Back to Art H 280 table of contents
The History of Art Survey
Lecture 7
Greek Art 1: Geometric, Orientalizing and Archaic
Gardner 96-120
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Style Periods: Geometric, Orientalizing, Archaic
Style Period: Geometric 900-700 BCE
1 Attic Geometric Krater Athens
2 Hero and centaur
Style Period: Orientalizing 700-600 BCE
3 Mantiklos’ Apollo Thebes
4 Corinthian black-figure amphora Rhodes
5 Temple A (plan) Prinias
6 Lintel of Temple A Prinias
7 Lady of Auxerre (kore) Auxerre (?)
Style Period: Archaic 600-480 BCE
8 Kouros from Attica Attica
9 Rhonbos’ Calf-bearer Athens
* 10 Kroisos Anavysos
11 Peplos Kore Athens
12 Acropolis Kore Athens
Doric temple plan
Doric and Ionic orders
* 13 Temple of Hera I Paestum
14 Temple of Hera I (plan) Paestum
15 Temple of Artemis: pediment Corfu
16 Treasury of Siphnians (reconstruction) Delphi
17 Treasury of Siphnians: gigantomachia frieze Delphi
18 Francois Vase, Kleitias and Ergotimos Chiusi
19 Ajax and Achilles, Exekias Vulci
20 Ajax and Achilles, Andokides
21 Herakles wrestling Antaios, Euphronios Cerveteri
22 Three Revelers, Euthymides Vulci
23 Girl going to wash, Onesimos Chiusi
* 24 Temple of Aphaia Aegina
25 Temple of Aphaia (reconstruction and plan) Aegina
26 Temple of Aphaia: West Pediment Aegina
27 Temple of Aphaia: Dying warrior from west pediment Aegina
28 Temple of Aphaia: Dying warrior from east pediment Aegina
Art Historiography: looking at the evidence
The quality of our art historiography is based upon a dialectic of looking in
two directions at once. The most immediate and conscious is our careful observation
of the evidence: our rereading of the story as it is handed down to us, and
our measuring it against the evidence. The most indirect and so more difficult
is the self-consciousness act of keeping an eye on our own theory and methods
of interpretation.
Learning to look with care is one of the fundamental skills in art history.
My own reading of the field has involved a case in which I read everything written
about a particular monument over a century and a half to see how different historians
interpretations changed. You can do that with any monument. I recommend it,
as a means to understanding both how our current understanding of the item have
come into being, and as a means to understanding what our current means of interpreting
have come into being. Every history tells us something about the historians
as it tells us about their subjects.
The most telling single thing I learned in reading the 80 discussions of the
Durga Temple, from its entry into the historical literature to the period of
my own research, was that most writers were much more interested in what the
previous writers had to say than they were in what the actual monument looked
like. They were more interested in fitting into the hegemonic scene than in
checking whether or not it was correct. We could say, they were more interested
in joining the establishment than in questioning it.
Possibly out of my own personal or social dissatisfaction with the status quo
of my life, I have long been more interested in questioning the status quo that
in fitting in. Though I can’t claim to be too much of a rebel, when I
recognize that my society is one that claims that to be successful one must
be willing to work against the grain and not be a conformist. And I must also
admit to being a rebel who has been trained for dozens of years in schools that
have given me degrees only because I have learned to fit into the status quo,
and then given me a state sponsored job in a state institution. If I am a critical
reader, it is within very carefully monitored range.
I return to my very basic point. To do history effectively one must look with
great care, both at the stories we recapitulate—that we read and tell,
over and over—and at the evidence. Looking at the evidence. For art historians
that means looking more than most others at the objects. Do they look like what
our stories say they do? Nearly everything I read about the Parthenon, possibly
the most famous work of art in the ancient world, when I first studied it at
length in the late 1970s, began with the statement that it was the most beautiful
work of architecture to come down to us from antiquity or it was the most beautiful
work of architecture in antiquity. This despite the fact that it
was a bloody ruin! It was a misshapen desperately dilapidated pile of broken
stones. The fact was, the great writers of the ancient classical
world had a particular penchant for it, for reasons we sill see as we go on,
and so they liked calling it the finest of all designs, and every succeeding
writer wanting to fit into the tradition simply repeated them.
You should not be surprised to hear how often the story must be changed as we
learn new things about the objects. An inscription in an undeciphered language
is finally read. A symbol not noticed before is recognized. Or, even in the
best known or at least most familiar objects a new general cultural interpretation
allows for a different fit into the historical context. Meaning, after all in
the fit of the object into its context, not in the object itself.
First of all, we learn to look very carefully at the object to see what is there.
