Yeah, so, I’m so glad we know about lead poisoning now because looking back on history, we can sit there and go, “Hey, yeah, you know y’all are poisoning your water/wine supply right? That you’re going to eventually die from drinking tainted liquids?” Hindsight being what it is, and, like, Flint, Michigan being right in front of our faces.
Category: Ancient art
Thursday
It’s small, warped pressed glass that’s somehow survived the ages. How? Who knows!
Wednesday
Does anyone else find it disturbing that, with very small differences, drinking vessels haven’t changed in thousands of years? I mean, my coffee mug is basically this dipper on steroids.
Tuesday
While this isn’t as old as some of the other things we’ve seen this week, it’s still pretty damn old and in remarkably good shape for as old as it is. I don’t even understand how some of these items have survived intact, except that they weren’t used – that’s the only explanation.
Monday
It’s things like this, scattered around the world, these remnants of our earlier civilizations and our earliest incarnations and our earliest selves and our walking and talking with the arts and our pictures of ourselves and the world around us that I find fascinating. Because we haven’t changed that much, have we?
Sunday
I get the feeling that this cup could be held together with duct tape and still be pretty. It’s already basically held together with super glue and a prayer. And yet, for all my glib sarcasm, it’s still here and it’s old as hell and it’s in pieces, but it’s here.
Sunday
The glare from the plexiglass case is insane in this one. I do apologize. It also renders the metallic finish of some of the textures almost obsolete. *sad face*
Some of the funerary objects from SLAM’s ancient Egyptian collection are insane. This is one of the ones that strikes you dumb when you look at it. The colors, the textures, the idealized lines and the way it’s all put together… just, man. *sigh*
Monday
When one of your best friends requests that you take pictures of sharp objects that you could stab people with, you take pictures of stabbity things. And this is very stabby. And green. Because bronze and patina.
Wednesday
It seems odd to think that, even to the Romans, the Greeks and Egyptians were ancient and revered civilizations, worthy of being emulated in artistic stylizations. History is nothing more than a never-ending domino effect of tumbling empires, held together by the glue of art.
In this case, we have a beautifully wrought statue of a Greek goddess in marble, the flowing lines begging for the invitation of touch and reverence, of worship and devotion, of invocation and blessing, the divine and sacred brought to life on earth for those who were lucky enough to see it. The level of craftsmanship it took to produce sculptures of this type was unparalleled; the Roman Empire in the 2nd century AD laid claim to a host of the best craftsmen in the world. I can only begin to imagine what kind of a life those men would have lived.
Tuesday
The cult of death has evolved in many ways over thousands of years, but we still memorialize our deceased in the same ways we always have: in physical recreations of their deceased bodies. In this case, it is a memorial tomb marker with a lovely portrait. She is long gone, but we know what she looked like (or an approximation thereof), and that is enough to capture our imaginations.