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Le Caractère du Dessin en Égypte Ancienne by Marcelle Baud Review by: Robert S. Bianchi Journal of the American Research Center in Egypt, Vol. 19 (1982), pp. 154-155 Published by: American Research Center in Egypt Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/40000446 . Accessed: 14/06/2014 10:59 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at . http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp . JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. . American Research Center in Egypt is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Journal of the American Research Center in Egypt. http://www.jstor.org This content downloaded from 185.44.78.129 on Sat, 14 Jun 2014 10:59:14 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

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Page 1: Le Caractère du Dessin en Égypte Ancienneby Marcelle Baud

Le Caractère du Dessin en Égypte Ancienne by Marcelle BaudReview by: Robert S. BianchiJournal of the American Research Center in Egypt, Vol. 19 (1982), pp. 154-155Published by: American Research Center in EgyptStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/40000446 .

Accessed: 14/06/2014 10:59

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at .http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp

.JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range ofcontent in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new formsof scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected].

.

American Research Center in Egypt is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access toJournal of the American Research Center in Egypt.

http://www.jstor.org

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Page 2: Le Caractère du Dessin en Égypte Ancienneby Marcelle Baud

154 JARCE XIX (1982)

dehmit"; p. 139, § 60, possibly "les deux aspects ..." instead of "ses deux aspects. . . ."

These last few remarks should in no way be interpreted as negative comments. Indeed Dr. Valbelle should be congratulated for her diligent work and her determination to wrench all the information possible out of her material. Her task is well done, and the book will no doubt become the standard reference work on Satis and Anukis for years to come.

Ronald J. Leprohon university ol loronto

LE CARACTERE DU DESSIN EN EGYPTE ANCI- ENNE, by Marcelle Baud, Librairie d'Amerique et d'Orient, Adrien-Maisonneuve, Paris, 1978. Pp. 94, 24 color pls. and 95 black and white plates.

Marcelle Baud, a consummate draughtsman, is per- haps best known for her renderings of scenes from the tombs of the New Kingdom.1 As an accomplished artist personally familiar with the monuments themselves, Mile. Baud earlier attempted to explain the nature of Egyptian two-dimensional representations.2 The work under review here must be understood in the context of those earlier essays, particularly since its "Introduc- tion" was written in the years between 1937 and 1939 (p. 13). Mile. Baud's approach is, therefore, one of an artist rather than one of an Egyptologist. The reader must bear this in mind and must also remember that the history of modern painting figures prominently in the background of her text. She goes to great lengths to explain the nature of ancient Egyptian painting and relief representations to a Western audience whose cul- tural horizons have been dominated by Classical aes- thetics.3 Those aesthetics, in her opinion, have been improperly applied to Egyptian art by art historians who have prejudiced a true assessment of Egyptian aes- thetics, because they have applied inapplicable and inappropriate standards of one culture to those of another. To redress this inequity, Mile. Baud quite cor- rectly recognizes the great affinities between Cubism,4 itself a movement repudiating the Classical traditions of Western art, and Egyptian two-dimensional repre- sentations. These similarities are indeed striking; Mile. Baud avoids, to her credit, random free-association exercises and does not suggest that the one is the linear descendant of the other (p. 13).5 She does, however, strongly maintain that an appreciation of Cubism will lead to an understanding of the principles of Egyptian painting and relief.

The ancient Egyptian artist,6 like the Cubist painter, was interested in giving as much visual information as possible about his subject to the spectator. Both employ multiple points of view, or simultaneity, in depicting their objects. Mile. Baud terms this principle geometne

