal the surfaces, tools and pigments technologically available at that time. They worked on wax tablets, parchment, and vellum. Their pigments were made from plants, powdered natural stones and minerals, precious metals, animal substances. Their tools were of simple manufacture or of natural origin, like the use of an animal tooth to polish gold leaf, or a brush painstakingly made of animal hair (not so different from today's fine brushes.) But they were using technology. Each blending of a pigment, each insertion of one hair of a red sable into a brush destined to illuminate a manuscript, each discovery that advanced the craft (I wonder who discovered that the ashes of the bones of dead birds made an excellent white paint) was an advancement in the technology of art. Like all technology, in its early stages it was available only to the few. But, like most technology, it was demanded by and spread slowly through more and more of the populace. Western manuscript illumination began with the sacred texts, as did Middle and Far Eastern illumination. The Christian church, particularly the monasteries, were the guardians of culture and learning during the turmoil following the decline of the Roman Empire. The monasteries were also among the few patrons wealthy enough to afford the expensive materials needed to produce original works of art. Only the most affluent of the royal and noble classes - if their wealth survived the frequent wars - could approach the church's resources. Among the common people, a well-off merchant might be able to commission, once in his lifetime, a miniature portrait of himself or a piece of enameled jewelry for his wife. The poor, free or indentured, had little opportunity to see, and almost no opportunity to own, art of any type. Which extant manuscripts contain the earliest known examples of illumination is disputed. One of the earliest is known as the Lindisfarne Gospels, probably begun around 698 CE at the Monastery of Lindisfarne on an island off the British coast of Northumbria. The Gospels are known to have been created in honor of Saint Cuthbert, Bishop of Lindisfarne, who died in 687 CE. Significant are the fantastic creatures and intertwined patterns - believed to have been taken from Viking art - found in abundance in later Irish and Anglo-Saxon illuminations. The Book of Kells, now in the library at Trinity College, Dublin, was written in the Eighth Century CE.  Book
of Kells Folio 27v The Symbols of the FourEvangelists This fine image was reproduced using modern day technology: they needed to find a way to photograph the Book of Kells without actually touching it. Here is a clear example of technology following art; of art as the progenitor of invention. An extraordinary discovery from the Book of Kells project is quoted below: "The masters must have been short-sighted, because only when a 10-factor magnifying glass is applied to the figure of Saint Luke on page 201 does one see the breathtakingly intricate and exact decoration. There are numerous other examples of this kind of fine detail, and magnifying glasses of that power were not invented until hundreds of years later." [See Resources, below, for more on the Book of Kells project. Ed.] Amazing! The artist must have painted the intricate details with his nose almost touching the vellum. I have observed that profoundly near-sighted artists, particularly beginners or those first developing a style of their own, have a natural tendency sit with their faces very close to the page and to paint or draw in tiny detail. In the case of Medieval manuscript illumination, near-sightedness has proved an asset, since it is known that devices for the improvement of vision weren't available in Europe until the Thirteenth Century. While eyeglasses were not invented for the specific use of artists, we can only speculate on how the art of manuscript illumination might have evolved had they been available earlier. Historians have identified the techniques used for making vellum, scoring the margins, ruling the pages, and other preparatory details, probably done by apprentice scribes, after which the master calligrapher would draw the text. Recipes still exist for the making of inks. Instructions have been found for the piercing and ruling of the vellum, for the carving of the design into wax tablets before carefully transferring it to the manuscript, for the making of the gloriously colored paints which must have been even more vibrant when they were first applied, and for the use of precious metals, primarily gold but also silver, to be laid down last of all. Some of the more delightful details include the erasure of mistakes with bread crumbs, the blackening of the back of an old parchment with lead, charcoal, or other such agent to create a kind of carbon paper used to transfer the drawing to the page. Or how about adding a little urine to keep the solid and liquid parts of ink from separating! Little is known about the artists themselves. As monks, they would have been self-effacing and dedicated. They breathed life into their work, literally by breathing on the manuscript pages to adhere the gilt paint and symbolically by equating the breathing on the vellum as equivalent to the breath of God breathing life into His creations. Indeed, much of the process of the creation of copies of the sacred texts of the time was symbolic, making manuscript illumination a spiritual experience comparable to worship.  Book
of Kells, Folio 291v Portrait of Saint John, with the tools of a
