The Monetary Value of a Work of Art Refers to

Affiliate 3: Significance of Materials Used in Art

Rita Tekippe and Pamela J. Sachant

three.1 LEARNING OUTCOMES

After completing this chapter, yous should be able to:

• Depict the differences among valuation of art materials, specially with regard to intrinsic qualities of raw material versus produced objects

• Discuss the differences between budgetary and cultural values for works of art

• Discuss the idea of "borrowed" significance that comes with the re-use of components from previous artworks

• Describe the significance of value added to objects past complex artistic processes or past changing tastes in dissimilar eras

3.2 INTRODUCTION

Amidst the aspects of an artwork that evoke response, aid understanding, and contribute meaning will exist the material(s) used in its cosmos. These materials might make it more or less of import, more or less valuable, or might bring a variety of associations that are non inherent in the essential form. For case, you might recognize a vase not merely every bit a vase, but as a Louis Comfort Tiffany (1848-1933, United states) Favrile glass vase. (Figure 3.ane) Knowing the creator, material, and special processes involved in the artwork's creation would add to and might modify your perception and appreciation in several important respects. For example, y'all could link information technology to an of import creative person, an innovative creative technique, a significant flow in American décor and manufacturing and marketing, a valuation based on its collectability, and numerous other interesting details near its creation and use.

Figure 3.1 | Bowl

Artist: Louis Comfort Tiffany

Source: Met Museum

License: Public Domain

The most apparent choices in this regard are for three-dimensional forms such equally sculpture and compages, where it is more than likely that costly and precious materials such as gilded, silvery, gems, marble, or bronze are used in its creation. The distinction among material choices for drawing and paintings will besides accept certain effects for their meanings. For example, if a painter practical gilt leaf , 22K gold pounded into extremely thin sheets, to a painting's surface, the monetary and cultural value of the work increases. (Figure 3.2) The monetary value refers to the corporeality a heir-apparent is willing to pay, which in this instance includes the cost of the materials the creative person factors into the price of the artwork. The cultural value is the perceived quality or merit of the work: what information technology is worth according to that culture's standards of artistic importance or excellence. If a work of art has loftier budgetary or cultural value, the owner's reputation and status are, in turn, elevated.

Figure 3.two | Annunciation to the Shepherds , illumination from the Book of Pericopes (Lectionary) of Henry Two, fol. 8v, 1002-1012 CE.

Source: Artstor.org

License: Public Domain

Without considering each and every possibility in this regard, we should look at a few pointed examples that will help us know what to consider when nosotros examine artworks with a view to the choices of materials that the artist (or patron) must take made. The techniques for many of these is discussed in greater detail in other parts of the text, then our primary focus here volition be on the intrinsic materials, although the means they are worked, used, and combined are inextricably pregnant in some of these cases.

3.3 UTILITY AND VALUE OF MATERIALS

The primeval drawings, paintings, vessels, and sculptures were made with whatever the artists could find and turn to their use for creating images and objects; such readily-available material includes mud, clay, twigs, straw, minerals, and plants that they could use directly or with slight alteration, such every bit grinding and mixing minerals with h2o to apply to cave walls. (Figure 3.3) Experimentation was surely part of the process and, just as surely, much of it is lost to the states at present, although we take some examples of works, materials, and tools to requite us insight into the artistic processes and cloth choices.

Figure three.three | Reproduction of a bison of the cave of Altamira

Author: User "Rameessos"

Source: Wikimedia Commons

License: Public Domain

For instance, in works such as this earthenware , or baked clay, vessel, the creative person had explored sufficiently to observe that mixing a sure type of world in certain proportions with water would yield a flexible substance. The resulting clay could be handbuilt , more often than not by wrapping and smoothing coils, into a vessel shaped with a conical lesser that would sit nicely in a coal fire for heating its contents. (Effigy 3.iv) A twig or string might be used to incise marks in the surface, not only to decorate it, just likewise to make it easier to concord onto than if information technology were completely smooth. Dating to c. 3,500 BCE, pots such equally this from the late Neolithic era in Korea are known every bit Jeulmun pottery, meaning "comb-patterned." The dirt could be constitute in unlike colors, textures, density, potential for adherence, etc. Information technology could be manipulated past paw to make containers to store, transport, cook, or serve all sorts of goods.