Style Period: Geometric 900-700 BCE
The first thing to note when talking about the Greek world is that it was not confined to the location of the present day nation. Look at the map in our book. The Greek world there extends from the entire west coast of coast of what is now Turkey and the Islands of Rhodes and Crete, across the Islands and peninsula of modern Greece to Sicily and the southwestern coast of the Italy. The second is that when we say Greeks we aren’t speaking of a race, but of a linguistic and cultural group.
When your book says they were the product of an intermingling of Aegean people and Indo-European invaders there is a suggestion of them being genetic groups. They weren’t. The Dorians who came down from the north to conquer the Mycenaeans were speakers of a closely related language. The phrase “mixed stock” is an unfortunate racialist confusion.
A major surviving division in the Greek world was between the culture brought and developed by the Dorians and that reconstructed by the previous elites after their defeat by them. The major exression of this surviving culture was developed by the Ionians on the islands and coast of Anatolia and Attica, that eventually focused and flourished at Athens. Theseus, the legedary founder of Athens was a uniter of the Mycenaeans against the Dorians. The two cultural ideals were both shared by all the Greeks, like their major symbols in temple architecture, the Ionic and Doric orders.
Greek Humanism For the Greeks humanity mattered above all things, were the measure of all things. So begins our chapter. “This humanistic world view led the Greeks to create the concept of democracy (rule by the demos , the people) and to make seminal contributions in the fields of art, literature, and science.”
This is the hegemonic Anglo European, American view of the Greeks, par excellence. They are our chosen ancestors and so credited with the invention of Democracy, our proudest possession, along with the creation of important science, literature and art. The last three are true. The first is a travesty. The Greeks didn’t practice democracy as much as the Athenians did, and among the Athenians, neither women nor the Slaves who made up the bulk of the population voted. Athenian Democracy was limited indeed. And then one must remember that most of the peoples of the world, who lived in pre-literate bands and villages, more or less everyone in the Paleolithic and Neolithic and everyone outside the great archaic civilizations, lived in tribal democracies, where every member of the tribe took part in decision making, women usually included.
It is not that the Greeks had no real impact on the development of European culture and democracy. They had in their cultural production and their model they had perhaps more impact than any other culture. But they were not the inventors of all that we have come to enjoy, or nearly as much later heroization has portrayed them.
Gods and Humans Compared to the Spartans the Athenians were
democratic. Compared to the theocratic authoritarianism of the Mesopotamian
and Egyptian empires that preceded them, they were much more individualistic
and democratic and open to cultural development.
776 BCE is the date of the first joint athletic games at Olympia, where the
various tribes and city states from the region met together. Seeing themselves
as culturally connected and distinct from those surrounding them, the barbarians
who spoke different languages.
They were a trading and colonizing people. They were still spreading out
across the Aegean and the Mediterranean.
Greek art and culture reassessed [Even this hegemonic view notes, after
the recent development of multicultural vision] the great originality of Greek
culture owes much to the cultures of Egypt and the Fertile Crescent the preceded
it, that it drew upon. The Greeks themselves regularly gave credit to these
cultures, especially Egypt. “Uncritical admiration the 18th and 19th century
of anything Greek has undergone sharp revision.” [The major source
of the uncritical adulation came from the anti-Semitic writers, seeking a non-biblical
source for European culture].
The Greeks considered slavery natural. According to Aristotle, “It is
clear that some are free by nature, and others are slaves.” Greek women
were distinctly subordinated to their husbands, playing no part in public life,
and this is expressed in the arts. Although the Greeks invented and passed on
to future generations the concept and practice of democracy, most Greek states,
even those constituted as democracies, were dominated by well-born white males,
and the most admired virtues were not wisdom and justice but statecraft and
military valor.”
Big problems here. First of all democratic government is the norm among small tribal culture most everywhere, only being broken down in the large archaic city dominated states. The Greeks developed democracy on a larger scale, than those large states that preceded them. but invented nothing not invented by many others before and after them. Second, “white” was not a concept recognizable in any cultures before the Atlantic slavery of the 15th century CE. Our book has been updated on all these points from earlier more Grekophile editions, and here have gone overboard.
The Greeks were unable to unify themselves and eventually fell to the Macedonians
autocracy and Romans imperialism. When necessary it is noted that the Macedonians
were not Greeks.
The Art of Ancient Greece: Geometric 900-700 BCE
We know fairly little about the region between the disintegration of the Mycenaeans fortress states around 1200 BCE and c 900 BCE. Then in the 8th century the Greek city states emerged and began to grow and trade with others. The Geometric period is named for the outlines of its abstracted and schematic visual style.
