Greek Art from the Bronze Age to the Classical Period PDF

UAE U Greek Art from the Bronze Age to the Classical period Introduction to Art History Dr. Clarisse Roche – HIS 133  INTRODUCTION 🞂​ The geography of the region prevented the Greeks from creating a large, united empire. Instead, they b...

UAE U Greek Art from the Bronze Age to the Classical period Introduction to Art History Dr. Clarisse Roche – HIS 133  INTRODUCTION 🞂​ The geography of the region prevented the Greeks from creating a large, united empire. Instead, they built many small city-states, cut off from one another by mountains or water. 🞂 ​ The seas linked the Greeks to the outside world. The Greeks became skilled sailors, traveling and trading all over the Mediterranean. 🞂 ​ The Minoans established a brilliant early civilization on the island of Crete. 🞂 ​ The Minoans helped to shape the first Greek civilization as well as the Greek art.  1. THE PREHISTORIC AEGEAN: THE MINOANS  Aegean culture (civilization around the Aegean Sea) did not begin with the Greeks but with the Minoans in the 3rd millennium BCE.  The Minoans lived on the island of Crete. Though they traded with the Egyptians and the Mesopotamians, they lived in relative isolation and developed a unique culture.  Their art does not focus on death and war like the Egyptians and Mesopotamians, but on life, beauty and entertainment.  The Minoans were a peaceful people. They worshipped a snake goddess and animals such as the dove, snake and bull. As a sport, they practiced bull jumping.  Lastly, the Minoans built palaces, which they decorated with elaborated murals. Restored view of the Palace of Knossos Crete, Greece, This palace, the largest on Crete, was the legendary home of king Minos.  Its layout features a large central court surrounded by scores of residential and administrative units. Stairwell in the residendial quarter of the Knossos palace. The Knossos Palace was complex in elevation as well as plan. It has at least three stories on all sides of the court.  Minoans columns taper from top to bottom, the opposite of Egyptian and Greek columns. Plan of the Knossos palace  The maze like plan of the Knossos palace gave rise to the Greek myth of the Cretan labyrinth inhabited by the Minotaur, a half bull monster that King of Athens Theseus killed. Bull-leaping, from the palace, Knossos (Crete), Greece  Mural paintings (= paintings on the walls) adorned the palace of Knossos. The brightly painted walls and the red shafts and black capitals of the columns produced an extraordinary rich effect.  The paintings depict many aspects of Minoans life and of nature (birds, animals, flowers, and marine life)  The subject of the Knossos frescoes are often ceremonial scenes, such as the one of bull-leaping. The women have fair skin and the man has dark skin, a common convention in ancient painting.  On this fresco, the Minoan artist provided no setting, instead focusing attention on the three characters and the fearsome bull.  The painter suggest the power charge of the bull, which has all four legs off the ground, by elongating the animal shape.  The highly animated human figures also have stylized shapes, with typically Minoan pinched waist.  Although the frontal pose with frontal eye was familiar convention in Egypt and Mesopotamia, the elegance of the Cretan figures, with their long, curly hair and self- confidence, distinguishes them from all other early figures styles.  In contrast to the angularity of Egyptian wall paintings, the curving lines the Minoans artist employed suggest elasticity of living and moving beings.  2. GREEK SCULPTURE: STARK SYMMETRY TO DELICATE BALANCE  In terms of sculpture, the Greeks absorbed the rigidness of the Egyptians, with whom they traded, and the fluid forms of the Minoans.  They gradually combined the two into an idealized but naturalistic art that may be considered the greatest art of the ancient world.  The evolution of Greek sculpture from the rigid kouros statues of the 7th century to the naturalistic Kritios boy coincide with a political change that spread from Athens to other city-states.  Despotism (rule by one) was replaced by Democracy (rule by all the male citizens). A. The archaic period: the Kouros statue from Attica, Greece,  During the Archaic period (7th-6th BCE), Greek sculptures looked very similar to the Egyptians statues. The artists obviously spent time in Egypt or studied the imports closely.  Sculptors of the earliest life-size statues of Kouroi (“young men”) adopted the Egyptian pose for standing figures.  The Kouros (“youthful boy”) statue is as symmetrical and rigid as a pharaoh’s statue. He has squared shoulders.  However, the Kouros is nude and liberated from the stone block. B. The Classical period: the Kritios Boy, from the Acropolis,  This is the first statue to show how a person naturally stands.  The sculptor depicted the weight shift from one leg to the other (contraposto).  The head turns slightly, and the youth no longer smiles.  C. The high classical style: Myron, Diskobolos (Discus Thrower), Rome, Italy. Roman copy of a bronze statue  This marble copy of Myron’s lost bronze statue captures how the sculptor froze the action of discus throwing and arranged the nude athlete’s body and limbs so that they can form two intersecting arcs. The body is very proportional.  This tension, however, is not visible on the athlete face that remains motionless.  Myron’s Discus Thrower is a vigorous action statue.  The high classical style began, when Greek sculptors learned to invest statues with the appearance of motion.  Myron involved the entire body of Diskobolos (“Discus Thrower) in a single, compressed action. Yet his classically serene face and the faraway look contrast with the action of his body, giving the athlete a timeless quality.  3. GREEK ARCHITECTURE  The earliest Greek temples did not survive because they were built of wood and mud bricks.  For Archaic and later Greek temples, however, Greek builders used more permanent materials: limestone and marble.  The temples are embellished with stone sculpture.  Architectural historians describe the elevation of a Greek temple in terms of the platform, the colonnade, and the superstructure (entablature).  The Greeks invented the three orders, or architectural formulas: Doric, Ionic, and Corinthian.  Each order is based on precise numerical relationships so that all the architectural elements in a structure harmonize.  The Parthenon, Doric temple, was built under Pericles and designed by Iktinos and Kallikrates.  At 8 columns wide and 17 columns long, it is a big temple, which, yet, seems very graceful.  The architects achieved this effect by thinning (tapering) the columns, which also lean toward the centre, giving the structure a feeling of upward lift.  4. Greek vase painting  Greek vase painting progressed from the Geometric style to the highly realistic Early Classical style in the early 5th century BCE. 1. Geometric style: complex network of geometric patterns: squares, dots. Some of them tell stories. 2. Black-figure techniques: appeared in the 6th century BCE. The black-figure pottery usually tell stories. 3. Red-figure techniques: appeared in the 6th century BCE. The red-figure pottery usually tell stories.