#art history

spockvarietyhour grindlebone
From Daily Grail “ This amazing carved skull is alleged to be 300 years old, and come from a Buddhist monastery in Tibet. The owner posted images of the skull on a forum back in 2011 asking for more information about it: I got this skull in March... http://www.oddman.ca/archives/47309
spockvarietyhour

From Daily Grail

This amazing carved skull is alleged to be 300 years old, and come from a Buddhist monastery in Tibet. The owner posted images of the skull on a forum back in 2011 asking for more information about it:

I got this skull in March 2011 from an antiques shop in Vienna, Austria. Showed it to several experts and organizations, such as the Institute for Tibetan and Buddhistic Studies in Vienna, the Museum of Natural History Vienna and the Völkerkunde Museum. The Tibetan letters and most of the symbols got deciphered, but no one ever heard of a skull like that. Except one Tibetan Khenpo (Monk-Professor), who said such skulls where carved a long time ago to take a curse off a family or to guide the soul of a mislead human being on the right path. The guy who sold it to the auction house where the antiques shop got it from said that one of his ancestors used to be a medical doctor in Vienna. He travelled around Tibet and also gave medical treatment to an abbot of a Buddhist monastery. That abbot gave the skull amongst other relics to that doctor as a reward for his services. Allegedly around 300 years old.

TibetanSkullEngravinghistoryart historykapala
spockvarietyhour airyairyquitecontrary-deactivat
monsterinthegirlmask asked:
It's not art related, but I was wondering your opinion of this. I was at a zoo recently and I couldn't help but notice that nearly every non-western animal was "discovered" by a white male explorer. Uhm, so, no one ever saw any of these animals until white people did? Even though in the case of a few of them Chinese people domesticated them? Good thing white people showed up to discover animals so POC could finally be told that zebras and kangaroos are in fact not plants or hallucinations.
medievalpoc answered:

First of all, I laughed a bitter laugh at the last line, and second of all, you’ve underestimated my ability to make everything about art history.

Almost every “discovery” narrative you come across isn’t even internally consistent. I mean, have a gander at what is oft referred to as The Beowulf Manuscript, dating from c. 1075 in England. It also contains a manuscript called “Marvels of the East”, which is about people, landmarks, plants, and animals of the world. It’s also illuminated:

image

See? People, camels, some other stuff. Here’s a lizard:

image

Anyhow, what I’m getting at here is that the whole “discovery” narrative is silly, because it hinges on the idea of a totally isolated, racially and culturally
“pure” Europe that supposedly existed in “the past”, as in “before discovery!11!!!”, and that’s just not true.

I know a lot of joke articles make their way around about the laughable inaccuracy of Medieval European illuminations of “Exotic Animals”, but it has more to do with the art style and cultural factors than “ha ha this person never even saw an animal before”.

I mean, here’s a Medieval (c. 1250s) English Illumination of some people riding an elephant:

image

And here’s a Japanese painting from c. 1550s of some Europeans riding an elephant:

image

Basically the point I’m making is, 1. the “Discovery” narrative doesn’t work because the people who lived in the same places as these supposedly “exotic” animals obviously already knew what they were, and 2. the “Discovery” narrative doesn’t work because centuries ago, Europeans often knew what those animals were, too.

airyairyquitecontrary

however I would argue that the elephant in the upper picture is overcrowded; ten freakin’ people on one elephant? That’s a hazard to both their safety and the elephant’s health.

HistoryArt HistoryWestern CivAnimals*Discovereies*