[ home · entrance · contact · what's new · about me · *fine art* · digital art · cd cover · darkroom · photography · sculptures ]
[ back to main page art history ]  [ back to main page fine art ]

wildbrush's art.to.day - you entered my world of art history -

Comparative Advancing Art History     
 of Pigments and Mediums     
in European and Asian Cultures     

INDIA AND SOUTHERN ASIA

EARLY INDIA

4000 B.C. NEOLITHIC. Pottery and weapons were found at Amri, the first city on the Indus River.
If Ancient India were the face of a clock, the Indus River would be 10:00, Old and New Delhi are at 12:00 and touched by the Ganges River on the other side top right, at 2:00. The Kistna River would be lower east at 4:00, Ceylon is an island about two hundred miles long and one hundred wide at 5:30, the Waghora River is at 9:00 just above the city of Bombay. Civilizations start on the major rivers or islands.

3000 B.C. INDUS RIVER. The Mohenjo-Daro and Harappa excavations in the Indus Valley show contact with Mesopotamia, which had fully developed palaces and mansions by now. In Egypt the pyramids at Gizeh have been built, and on Crete the Minoan civilization is in it's top form.

Mohenjo-Daro is a great city also, some thirty acres in size, with streets running North, South, East and West. Houses were made of fired brick of a better quality than Mesopotamia, they had more wood to burn and had hotter kilns. Separate bathrooms in the homes were connected to sewers under the side streets, as tall as a man. In the center of town was a well-fed bathing pool, cleanliness was number one, I like that. Their sculpture was at a high standard, anatomically correct with complete control of the medium, as the Torso from Harappa shows.
These are a phallus-worshiping people with a mother goddess. They had clay toys of animals, not combat symbols. Harappa had 35,000 people by 2300 B.C.

2000 B.C., India cultivated a sap eating insect that secreted an alcohol soluble stick-lac or lac, or shellac paint. By adding borax from Tibet it became a water-soluble permanent paint. Boiling removed the crimson to magenta color, adding alum made it a dye. Madder root made a similar color without the shellac. Colored resins from the sap of trees and boiled roots from as far away as Singapore made red, crimson and yellow. Insects and insect secretions made the brightest and dearest magenta. It is to believe that both "Imperial Yellow" and "Mandarin Yellow" were made from Monghyr puree, named after a city in Bengal. Other yellows were made from weld family vines and rhubarb leaves, tea leaves made nice tans. Transparent Cyan Blue was a major cultivated trade product, made from the leaves of a plant they grew. Tapestries and rugs were colored with these dyes. Mordants of alum or other metal bases were used. The Poplar and Tamarisk tree barks, pomegranate husks and grape leaves worked as mordants also, all giving a different color. Cotton and wool textiles and rugs, and dyes for and as pigments were big export products.

Morocco and China used the sap of an alcohol based tree as paint. Malaysia had the best turpentine based dammar mastic, but no one used it, they used the soft copals that were alcohol based. Greece and Italy were going to be happy with Chian or Levantine mastic from the island of Chios.

Egypt had the best linen and cotton, but didn't do rugs or windows; their pigments were solids not dyes, except for some reds.

1500 B.C., Priests were singing hymns from the "Vedas" and later from the "Brahmanas", and around 1000 B.C., the philosophical "Upanishads". These were to become the basis for the three religions of India, Hindu, Jain and Buddhist.

1200 B.C., The Aryan invasion came from Iran and the North, they took the place apart and added a new class of people to the castes system, the surfs.

612 B.C., The Achaemenids civilization of Persia is the largest and most important in the world.

500 B.C., Cyrus, Darius, Xerxes rule from the Mediterranean to India. They built great palaces in the middle area, at Persepolis.

500 B.C., Mahavira founded the Jain sect, Gautama became the Buddha, as Prince Kapilavastu of Nepal he became enlightened by resisting the demon Mara and his daughters. He was buried in a stone mound 54' high called Stupa No. 1. Asoka, a king in the Maurya Dynasty urged more followers with large inscribed pillars, one was topped with four carved stylized lions in sandstone. Religious merit could be gained by walking around the pillar. Missionaries were sent to Ceylon, Burma and the East Indies with this type of symbolic art. Formulas were developed for making monuments and images that trained carver's could reproduce. Everybody was a good carver, they were on an upswing and approaching high art standards again.

323 B.C., Alexander the Great destroyed all of Persia.

323 B.C., Alexander the Great added the Graeco-Roman influence to India, artists became more independent in style while the religious dominance was wetted down some. Most of their great art was destroyed, either by Alexander or later by the Moslems.