Figure 3.iv | Korean neolithic pot, constitute in Busan

Author: User "Practiced friend100"

Source: Wikimedia Commons

License: Public Domain

The invention of the potter'due south wheel allowed artists to "throw" the clay on a rotating platform the artist operated by hand or powered with a kick motion. When and where the potter's bike first appeared is much debated, only it was widely used in Mesopotamia, Egypt, and Southeast Asia before 3,000 BCE. Using a potter'southward bike immune the artist to turn vessels with thinner walls, a greater variety of and more uniform shapes and sizes, and a larger array of painted and incised decorative elements for boosted aesthetic appeal. They could, likewise, brand molds for serial production of normally used types of pots.

By the fourth dimension of the Ming Dynasty in China (1368-1644), vases such as this from the Xuande menstruation (1426-1435) painted in regal (cobalt) blueish and white display both the technical innovations and the remarkable degree of refinement achieved. (Effigy 3.5) The development of such mineral resources as kaolin and petuntse allowed ceramicists to create porcelain, one of the most refined and hardest types of pottery, which became known as "china" considering of the origins of the materials and processes; chinaware was soon emulated the globe over for its dazzler and utility as tableware and décor. Traders from Portugal returned from China with chinaware (porcelain vessels) in the sixteenth century. The semi-translucent material, elegant shapes, and glass-similar, intricately decorated surfaces of the pots were unlike anything produced in Europe at that time. The demand for such wares quickly spread throughout Europe, and ceramicists on that continent spent the side by side two centuries trying to unlock the secret of how to create such smooth, white, and difficult pottery. Ehrenfried Walther von Tschirnhaus and Johann Friedrich Böttger, both employed for that purpose by Augustus Two the Strong, Elector of Saxony (today Frg) and King of Poland (r. 1694-1733), are credited with producing the first European porcelain in 1708. It would go known equally Meissen ware considering it was produced at the manufactory set up in the town by Augustus II for that purpose to safeguard the formula and maintain his exclusive control over the creation and auction of European porcelain. (Effigy 3.half dozen)

Figure 3.five | A Ming dynasty Xuande mark and flow (1426-1435) majestic blue and white vase

Author: User "Meliere"

Source: Wikimedia Commons

License: CC BY-SA 4.0

Effigy 3.six | Teapot

Creative person: Königliche Porzellan Manufaktur

Author: Walters Fine art Museum

Source: Wikimedia Commons

License: CC BY-SA 3.0

The monopoly held by Augustus II was curt-lived, however, equally the hugger-mugger was sold and a competing factory opened in Vienna, Austria, past 1717. From there, variations of the formula and the production of porcelain spread throughout Europe as need increased from the privilege of royalty, to the rich and titled, and eventually to all who could afford the condition-giving ware. For instance, this nineteenth-century commemorative bullpen made past the American Porcelain Manufacturing Company would have been presented to peculiarly mark an occasion. (Figure iii.7) Although information technology is a distant relative of Chinese purple porcelain ware and the royal courts of Europe, the techniques and materials used in its creation were still associated with tradition, wealth, and high social standing, elevating the cultural value of this mass-produced vessel to the level of a emblem or even a family unit heirloom. Objects such as this are valued beyond their monetary worth or utilitarian purposes, both due to the tactile and aesthetic qualities that come from the physical substance and techniques used and to historical and social associations they agree.

