(jazz piano)
- [Voiceover] Artists love to portray the human body,
but there's a lot of decisions to make,
and when you portray the human body
on a two-dimensional surface,
those decisions come to the fore.
- [Voiceover] Bodies exist in space,
and so there are various ways of representing
three-dimensional forms on a two-dimensional surface,
and when you're representing the body,
there's lots of other complicated things
like how do you represent movement,
the weight of the body, and do you?
Or do you choose to represent the body
in a more abstract and transcendent way?
- [Voiceover] One of the first great naturalistic
renderings of the human body came about
in the classical tradition, that is, the art work
of the ancient Greeks and the ancient Romans.
Now most ancient Greek painting is lost,
but we do have some ancient Roman painting.
A great example of that can be seen
in a fresco, that is a wall painting,
of a woman and her daughter who's standing behind a chair.
- [Voiceover] We think is her daughter,
and this is a very old image,
so it's hard to know exactly what's being shown.
- [Voiceover] That's true.
This is more than 2,000 years old.
- [Voiceover] So, just like we see in sculpture
in ancient Greece and Rome in two-dimensional art
and fresco paintings like this one,
we see an interest in representing the correct
proportions of the human body,
and interest in representing, although a clothed figure,
a sense of a nude figure that makes sense
underneath that drapery.
- [Voiceover] Well, we get a sense for the mass,
of the volumes, of the body,
and remember, all of this is represented
on a two-dimensional surface,
so the ability to create a sense of a form
turning in space is quite an achievement.
- [Voiceover] And when you say turning in space,
you mean light playing over the surface
of a form to make it appear three-dimensional.
- [Voiceover] Well, look at the edge of the pillow
that she sits on.
The bottom of it has shadow,
the top of it has a highlight,
and so we get a sense of that object in space.
- [Voiceover] So the artist has created
a convincing illusion on this two-dimensional surface
of a three-dimensional form.
- [Voiceover] Look at the instrument that that woman holds.
We're seeing it at an angle
so that it looks foreshortened.
- [Voiceover] It appears to be coming out in space
toward us, and by creating a foreshortened form,
the artist further helps to convince us
of an illusion of space.
There's a lot going on here, in fact,
where the artist is trying to give us
a sense of naturalism, of an illusion of reality.
We have the foreshortened musical instrument,
the foreshortened arm of the chair,
the naturalism of her body,
the sense of her weight as she sits on that chair.
- [Voiceover] And, of course, the child that is behind
the chair so that we know that there is space.
It's a relatively shallow space.
We have a wall behind the child.
Nevertheless, we do see the woman in front,
the chair in the middle, the girl behind that,
and the wall behind her.
- [Voiceover] Exactly.
We have an illusion of space
and we have an illusion of three-dimensional
figures that exist within that space.
- [Voiceover] But throughout history,
that wasn't always the primary consideration of an artist.
- [Voiceover] If we look at a Medieval mosaic
when Europe was dominated by Christianity,
by Christian thought, we see a very different
approach to the human figure.
- [Voiceover] Here we're looking at an apse mosaic.
That is, this is made of tiny pieces of stone and glass
that's in a church called Hagia Sophia.
This is huge.
It's about 16 feet tall, but it's so much more
stylized than the Roman painting.
The image itself is quite symmetrical.
- [Voiceover] By symmetry we mean that if you
cut it down the center it would be
pretty much the same on both sides,
and the figures are very frontal.
This is a kind of view that's not very realistic.
If you walked in a room, for example,
how many people would you actually see exactly frontal?
- [Voiceover] And you would generally not see
figures that have halos around their heads
or gold backgrounds behind them.
This is a spiritual representation.
This is an image of the Virgin Mary and her son, Christ.
So what we're looking at here is a heavenly representation.
This is a symbolic representation.
Although there is some reference to light and shadow,
especially in the drapery
and especially in the cushions,
this is an image that is coming
out of the late Roman tradition.
Nevertheless, this is primarily concerned
with abstracting the human body.
- [Voiceover] And abstracting space,
and so we can say that the artists
of the ancient Roman fresco
was doing everything he could to convince us
of the reality of his illusion.
Here, in the Middle Ages, the artist
is doing everything he can to convince us
of the unreality of his image.
He has removed it from any earthly setting.
We have that gold background.
The figure is elongated.
The drapery describes the body a bit,
but is very abstracted.
By abstracted, we mean removed from reality.
- [Voiceover] So the lengthening of that body
is a way of signaling to the viewer
that the figure that we're seeing
is not somebody that we would meet in our daily lives,
that this is somebody who exists in the spiritual realm.
Christians at this point in history
are much less concerned with the importance
of the physical, of the realm in which we live,
and are much more focused on the hereafter,
on the spiritual realm.
Now, that changes.
If we move to the Renaissance,
we see Christian art that is concerned
with the here and now.
- [Voiceover] And see that in so much work
of the Renaissance.
In this beautiful painting by Giovanni Bellini,
we have a spiritual image,
this is the Madonna and the Christ child,
but in a beautiful earthly setting
with a landscape behind them.
The figures no longer wear those big halos
indicating their divine status.
Their bodies are in much more natural proportions,
and move much more naturally.
So we have that interest in both the natural world
and the naturalism, the realism, of the body.
- [Voiceover] So here's an artist that is finding
kind of spirituality in the beauty of nature,
in the beauty of the human body.
In this way, we have an artist who has an interest
in returning to that older Greek and Roman tradition.
I'm not saying that Bellini was looking
specifically at Roman wall painting,
that would have been hard to see,
but there was a general interest
in the classical interest in the natural world.
- [Voiceover] And that's one of the ways
that we define the Renaissance,
the Renaissance as a rebirth of the culture
of ancient Greece and Rome
and artists looking back to that naturalistic tradition.
- [Voiceover] But I think it's important to be cautious
not to look at the Bellini and say that it is
more successful than the Medieval mosaic.
These are works of art that were responding
to the needs of its culture,
to the interests of its culture.
Both of them are spectacular representations,
but very different kinds of issues are important to them.
- [Voiceover] The artists who created the mosaic
in Hagia Sophia had no interest in creating
an illusion of reality.
In fact, their goal was to not create
the illusion of reality!
We see that happen again in the 20th Century
with some artists.
We're looking at a Madonna and Child
by a 20th Century artist named Eric Gill.
- [Voiceover] This is a print, and it is so simplified.
It is so abstracted.
We can clearly see the intimacy between
the Virgin Mary and the Christ child,
very similar to the intimacy that exists
in all of these images,
but it is stark black and white.
It is simple line and contour.
The artist has reduced it.
This is a kind of economy of line
that is interesting and important
to artists in the 20th Century,
and to artists who have, in a sense,
the entire sweep of history at their disposal,
that can pick and choose the styles
that they want to work in,
and who try to create a new kind of meaning
through those choices.
- [Voiceover] So gone is the use of modeling,
or chiaroscuro, that movement of light to dark
to create an illusion of three-dimensional form.
We have no sense of atmospheric perspective
like we have in the Bellini,
where we have a sense of deep space in that landscape.
- [Voiceover] And even more abstracted than the mosaic,
but this is an artist who is familiar
with every image we've looked at.
- [Voiceover] And you could say that in the era
of photography, why create reality?
- [Voiceover] So like every artist before him,
Eric Gill is making choices and producing art
that answers questions that are relevant to his culture.
- [Voiceover] That answers the needs of the 20th Century.
(jazz piano)