donner une valeur autonome au détail dans toute représentation
English translation: imparts a distinct value to the details within the context of the whole composition
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| 18:00 Jun 2, 2017 |
| French to English translations [PRO] Art/Literary - Archaeology / ancient art | |||||
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|  Selected response from: Christopher Crockett Local time: 00:16 | ||||
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| 4 | imparts a distinct value to the details within the context of the whole composition |
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| Discussion entries: 5 | |
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Answers
2 days 20 hrs confidence: 
imparts a distinct value to the details within the context of the whole composition Explanation: It is worth noting that these campaniform-type Hathor columns, with their “fasciculated” shafts made up of a bundle of stalks, contain smaller stalks topped by a bud which, within the real structure of the column, are inserted symmetrically into the bundle of the stalks but are here distinctly separated from it, according to the accepted canon of Egyptian design, which imparts a distinct value to the details within the context of the whole composition. By being represented in such a way, the contribution of the buds is more efficacious in the overall composition. (I have to say that the columns which are in your British Museum example most definitely do NOT appear to me to be of the "fasciculated" type; though, perhaps, this is because the small scale did not permit detailed articulation --of either the large stalks or, more relevant to the present case, the smaller stalks with their separate buds.) -------------------------------------------------- Note added at 2 days21 hrs (2017-06-05 15:15:32 GMT) -------------------------------------------------- Note that there is a somewhat "technical" point which I believe Bénéditi might be making when he says, "en vertu de la formule scripturale du dessin égyptien," and which I have chosen to translate as "according to the accepted canon of Egyptian design." I think that he is pointing out that the accepted "canon" of Egyptian design (which was arrived at by at least the late 4th millennium B.C. and persisted down through Roman times) does not at all depend upon what we would call "realism," but rather is concerned with "accurately" displaying the various elements of any given composition by imparting to all those individual elements the **integrity** of their "true" form. It is this "vital" principle of "design" (i.e., depiction) which trumps our own, quite naive and obviously simplistic, concept of "realism." Thus, for example, the eyes of all figures have the basic (oval) shape of an eye --no matter from what point of view they are being "seen" (frontally or from the side); or the hands of all figures are depicted as having five fingers (+ a thumb), no matter from what position they might be viewed. The mere "accident" of a point of view (which might obscure some elements of the hand) could not possibly be more important than the obvious FACT that all hands, by their very nature, have five fingers, and that it is *that* which is part of their *true* essence. I believe that is what he is driving at when he says that the depiction of the buds "donne une valeur autonome au détail dans toute représentation" --"imparts a distinct value to the details within the context of the whole composition." It's a somewhat difficult point for us post-Renaissance westerners --with our (to Egyptians) naive and quite nonsensical notion of "realism" to understand. But the basic idea of what constitutes "realism" also applies to much of the art of the Western (and Byzantine) Middle Ages, and it is really impossible to understand what is going on in that art during the 1,000+ years of its flourishing unless this fundamental concept is appreciated. Otherwise, one is left with such ridiculous notions that the Egyptians (or the Medievals) couldn't "realistically" --i.e., NATURALISTICALLY-- represent the phenomenal world because they were just "too dumb" to do so. -------------------------------------------------- Note added at 2 days21 hrs (2017-06-05 15:35:26 GMT) -------------------------------------------------- I'm virtually sure that this "technical" concept of the very nature of what constituted "realism" and the nature of the "Egyptian canon of Design" --or one very close to it-- accounts for Bénéditi's curious language here (and, thus, your problem trying to understand what the hell he was trying to say, Angela). I.e., you are not dealing with just a text intent on a simple description of an object in this case, but rather with a description which is "loaded" with a whole theoretical aesthetic "system" behind it. This theoretical framework (for looking at and explaining the representational art of various cultures, like that of Egypt or the Middle Ages) was in the process of being worked out in the second half of the 19th century, and was elaborated and refined through the first half of the 20th c. (suchlike "subjective" "speculations" have since fallen out of favor in our own benighted epoch) --primarily by German art historians but also by the French, and the best scholars of the time (among which we must count Bénéditi) were aware of and influenced by those very fundamental ideas. |
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