Jackson Pollack essays

Jackson Pollack essays On the floor I am more at ease, I feel nearer, more a part of the painting, since this way I can walk around in it, work from the four sides and be literally in the painting. These are the words of the great 1940s artist Jackson Pollack, a commanding figure in the Abstract Expressionist movement. In this essay I will talk a little about Pollacks history, his work Full Fathom Five, and the parallels between Pollacks work and 1940s lifestyle. Paul Jackson Pollock was born in Cody, Wyoming in January of 1912. His family frequently moved around the western United States, as his father took various jobs to support them. When his father finally landed a steady job as a land surveyor in the Grand Canyon and other parts of the Southwest, Pollock often joined him. He later remarked that his memories of the panoramic landscape influenced his artistic vision. In 1930, Pollock joined his 2 brothers in New York at the Art Students League. He studied under the Regionalist painter Thomas Hart Benton. Pollocks works in the 1930s had Regionalist and slight Surrealist influences in them. The early 1940s marked a significant change in Pollocks style of painting. Native American motifs and other pictographic imagery began to play a role in his paintings, which showed the beginning of a new, more mature style. By the mid-1940s, Pollock began painting completely abstract. With his 1949 painting Full Fathom Five, Pollock truly showed what art could become. He began using his drip technique in 1947. Pollock would fix his canvas to the floor and drip paint from a can using a variety of objects to manipulate the paint. He would use nails, coins, needles, and various other small objects on the canvas itself and let the paint flow around them. It is one of the first action ...