Figure 3.7 | Pitcher

Artist: American Porcelain Manufacturing Company

Source: Met Museum

License: OASC

Similarly, drawing and painting, apparently first confined to the rock walls of nature, were areas of exploration for artists who later applied colour to the built walls of compages, and then to portable objects of diverse types. Ceramic ware was decorated with images from nature, pictorial and narrative motifs, and messages of myth, power, and even everyday life. The same is truthful of tomb walls of Arab republic of egypt (Figure 3.viii), palace walls in ancient Iraq, ( Ashurnasirpal II with Attendants and Soldier ) and Greek vessels used for practical or ritual purposes (Effigy 3.9).

Figure 3.8 | Egyptian tomb wall painting

Author: British Library

Source: Wikimedia Commons

License: CC0 i.0

Figure three.9 | Terra cotta krater

Source: Met Museum

License: OASC

Eventually such vessels, as well as books and other objects, bore written data and pictorial explications of textual content: illustrations. Early textual works were frequently inscribed on rock tablets to ensure their durability or on relatively delicate materials similar papyrus that required laborious preparation to make information technology suitable for conveying data. In either example, the materials used added to the piece of work's significance. Past the fourth dimension of the development of the codex (probably in the Roman era), or manuscript with bound pages, the most common course of modernistic concrete books, the choice material was animal skin, as seen in manuscripts throughout Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages, roughly the beginning of the quaternary to the fifteenth centuries, in the Western and the Heart Eastern regions of the globe. (Figures iii.10 and 3.11) Sheepskin, or parchment, the about commonly used back up for written works, was obtained past laborious preparation of the pelts, through scraping and buffing the surface to make it suitable for use by scribes and illustrators who added the words and pictures. The most refined volume arts were oft presented on vellum , or calfskin, prized for its smoother and finer surface. When used for especially of import works or those made for royal purposes, information technology was frequently dyed majestic or dark bluish, with script applied in gold or argent ink and illustrations that included areas of gold or silver. (see Effigy 3.2) These lustrous images were known equally illuminations , that is, given light. The viewer would at once recognize the special and distinctive treatment unsaid by the use of such precious materials and know that the patron had paid well for an elegant and of import book.

Figure 3.ten | Historiated Alphabetic character L, with analogy of the Tree of Jesse, Capuchin'south Bible , f. 7v, c. 1180. BNF

Writer: User "Soefrm"

Source: Wikimedia Eatables

License: Public Domain

Effigy iii.11 | Kitab al-Bulhan: Center Eastern House and Lifting Machine , Arab scientific manuscript leaf. i. 14th century

Writer: User "Peacay"

Source: Wikimedia Commons

License: Public Domain

3.four PRECIOUS MATERIALS, SPOLIA, AND BORROWED GLORY

Objects made for sacred or regal use were frequently wrought of such lavish and treasured components as vellum, silk, linen, wool, ivory, gold, silverish, gems, and rare stones and minerals. Frequently crafted for further refinement, such works prove their precious properties to advantage. In ancient Rome/Byzantium, there were quarries for porphyry, a rich royal marble stone (the footing for the association of the color regal with royalty). Considering information technology was restricted to majestic purposes, its very advent carried connotations of the purple significance of any work fabricated from information technology. It was frequently used for columns and other architectural components that thereby accentuated of import structures or parts of them. Once the imperially controlled mines were abandoned in the 5th century CE, new items could not be made of porphyry, so older monuments were sometimes pillaged and re-used, with the royal significance transferred to the plunderers, implying non only the replacement of the old order by the new, simply too the superiority of the conquerors.

Porphyry burial containers were particularly prized in antiquity and the Middle Ages. Constantina was the eldest girl of Emperor Constantine the Great (r. 306-337 CE), the Roman ruler who in 313 CE decreed early Christians could practice their faith without persecution and confiscated state should be returned to the Church. Although Constantine considered himself a Christian, he did not abandon the Roman gods and religious rituals. For instance, in 321 CE he stated that Christians and pagans akin should detect the mean solar day of the sun (later named Sunday); the cult of the lord's day god had been popularly observed in Roman culture for centuries, and associations of the sun as the source of light, warmth, and life had been adopted by those of the Christian faith. Constantine, according to fable, was baptized a Christian on his deathbed in 337 CE.