1 Attic Geometric Krater, 3’ 4” c 740 BCE, Athens
The human figure, rare on ceramics of the region after the disintegration of
the Mycenaeans, regurns at this moment. One of the earliest surviving examples
is this krator (mixing) vessel from Athens, Dipylon cemetery. Just to manufacture
a ceramic fabric of this size takes a highly advanced technique. The vessel
is bottomless in order to allow offerings poured into it to go to the grave
it stood above.
Among the painted decorations are decorative patterns and narrative ones. There
are meanders (key) pattern on the lip and many other horizontal decorative bands,
that give the style its name. There are also two narrative bands, with figures
in relatively “geometric” abstraction.” Below figures in armor
and mounted on war chariots march. Above are rows of standing figures meeting
at a horizontal figure on a table above an altar with a smaller scaled figure
seated with an even smaller one it her lap. Another small figure with a smaller
one stand at the foot of the deceased. They seem to be the deceased’s
wife and children. The perspective is limited to stick figures more or less
parallel to the picture plane.
Figures are silhouette stick figures with single eyes in profile. The deceased
is identified as masculine by a penis mark on one thigh. The women are given
gender by marks for breasts under their arms on one side. Gender is thus symbolized,
not recorded anatomically. Warriors are walking shields. Horses show all their
legs.
2 Hero and centaur c 750-730 BCE, 4”
Another schematic figure piece at a tiny scale. Solid cast bronze. Possibly
it is Herakles battling a centaur, half-horse half-human. If composite animals
are common, the half horse half human is a Greek invention. Unlike previous
cultures the figures here are shown nude, a continuing Greek convention.
That is, important figures are shown nude and not as a symbol of submission.
Orientalizing period 700 - 600 BCE
The so-called Orientalizing period is the 7th century BCE. This was a period
of expansion and trade that brought the cultures of the Greek mainland in contact
with the surrounding cultures and many foreign characteristics flooded in.
3 Mantiklos’ Apollo [?], c 700-670 BCE, Bronze 8” Thebes
Mantiklos’ Apollo is a youth dedicated by Mantiklos c 700-670 BCE. It
is inscribed and the figure nude. It is a god in human form. “Mantiklos
dedicated me as a tithe to the far-shooting Lord of the Silver Bow; you Phoibos
[Apollo] might give some pleasing favor in return.” There is little attempt
at anatomy and holes for inlays. The
4 Corinthian black-figure amphora with animal friezes, Rhodes, 1’
2” 625-600 BCE
Here we see six bands decorative animals, on a storage vessel. Native boars
appear with exotic lions, panthers and monsters like the sphinx and limassu,
with a siren (bird-woman) on the neck. The dark figures are mostly in black,
standing out from a light cream ground, in a technique called black-figure,
invented by the Corinthians. The figures are dark silhouettes with some internal
details picked out in white and others painted in dark purplish red.
The figures are called Orientalizing because their style as well as their subjects are Fertile Crescent ones, not seen in Greece before.
5 Temple A (plan), c 625 BCE, Prinias
Greeks were in direct and continuing access to Egyptian culture from some time
around 630 BCE with a major trading community in Naukratis on the Nile. Their
first stone, monumental structures since Mycenaean times were created soon after,
at Prinias on Crete.
The form resembles the Mycenaean megaron at Tyrins ,illustrated here already
(4-19). It is a rectangular hall with a fire pit flanked by a pair of columns
at its center. It was entered through a porch with a facade of three massive
piers. The roof was likely flat.
6 Lintel of Temple A, c 625 BCE, c 6’ Prinias
Above the entrance to Temple A was a limestone lintel, carved with figurative
imagery. On the face of the lintel trios of “Orientalizing panthers with
frontal heads” march toward the center. Beneath, standing goddesses, with
tall headdresses and capes, face down toward the person entering. Above are
seated goddesses facing in toward each other. The dominant characteristics are
the symmetry of motifs and the rigidly formal poses of each figure.
Here’s a test of Orientalizing: do the “panthers with frontal heads” appear to be “the same motif” as that on the contemporary Corinthian black-figure amphora (fig. 5-4)? In this case you will have to take the closeness of these panthers “with frontal heads” to those, which have profile heads as a measure of “same.”
7 Lady of Auxerre (kore), 650-625 BCE, 2’ Auxerre, France (?)
The Louvre possesses a small statuette of a woman of this period, taken there
from Auxerre (in France) that is believed to trace to Crete of this time and
style. It is a kore (maiden). She wears a long skirt, blouse, and a
cape, but has no headdress. Instead she sports a heavy hair-do of long, sausage-like
ringlets. She holds her right hand to her breast, in what may be a gesture of
prayer. Her left arm hangs down at her side. Her shovel shaped face has clearly
articulated features. She has a narrow waist. The skirt bears a pattern of squares
and fragments of paint.
