Splayed perspective is not only an ancient Egyptian art conceit but it is perhaps the best recognized worldwide. How great then is the contrast between Amarna examples of bas relief and fresco painting in comparison to the art which came before and after the collapse of the Atenist cult?
I remember my first trip to the Cairo Museum, fresh from some time in Athens, Greece, when I looked up at the colossal sculptures of Akhenaten and I wondered then, as I still do now, if there were any form of entasis used in the execution of the works, inasmuch as the columns of the Parthenon, for example, were designed to slant upwards in order to create a more harmonious effect in the overall scheme of the architecture. When I stood directly below the face of Akhenaten, I tried to see as if this could be the case in the exaggerated features of the Pharaoh but I didn't see it. I have just come back from the Tutankhamun and the Golden Age of the Pharaohs exhibit at the new De Young Museum in San Francisco and, again, I looked at the face of Akhenaten, wondering about the distortions and the affects they had and do have on viewers. I pointed out to my daughter that the cloth/nemes head-dress was surmounted by stylized Maat feathers, which one can readily see from a side glance. This piece was meant to be seen from the sides as well as the front, I would say, otherwise the full affect of the rebus writing (Maat, Speaker of Truth) ould not be appreciated. Now, looking at the photograph of one of the boundary stelae from Amarna, the distortions are again easy to see: the so-called spindly arms and legs, the convex thighs and the overall splayed perspective. But what is the affect on the viewer? I find this problem fascinating. I have looked again and again at the faces of Amenhotep III and his chief wife-consort Tiye, and I saw again the upturned, almond eyes of the king and the fierce and beautiful expressions of his wife. There is a lot of visual psychology here; that is, the overall impact of the portraiture could suggest the impression that the father of Amenhotep IV/ Akhenaten was a sort of laid-back fellow but his wife was vigilant, and that the move from the old capital(and the old ways of showing royals) to the new city of Amarna allowed for innovations and experiments in the royal artworks: the exaggerated portraiture, the move towards more naturalistic works, the fresh fresco paintings in the palaces and the garden pictures, and the overall feeling that this was an experiment on many levels, most of which faded back into the desert once Tutakhamun and his successor Aye died and Horemheb began his campaign of using up the talatat from Amarna to fill his 9th pylon at Karnak.
I must say that when I saw the tomb of Meryre, I was astonished by the sheer beauty of the painted images on the brilliant gypsum plaster, utterly and thoroughly astonished and thrilled. Even the subject of the Pharaoh and his Queen Nefertiti in their chariots with a large police escort running around them and beside them, suggesting that the royals were not safe, not even in this new capital, still, I was overcome by the layout of the scene, the sheer depth of the bas reliefs, the shadows cast in the cut plaster---this one thing really got to me---felt as if it had been created quite recently and the feel of the artist's tools, the sweat of the hours of work, seemed to move in the very room! That is the impression with which I was left and still am. The brilliance of the paints and the plaster, the open-air qualities of the rooms and the entrances, especially in comparison with the other 18th dynasty burial chambers, both before and after Akhenaten's reign. As I think, even now, of the carved images, my thoughts go back to the shadows and how they influence the compositions. And I have looked again and again at the Akhetaten boundary stelae
with this in mind: how do these contrast between light and dark make me feel, about art, about the Amarna Era, about the Gestalt of it? It is a complex and very engaging exercise for me. From the most elegant single papyrus stalk erected at Karnak by Thutmosis III, a gorgeous, dramatic, regal statement of power and design, to the heavier figures of Aye and Tutankhamun on a field of thick ochre-imbued yellows in the latter's romb, in the Opening of the Mouth scene, there, in the middle is this seeming aberration, the enormous figures of Akhenaten and his wife cut deeply into the plaster, with great energy both in its cutting and design and also in the subject matter.
We expect grand artwork in public settings such as Karnak and Luxor; we expect the ritual scenes in tombs. What we haven't seen before or
since are the personal scenes we get in the Amarnan works, the glimpses of daily life, companionship between husband and wife and children, and the sheer energy of those scenes, produced in materials chosen for their easier transport (the talatat,for example) or for their ability to dry quickly and to cover up poor stone quality in rock-cut tombs (the plaster).
There are so many interpretations of what might have happened to cause this pharaoh to become the Atenist he did, to move the capital for self-protection, self-indulgence---to be sure---and for a purposeful change in the status quo. What did emerge was the art. We may not know as much as we may want to about this Era but the impressions left by the stelae, the bas reliefs and the layout of the city
and its structures cause an affect on the viewers. I hope we all keep looking.
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