scribe Over the centuries, written manuscripts slowly found their way into the general populace. Demand increased, among the public as well as the clergy, particularly for copies of the Book of Hours, containing daily devotions and prayers. The Thirteenth through the Sixteenth Centuries saw the height of their popularity, but Books of Hours were still available only to the rich, who often commissioned one to prove their devotion and piety and show their good taste and wealth. As the centuries wore on, cultural factors combined to raise the demand for and distribution of books. The example most often cited is the invention of the printing press, after which books gradually became more available and literacy gradually increased. However, that premise is over-simplified. Several other factors also contributed. Between 1095, when Pope Urban II called for the First Crusade, and the end of the crusades in the first quarter of the Thirteenth Century, returning crusaders brought back from the East contemporary books, and older ones written as early as the Greek and Roman periods. This combination, along with the rise in commerce which in turn created a more and more prosperous middle class, increased the demand for books and for learning. The demand for learning had as its natural outcome the rise of the European university, the first founded in Italy in the early Twelfth Century. The concept of centers of learning spread quickly and with it the demand for more secular books, on history, science, and medicine. The learning preserved in the East during the Dark Ages in Europe was spreading outward from the Western centers of learning - the inaccessible libraries of the monasteries, supplemented by the more available libraries of the universities. University scholars demanded more and more books, far more than the secular copiers' guilds - founded for that purpose - could provide. Illustrations from the older, carefully copied books needed to be produced faster than the illuminators could manage to make them. Encouraged by the laws of supply and demand, the printing press - and woodcut and other methods of reproducing illustrations - flourished, as learning flowered in the Renaissance. Illumination is not a lost art. Artists nowadays, in the Western Hemisphere, in Europe and in Asia, are preserving the art and its traditional technology. In Turkey, for example, classes dedicated to learning and perpetuating the fine illuminative arts are offered at various universities, the Topkapi Palace and the Cerrahpasa Institute of Medical History. The cycle continues.
Resources: [Part One of Prof. Redpath's Art and Technology series is available in the January Newsletter at http://www.arts4all.com/newsletter/issue9/redpath1.html ]
The Book of
the Dead For fictional insight into the beliefs inherent in the Egyptian Book of the Dead, read The Ape Who Guards the Balance, by Elizabeth Peters.
A short, informative paper on the Lindisfarne Gospels can be found at http://www.bl.uk/diglib/treasures/lindisfarne.html
The delicate
process of photographing the pages without touching them is
explained in detail at
For those of you who enjoy historically accurate fiction, I recommend An Excellent Mystery, one of the Brother Cadfael series, by Ellis Peters, in which the author draws a vivid picture of life in an early Twenfth-Century monastery, centered around the work of the scriptorium.
Historical sites
Age of
Charles V: Research with
text and illustrations: Many Arts
links at:
Urbino Bible: Illiad:
Carolingian
Manuscript: Getty Museum: Melbert B.
Cary, Jr. Graphic Arts Collection, a library on printing history
located at the Rochester Institute of Technology in Rochester, NY: Utah Museum
of Fine Arts: Koninklijke
Bibliotheek: Very enjoyable site Geocities (a
Yahoo site) complete with music takes viewer through illuminated
manuscript called King René's Book of Love Another
Geocities site worth visiting: http://www.geocities.com/Paris/Rue/9451/medievalresources.html
Links to
Collections by Country and Century: http://www.columbia.edu/cu/libraries/indiv/rare/images/date.html Portugal: Greece: http://www.ee.bilkent.edu.tr/~history/topkapi.html http://www.mfa.gov.tr/grupe/eh/eh03/12.htm http://www.ee.bilkent.edu.tr/~history/Images/Topkapi/OtherIma ges2/Yeni/p202.JPG
Contemporary
Manuscript Illumination - Diane Calvert's Medieval Art for Today
website: Development
of the book: Calligraphy: Women
Illuminators:
Kristin Redpath is Professor Emeritus of Computer Technology, Massasoit Community College, Brockton, Massachusetts, with a Master's Degree in Theater Education, as well as additional graduate study in theater, education and computer science. She combined her love of teaching, computers, and the arts with business skills in 1984 as an adjunct, then full time, professor of Computer Information Systems at Massasoit Community College. She served as Chair of the Computer Information Systems Department from 1988 through 1994, received tenure in 1990 and the rank of full Professor in 1991. Before retiring (early) in August, 1999, she also served as President of Massasoit's Academic Senate. She is
currently at work on a textbook on introductory computer graphics
and is investigating the feasibility of making her own technical
training CD's. Also a watercolorist and singer, she views retirement
as a new beginning. Married, with a grown son, she lives in the
picturesque (Wheaton) college town of Norton, Massachusetts, and
never wants to live permanently anywhere but in a small, New England
college town.
Email a friend or colleague about this article Subscribe to the Newsletter (at no charge) |
|
|
|
|