The style is sometimes called Daedalic, after the mythical creator
of the Minotaur’s labyrinth on Crete and a temple in Egypt. The most ancient
works of Greek art were regularly attributed to this artists associated with
Egypt.
Style Period: Archaic 600-500 BCE
8 Kouros from Attica, 6’, c 600 BCE, Attica
The earliest monumental figures of ancient Greece are kouros (youth) figures
of the Archaic period. Redolent of the myth of Daedalus’ connections with
Egypt, they partake of the same figure stance and rigid monumentality. Though
the lack the naturalism of the Greeks figures and have more of the geometric
abstraction of contemporary Greek tradition. We can see this if we compare it
to the Mentuemhet from Karnak (3-40) of about the same time.
The Metropolitan Museum’s Kouros is bolt uptight, striding ahead, left
leg extended, arms hanging straight down to clenched fists, and frontal thumbs.
His face stairs straight ahead. His hair, or wig, hangs behind in beaded ringlets,
framing his neck. Except for the outstretched leg, or despite it, symmetry dominates.
Both are constructed on the Egyptian workshop technique of working from each
of four sides. This much is precisely in the Egyptian manner.
But there are distinguishing differences too. Where Mentuemhet is a solid block
the kouros sculptor has cut away the stone from between his legs and between
his arms and his side. And where Mentuemhet’s figure and face are finished
with a simple and smooth, portrait specific naturalism, the kouros is finished
in a blocky anatomy that indicates more particular muscles, but in a less naturalistic,
more abstract manner that is more decorative than accurate. And the Greek figure
is nude. [Entirely nude, but for a ribbon at the throat, and possibly a
wig.]
The face particularly exhibits an angularity of edges, oversized eyes and frozen
expression.
This too, like the Mentuemhet, is a funerary image, though Greek culture had
nothing like the Egyptian beliefs surrounding the ka. This was simply a grave
marker. It replaced the function great vases of the type we began with.
One of the things we have to learn here is how images that may look alike, if coming from different cultures may have quite different meanings. Precisely similar kouros figures served as gifts to the deities in temples. Neither Kouros use fit the Egyptian usages.
9 Rhonbos’ Calf-bearer, c 560 BCE, [5 1/2’] Athens
The Calf Bearer (moschophoros), dedicated by Rhonbos on the Acropolis is more
than a generation later and gives us our first indication of the great difference
between the culture of the Greeks and those who preceded them. It is a stylistic
step more naturalistic, in the direction of a gradual projection that will continue
for the next several centuries. Greek art changed with such persistence and
consistency that it can be dated with some accuracy on the basis of that continual
change. The dedicator, Rhonbos, has himself shown bringing a calf to the god
Athena’s altar as an offering.
Aside from the calf, draped across his shoulders, and some sort of coat, Rhonbos
pretty much resembles the kouros we’ve just seen: frontal, rigid, left
foot forward, articulated muscles, frozen expression and bulging eyes. There
are differences too. The main one is the slightly less angular and more organic
roundness of the anatomy. We can also notice the arms drawn up to hold the calf,
the beard indicating he is not a youth, and the hollowed out eyes, meant for
inlays of some sort.
A particular point noted by later art historians, is the taught frozen smile,
dubbed by them “the archaic smile,” after this period in Greek sculpture,
that Western European art historians long took as the model for all the arts,
wherever else they looked later. We can see it here in its realm (5-10, 5-11,
and 5-27).
* 10 Kroisos, c 530 BCE, 6’ 4”, Anavysos
Here we can see this continual development underway. Kroisos’s pose is
the same as the earlier kouros, but all the sharp edges are now melted organically
and the muscles are indicated in soft bulging, not lines. The head is in proper
proportions for the body; the hair falls more naturally, all the flat planes
are replaced by organically rounded ones. Where there were symbols of muscles
there are now representations of them. There are curves here having nothing
to do with the four sides of the original block. Some of the original color
remains. The Greek formula left flesh the natural stone, polished and waxed,
with eyes, lips , hair and drapery (when it was included) painted in encaustic
(pigment in was, applied hot).
“[S]tay and morn at the tomb of dead Kroisos, whom raging Ares destroyed
one day as he fought in the foremost ranks.” This is a warrior’s
memorial marker.
What we are observing is a slow progression from fairly abstract Geometric through a gradually more naturalistic imagery, as we progress to the Orientalizing and then the Archaic, and within the Archaic. What we should remember is that this is not science. More realistic imagery was already available in Egypt, and undoubtedly known to the Greeks. And it did not take the Egyptians generations to invent naturalism. What we see is an interest in changing, developing style. And this is a Greek development.
