Amarna Period - Art

Art

During Akhenaten's reign, royal portraiture underwent dramatic change. Sculptures of Akhenaten deviate from conventional portrayal of royalty. Akhenaten is depicted in an androgynous and highly stylized manner, with large thighs, a slim torso, drooping belly, full lips, and a long neck and nose. Some believe that the break with convention was due to "the presence at Amarna of new people or groups of artists whose background and training were different from those of the Karnak sculptors."

The events following Akhenaten's death are unclear and the identity and policies of his co-regent and immediate successor are the matter of ongoing scholarly debate.

Read more about this topic:  Amarna Period

Famous quotes containing the word art:

    Museums are just a lot of lies, and the people who make art their business are mostly imposters.... We have infected the pictures in museums with all our stupidities, all our mistakes, all our poverty of spirit. We have turned them into petty and ridiculous things.
    Pablo Picasso (1881–1973)

    When lovely woman stoops to folly,
    And finds too late that men betray,
    What charm can soothe her melancholy,
    What art can wash her guilt away?

    The only art her guilt to cover,
    To hide her shame from every eye,
    To give repentance to her lover,
    And wring his bosom—is to die.
    Oliver Goldsmith (1730?–1774)

    If we can learn ... to look at the ways in which various groups appropriate and use the mass-produced art of our culture ... we may well begin to understand that although the ideological power of contemporary cultural forms is enormous, indeed sometimes even frightening, that power is not yet all-pervasive, totally vigilant, or complete.
    Janice A. Radway (b. 1949)