200 B.C., In the western region at Ajanta, near Bombay on the Waghora River, people lived in the jungles hiding out from invaders. They dug caves near the river, not ordinary caves, these were carved and painted caves. The painting fresco on the walls started around 200 B.C., the work still there was done about A.D. 400, in the Gupta period. They were fresco secco paintings in blue lapis and azurite, pearl whites, crimsons, brown ochers and green malachite, in a fresco smoothed, 60' x 60' cave room.

They really believed that men were beautiful too, not like their face scarring neighbors and intruders, the Aryan's in 900 B.C., the Scyth's in 700 B.C., and East Asiatic's in 400 B.C.

100 B.C., Ceylon was relatively unscathed since the third century B.C. and principally Buddhist, they built a city at least eight miles in diameter. This was their capitol in Anuradhapura, trading with Greece and Rome, they were their equals in grandeur. Red, yellow and green were the main painting colors, with little brown or blue, painting just never was their thing.

180 B.C., Farther inland from Bombay and Karli there's an interior called "Chaitya Hall". They carved a large temple room in living rock, 125' long and 50' high, a very intricate and repetitive interior. A small version of the stupa at the back the temple was there for people to gain merit, by walking around it. These are gentle people, followers of the Good Law of the Compassionate One.

Religion was making great artists by giving people time to paint and sculpture, everybody likes to have their work appreciated. The best India artists were alive now, supported by holy families and monasteries in different regions.

At the same time on the Ganges River, parallel developments were taking place, at Mathura and Mattra in the Indus Valley they carved in red sandstone.

The best preserved work is where the invaders were least, at the Kistna River at Amaravari. They worked in a green marble that was a pleasure to carve, and kept high standards until the Gupta kings in 320, who ruled the Aryan north, formed the classical style and drew the artists into developing a new easier image to copy, a dumbing down as it were.

A.D. 100, In the battle areas, figures were losing their fine quality of definition and getting back to the more mass produced symbolic style.

A.D. 242, Persia was back in power and defeated the Roman emperor Valerian. Sessanian palaces were grand, a typical one at Ctesiphone, Mesopotamia, was classed as one of the wonders of the world. It had pointed arches, an original innovation of the time, a barrel vault with a span of 84' runs through the center of the building. Gypsum mortar held the bricks and smoothed the outside painted surfaces.
These were great warriors, now was the time and the place "chain mail" armor was invented.

A.D. 400. Many mold-made fresco mortar plaster casts of figures were found in the ruins of Hadda.

A.D. 400. Java Island is farther out in the East Indies, they based their art and architecture on India. A 100 foot high monument was made on the Dieng Plateau, you could walk and worship up the circling path, past 1000 panels of reliefs. This would be three miles of sculpture if placed end to end, they could make the figure do anything. These people included Cambodia under Jayavarman II, and raised art another notch in realism but never left their religious symbolism.

A.D. 600, Near Ajanta in Elura, the three sects, Buddhist, Jain, and Brahman carved out of solid living rock, a temple city. Two hundred feet deep, that's two hundred feet straight down, where you walk around, talk about a relief carving! This is one of the "Wonder Cities" of the ancient world, ranking with the Palace of Cnossus, the Aegean Pre-Greek city, in 4000 B.C.., the Great Pyramids of Gizeh in Egypt from 4000-3000 B.C., Alexander's Mesopotamian palaces in 3000 B.C., the Acropolis of Greece in 440 B.C. and the Sassanian Palaces of Mesopotamia that were still great at this time.

All the cities of the greatest cultures at their peak periods. These carved four story buildings were to be lived and prayed in, carved out of solid rock, there still standing today.

700 A.D., Another hidden grand temple was carved in subterranean caverns on an island in Bombay harbor.

700 A.D., Ceylon had buildings twelve stories high, sculpture was massive.

800 A.D., The tower is becoming increasingly important in the Ganges Valley. Greece is still in the Dark Ages.

1000 A.D., In Southwest India, the tower to Siva is 216 feet high built without mortar, the crowning stone carving weighed 80 tons and was pushed up a ramp 4 miles long by elephants.

1200 A.D., The Tai people from southwest China establish the Siamese style, curving roof lines and fancifulness that make Bangkok synonymous with the East.

1300 A.D., Tibet, here India and China met, in art and religion.

1555 A.D., Buildings were big but paintings were getting smaller, Persian influence in calligraphy and illumination in book making was the fashion but India was a little behind in their painting skills.

1600 A.D., Here in Delhi, India, the Moslems are slowly taking over, by the 1600's they controlled most of India. Their influence shows in the Taj Mahall.

1670 A.D., India's artwork was getting closer to the Flemish standard of the time, when a new Moslem in control decreed portraits were a sin. Cottons were stamped or printed with Hindu and Persian motifs for export.

[ back to main page art history ]  [ back to main page fine art ]