When his daughter Constantina died in 354 CE, she was entombed in a porphyry sarcophagus , or stone bury, that was richly carved with motifs from both the pagan Roman and Christian faiths. (Figure 3.12) There are small, winged cupids gathering grapes amongst garlands of grape vines with peacocks and a ram below on the forepart and dorsum of the coffin, and cupids treading on grapes on both ends. In Roman mythology, such scenes were associated with Bacchus (known to the Greeks as Dionysus), the god of the wine harvest and wine making who as a babe was reborn later on having been slaughtered by the Titans. Interpreted every bit Christian motifs, the cupids, who became known equally putti or small, winged angels, are seen as preparing the grapes for the Eucharist , the sacrament commemorating the Last Supper by consecration of the bread and vino as the Body and Blood of Jesus Christ. Such re-imaging and re-purposing of motifs and their meanings were often seen at this fourth dimension of transition from paganism to Christianity; farther, having been adopted by Constantine and his family, they were associated with regal power and carried connotations of the Christian conquest of paganism.

Figure 3.12 | Sarcophagus of Constantina

Author: User "Jean-Pol GRANDMONT"

Source: Wikimedia Commons

License: CC By-SA 3.0

Afterwards, in the eighth and ninth centuries CE, Charlemagne (r. 768-814 CE) used pillaged porphyry columns inside arches on the upper level of his royal chapel, a building intended for his own entombment. (Effigy iii.thirteen) The Palatine Chapel (c. 796-798 CE, consecrated 805 CE) was part of the palace circuitous Charlemagne had built at Aachen, in what is now Frg. The interior of the chapel is an octagon topped by a dome supported past heavy piers with arches on the second level, where the purple throne is located, with a view to the high chantry (the table or other surface where religious rituals are carried out) located across the church on the first floor below. (Figure 3.14) The design of the building is modeled on mausolea , or buildings containing tombs, and churches from the late Roman, early on Christian, and early Byzantine periods (4th-7th centuries), such as San Vitale (526-647 CE) in Ravenna, Italy. (Effigy three.15) Charlemagne, who was not only King of the Franks and King of the Lombards but was also crowned as the showtime Holy Roman Emperor in 800 CE, used that blueprint and the plundered columns to signify the revival and replacement of the old Roman Empire with his own reign as a Christian earth ruler.

Figure three.13 | Aachen, Palace Chapel of Charlemagne. c. 800

Author: User "Velvet"

Source: Wikimedia Commons

License: CC BY-SA iii.0

Figure 3.14 | Cross-sections of the Palace Chapel of Aachen

Author: User "Sir Gawain"

Source: Wikimedia Commons

License: Public Domain

Figure 3.xv | San Vitale, Ravenna

Author: User "Väsk"

Source: Wikimedia Eatables

License: Public Domain

Amid others, Holy Roman Emperor Henry (or Heinrich) 2 (r. 973-1024) similarly borrowed and supplanted Charlemagne'southward celebrity by adopting his palace complex at Aachen and adding to its structure and furnishings with his ain statements of imperial power. Henry II deputed a lavish pulpit for the chapel that was completed in 1014. (Effigy 3.sixteen) The semi-circular pulpit has a smaller semi-circumvolve to either side, a shape known as a trefoil . The eye is made up of ix rectangular panels covered with chased gold copper that has been formed by hammering into low relief images of the Four Evangelists. The panels are adorned with gemstones and embellished with enamel , powdered drinking glass fused to the surface by heat, and grid , beads or threads of gold or argent arranged in designs on a metal surface. The three ivory panels on each of the smaller semi-circles depict infidel mythological figures; the panels were made in Egypt in the sixth century CE. Re-used parts such as the porphyry columns, gemstones, and ivory panels are known every bit spolia , remnants that had been taken from older fine art and compages and incorporated into new fine art objects and places with the implications of conquest, superiority, and heritage for the new patrons.

