Читать книгу Art History For Dummies - Jesse Bryant Wilder - Страница 93

In 1596 BC, about a hundred years after the death of Hammurabi, the Hittites conquered Babylon. They produced no great art. Not long after, the Kassites overran Babylon. About the same time, in northern Mesopotamia, the brutal Assyrians grew from a city-state called Assur into a vast empire that lasted from about 1363 BC to 612 BC, when the Persians and Scythians overran them. With their iron weapons, the Assyrians terrorized their neighbors and mercilessly destroyed all challengers.

The Assyrians created a macho art that glorified their rulers and intimidated their enemies. Each Assyrian king built a bigger-than-his-predecessor’s palace to flaunt his power.

Five-legged creatures called lamassu (half bull, half man) with mile-long beards guard the gates of the Citadel of Sargon II. The fifth leg makes the creature look like he’s striding when viewed from the side, while from the front, the lamassu appears to stand firm. More important, to depict their military exploits and staged hunting expeditions (the animals were released from cages and then killed), the Assyrians gave visual narrative an action-movie feel by inventing continuous visual narration. In other words, their picture stories “read” like a film strip with one event leading dramatically to the next.

To appreciate the Assyrian’s action-movie-feel contribution, compare an Assyrian storytelling relief to the Standard of Ur (refer to Figure 5-3 and Figure 5-4). The victory that the Standard of Ur describes is told in chunks — discrete strips. Not only does the story get stuck at the end of each band, but the events within the band have no dramatic momentum — one action does not propel the next. The Assyrian relief of King Ashurnasirpal II Killing Lions (see Figure 5-5) is cinematic and roils with dynamic energy. You can feel the lion’s awesome power as he leaps at the king, and you pity the dying lion under the horses’ hooves after it’s been shot. Note: In Assyrian art, rank is no longer indicated by physical size (as in the Standard of Ur, where the king is larger than soldiers and prisoners appear frail).

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FIGURE 5-5: King Ashurnasirpal II Killing Lions captures the tense action of a lion hunt.