descriptive (p. 19) and ought here to have referred to her earlier discussion and illustrations which are most appropriate.7 To further her point, she explains the hieroglyphic nature of Egyptian two-dimensional representations and cogently demonstrates that the hieroglyphs themselves are subjected to the same principles of simultaneity (pp. 22f.).8 In their quest for visual clarity, the Egyptian artists traditionally repre- sented the human figure as an image of reconstructed, rotated planes (pp. 3 Iff.), a schema which allowed for a degree of naturalism in representations of the aged (p. 35f.). These same rotated planes, when used with variations for the depiction of torsos and limbs, became the main vehicle for expressions of physical activity (pp. 38ff.). The absence of the Greek ideal of the body beautiful and the adherence to the bilaterally sym- metrical depiction of the human torso throughout the history of Egyptian art (pp. 37f.)9 are significant observations by Mile. Baud. Such a depiction of the torso is consistent with her perceptive comment that Egyptian artists consciously elected to omit certain elements from their subjects when representing certain constructed scenes (pp. 40ff.).

Mile. Baud steadfastly maintains that the Egyptians, like the Cubists, did not employ perspective in the tra- ditional, Western sense to organize the decoration of their walls (pp. 13, 19, 45, passim).10 As a consequence, she offers in Chapter III (pp. 45ff.) suggestions on how the decoration of such walls was arranged vis-a-vis the spectator. She suggests four categories into which wall decoration can be divided, and each category is predi- cated on a different vantage point assumed by the spec- tator (pp. 47ff.). While these observations may be useful for facilitating our own understanding of any given scene,11 they do overlook the principles of orientation and the functional demands for which such scenes were originally created.12 To be sure, few have come to grips with the organization of space in an entire tomb or architectural setting, but Mile. Baud's suggestions for this aspect, relying as it does almost exclusively upon vignettes, removed from their larger, compositional contexts, ought to be used with caution.

Having dismissed perspective, it is seemingly ironic that Mile. Baud should then include an entire chapter on that subject (pp. 65ff.). Here, however, she applies the word "perspective" rather loosely to a series of visual effects which include three-quarter views (p. 65), a type of foreshortening (p. 69), and some instances of what she terms true perspective (p. 68). The latter, if indeed they exhibit a vanishing point, may well be accidental creations. To be sure, we have no hard evidence for a systematic formulation of the principles of true perspective from pharaonic Egypt despite the infrequent occurances of this rare phenomenon.13 This chapter concludes with a discussion of the register sys- tem and of how spatial relationships are worked out in selected compositions (pp. 69ff.).

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Page 3: Le Caractère du Dessin en Égypte Ancienneby Marcelle Baud

BOOK REVIEWS 155

Chapter IV (pp. 57ff.) deals with scale and with the proportional relationships between figures in various compositions. The final three chapters, each very brief, deal with specific topics. In Chapter V, Mile. Baud treats subjects with frontal faces but appears, to my mind, to overlook the reasons for this phenomenon. Her chapter on expression of emotions and feelings (pp. 8 Iff.) draws upon her earlier work about mourners. The final chapter on the technique of drawing (pp. 85ff.) is devoted not to the technical aspects of art but rather to aesthetics. She concludes by reaffirming the similarities between Cubism and Egyptian art and goes one step further in her assessment of the latter. She suggests that Egyptian art is also similar to that of a child but that it is not infantile. The simple complexi- ties of this art could, I suggest, be linked to the oeuvre of a Klee or of a Miro in this context and here again Mile. Baud's suggestion is well intended (p. 89). Egyp- tian art, like the art of the moderns, is one based on reason and not on passion.

This highly personal approach to the nature of Egyptian painting and relief, illustrated by the hand of the author, raises some fundamental issues for Egyp- tologists in general and art historians in particular. Any assessment of the nature of Egyptian art ought to consider the points raised therein.

Robert S. Bianchi The Brooklyn Museum

1 M. Werbrouck, Les pleureuses dans L'Egypte ancienne (Brussels 1938); G. Foucard, Tombes the- baines (Cairo, 1932 = MIFAO vol.57); M. Baud, Les dessins ebauches de la necropole thebaine (Cairo 1935 = MIFAO vol. 63); and idem, "Caractere du dessin egyptien," MIFAO 66 (1934), 13ff.

