Birds
Bird imagery has been found across world cultures since the cave paintings of the Paleolithic era. Gifted with the ability to fly, throughout art’s history their wings have represented freedom and divinity. Often part-bird, part-human depictions communicate superhuman powers and abilities. Ancient Egyptians represented Horus, the god of the sun the Upper Nile, with the head or body of a falcon. Goldfinches appear commonly in illuminated manuscripts from the Middle Ages as a stand in for the Christ child. The Greek Hellenistic marble masterpiece, Nike of Samothrace, depicts victory as a winged goddess. In the early 1800’s James Audubon became …
Bird imagery has been found across world cultures since the cave paintings of the Paleolithic era. Gifted with the ability to fly, throughout art’s history their wings have represented freedom and divinity. Often part-bird, part-human depictions communicate superhuman powers and abilities. Ancient Egyptians represented Horus, the god of the sun the Upper Nile, with the head or body of a falcon. Goldfinches appear commonly in illuminated manuscripts from the Middle Ages as a stand in for the Christ child. The Greek Hellenistic marble masterpiece, Nike of Samothrace, depicts victory as a winged goddess. In the early 1800’s James Audubon became famous for his life size watercolors that accurately portrayed bird biology with dramatic flair. More recently, Felix Gonzalez Torres’s photographs of soaring birds in the sky have captured the essence of a fleeing moment on billboards throughout New York City; while, Carsten Holler has included live birds in several of his installations and made photogravures of crossbred songbirds.