Bent Pyramid Insight In Egyptian Architectural History

Bent Pyramid Insight In Egyptian Architectural History The Bent Pyramid in Dahshur, Egypt is unique among pyramids: instead of being a perfect pyramid shape, the slope changes about 2/3 of the way to the top. It is also one of five Old Kingdom Pyramids that retain their original form, 4,500 years after their construction. All of them- the Bent and Red Pyramids at Dahshur and the three Pyramids at Giza- were built within a single century. Out of all five, the Bent Pyramid is the best opportunity we have for understanding how architectural techniques of ancient Egypt were developed. Statistics The Bent Pyramid is located near Saqqara, and it was built during the reign of the Old Kingdom Egyptian pharaoh Snefru, sometimes transliterated from the hieroglyphs as Snofru or Sneferu. Snefru ruled Upper and Lower Egypt between 2680-2565 BCE or 2575-2551 BCE, depending on which chronology you use. The Bent Pyramid is 189 meters (620 feet) square at its base and 105 m (345 ft) tall. It has two distinct interior apartments designed and built independently and connected only by a narrow passageway. Entrances to these rooms are located on the north and west faces of the pyramid. It is unknown who was buried inside of the Bent Pyramid- their mummies were stolen in ancient times. Why is it Bent? The pyramid is called bent because of that steep change in slope. To be precise, the lower part of the pyramids outline is angled inward at 54 degrees, 31 minutes, and then at 49 m (165 ft) above the base, the slope abruptly flattens out to 43 degrees, 21 minutes, leaving a distinctively odd shape. Several theories about why the pyramid was made this way were prevalent in Egyptology until recently. They included the premature death of the pharaoh, requiring the speedy completion of the pyramid; or that noises coming from the interior clued the builders into the fact that the angle was not sustainable. To Bend or Not to Bend Archaeoastronomer Juan Antonio Belmonte and engineer Giulio Magli have argued that the Bent Pyramid was built at the same time as the Red Pyramid, a pair of monuments built to celebrate Snefru as the double-king: pharaoh of the Red Crown of the north and the White Crown of the South. Magli, in particular, has argued that the bend was an intentional element of the Bent Pyramids architecture, meant to establish an astronomical alignment appropriate to Snefrus sun cult. The most commonly held theory today is that a comparably sloped pyramid- Meidum, also thought to have been built by Snefru- collapsed while the Bent Pyramid was still under construction, and the architects adjusted their building techniques to make sure the Bent Pyramid would not do the same. A Technological Breakthrough Intentional or not, the Bent Pyramids odd appearance provides insight into the technical and architectural breakthrough it represents in Old Kingdom monument building. The dimensions and weight of the stone blocks are much greater than its predecessors, and the construction technique of the outer casings is quite different. Earlier pyramids were constructed with a central core with no functional distinctions between casing and external layer: the experimenting architects of the Bent Pyramid tried something different. Like the earlier Step Pyramid, the Bent pyramid has a central core with progressively smaller horizontal courses stacked on top of one another. To fill in the external steps and make a smooth-faced triangle, the architects needed to add casing blocks. The Meidum pyramids outer casings were formed by cutting sloped edges on horizontally placed blocks: but that pyramid failed, spectacularly, its outer casings falling off it in a catastrophic landslide as it neared completion. The Bent Pyramids casings were cut as rectangular blocks, but they were laid sloping inward at 17 degrees against the horizontal. That is technically more difficult, but it gives strength and solidity to the building, taking advantage of gravity pulling the mass inward and downward. This technology was invented during the construction: in the 1970s, Kurt Mendelssohn suggested that when Meidum collapsed, the core of the Bent Pyramid was already built to a height of about 50 m (165 ft), so instead of starting from scratch, the builders changed the way the outer casings were constructed. By the time Cheops pyramid at Giza was constructed a few decades later, those architects used improved, better-fitting and better-shaped limestone blocks as casings, permitting that steep and lovely 54-degree angle to survive. A Complex of Buildings In the 1950s, archaeologist  Ahmed Fakhry  discovered that the Bent Pyramid was surrounded by a complex of temples, residential structures and causeways, hidden beneath the shifting sands of the Dahshur plateau. Causeways and orthogonal roads connect the structures: some were built or added on to during the Middle Kingdom, but much of the complex is attributed to the reign of Snefru or his 5th dynasty successors. All later pyramids are also part of complexes, but the Bent Pyramids is one of the earliest examples. The Bent Pyramid complex includes a small upper temple or chapel to the east of the pyramid, a causeway and a valley temple. The Valley Temple is a rectangular 47.5x27.5 m (155.8x90 ft) stone building with an open courtyard and a gallery that probably held six statues of Snefru. Its stone walls are about 2 m (6.5 ft) thick. Residential and Administrative An extensive (34x25 m or 112x82 ft) mud brick structure with much thinner walls (.3-.4 m or 1-1.3 ft) was adjacent to the valley temple, and it was accompanied by round silos and square storage buildings. A garden with some palm trees stood nearby, and a mud-brick enclosure wall surrounded all of it. Based on archaeological remains, this set of buildings served a range of purposes, from domestic and residential to administrative and storage. A total of 42 clay sealing fragments naming fifth dynasty rulers was found in a midden east of the valley temple. South of the Bent pyramid is a smaller pyramid, 30 m (100 ft) high with an overall slope of about 44.5 degrees. The small inner chamber may have held another statue of Snefru, this one to hold the Ka, the symbolic vital spirit of the king. Arguably, the Red Pyramid could be part of the intended Bent Pyramid complex. Built roughly at the same time, the Red Pyramid is the same height, but faced with reddish limestone- scholars surmise that this is the pyramid where Snefru himself was buried, but of course, his mummy was looted long ago. Other features of the complex include a necropolis with Old Kingdom tombs and Middle Kingdom burials, located east of the Red Pyramid. Archaeology and History The primary archaeologist associated with excavations in the 19th century was William Henry Flinders Petrie; and in the 20th century, it was Ahmed Fakhry. Ongoing excavations are being conducted at Dahshur by the German Archaeological Institute at Cairo and the Free University of Berlin. Sources Aboulfotouh, Hossam M. K. Astronomical Algorithms of Egyptian Pyramids Slopes Adn Their Modules Divider. Mediterranean Archaeology and Archaeometry 15.3 (2015): 225–35. Print.Alexanian, Nicole, and Felix Arnold. The Necropolis of Dahshur: Eleventh Excavation Report Spring 2014. Berlin: German Archaeological Institute and Free University of Berlin, 2014. Print.Alexanian, Nicole, et al. The Necropolis of Dahshur: Fifth Excavation Report Spring 2008. Berlin: German Archaeological Institute and Free University of Berlin, 2008. Print.Belmonte, Juan Antonio, and Giulio Magli. Astronomy, Architecture, and Symbolism: The Global Project of Sneferu at Dahshur. Journal for the History of Astronomy 46.2 (2015): 173–205. Print.MacKenzie, Kenneth J. D., et al. Were the Casing Stones of Senefrus Bent Pyramid in Dahshour Cast or Carved?: Multinuclear Nmr Evidence. Materials Letters 65.2 (2011): 350–52. Print.Magli, Giulio. The Giza ‘Written’ Landscape and the Double Project of King Khufu. Time and Mind 9.1 (2016): 57-74. Print. Mendelssohn, K. A Building Disaster at the Meidum Pyramid. The Journal of Egyptian Archaeology 59 (1973): 60–71. Print.Moeller, Nadine. The Archaeology of Urbanism in Ancient Egypt from the Predynastic Period to the End of the Middle Kingdom. New York: Camridge University Press, 2016. Print.Mà ¼ller-Rà ¶mer, Frank. A New Consideration of the Construction Methods of the Ancient Egyptian Pyramids. Journal of the American Research Center in Egypt 44 (2008): 113–40. Print.Reader, Colin. On Pyramid Causeways. The Journal of Egyptian Archaeology 90 (2004): 63–71. Print.Rossi, Corinna. Note on the Pyramidion Found at Dahshur. The Journal of Egyptian Archaeology 85 (1999): 219–22. Print.