Egyptian art.

Egyptian art. JAROMIR MALEK. Egyptian art. 448 pages, colour photographs. 1999.London: Phaidon; 0-7148-3627-3 paperback 14.95 [pounds sterling],US$24.95, Can$35, Aus$39.95. What is art? We might include every human intervention in thematerial world, or one segment in a spectrum from least to mostself-conscious. Every shard, every word amounts to the self-expressionthat crafts individual existence within the contours of the socialenvironment. No selection of the objects of study is straightforward,and the task becomes more complicated when the readership knows littleof the details behind production of the works selected. When thatbackground consists of 5000 years of human settled life along 1000 km ofa highly unusual river, most specialists retreat into their privateclub. The general reader is fortunate to find in the author of this bookon Egyptian art one of the most sympathetic and imaginativeEgyptologists of the current generation. Among the marks of originality,it suffices to cite his decision to include, despite the pressures ofspace, at the start the Stone Age and predynastic millennia of Egyptianhistory and, at the end, a chapter on the continuing European receptionof Egyptian art. The range of object types selected reinforces theopenness of attitude. As in the `cultural history' by WilliamHayes, The Scepter sceptersymbol of regal or imperial power and authority. [Western Culture: Misc.]See : Authorityscepterdenotes fairness and righteousness. [Heraldry: Halberts, 37]See : Justice of Egypt (1953), sculpture, painting and architectureare extended to encompass humbler artefacts such as painted pottery orglazed scarab-shaped stamp-seals. The contents lie within the usual formal, external constraints:number, type, size and quality of illustrations, and the size and typeof font. Bold printing and spacing make the text, if rather sparse perpage, easy to absorb. Pictures are predominantly colour photographs, animportant benefit for appreciating material products, particularly giventhe polychromatic polychromatic/poly��chro��mat��ic/ (-krom-at��ik) many-colored. pol��y��chro��mat��icor pol��y��chro��mic or pol��y��chro��mousadj.Having or exhibiting many colors. compositions of dynastic Egypt. Inevitably theillustrations often seem too small, and too few, when a double pagereceives either a single marginal image or no illustration at all.However, the consumer receives a choice: there are the fewer but colourphotographs of the Phaidon book, or the twice as numerous but monochromeillustrations of a principal competitor, W.K. Simpson's (1999)update of W. Stevenson Smith's Art and Architecture of AncientEgypt Editing of this page by unregistered or newly registered users is currently disabled due to vandalism. . Clearly both have their advantages. In favour of the morecolourful option, it is worth noting how the author declares his guidingmotivation (p. 6): `it is hoped that this book will help readers toappreciate ancient Egyptian art more by knowing something of what itmeant to those who made it'. Even if we cannot see `like an Egyptian', we must rememberthat they did not necessarily see what we think we see now. This appliesboth to the ways in which people perceive their environment, and to theways in which material undergoes decay or restoration. Art historicaland psychological theory may illuminate conceptual worlds, whilelaboratory analysis can help to restore the physical world. We can takenothing for granted: pigment and surface may have faded, the metal mayhave lost its patina, the architecture and sculpture may be reduced tofragments of their original shape and context. The farther into thepast, the more incomplete the evidence, and the greater our need forthese technical guides. Colour illustrations offer the present conditionof the works, or, as for the Minoan painting fragments, reconstructiondrawings. Pigments survive imperfectly, on surfaces exposed to changesin light and temperature. Widely varying preservation appears in fourscenes from ground level tomb-chapels. Surfaces locked below ground havetended to fare better and, thanks to the Saharan aridity, grant us avision unsurpassed in the ancient world. Reproduction quality thenbecomes one of the most important links with Egyptian artists (comparepp. 238-9, 331--2, 342-3). Sometimes the issue of original appearanceseems intractable, as with painted papyrus, ancestor of the illustratedbook. One papyrus (pp. 244-5) has darkened with age, but its vignette VignetteA symbol or pictorial representation of the corporation on a stock certificate. Usually a complicated and artistic design, it is meant to make the counterfeiting of stock certificates as difficult as possible. retains its magnificent original pigmentation pigmentation,name for the coloring matter found in certain plant and animal cells and for the color produced thereby. Pigmentation occurs in nearly all living organisms. . In a diametrically di��a��met��ri��cal? also di��a��met��ricadj.1. Of, relating to, or along a diameter.2. Exactly opposite; contrary.di opposite case (p. 335), the overexposed o��ver��ex��pose?tr.v. o��ver��ex��posed, o��ver��ex��pos��ing, o��ver��ex��pos��es1. To expose too long or too much: Don't overexpose the children to television.2. papyrus may be closer to thewhiteness described by Pliny, but its brighter pigments have faded.Original intention entices us as much as original appearance. The authornotes that Egyptian art served religious purposes more than publicdisplay, and he devotes much of the book to explaining historicaldevelopments accompanying art production. Egyptologists may find thisdistracting, but most readers probably welcome it. They may not realizethe extent to which the author incorporates new knowledge, newinterpretation, especially in the paragraphs on Memphis, a special areaof his research. They should, though, enjoy the often very personalizedenthusiasm with which the author shares his knowledge, and woulddoubtless encourage more specialists to follow his example. STEPHEN QUIRKE University College London “UCL” redirects here. For other uses, see UCL (disambiguation).University College London, commonly known as UCL, is the oldest multi-faculty constituent college of the University of London, one of the two original founding colleges, and the first British