Re: Celtic body art?
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Posted by Phoenix and Arabeth on January 22, 1998 at 02:22:19:
In Reply to: Celtic body art? posted by Lise Anderson/Andalusia on January 20, 1998 at 14:39:39:
Well this is a fun subject. Most people think of the elaborate interlocking knotwork of Irish art as "Celtic" today. However, this was almost entirely developed by Irish Christian monks to illuminate holy manuscripts from ca. 700 AD on. Of course, at this point nudity, tattooing and body-painting would have been forbidden by the Catholic Church and largely disappeared. What would be authentic Celtic art that was what most assuredly what Caesar and other Roman authors saw on the bodies of the Celtic and Gaulish warriors was the more ancient form known as "La Tene" style, named by archeologists after a site in France where this type of art was first discovered. There are many examples from the British Isles as well. It is very curvilinear, with plenty of spirals, but no knotwork. It tends to have a fair amount of large solids in it, and has something of the feel of the yin-yang symbol graphically speaking. You have to dig for this stuff, but there is a little of it in many Celtic knotwork artbooks (seeGeo. Baine), and there are at least one or two books devoted to this ancient pre-Christian era of Celtic art. In practical terms (having done the northern California Rennaisance Faire where 7 artists applied henna to about 2500 eager customers last summer, and British/Celtic design is very popular) we found that the ancient triple spiral symbol was very popular and easly to do. Also a running spiral (aka "Greek/Minoan waves") gives a very Celtic feel for a bracelet or arm band. Triple spiral and running spiral combined for a very strong armband. This well satisfied most peoples' expectations of a "Celtic" henna design. We practice henna as a stricly immediate, freehand medium without using patterns. This makes the comples geometry of Celtic knotwork very difficult to pull off. The one thing we used fairly successfully is the endless knot of Tibetan Buddhism (one of the 8 auspicious symbols) which most people see and accept as Celtic. And indeed there is a connection between these 2 widely separated peoples from very ancient times (1-2,000 BC) but that is another story.
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