Egyptian Art

This is what makes my personality so difficult of dealing with sometimes, I simply cannot be pleased. I take something great and nit pick it to death, mangle its intention until there is no joy left. I am supposed to love this and I almost do but I cannot.

I am showing this because commenters love it. I do not. There is something wrong with me. Commenters learned something. They think it is awesome.

He mentions Picasso, I did like that because it showed understanding right off.

They do show hands both ways, grasping things especially, but not right/left feet. However, I do show both feet when I paint them. So I'd be fired. Or whipped. Big toe on one foot, all the toes lined up on the other foot.

The answer couldn't have been clearer, he says. He needn't go all the way to Karnak just to discover continuity through centuries. That puts me off right there, because I know he and his crew went to Karnak because he wanted to go to Karnak, not to uncover this trivial bit of information already well known, all that traveling for so little payoff. That is not a huge discovery, but he is playing it as if it is. He is extremely slow on the uptake if he must go all the way to Egypt to find out something simple and basic as this. Come on. Superfluous travel, wasted energy, global warming, rising sea levels etc., etc. 

Karnak, truly awesome. Yes, yes, yes. We know. That is the place where the tempest stele was uncovered within the third pylon as junk rubble filler, the third such set of pylons with their 80' streaming banners presenting some IMAX propaganda scene on the façade and with arches that lead to a courtyard or to a walled avenue of sphinxes, so over the centuries, a temple within a temple within a temple to the hippodrome, awesome, yes, in its megalomania and in it evidence of their abject inability to manage a steady roof unless it comes to a point even though they had centuries to sort it.

"... and in all that time, this was the only image of the body anyone ever saw."

In 2-dimensional wall art, not statues. He does mention statues later. So why this here?

And the grid did change. Middle Kingdom grid is different from old Kingdom grid, And it reverts to a neoclassical following the disastrous Amarna period. An art historian knows this. The grid for the figures on King Tut's tomb is noticeably different from those before it, before the gap created by his father. The grid used on Tut's tomb itself is a reversion to an earlier period noticeably different from this classical grid because his dad messed up art so much. Tut's dad changed this grid and this representation utterly. It was shocking. Still is shocking. The Amarna art look like aliens. So this statement about it being the only image seen is quite wrong. 

Notice in the hippodrome when the camera scans up the column I wish they would linger. Give a guy a chance to see what it says. 

The lollypop is a circle and a 1 under it,"ra," Three vertical scratchy lines with a bow on top is three fox skins "mes, the two upside down j's are "s s", so Ra mes s s, Ramses. They want you to say Ra mes ses. Ramses II, the great builder did this part of the add on. Great builder or not, he still couldn't do a decent roof. What good is a cavernous room when it's 90% stone columns? You could seriously hurt your neck just reading the things, and it all turns out to be bragging anyway.

Back at the tomb, the king died, work stopped on the tomb, bad news for the tomb painter Ramose, (ra mes again unless the O is specified) but the bad news part is conjuncture. Ramose undoubtedly went directly on to another tomb. He was part of a bureaucracy, a cog in the machinery, not a freelance artist suddenly cast out of work as the narrator suggests.

The type of grid noted in the video is seen frequently. The video suggests it is singularly unusual case. Not so. It is actually common to see incomplete works and from them extrapolate process. People died all the time while their tombs are in process. The grid is seen frequently.

This is why it stayed the same for so long. Clearly society didn't want it to change.

Duh.

That proves it, this guy is terribly slow on the uptake, that is my frustration.

Their obsession with order made these statues just as rigid as their paintings. 

Eh. They also need to stay in one piece, a bit of a trick when chiseling stone, a leg separate from the matrix tends to break, the mass has to be carried on a leg (You see Renaissance era David with a tree trunk to help hold him up) arms cannot be extended, certain limitations having to do with material and scale. It is not just obsession with order. Things did change over time, the fortunes of cities changed so too the deities associated with them the attributes of gods changed combining their backstories developed, they fell in and out of favor, changed through syncretism, some like Isis had cults well beyond Egypt long after the last Ptolemy.

The video ends hyperbolically, "ABsolute precision, aSTONishing scale, yes, yes, yes, you were talking about style. The rising inspirational violins are not helpful in understanding Egyptian style. They developed revolutionary quarrying and masonry skills to do. just. that. yes, yes, yes, you were talking about style. 

Not because of how their brains are hardwired, but because of their... cul-cha.

Gawd. Why did I even show this?