Effigy 3.16 | Ambon (11thcentury) of Henry II, Holy Roman Emperor. Aachen Cathedral, Deutschland.

Author: User "HOWI"

Source: Wikimedia Commons

License: CC Past-SA 3.0

Another, subsequently Holy Roman Emperor, Frederick I (r. 11551190), and his married woman, Beatrice, commissioned a chandelier to hang below the octagonal dome in the chapel. (Figure iii.17) This was called the Barbarossa chandelier, reflecting the emperor's nickname later on his red beard; information technology was installed between 1165 and 1170 in award of the Virgin Mary and every bit a tribute to Charlemagne. The chandelier's forty-8 candles bandage a tremendous spread of light in an historic period when artificial illumination was plush, emphasizing its association with earthly wealth and heavenly low-cal.

Figure three.17 | The Barbarossa chandelier

Author: User "Lokilech"

Source: Wikimedia Commons

License: CC Past-SA three.0

Equally a continuation of the work undertaken past his grandfather Frederick I, which likewise included exhuming Charlemagne'due south bones, Frederick II (r. 1220-1250), following the plans Barbarossa had made, completed the creation of a lavish, new jeweled and golden shrine for the remains of Charlemagne, seeking to elevate him to the rank of sainthood. These statements in rich cloth forms, imply the surpassing glory of their royal predecessor, shared by those who followed in his lineage. Moreover, the associations of royalty and honor for earthly rulers was often intertwined in very pointed ways to artwork associated with the Christian God and saints. Notable in this regard is the shrine for Charlemagne—clearly a statement of imperial power—made of rich materials that reflect popular Christian notions of the Heavenly Jerusalem, where these saintly rulers were thought to act as intercessors for the believer. (Figures 3.xviii and three.19) Ofttimes such purple works actually featured objects or meaning decorative details from imperial Roman works, such as the antique cameo of the Roman Emperor Augustus that was applied to the Cross of the Emperor Lothair Two . (Figures iii.twenty and 3.21) The gilded cross, dated to c. 1000, is covered with 102 gemstones and thirty-two pearls and has a rock crystal seal most its base of operations bearing a portrait of Lothair Ii (r. 835-869). Including the portraits of earlier emperors further emphasized the wealth and power of the ruler who had it fabricated, believed to exist Otto 3 (r. 983-1002). In addition, gemstones on such devotional works were selected for their qualities associated with healing, good fortune, the ability to ward off evil, and their mystical translucence, that fostered spiritual illumination.

Effigy iii.18 | Shrine of Charlemagne, Interior of palatine chapel in Aachen Cathedral, Germany.

Author: User "ACBahn"

Source: Wikimedia Commons

License: CC BY-SA 3.0

Figure 3.nineteen | Shrine of Charlemagne

Author: User "HOWI"

Source: Wikimedia Commons

License: CC By-SA 3.0

Figure iii.xx | Cross of Lothair

Author: CEphoto, Uwe Aranas

Source: Wikimedia Eatables

License: CC Past-SA 3.0

Figure 3.21 | Augustus cameo

Author: User "Absalypson2"

Source: Wikimedia Commons

License: CC By-SA 3.0

3.five LIQUIDATION OF TREASURES

Works such equally these often unsaid the storing of riches as heavenly treasure and likewise represented a means of storing material wealth that could be used for mundane purposes in fourth dimension of demand. Nosotros have records of a number of extravagant shrines and liturgical (relating to worship) furnishings that have non survived because they were taken autonomously and sold to feed a famine-stricken community or to provide for a new building projection or an updated expression of devotion. Such works as the sumptuous Screen of Charlemagne (Effigy 3.22) and the enormous Stavelot Altarpiece (Effigy three.23) are known to u.s. only from drawings and small-scale fragments that remain from the original objects. The disappearances of such works betoken that their rich cloth components, while one time intrinsic to their bang-up spiritual implications, at some signal came to exist seen every bit an important source of wealth that could be put to other utilise.

