I’m a big fan of Crash Course videos, and I have been dying for them to make an art history crash course forever! So, I decided to take matters into my own hands and make a new video series–5-Minute Art History. I start at the beginning with Upper Paleolithic Art.
This series will have a 5 minute (or so) video summarizing the main points of the art movement along with a corresponding conventions printable handout that you can download here on The Art Class Curator!
Free PDF!
Paleolithic Art Conventions Printable
Get to know more about Paleolithic art in this informative PDF. Makes a great printable for your classroom or study sheet for your students!
Paleolithic Art Conventions
Time:
Upper Paleolithic Period, 40,000-10,000 B.C.E.
Paleolithic Key Points:
- Main art forms were cave painting and small sculpture.
- Primary themes in art were animals/hunting and fertility.
- Art was either stationary (cave paintings) or portable (Venus figurines).
- Hunter-gatherer lifestyle
- Prehistory means we have no written records from this period.
- Although the art represents a big jump in human development, we can only guess why they created art.
Paleolithic Artistic Conventions:
“Venus” Figurines:
- Figurative, mostly representing females and sometimes animals
- Small, usually can fit in one hand
- Exaggerated breasts, belly, and hips could represent fertility
- Minimized face, feet, and hands
Cave Paintings:
- Paint made from natural materials (ochre, blood, minerals, charcoal, etc)
- Mostly represented animals with few humans
- Realistic style for animals, stick figure humans
- Evidence they were created over a long period of time
Important Artworks:
- Venus of Willendorf
- Caves of Lascaux
How to Study Art History Bundle
This bundle includes all of my favorite resources for art history—interactive activities, in-depth lessons, useful worksheets, trainings and more!
Image Credits:
Venus of Dolní Věstonice: Petr Novák, Wikipedia
Venus of Hohle Fels: Thilo Parg / Wikimedia Commons, License: CC BY-SA 3.0
Venus of Laussel: User 120, Wikipedia
This was originally posted on October 1, 2015.
Can I ask…in your video, what recovering editing program did you use that created the popups of photos? That was a nice feature instead of cutting to a full screen of art. Thanks for it, looking forward to more.
Thanks! I just filmed new ones all day today, so there are more to come! I used a mix of iMovie on my iPhone and screencast-o-matic. To put the art on, I would have to make a short video using the screencast software of the still image on my computer. Then, I inserted it into the video in iMovie as a picture in picture which I could then adjust and place on the video where I wanted it. It worked pretty well. It wouldn’t let me put really vertical images as far over to the side as I wanted, but otherwise it was a good work around!
I love it! You did a fantastic job at being easy to understand and appealing to kids. I can’t wait to watch more of the series with my family.
it is really help full… thanky so much ……… love you…..
Thank you so much for these posts! Such a great resource for a good summary of art periods.
You’re welcome!