2001 Fiscal Year Final Research Report Summary
Mythological elements in Ornament and Sacred Imagery in Ancient and Medieval Art of the Celts
| Project/Area Number |
09610064
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| Research Category |
Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research (C)
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| Allocation Type | Single-year Grants |
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| Section | 一般 |
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| Research Field |
Fine art history
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| Research Institution | Ritsumeikan University |
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Principal Investigator |
UEDA Takahiro Ritusmeikan University, College of Letters, Associated Professor, 文学部, 助教授 (80244979)
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| Project Period (FY) |
1997 – 2000
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| Keywords | Celtic ornament / abstract expression / ornamentation / anti-anthropomorphism / Gallo-roman coins / illuminated manuscripts / Abstraktion und Einfuhlung / vital changing and animation of forms |
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| Research Abstract |
This research, with an introductory illustration of the history of the Celtic art in ancient and medieval times, proposes an analytical description and interpretation on the typical Celtic ornaments, in order to discuss on the Celtic visual communication which could be an aesthetic contribution to represent our vision about nature and life in abstract forms. Because the Celtic ornaments, especially seen in La Tene metal warks, the Gallo-roman coins and the illuminated manuscripts of the medieval Insular Art, are so unique in style that their forms significantly suggest the obsessive curiosity about the vital changing and animation of forms, which should fairly represents Celtic mythological and cosmological visions though the abstract character as W. Worringer proposed in Abstraktion und Einfuhlung (1908). In other words such Celtic type of art should be called Anti-Anthropomorphic art, contrary to the Greco-roman classical Anthropomorphic art or figurative type of art.
In this research, the analysis of Celtic abstract and ornamental forms resulted the more essential character in form of, so called, 'Shape-changing ambiguity' correspond with the Celtic mythological theme of 'Metamorphosis of beings'. Celtic art continued to evoke a dense, ever changing world. The artist showed the animate principles in nature, living on in the secret places of the imagination. Such Celtic style in art, through the main analysis of the style of icons and ornaments of Gallo-roman coins shows a key for recognition of the vision of life and nature kept by the people called Celts who built the basic stratum of European civilization. This also resulted an answer why such ornamental expressions had attracted not only art historians but also modern artists like Kandinsky, who inventively put ornament like motives into art of abstract painting by a method influenced by psychological and musicological thoughts starting from the early twentieth century against those of the ancient naturalism.
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