The Heir of the Ancient Celtic Artistic Tradition Essays

The Heir of the Ancient Celtic Artistic Tradition Essays The Heir of the Ancient Celtic Artistic Tradition Essay The Heir of the Ancient Celtic Artistic Tradition Essay Celtic art is a complex, unique and beautiful style. Through its history it has undergone many changes and yet remained a distinct and identifiable style. Celtic art underwent a number of changes like the adoption of a number of Roman motifs, which continued to be used during the Christian era, during the Roman occupation of the Celtic heartland. Celtic art was also greatly influenced by foreign artistic styles, including Germanic and Mediterranean art, and underwent a rapid shift, from symbolic to realistic, during the Celtic conversion to Christianity. This essay will argue that the illuminated manuscripts of the 8th-9th centuries CE are the heirs of ancient, pagan Celtic style; that despite all the changes and foreign influence that Celtic art experienced that the genius, ingenuity and resilience of the Celtic artists and his artistic traditions allowed Celtic art to remain a distinct identifiable style. Early Celtic is full of complex and beautiful abstract patterns and aimed to situate itself between the two extremes of realism and abstraction1. The La Tene style of the last four hundred years BCE is described by Ramsey MacMullen as showing a fondness for abstraction [ through] the reduction of faces to triangles or in the rendering of hair in straight lines [ ] or in the reduction of the joints of an animals legs to mere circles. The La Tene style also utilized a more fluid type of abstractism illustrated by the wild patterns of whorls, spirals and volutes2. One of the best examples of the La Tene style is the Petrie Crown. It shows almost no foreign influence3. Early Celtic art also had a tendency to reduce three dimensions to two; it had a tendency to flatness, to decorate line. Motifs were designed to fill space, not to narrate4. But, the fact that some motifs are repeated throughout Celtic art fosters the belief that there was a meaning behind the some of the images. Those repeated symbols could have had a communicative property. According to D. W. Harding Celtic art [would have ] conveyed a meaning, overtly or subconsciously, to those who were aware of its significance5. Until it was engulfed by Rome, the heartland of Celtic art was in the Souths of them include paterae or skillets. Some of these skillets are decorated with the names of Roman outposts and/ or designs thought to be of representative Hadrians Wall9. During the occupation of Rome Celtic artists also attempted to imitate classical forms. The Celts were largely unaware of the meanings behind the images they copied and most attempts resulted in a very unrefined rendering. This was due, according to Ian Finlay, because the poetic abstraction of early Celtic art was unable to co-exist with classical realism10. As Roman pressure increased in the South, a number of peoples moved North into Wales, Scotland and Ireland. There, they were able to preserve their artistic traditions; because only where the legions did not penetrate did the [Celtic] style survive in sufficient strength to continue developing11. This is especially true of Ireland. There the basis of the next evolution in Celtic art developed. In Ireland, Celtic artists continued working in a[n artistic] tradition long forgotten on the continent12. The dominance of Rome in Celtic lands was not absolute. With the Celts Rome encountered a resistance never met within [the other] countries that had known Romes military domination13. This sentiment is echoed by Judith Mederos. She states that the Celts had a stubborn capacity to outlast [ ] alien conquers and still emerge as a victorious and imaginative people14. While the culture brought by the Romans probably never greatly influenced more than the ruling and official classes15 it did have a profound impact on the art of the early Medieval Celts16.