11 Peplos Kore, c 530 BCE, 4 ‘ Athens
The Peplos Kore is a chronological sister of the Kroisos, so we can compare
the male and female ideals they represent. To begin with, she is dressed. A
peplos is a long woolen belted garment. Dressing her leaves us with a totally
different ideal, one in which women’s very anatomy is obscured in contrast
to men’s.
You should take note of this. It is natural for humans to over-determine gender contrasts, but in this case we get the opposite of today’s American clothes in which women’s bodies are displayed quite sensuously and men’s relatively obscured. This would seem to indicate a difference between that culture and ours, here today. How do you understand this?
Her figure is turned into a column. If we look back we’ll see this dressing
of women and undressing of men is standard. It is also an esthetic convention,
people didn’t go this way in public. Only deities and heroic males are
so idealized. This figure was a votive offering in Athena’s temple on
the Acropolis in Athens, broken at the time of Xerxes’s sacking of Athens
in 480 BCE,. You can see where her left arm was added in an extended position.
Yellow color remains in her hair and some other bits also.
12 Acropolis Kore, c 510 BCE, 1’ 9” Athens
The Acropolis kore, of twenty years later, wears a light chiton below
a heavier himation (mantel). This adds a plethora of patterns to the
surface but exposed no more of her body. The Green color has lasted well here.
Here at last also is a bit of asymmetry. For all the advance in naturalism,
we still have the Archaic smile and bulging eyes.
The familiar convention of keeping sculpture colorless was developed by the Romans in the second century CE, in an attempt to look old, since the Greek sculpture of their day, which was the most admired art of the period, was all so old the authentic pieces had had their color washed off.
The Canonical temple
The Greek temple is a structure distinctly different than those that preceded it, and as most of you know, one that influenced elite architecture for most of the succeeding 2500 years, a period quite a long as any Egyptian formula. Greek temples weren’t houses of worship. Their worship altars were outside on the east, facing the rising sun. Though they contained images of the god or goddess of their dedication and priests. The were decorated lavishly with figurative imagery, in the deity’s honor.
The major Greek public ritual of worship was a gathering around an outside altar to share a meal with the deity of choice. Offerings to the deity included a feast, from which the heavenly gods received the flame and smoke laden elements and the worshippers the meat. The priests ran the feasts and made sure appropriate words were said to make sure the gods knew they were appreciated and who specifically was making offerings and what they expected in return.
The temple was a closed and so dark place in which the image of the god or goddess could be maintained in state. And there it could be visited individually or in small groups and more modest, personal offerings passed through the priests.
The temple was in the form of a large house, with an open porch around the exterior
and open halls at either end. It was decorated with figurative sculpture over
the lintel and in the triangular pediment over the lintel and before
the entrance, at each end. Originally made of mud and then wood, most were fairly
modest, but those of the greatest communities, were eventually constructed in
stone. For the very finest temples, very handsome stones were found and very
fine craft was used to embellish them. As a hall entered through a pillared
entrance it maintains its relationship with Mycenaean megaron (4-19).
It is an elongated rectangular hall surrounded by an outer veranda row of pillars
all around the exterior and a pair of rooms on the inside, fronted by an inner
porch, fronted by a second rank of pillars. The structure is rigidly symmetrical,
the slightly pent roof offering a slim triangular pediment, frame at
each longitudinal end. The beauty of the design comes from its simplicity,
and the simple rhythms and proportions of
the rows of eye catching columns over a three steeped base, under the pent roof.
The earliest temples had layouts in proportions of 1:3 and later ones moved
toward 1:2. The Greeks themselves talked of beauty as being a matter of proportions.
There was decorative ornament at structurally accented points, with figurative
images limited largely to the lintels and pediments. There were three main styles,
each with its own combination of pillar, capitol and decorative scheme. The
ornamentation was painted brightly.
The Doric order (named for its supposed Dorian origins) had very plain, saucer
capitols over fluted columns and a series of square figurative panels (metopes)
alternating with three miniature columns (trilglyphs) on its lintel. The Ionic
(for the Ionians) had the double volute (spiral) capitols and bases on its columns.
In some cases it had figurative caryatid figurative columns. When it
had a lintel frieze it was continuous. Later a third order, the Corinthian was
added, with a capitol of acanthus leaves on an Ionic body. Compared to the rich
surface treatments and closed walls of the Egyptian temple, the Greek temple
was plainly geometric, with only accents of figurative ornament, and open all
the way around.
* 13 Temple of Hera I, c 550 BCE, 170’ Paestum (Italy)
One of the earliest examples to survive in representative condition is the Temple
of Hera I (long called “the Basilica”) at Paestum, on the west coast
of Italy just south of Naples. Paestum was a Greek colony, the Greeks being
seafarers spread their city states around the coast of the Mediterranean from
the west coast of Asia Minor (what is now Turkey), across what are now the islands
and mainland of Greece and all around the foot of the Italian boot.