Figure 3.22 | Screen of Charlemagne

Artist: Piersac

Source: www.medart.pitt.edu

License: Public Domain

Effigy iii.23 | The mid-twelfth-century silver altar piece surrounding the shrine of Saint Remaclus

Author: User "Kleon3"

Source: Wikimedia Eatables

License: Public Domain

3.half-dozen WOOD, INLAY, AND LACQUER

Sculptures, objects, and architectural components of wood were also fashioned with a view to their monetary and cultural value. Some varieties of wood are more rare, others have qualities that make them easier to work in sure types of process, and there have been waves of "fashion" in woods choices at many eras. For example, lindenwood and limewood are associated with the Middle Ages, mahogany with eighteenth-century England and Scotland, oak with the Arts and Crafts work of the mid-nineteenth to early twentieth centuries, and delicately lacquered wooden goods with Yuan Dynasty China.

Wooden sculpture was a far more predominant art form than painting in northern Europe during the Romanesque (c. 1000-1200) and Gothic periods (c. 1200-1500) in that region. The material favored was lindenwood or limewood due to the fineness of the forest's grain, which immune the sculptor to carve intricate detail. More often than not, the sculpture was then polychromed , or painted, to increase the lifelike quality of the figure. Suggesting that spark of life was of import in works such as The Throne of Wisdom because Mary, the compassionate and merciful Mother of God and Queen of Heaven, was believed to have the ability to intercede with her Son, the babe Christ, on behalf of the faithful. (Effigy three.24)

Figure iii.24 | Throne of Wisdom

Author: User "Okapi07"

Source: Wikimedia Eatables

License: CC BY-SA 3.0

Mahogany was discovered as a marketable wood past European explorers and traders in the Caribbean area islands, Fundamental America, and South America by the seventeenth century. The naturally reddish-brown woods was prized for its beauty and force and, throughout the 1700s, was frequently used in England and Scotland to create fine furniture for the market place there and in the American colonies. A table such as this was a condition symbol indicating the possessor's wealth and taste, which was farther enhanced by its employ: this was not a utilitarian slice but a display table for chinaware. (Figure 3.25)

Figure 3.25 | China table

Source: Met Museum

License: OASC

The Arts and Crafts motility began in England in the centre of the nineteenth century, but rapidly spread throughout Europe and to the United States. In a time of growing industrialization, with an always greater number of people moving to urban areas, working in factories, and consuming car-made goods, some felt the need to repossess the handmade. With romantic associations of simpler times, greater actuality, and individual labor, piece of furniture and decorative objects made as office of the Craft motion were prized for their workmanship, design based on forms from nature, and respect for the natural materials used. For example, this cabinet is thought to have been made past Daniel Pabst (1826-1910, Frg, lived U.s.), 1 of the leading furniture makers of his day. It features elaborately carved surfaces and inlay , where i fabric is cut and fit into another in complex patterns. (Figures 3.26 and 3.27) Although the types of wood used—walnut, maple, and white pino—are non exotic or rare, the mastery with which they take been painstakingly cut and applied conveys a sense of preciousness. Inlay techniques were oft used to provide visual dissimilarity and to emphasize both the distinctive and various qualities amidst the materials brought together and the refined craftsmanship involved. A piece of furniture made with such skill was prized for its singularity and for the intricacy of the arts and crafts involved in its creation.

