Week 7: Art as a Culture

1. Functions of Early Art:
A. I believe the cave artists were just painting images of daily life. From the many different animals, to some images of humans hunting. From doing more reading into the Lascaux Caves, I found out that some of the little collections of dots are thought to be constellations. I believe the images being painted in these caves make it somewhat ritualistic to the cave artists.


B. I believe the paintings are all of animals because the cave artists were showing what they see in their normal lives. Hunting played a big role in this era, so all the animals were animals they hunted. Although, they did paint animals they hunted, reindeer were of the many hunted but they do not have any paintings of them. I believe they probably do have some paintings of reindeer however, we can not identify them as there are still 300 paintings unidentified.

C. This picture below shows of a bison and a stick figure (human) on the ground, I think this is portraying the hunting of the people of this era and the strength of these animals. I believe all these paintings show the importance animals had in this era. The detail put into these animal paintings and not so much into the humans, to me, shows that the animals were stronger and in a sense looked up to. With paintings of animals like the unicorn, maybe they believed these animals and paintings were magical. The different proportions and placings of these paintings show the attention to detail and time these cave artists took to make these paintings.

D. The unevenness of the cave was probably the hardest part of making these painting. Cave artists had to be able to paint with the cracks of the caves. Also finding different materials to use to make these colorful paintings was probably a challenge. Another big factor is lighting, these paintings were done in caves. A lot of these images were probably painted in the dark or with little use of light.


E. One function of this art to early humans is it gave a sense of capturing a story or image, somewhat like a picture. Everyday they were out hunting and meeting these new animals, coming to these caves and painting them allows them to remember their experience and tell someone else of it. Another function is just seeing the beautiful art for the ones that did not create these paintings. They will be able to look at an image and make their own story from it. Lastly, I feel these paintings help educate people. It helped educate early humans as it let them know the different animals surrounding them and that some are dangerous. For later humans, these paintings have educated us on our history, giving us some insight on this era and what was going on during it.


2. Commonalities in Function:
Art now, whether it is in the form of paintings/drawings, photography, music, &/or theatre all capture a story or image. In the paintings/drawings and photography of modern day art, they all capture a moment and allow the person to make their own story from it. Music and theatre are a bit different as they usually tell you the story, but they still allow you to get lost in the story and feel as though you experienced it. Also there is always an audience wanting to see these images, watch these plays, &/or listen to these songs for their stories. Many people have favorite artists because they can relate or enjoy the stories that are being depicted. To me, education through art is one of the best forms of education. It allows people to really pay attention to what is being taught and not feel as though it is being taught in a uninteresting way. Also our art now will help people in the future learn about our time now and how life was for us.


3. Introduce your Favorite Art:
The form of art I chose to explore is Photojournalism. I have always had an interest in photography, but I recently have gotten into Photojournalism as it tells more of a story. From taking classes, I've learned photojournalism is more so about the people and really capturing a story.

A. Photojournalists main goal is to tell a story. They are somewhat like the news only through photos. They capture a series of photos and put them together to tell a story or can capture one photo (like this one to the right) and it can tell a story alone. There are trying to communicate a problem or what is going in the world.


B. Photojournalists are a group of people, but there is no complete culture. There are however 3 different types of photos in photojournalism. 

• Timeliness — the images have meaning in the context of a recently published record of events.
• Objectivity — the situation implied by the images is a fair and accurate representation of the events they depict in both content and tone.
• Narrative — the images combine with other news elements to make facts relatable to the viewer or reader on a cultural level.

C. Photojournalism benefits society because it brings awareness to the world. They are able to capture the stories being told through images which tells a better story than hearing it on the news or reading about it. Photos capture peoples eyes and gives a more sense of empathy for the event being captured.