Tuesday, November 5, 2013

Dolphins in Art


Dolphins have most definitely been presented in art today and throughout history. This post will cover a couple of those today.

 
One of the many forms of ancient art that included dolphins is frescoes. Frescoes are a source of some of the most beautiful ancient art handed down to us from the Minoan civilization of Bronze Age Crete (2000-1500 BC). Without written records, they are often the only source, along with decorated pottery, of just how Minoans saw the world and give us glimpses of their beliefs, cultural practices and tastes. Fresco painting is the painting of color pigments on wet lime plaster without a binding agent and the paint is then absorbed by the plaster and protected from fading.

A few problems with frescoes are the delicateness of the pieces, incompleteness of the art and the lack of an artist to tie them to. They also tend to be extremely difficult to date. There are also many surviving fresco remains dating from the second phase of 1550 to 1450 BC, when the Mycenaean began to take over the Minoan sites. However, as these are stylistically very similar to earlier Minoan frescoes, they are discussed as one in today’s society.

Natural subjects such as flowers and other plants were typically the subjects in these paintings. The Minoans were one of the earliest cultures to paint natural landscapes without any humans present in the scene due to their love of nature. Animals were also commonly portrayed in their natural habitat, including dolphins and other sea creatures.

As far as today’s modern culture, dolphins are portrayed in art in hundreds of different forms such as statues, jewels, posters, films, photography, carvings, sculptures, moldings and paintings to name a few. In Scotland you can find this really neat metal wire sculpture of a dolphin along the boardwalk in Aberdeen City and Shire.
 

This sculpture was placed here to bring in tourists and spark an interest in their desire to see the modern arts and culture of Aberdeen and Scotland in general. In fact, this picture was taken directly from the “Visit Scotland” website!
 

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