14 Temple of Hera I (plan), c 550 BCE, 170 x 80’ Paestum
Though its roof and interior walls have vanished, the temple’s entire
peripteral colonnade has remained intact. It is a model Doric structure. Its
base is a three steeped stylobate from which rise its 52 columns, 9 across the
facade, 18 down the sides, a simple 1:2. Within the surrounding columns once
stood the walls of the inner cella or sanctum fronted by three pillars in antis
and a pair of engaged columns and entered by a pair of doorways. The main image
of Hera stood a the far end, before an inner “treasury.” The center
line of the structure was filled by a ridge pole colonnade, dividing the hall,
unconventionally, in half. This was apparently done, in part at least, to suit
two sanctum deities, with Hera on one side and her husband, Zeus on the other.
The richness of the design comes from the repetition of the columns.
They are concave fluted Doric pillars with organically
curving dish capitals—that seem to respond to the weight they
bear—beneath crisp rectangular impost blocks (each called an abacus).
In class I’ll show some details, the combination of shapes, of the softly
organic dish and the crystalline abacus is a treat.
The flutes of the shaft are shallow concave
troughs meeting in sharply linear ridges. The geometric clarity
of the forms is eye catching. The pillars as a whole are a set of cylindrical
drums, one on the next, but tied into a single vertical shaft by the vertical
flutes and their subtly narrowing profiles. The curve is slightly swelling
rather than simply a narrowing, giving the whole a living rather than inert
feel. The Greeks named this swelling entasis. The
columns are relatively thick and the span
between them is relatively narrow, in contrast to later, less
conservative designs. These columns rise in the standard Doric manner, straight
out off the top slab of the stylobate.
Along with its roof, the metopes are now all lost to the temple, but those preserved in the site museum show blocky archaic figures in rigid but rhythmical poses. In the standard Doric fashion they alternated between triglyph panels.
15 Temple of Artemis: pediment, c 600-580 BCE, 9’ h., Corfu
The pediment of the Temple of Artemis, from the Island
of Corfu, shows us the major sculptural element of the Greek temple facade.
It is a wide, low, symmetrical triangle, that fits the space between the horizontal
of the lintel and the slightly angled planes of the roof, and standing over
the entrance is the prime decorative space on the temple. The sculptors’
problem was to fit such an odd space effectively. Here, we can say they
did a satisfactory, if not compellingly interesting job.
Both pediments at Corfu had the same subject and imagery: Medusa, the Gorgon
with serpentine hair, striding between opposed panthers. As a symmetrical heraldic
device of three guardian figures, this does all right. The spaces not filled
by these three are occupied by human figures of different scales. Between the
Gorgon and the panthers are her children, Chrysor (her son) and Pegasus (no
longer visible on this side). He is the only unbalanced figure in the otherwise
symmetrical design. Behind each of the lions is a figure piece. On our right
is Zeus brandishing a thunderbolt at a giant, balanced on the opposite side
by the killing of Troy’s king Priam, seated on his throne. Defeated giants
are sit into the cramped corners. The effect of the Gorgon bursting the boundary
of the triangular frame is a nice touch. The cutting is crisp and main figures
striking. The subject matter combines apotrapaic protection and myths of the
god’s favoring of the Greeks, over their enemies: the Trojans and the
Giants.
The presence of panthers guarding the entrance and their heraldic pose fit the
Orientalizing style of the moment.
16 Treasury of Siphnians (reconstruction), c 530 BCE Delphi
Though only fragments of the Siphnian Treasury at Delphi have survived, we can
reconstruct it in essential form, because such structures followed such
consistent formulas. Here we see the pent-roofed rectangle, though in a
treasury there is no perimeter of columns. To two pillars in antis are caryatid
females, and the continuous narrative frieze of the lintel is typical of the
Ionic order. Treasuries were the structures where offerings to the gods were
stored.
Siphnos, it is pointed out, used the Ionic style, because it was a poleis associated with the region of Ionia, or what is also called Asia Minor. If you will go back to your map you will notice that the Greek speaking, and so Greek culture bearing, peoples had a major concentration of cities beyond the modern nation state of Greece. They were spread out across the area between the 34th and 41st parallels, extending from what is now Sicily and southern Italy to Crete and western coast of Turkey. Ionia and Caria were located in what is today called Asia. There is an interesting cultural war still continuing over whether this region is Asian or European. Turkey is a member of NATO and a preliminary member of the European Union. Though some of the European members are against counting Turkey as European, because its people are now largely Islamic in religion.