Figure three.26 | Chiffonier

Artist: Daniel Pabst

Source: Met Museum

License: OASC

Figure three.27 | Particular of Cabinet

Artist: Daniel Pabst

Source: Met Museum

License: OASC

Lacquer has been used in art throughout Asia since Neolithic times, but carved lacquer is created in China but. Lacquer is resin from trees found in continental Asia that hardens to a natural plastic when exposed to the air; information technology is resistant to water and durable. The base of a lacquered object is forest, to which the liquid resin is applied in upwardly to 200 layers. This tray was fabricated in the fourteenth century, during the Yuan Dynasty, when lacquer was most often tinted cerise past adding cinnabar, powdered mercury sulfide. (Figure 3.28) Once hardened, the lacquer was carved away to create detailed scenes of courtroom life, such every bit nosotros see here, floral motifs, nature scenes, dragons or bathetic patterns. While the resin itself is of niggling monetary value, the laborious procedure and high level of skill required for such delicate carving meant the completed objects had, and still take, pregnant cultural value.

Figure 3.28 | Tray with women and boys on a garden terrace

Source: Met Museum

License: OASC

Some of the materials prized by artists and patrons get more than valuable because of these artistic uses; others are valuable for their intrinsic worth as raw substance. From the primeval times, metals such as gilt, silver, iron, and copper were used and traded in their natural states, as they came from the earth. They were mixed with other materials to create alloys, used for minting coins and forming sculptural objects. Among the most prominent metal materials first used for art were iron and bronze; forging and casting them were amidst the earliest complex artistic processes devised. Contumely (copper alloyed with can, lead, and/or other metals) and the harder, more than durable statuary take been widely used for chiliad public monuments that have fine detail, weather well, and can be hollow cast to reduce the corporeality of metal used. (Figures 3.29 and 3.thirty). Considering forging and casting are complex and highly skilled processes, a viewer should know that an object fabricated of this material was a pregnant statement for the creative person or patron to make, one involving considerable planning and staging to achieve the work.

Figure 3.29 | Bronze statue of Buddha

Writer: User "Dirk Beyer"

Source: Wikimedia Commons

License: CC By-SA 3.0

Figure 3.xxx | The Minute Man

Artist: Daniel Chester French

Author: User "Flight Jazz"

Source: Wikimedia Commons

License: Public Domain

3.viii RARE MATERIALS AND PROHIBITED USES

The economic and ecological factors involved in some materials accept sometimes moved consideration of their use far beyond the discussion of creative product. An example is work in ivory, especially that obtained from elephants, although information technology was too taken to use for sculpture from their kin, the extinct mammoth, as well equally from walruses and other mammals. Its rarity and workability led to its valuation for finely carved works, often for aloof patrons and very special purposes, such as the devotional objects ( The Virgin and Kid , Unknown ) and personal toilet articles ( Assault on the Castle of Love , Unknown ) that were popular among the court ladies of the belatedly Middle Ages. Its exploitation has led to scarcity and, ultimately, at present threatens the very existence of elephants, since they have been savagely hunted and their herds decimated in the interest of turn a profit. Consequently, both the sale and purchase of ivory objects, even those considered antiques and historical treasures, are now widely boycotted in the interest of preservation of the species.

3.9 Fabric CONNOTATIONS OF Class OR STATION

Other more than mundane materials and appropriated components might also have potent political connotations that intensify the significant of the artwork. Korean artist Do Ho Su chose and assembled armed forces dog tags to create a larger-than-life figural impression of an imperialistic robe with a hollow core. It carries connotations of the political strength of his native state being congenital upon such things as the dehumanizing mandatory military service he had performed, and the relationships between individuals and the collectives they form. ( Some/1 , Do Ho Suh ; Some/Ane detail, Practice Ho Suh )

3.10 BEFORE Yous MOVE ON

Key Concepts

One of the basic creative choices for any creation is the material from which it will exist made and so should exist an surface area for careful attention in our analysis of whatsoever artwork. Deliberate choices tin can likewise involve the pointed spurning of rich resources in favor of humbler stuff, every bit in the robe created past Do Ho Su, and less refined surfaces, such as cardboard or burlap for paintings; things that are only more recently available than those traditionally used, like plastics for sculpture, titanium for architecture; and the technologically evolved media that move into the realms of the physically immaterial. Choices and implications have expanded exponentially, and our test of them should be wide, deep, and careful.

