Innovativeness of The Amarna Style

Innovativeness of the Amarna Style

     The Amarna style was an innovative an new art method started during the reign of Akhenaten (Amarna Art).  When Akhenaten took control of Egypt, he decisively took action against the priests of Amun, who had become very powerful and wealthy, by declaring a monotheistic religion revolving around the sun god, Aten (Dunn).  Offerings and sacrifices would now be made only to Aten, the supreme deity, and the names and depictions of all other gods would be removed from the temple walls.  Akhenaten took every step he could to reinforce the idea that Aten was the one and only god, and all other gods were to be forgotten. 

     After Akhenaten’s decree, art branched out from the normal mold and became known as the Amarna style, named after the region, and would be a complete innovation of the traditional style.  In order to compare the two art forms, you must examine both, so in order to understand how creative and radical the new art would be we must first see how static and stagnant the old art was. The old art form, like the new, was dictated by law, the way everything was drawn and inscribed was the way art had to be done, and any other way was illegal.  In statues people had to have one foot forward, and arms straight down their sides or bent at the elbow with the bicep still firmly in position.  Hands were clenched in tight fists or open palms with fingers rigidly together, and faces were always straightforward.  In two-dimensional representations figures are depicted according to certain proportions, and social status, with the upper body shown from the front and lower body from the side, as Fiero says, “The proportions of the human body were determined by a module represented by the width of a clenched fist.  More generally, Egyptian artists adhered to a set of guidelines by which they might ‘capture’ the most characteristic and essential aspects of the subject matter: in depicting the human figure, the upper torso is shown from the front, while the lower is shown from the side” (33).

     The new innovative Amarna art form that swept the nation was a departure from the conceptual style and embrace naturalistic tendencies.  Human form was no longer shown as rigid and posed but had become more relaxed and natural.  Akhenaten’s depictions often suggested a very feminine form however, to the extent that his sexuality and gender are a topic of debate (Akhenaten).  Akhenaten would have been the one to impose the rules of form and style for art and architecture, which would imply that Akhenaten was who wanted to be portrayed with wide child bearing hips, drooping belly, and extended abdomen, and that it was not simply one artist or a new pharaoh depiction method that was coming into popularity (Akhenaten).