The Chi Rho Page from the Book of Kells
During Tuesday's class, I want to look at the above image. It is a page from an illuminated manuscript, the Book of Kells. Although we are not certain, the manuscript was probably made in a monastery in southern Scotland or Ireland about the year 800. I will say a lot more about the contexts of this page, but in preparation for the class, I would like you to spend some time looking carefully at this. Click on the thumbnail above to see a much larger image. See what you can find. If you look carefully enough you should find a couple of cats, what appears to be an otter with a fish, a couple of angels, and moth/butterfly. This is a text page. Can you figure out the letters that appear on the page?
Imagine making a page like this. Students regularly ask me, how long it took the monk to make this page. I have no firm answer. My response is usually to ask my students why it is important to them how long it took to make? What this asks us to consider is our attitude to work versus that of the monk that made this page.
I teach a course examining the nature of the artist. In that course, I ask my students to consider for each work we look at the following questions:
1) What is the role or function of the "work of art" in the social context?
2) What is the position of the artist in the social context?
3) What is the conception or nature of making "art" in the social context?
4) How do your answers to the first three questions help you to gain an understanding of the particular culture's conception of reality?
At the end of our discussion, you might try to answer these questions in relationship to the Book of Kells page.
