Ancient Egyptian and Ancient Greeks

This essay will consist of analysing two diverse cultures and the art in the
timeframe. Modern Neuro- Psychology research suggests that we are
hard-wired in our brain to produce images of the human form which are
not naturalistic, but instead are exaggerated and/or distorted. In this
essay we will find out why we prefer images of the body which dont look
like us.
Artist from the Ancient Egyptian era followed rules and formulas about the
size of objects they carved and painted. When drawing the human figure,
the arms, legs and feet were shown from the side and the shoulders and
eyes were shown from the front. The purpose of this kind of Egyptian art
was to record information, so each part of the body was shown from its
most important angle, therefore a complete view is created and view can
be seen at any one time. The paintings on walls were taken from the daily
life of the people, therefore including hunting, farming and fishing, along
with other things like feasts and parties to preparing food. Paintings on the
inside on a pharaohs tomb were scenes from the deceased life and it
shows how they lived and how to act as a model for the afterlife. Egyptian
sculptures were created to be viewed from all sides or from the front as
caving on wall surfaces and columns. They were often painted in strong
bright colours like they also painted on walls and papyrus. Standing
figures have left leg forward and the arms stiffly by their sides, eyes stare
straight ahead and their faces show no sense of emotion. Rather than
working from a live model, artists worked from memory and the finished
sculpture was more symbolic of the sitter than a realistic representation.
One image dominates our modern world above all others the human
body. The ancient Egyptian sculptures`, are great example of the
exaggeration of the human body. The sculpture Menkure and His Queen
(2580 BC) demonstrates exaggeration in the human body by using the
ancient Egyptian stereotypical image, that express how the man and
female body should look and how they should be presented. For example
the man in the picture of the sculpture (Figure 1) by portraying him as a
muscular man with defined features like the clenched fists and the broad
shoulders with the arms having defining muscles. Common to most
Egyptian sculpture/ statues, exaggeration in such areas of the knees,
which are presented over-emphasized, and the shin-bone is much too
sharp, which is anatomically correct. The woman on the other hand is
presented as fragile and fertile as she had has defining features like
long thin legs and big breasts once again demonstrating that she is being
portrayed as being fertile. One of the possible reasons Ancient Egyptians

used exaggeration was to demonstrate the ideal body and how the body
should be presented.
http://portfolio.newschool.edu/alkhalifa94/
http://arthistoryresources.net/menkaure/menkauredescription.html

Distortion and exaggeration is a style in which artist attempt to depict not

objective reality, alternatively the subjective emotions and responses that
objects and events arouse in them. This is accomplished through distortion,
exaggeration, and realism

In the course of art history we reduced the complexity of landscape painting with
formulas of composition, subject matter and coloring. We further simplified and
exaggerated aspects of these categories as landscape painting moved toward
abstraction and modernism.

http://www.henry-moore.org/works-inpublic/world/germany/hamburg/moorweide/reclining-figure-hand-1979-lh-709
http://arthistoryresources.net/menkaure/menkauredescription.html