2 Baud, in MIFAO 66 (1943), 13ff. 3 Cf. MDAIK 35 (1979), 19 and n. 42. 4 William Rubin, ed., Pablo Picasso: A Retrospec-

tive (New York 1980), 85ff. 5 For further discussion on the possible influences

of ancient Egyptian art on the development of Cubism, see "Napatan and Meroitic Sculpture: An Art Histori- cal Reappraisal," Proceedings of the Cambridge Sym- posium of the Society for Nubian Studies, and Susan Mayer, "Ancient Mediterranean Sources in the Works of Picasso, 1892-1937," Marsyas 20 (1979-1980), 90.

6 For discussions of artists and their roles in the creative processes, see A. Hermann, "Zur Anonymitat der aegyptischen Kunst," MDAIK 6 (1935), 150ff.; H. Junker, "Die gesellschaftliche Stellung der aegypti- schen Kunstler im Alten Reich," Oesterreichische Aka- demie der Wissenschaften. Philosophisch-historische Klasse. Sitzungsbenchte 233, Abhandlung 1 (1959);

M. Matthieu, "The Role of the Artist's Individuality in Egyptian Art," TpyflH 4 (1947), Iff.; and F. Steinmann, "Die gesellschaftliche Stellung der aegyptischen 'Kunst- ler' in Neuen Reich," Das Altertum 24 (1978), 36ff.

7 M. Baud, in MIFAO 63 (1935), 4ff., esp. 1 If., and fig. 2.

8 Cf. H. G. Fischer, Metropolitan Museum Jour- nal 5 (1972), 55ff.; 8 (1973), 7ff.; and 11 (1976), 125ff.

9 Cf. B. V. Bothmer, H. DeMeulenaere, and H. W. Mu'ller, Egyptian Sculpture of the Late Period (Brook- lyn, 1960), XXXV; and H. DeMeulenaere, BIFAO 61 (1962), 29, n. 3. There are, of course, exceptions to the rule, and the statue of Sesostris III in New York is a good example of the tendency toward tripartition achieved during Dynasty XII; see, H. G. Fischer, "Anatomy in Egyptian Art," Apollo Magazine (Sep- tember, 1965), 13ff.

10 Infra, n. 13. 11 H. Schafer, Principles of Egyptian Art (ed.

E. Brunner-Traut and J. Baines (transl.) (Oxford, 1974), 224ff.

12 Wm. Stevenson Smith, A History of Egyptian Sculpture and Painting in the Old Kingdom2 (Boston, 1949), xif., and 333ff.

13 For a discussion of perspective in Egyptian art, see N. De Garis Davies, "An apparent Instance of Perspectival Drawing," JEA 12 (1926), HOff.; L. Klebs, "Die Tiefendimension in der Zeichnung des Alten Reiches," ZAS 52 (1914), 19ff.; R. Muller, "Sozialis- tische Antikerzeption," Das Altertum 23 (1977), 64ff.; K. Mysliwiec, "Remarques sur le conception d'espace de l'artiste egyptien," EetT 4 (1970), 61ff.; and O. R. Rostem, "Remarkable Drawings with Examples of True Perspective," ASAE 48 (1948), 167ff.

ANCIENT EGYPTIAN MIRRORS FROM THE EARLIEST TIMES THROUGH THE MIDDLE KINGDOM, by Christine Lilyquist (Munchner Agyptologische Studien, Heft 27) Deutscher Kunst- verlag Munchen, Berlin, 1979. Pp. XIII +170, 150 figs.

The work under review here is an attempt at a com- prehensive study of Egyptian mirrors. Actually it is the first half of such a study as it covers only those mirrors dating through the Middle Kingdom. The work deals not only with mirrors, but with representatives of mir- rors on coffins, tomb paintings, etc.

The book is divided into three main sections and it will be best to deal with these in order. Section I is the "Corpus of Dated mirrors and Representations from Egypt" and presents the raw data which are the basis of the book. Here brief descriptions of mirrors and their representations are presented in chronological se- quence. Within each period (Archaic, Late Old King- dom, Early Middle Kingdom, etc.) the material is dealt

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