17 Treasury of Siphnians: Gigantomachia frieze Delphi
Fragments of the relief of the frieze shows the Gigantomachy, the war between
the gods and the Giants. Here we see for the first time how the Archaic style
copes with narrative. In contrast to previous art, there is movement throughout.
On the right Apollo and Artemis drive a helmeted warrior away as three more
come on. Another lies broken below their feet.
Originally there was more clarity due to the use of added metal ornaments and
paint on the figures and even painted labels on important characters.
Though the fact is, little of the story could be seen. The goal of the patron, here the Siphnian poleis was the prestige from display of lavish luxury and fine craft. They were out to impress both their neighbors and their gods, with the quality of their presentation. And quality then meant accomplished craft and richness of materials. There was also an implicit need to identify themselves with their particular gods, and for this reason the subject matter was crucial.
What our bourgeois art museums value today is also possession of luxury and craft, though subject matter is not as important. Where the original producers valued association with particular gods and sites, we today value rarity of survival and association with particular historical moments, but most important, fine craft or aesthetic attractiveness. That is, trophy display value. This is the difference between art interest and design or material culture interest.
18 François Vase, Kleitias and Ergotimos, c 570 BCE, Chiusi,
2’
Greek painting survives almost exclusively in the form of the decoration of
ceramic vessels: vase painting. The potter and the painter were in most cases
different. The fabric is quite hard and the images quite long lasting, if the
vessel isn’t shattered. Artists were so important in the Archaic period
that works were signed. Painted ceramics were an important luxury export of
the Greek cities.
The François Vase is an Attic black-figure krater, found in
an Etruscan tomb at Chiusi, Italy. It has been reassembled from a great many
pieces. The assumption is that it was imported from Athens. The imagery is in
black and brown on a cream background. The form was first used by Corinthians.
It is signed: Kleitias made me” by the potter, and “Ergotimos made
me” by the painter. They both signed twice. There are more than 200 figures
in six registers. There are lots of labels naming people, animals and objects.
There is one register of Orientalizing animals, the rest is mythological and
figurative. It is filled with mythology, with special focus on Peleus, his son
Achilles, and Theseus, and includes the centauromachy. The figures are more
naturalistic than earlier and there is les geometric detail, but they are still
formulaic and conceptual. Centaurs are now human torsoed horses.
19 Ajax and Achilles, Exekias, 540-30 BCE, 2’ vessel, Vulci (It)
Exekias, the Athenian, is the master of the black figure, and a great leap,
emotionally, from the earlier part of the century. He is the potter as
well as the painter and signed for both. Instead of registers he has one large
composition on each side covering nearly a quarter of the height. The
figures are in black silhouette with scratched out details and a second color,
on a light terracotta background. Ajax and Achilles play at dice. Achilles calls
out “4”, Ajax replies “3.” There are detailed patterns
in the textiles of the capes and sophisticated linear and silhouette contours.
Quality here is marked by the subtle rhythms of the composition and elegance
of the linear detail.
20 Ajax and Achilles, Andokides [?],c 525-520 BCE, 1’9”
vessel, Orvieto
The Andokides painter offers us the next stage of the style’s development.
A black figure version of the same gamboling theme stands on one side and a
reversal, a red figure version on the other. The red figure style leaves the
faces bright and so more emotionally available. The movement toward a less abstract
imagery is enhanced by the overlapping of the border by the figures at the top.
Red figure ware begins about 530 BCE. And the Andokides painter is its creator.
The painter is probably the same as the Andokides who signed as potter. Our
authors find his technique “decidedly inferior” in “intensity.”
21 Herakles wrestling Antaios, Euphronios, c 510 BCE, Cerveteri
In his red figure ware, Euphronios breaks the style out of the strict conceptual
profile, allowing the foreshortenings of elements seen from the front. Thereby
he suggests figures with mass moving in space and so more optical, less conceptual
view than the previous painters.
22 Three Rivers, Euthymides, c 510 BCE, 2’ Vulci (It)
The shift from black figure to red figure gives primacy to line over silhouette,
and one of the things that Greek vase painting is most highly admired for is
its strong, clear, strong linear liveliness. It is a line that suggests a very
sophisticated understanding of the human form and the gestures of human action
with amazing simplicity.
When Neoclassical artists reached back to fashion an art based on the ancient Greeks in the 19th century, this clean continuous line was one of their prime guides and focuses.
23 Girl going to wash, Onesimos, c 490 BCE, 6” d Chiusi (It)
The woman painted in this drinking cup by Onesimos is discussed for her foreshortening.
Onesimos assumes we can read a figure turning in space and he no longer needs
to give his viewers only a conceptual profile. The fact that the woman is shown
nude indicates that she is a servant. It reminds us that the men are seen nude
and women not.
