IDES 141 Exhibit Project
For the Exhibit Project I chose to recreate the Bust of Nefertiti as my artifact. I have always been fascinated by this sculpture, and as I was brainstorming potential subjects in the beginning I kept being drawn back to Nefertiti, although initially I wasn’t really sure if she had a strong tie to visual communication. As it turns out, however, she does have quite an interesting history relating to the subject.
Queen Nefertiti and her pharaoh husband were responsible for an era in Ancient Egypt now referred to as the Amarna Period, which was defined by one of the first monotheistic religions in history. This worship of a single god, the solar disk Aten, brought about what we now refer to as the Amarna Style; this style, characterized by long lines and fluid curves, was used as a way to communicate an era of reformation by going against the sharp angles and rigid forms of the past. The Bust of Nefertiti turned out to be a perfect example of the Amarna style; beside her husband and their god, Queen Nefertiti was one of the main subjects featured in the art of the time, and she remains an emblem of this great cultural shift. We see this type of shift repeated throughout history, wherein one movement directly opposes its precursor in thought, theory, or aesthetic – or oftentimes, as in this case, all three.
I decided to start by creating a physical sculpture out of air dry clay, and initially the plan was to create an entire physical set around it. However, there were so many aspects necessary to my initial design that were just too time-consuming given the deadline, so I decided to switch to digital illustration halfway through. This ended up being quite difficult as I tried to incorporate an entire scene around the sculpture in a way that was believable.
Keeping in mind composition and visual hierarchy, I incorporated a photo of hieroglyphs from the Amarna Period into the background as if it were an additional artifact. Making sure my sculpture remained the focus of the composition was a bit of a challenge because the hues and shadows were so different between both artifacts.
In many of the reference photos I looked at, most museums displayed their statues on minimalistic podiums lit by spotlights. I wanted to come up with a unique, dynamic way to recreate these elements, so I sketched out numerous vantage points and scrapped a few drafts before finally settling on a scene. I took new photos of the bust with different light sources throughout the process and once I had everything aligned, I built the highlights and shadows up based on the light sources on both the statue and the hieroglyphs. I also blurred the hieroglyphs to create the illusion of distance.
Overall I’m very happy with how the image turned out. I had a lot of trouble with adding text in Illustrator, but otherwise things went pretty smoothly. Picking a statue as an artifact was hard given the fact that museums display them in fairly simplistic ways, and that took time to figure out. As well, if I hadn’t lost so much time trying to build a physical set, I probably would have added colour to my artifact as well. In total, the whole project took about 15 hours to complete.
References
https://www.britannica.com/art/Amarna-style
https://www.britannica.com/biography/Nefertiti
https://www.jpost.com/archaeology/article-717631
During the middle of the Eighteenth Dynasty (14th century BCE) Pharaoh Amenhotep IV and his wife Nefertiti deposed the polytheistic religion of Egypt in favor of a new religion honoring a single deity, the solar disk Aten. With this turnover came an immense amount of rapid change – the capital of Egypt was moved to a new city named Akhetaten (now Amarna), and the ruling family promoted a new style of art, using it as a tool to underline radical reform. The Amarna Style went against the blunt, sharp angles of the Old Kingdom; figures were slim and streamlined, with elongated features and fluid curves. The king employed many artists for this reformation, including the sculptor Thutmose, who is notable today for sculpting the famous bust of queen Nefertiti.
After being buried for over 3000 years, the bust of Nefertiti was recovered from Thutmose’s studio by German archeologist Ludwig Borchardt in 1912. Sculpted from limestone, the bust features long, curving lines and an exaggerated crown, and has since become emblematic of the style and aesthetics from this period in Ancient Egypt.