Video Review

The first video I choose to watch was African Art.  I choose this video because I wanted to learn what separates African Art from other forms of art in the art world.  In this video I learned that much of African art was influenced heavily by Egypt.  Much of early African art was done by bushman that mostly portrayed animals.  I also learned that much like Egypt had their pyramids Africa had some elaborate fortresses for their leaders.  The last thing that I learned was what perceptual and conceptual art.  Much of African art involves statues that have religious ties and are the foundation to many governments and tribes in Africa.  Most of the African art comes from conceptual art which means that the artist uses more of their imagination when creating the piece. The video relates to the concepts that are explained in the video like conceptual and perceptual but the video goes into more detail and has many more visual examples of African art than the text book.  I enjoyed viewing this video it was shorter and gave a basic overview of African art and why it is different and separated in the art world.

The second video that I viewed was African Art: Legacy of Oppression and I choose to watch this video because I enjoyed watching the other video on African Art and was interested in learning more about the topic.  I learned that African Art is very symbolic.  For example there was a piece depicting a tribe chief with a large ax like object coming from his mouth.  This means that the chief has the biggest word and say. Another example was the mothers physical features were itemized and focused on.  This video went into the history of how these people of Africa were treated and how there was forced labor and slaves.  Some masks created in Africa were to protect and intimate opponents in battle.  Much of the art in the video was sort of modern and was not that long ago much in the 19^th century.   The book did not really explain the symbolism that most of the art from this era was possessing.  Also the book does not go into the history that is behind some of the art like the slavery.  This video was a good one is was nice and short and gave a brief basic understanding of some of the meaning behind African art.

 The reason I choose my third video is that I read about Buddhism in the book and I wanted to get a visual about Buddhism and the art that it involves.  I have the basis on Buddhism as a religion and I want to learn more about the art related to it. In this video I learned how important art is to Buddhism followers.  The shrines these people worship are art enough let alone the sculptures and structures the followers have.  The video follows the text in convey the same concepts.  The difference here is that the video goes into greater depth and understanding of the topic of Buddhism Art.  The video was a good reinforcement and I thought it was interesting and retained my attention.

The final video that I viewed was Islamic Art: Africa and Central Asia.  I choose to view this video because it also peeked my interest of how it was influenced while reading about it in the text book.  I learned that in Islamic art that it is highly regulated by the Islamic Religion and most of the art in this venue has to do with religion and religious ideas.  The Islamic art is really unique and different compared to other style of art.  The topics covered in this video pretty much go right along with the teachings that the book has to offer.  The only difference is like the other videos viewed, is that the videos go into greater detail than the book did.  I enjoyed this videos and viewing all of the videos I felt that I learn better from watching videos over reading a book.