User:Chen Junyu/graduation/theise/research notes/Notes for thesis

[English Scripts]Earth, Sea, and Sky: Nature in Western Art: Masterpieces from The Metropolitan Museum of Art

Chinese Version

Chapter1: Nature Idealized

Earth, Sea, and Sky begins with artistic visions of nature shaped by powerful ideas. Western culture has a long and rich history of nature imagery derived from literary sources and the imagination rather than from the world before the artist's eyes.

From early times, people struggling to understand powerful natural forces imagined them as human in order to mitigate their fear of the unknown. The tradition of personifying nature continues to this day, for example in the practice of giving personal names to hurricanes. The personification of nature is a form of metaphoric representation that depicts a culturally understood avatar for the idea of a river, season, or time of day

nature personate

Chapter 2: The Human Presence in Nature A human figure can literally wear nature as a crown of foliage or a rough animal skin, thereby taking on the symbolic attributes of the leaves or the strength and ferocity of the wild beast.

Chapter 3: Animals

The earliest prehistoric cave paintings of primitive man featured animals, and they have remained an important subject for art through the centuries. Many of the creatures seen here embody something more than the zoological species depicted. Pagan gods, for example in ancient Egypt, often assume animal form. Christian art finds symbolism in every species. The challenge for the artist often lies in preserving the true character, energy, and appearance of the animal while also expressing a theological or metaphorical meaning.

Artists try to give every species their own metaphor in works

Chapter 4: Flowers and Gardens flowers sometimes serve as symbols. All flowers have brief moments of perfection, and so their portrayal often implies the idea of transience.

The word "photography" derives from the Greek for "writing with light," and so despite the technology involved, photography is a form of art made of nature.

for the various manifestations of the theme of nature in art are recapitulated in this one medium: idealization, animals, gardens and flowers, and landscape.