Test Yourself

1. Hash out the differences between materials that are intrinsically precious, and those that are fabricated more valuable by the processes or creative ideas in works of art, by considering specific examples.

2. Consider the use of spolia in at to the lowest degree three specific examples and discuss how they inverse the significance of the art piece of work to which they were practical.

3. Review and depict a specific process for creating artwork that involved procedures for combining various materials into the production.

4. Considering such common materials as clay or forest, discuss the means in which an artist might utilize it for making an object of much greater value than the inherent worth, and what factors, other than the creation process, might lead people to value it highly.

three.11 Key TERMS

Codex: the volume course in which pages (or leaves) of material such as parchment, vellum, or paper, are gathered into bundles and leap together—initially by sewing, now commonly past glueing— and then provided with a cover to protect the sheets. Its antecedent was the coil, in which the sheets were joined into a long continuous whorl that was opened out from one side, rolled up at the other, for viewing the contents.

Cultural value : the perceived quality or merit of the work: what it is worth according to that civilisation'southward standards of artistic importance or excellence.

Earthenware , or objects made from dirt: such as vessels that are formed for specific uses and hardened either past drying in the air or by baking in high heat. Oft, earthenware goods are distinguished from more refined clay-based objects that are creating with additional processing of the material or unlike/more complex firing methods. See porcelain

Gold leaf : 22K gold pounded into extremely thin sheets, to be applied selectively to areas of 2-d or 3-d objects.

Handbuilt: dirt objects that are shaped by hand, ofttimes by wrapping and smoothing coils of clay into the desired form. These are distinguished from cycle-thrown or mold-made goods .

Illumination : literally, given low-cal, specifically through the employ of golden or silver for letting of illustrative touches in a manuscript. The term is also former used to describe manuscripts that have images added to them, as opposed to simply including lettered text

Manuscript : literally, hand-written presentation of script and/or images. The form was supplanted past books produced with a printing printing, although the term is still used for a singular re-create of a written piece of work.

Mausolea, plural of mausoleum : a edifice designed to house 1 or more tombs, usually for an of import person. These were most often centrally-planned, with a design that pivoted around the burial site. In Christian usage, these were sometimes attached to a larger, congregational structure, but sometimes stood alone. They might house more than i tomb.

Monetary value : the worth of materials or objects, in terms of "marketplace value." This might exist determined by the value of the materials use or of the finished art object, considered differently from the cost of the materials.

Parchment: sheepskin, prepared for use in manuscripts—less refined than vellum , used for finer and more expensive works.

Polychrome: painted in several colors.

Porcelain : highly refined ceramic ware, initially produced in China, with select materials like petuntse and kaolin, to create semi-translucent material, with elegant shapes, and glass-like, intricately busy surfaces, and loftier-temp fired for hardened finishes.

Potter'due south wheel, wheel-thrown : pottery made with the use of a potter'due south wheel, a device for turning the dirt body on a rotating platform for a more uniform shape. These were first turned past manus, knee, or pedal motion, later on electrified.

Putti plural of putto : a small winged baby affections, a cherub.

Spolia : bounty taken from and original context, equally in the "spoils of war." Often, items of spolia were re-used in afterward works to imply the conquest (and superiority) of the new owner over the original.

Vellum: calfskin, prepared for use in luxury manuscripts, more highly prized than the rougher, less expensive parchment.

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Source: https://alg.manifoldapp.org/read/introduction-to-art-design-context-and-meaning/section/5796880d-cc97-4690-883b-2b116186f68d

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