You will notice that all these pots were found in Etruscan
tombs.
* 24-5 Temple of Aphaia at Aegina, c 500-490 BCE,
The temple of Aphaia at Aegina is created at the beginning of the 5th century
BCE. It was the last major temple before the crushing defeat of the Athenians
by the Persians in 480 BCE. It is a Doric temple 45 x 90 feet, six columns across
the front and twelve along each side. Though it too has lost its roof, we can
still see a distinct change from the temple of Hera at Paestum, half a century
before. The pillars are proportionally much thinner and more widely spaced.
The capitals make a smoother transition to the impost blocks. They flow up to
them, rather than stab into them, as the more constricted earlier ones.
The temple’s plan has also developed in an important way. There is now
a pillar fronted entrance at each end, and most important, shifting of interior
pillars to either side of the central axis that allows for a centrally placed
image to be viewed without obstructions. We can see the meaning of this on the
outside with an even number of facade pillars and the ability to see the goddess
within even from the outside. The interior pillars are reduced in size and built
in two separate stories.
26 Temple of Aphaia: West Pediment, c500-490 BCE, 5’8”
Aegina
The sculpture from the Aegina temple’s two pediments have survived, through
transportation to Berlin. Here we can see the problem of the low triangular
frame taken seriously and ingeniously, and we can use it to remind ourselves
of the importance of composition, of balance and harmony within a concrete form.
The subject of both sides was the struggle of the Greeks versus the Trojans,
with Athena at the center. Athena is on a larger scale, but the rest are more
or less life sized. To make the most of the unusual space figures take a variety
of combat poses moving from the full standing at the center and crouching then
leaning and finally laying upon the ground. It isn’t a peculiarly brilliant
solution, but it is a handsome one.
As the view of the Berlin display shows them, there is a pleasing variety of
poses and anatomic displays. The symmetry is maintained with careful parings
across as well as along the line. Take the tallest male on the right. It pair,
the tallest on left is in the same pose, seen from the opposite side.
27 Temple of Aphaia: Dying warrior from west pediment Aegina
The recumbent image from the far end of the design shows us how far we have
come since the beginning of the Archaic. The dying warrior from the west pediment
offers us a pose much more interesting than the striding figures we have seen
up to now. There is not only an understanding of anatomy in movement, but of
depicting it with great grace. With clean lines, every major form is lined up
parallel to the plane. And yet it is quite unblocky. The archaic smile is still
there and the hair fits its head like a geometric wig.
28 Temple of Aphaia: Dying warrior from east pediment Aegina, c 490
- 480 BCE
The last figure we’ll see is a decade later and we can see changes already.
The main one is the growing optical naturalism. The posture isn’t much
different, but now we are given a taste of foreshortening. And instead of losing
clarity, we gain in understanding. Instead of caricature of a figure posed stiffly,
we see a figure more naturally. Whatever information less silhouette provided,
less conceptual figures lost when they were softened into less mechanical poses,
they gained in naturalism. The more casual form turns out to be more real.
Here is one of the central tales of “Western” art history. On the Dying Warrior of 490 BCE: He is like a mannequin...The viewer has no sense whatsoever of a thinking and feeling human being.” Of the next of a decade later: “his posture [is] more natural and more complex...he...reacts to his wound as a flesh and human being would...He knows that death is inevitable, but he still struggles to rise once again...”
On one hand this is hype, it overplays the development. On the other, it has a ring of interpretational cogency. The second figure with its breaking away from the conceptual geometry to softer turns and more casual placements, seems truly to turn in space and catch the effect of the human more effectively. You read the first for its angularity and the second for its feelings. As the helmeted figures looks away he appears more human.
What is clearest from the discussion of Greek art from the Geometric through the Orientalizing and Archaic periods, the 9th century through the 5th, is that it changes more and more quickly in a progression that spans this entire era, growing gradually more naturalistic and at a more and more rapid rate. This is le miracle Grec. And this is only its beginning.
What is less comonly recognized, though certainly as true is that what we are speaking of is not the art of a unified tribe in a national location. It is not the Aryan race of proto-Europeans that the 19th century German Romantics imagined. It was a loosely-knit set of city states and independent colonies, connected by the language of Homer and other shared cultural habits, spread around the islands and coasts of the eastern Mediterranean, from Crete and Rhodes and the coast of Caria and Ionia (of modern Turkey) to the islands and coastal planes of the mainland Greece, and west to sites around the southern end of the Italian boot and Sicily. It was not the Greek nation in embryo, but a multicultural variety of peoples sharing the Greek language and culture.
And there were devices like the division of architecture into Doric and Ionic to indicate the names of the different communities that made up this whole.