Antiquities

Antiquities

Antiquity refers to the ancient past, from approx 4,500 BCE, marking the origins of Western civilization, to around the start of the Middle Ages.

Early Antiquity features various forms of art, including advanced pottery and the invention of the potter's wheel, complex religious art like Egyptian pyramid architecture, storytelling through relief sculptures like upright stone or wooden steles, and intricate decorative art such as jewellery, ornate weaponry, mosaics, ivory carving, and pottery painting. During early Antiquity, the primary civilizations were Mesopotamia and Egypt, with additional notable cultures like Ancient Persia, which emerged around 3,500 BCE.


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Parra's studio, with Parra at the centre, his back to the camera as he works on the large painting takes centre stage, showing a faceless blue woman in a striped dress, painted in red, purple, blue and teal. The studio is full of brightly coloured paints, with a large window on the right and a patterned rug across the floor under the painting.