Strangford Apollo

Transcription

Hi! This brief lecture goes over some of the key works from the Geometric and Archaic periods in ancient Greece. So, the title of the lecture: "Representations of the human body in Ancient Greece before and after the Persian Invasions" relates to the idea that the representation of the human body changes dramatically between the periods or going from about 490 BCE into about 479 BCE. There's this dramatic shift in terms of the naturalism of the human form. But, even before Persian Invasions, you really see the human form transforming in ancient Greece, so we'll be tracking that in some of the artworks that we're looking at here, So, here I show you an archaic kouros [kouros = male youth] sculpture and then the "Kritios Boy" that we'll see as a result after the Persian Invasions. So before we get to the Persian Invasions, there is this period, following the ancient Aegean civilizations -- those civilizations being Mycenae, the Minoan civilization on Crete, and the Cycladic cultures -- we do have this period known as the Greek "Dark Ages", which runs from 1200 BCE to 800 BCE, so after the destruction of the Mycenaean palaces and citadels (except for Athens), the Greeks seem to have lost a lot of their knowledge. So, knowledge of masonry -- that is stone working -- reading and the arts. So we actually see the alphabet changing. Writing does reappear in 800 BCE, but with a different alphabet. So what we also see are probably changes in terms of the population. So, there is a legend that the Mycenaeans -- so those of the Peleponnesian region of southern Greece -- mixing with those from the north, called the Dorians, and this is a possibility in terms of what happened during this period because we don't have a lot of records from it. About 800 BCE is the time when we think the poetry of Homer would have been composed. So, just to give you a sense of the literary period as well. So, we enter into the Geometric Period around 800 BCE -- coming out of the "Dark Ages" -- and we see vessels like this. This is a geometric krater. Kraters are vessels for mixing the tend to have large openings at the top. This comes actually comes from a "Necropolis" or a city of the dead, so it's actually a grave marker or a funerary marker. And, on the actual vessel we see a representation a funerary scene or a burial scene, so we have a figure laid out on a bier with at those that are mourning -- presumably the family members around him, and a canopy above him, and those that are mourning on either side, as well as a procession down below. We get a sense of how the Greeks are beginning to perfect their techniques in terms ceramics, as well as the idea that could work in this kind of impressive size. This is a very large vessel, over three feet tall. It's now in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, but it would have been part a a very famous cemetery: "The Dipylon Necropolis" or "The Dipylon Cemetery" near the gate in Athens. And, these vessels also would often have holes in them where you could pour liquid offerings to the deceased. So, very important in terms commemorating the deceased, and also important in terms of showing us this new geometric style. So, as we zoom in, you can see that the geometric style reflects very much the geometric forms that we see here, so you can see that the upper bodies are created into triangles or reduced to triangles heads are simple circles, so a lot of the forms have been reduced to the "bare bones". You can see that the canopy is really just done as a checkerboard pattern with really no sense of depth. The horses -- you have three heads, and six legs both in the front and the back, so we definitely know that there are three horses here, but they're not represented in a very naturalistic way. These figures here are holding on to shields and they have very unnaturally thin waists, which we also saw in the Minoan culture and some of the artworks from the Mycenaean culture. But here it seems even more extreme, and then you can see the geometric forms incorporated into the decoration between the different registers -- so the decoration here and here and also just in terms of the Greek key pattern along here. So, now we move into the "Archaic Period", and we'll start to see human body becoming slightly more naturalistic. So, we see this, for example, in the "Kouros" figure -- and Kouros just means "youth" or young man in Greek. These kouros figures were often put up in honor of gods -- for example, Apollo. You would often commission a Kouros figure, and place it in his honor. Also, we see examples placed in the honor young man, who have died, so those are two possibilities. We can see that this one dates to around 600 BCE. So it's a relatively early example of a Kouros. He has very large eyes, and that traditional type of textured, stylized hair that we expect to see from Kouros figures around this time. We start to see some naturalistic indication of musculature, but still some elements of the body that remain quite Geometric. So, for example, the kind of angular nature of his hips, as well as his ribs here. So, you can see the ribs have been reduced basically to a triangle. You can see the knees have been reduced to basic geometric forms. The eyes are a little bit too large for the face, so were moving closer toward naturalism than we saw on the other vessel -- the geometric vessel, but we're still not quite there yet. There is a debate as to whether the Kouros figures were influenced by Egyptian art. So, most art historians do agree that there must be some kind of influence coming from Egypt because we do you see these figures with one foot forward just like we see with the Kouros -- so one foot forward in both of these Egyptian examples, but you can see that both the Egyptian examples -- they're high relief sculptures. They are still attached to the stone on the back, and they have one-foot forward, but they haven't quite shifted their weight forward. There still leaning their weight down in that back leg, so what we see with the "Kouros" is that actually that weight has been shifted and is now in between the two legs, and also they're fully carved in the round, so that's something that we don't really see before. You can see the additional geometric forms just of the elbows here, a little bit of the knee cap, as well. And just the straight line at the hair, which later on in Kouros figures, the hair will actually fall much more naturally. Another key work is the Kouros at the Getty Villa, which is a much more controversial Kouros, which number of scholars have identified as a forgery or believed to be a forgery, so the way it's labelled today at the Getty Villa is that it says "about 530 BCE, or a modern forgery". It was purchased as a real antiquity -- as a genuine antiquity by the Getty Villa in the 1980s I believe, and there were a number of problems with its documentation -- with its "provenance" -- so certain documents were found to be forged, the style the body is thought to be problematic. It's kind of an amalgam of different Kouros figures from different regions in Greece. The type of stone, the surface texture, details of the feet and the hair have all been identified as problematic by certain art historians. But the bottom line is we're really not sure about this, and that's why at the Getty they identify it as either an ancient work or modern forgery. If it is a forgery, it is pretty well done in the fact that the forgers were careful to use no modern tools or any modern tools that could be detectable detectible It's still debatable. A lot of people do feel it might be a forgery, but it's up for discussion. OK, we also see the "Peplos Kore" -- so we have the "Kouros", but we also have the "Kore" -- so "Kore" being a "young woman", and this figure is very famous. She's wearing a peplos, which was a traditional Greek garment at this time. Also, it's from the Archaic period with the same stylized hair. But, we see her with a lot of pigment that still survives on the surface of this statue. And so this reveals to us how a lot of ancient sculptures would have been painted, and there are two possibilities here represented. So, the colors are quite dramatic, quite garish, one might say. She is standing out making an offering presumably to the gods. She was found in the area of the Athenian Acropolis, so she is probably making an offering to Athena or to another figure who was important in Athens. You can see that here the arm is fully reconstructed in that gesture of offering. Important to note that men could be nude -- it was considered very heroic at this time -- but women at this time needed to be fully clothed, and women in Greece had pretty restrictive lives. They weren't able to go around as some of their counterparts will be able to, for example in the Etruscan civilization, so they [the Greek women] did not have a lot of freedom. Looking at this vessel, this gives us a sense of how the pottery techniques have developed in ancient Greece. This is black-figure pottery because you can see the figures themselves are done in black. And, this changing of color between red and black is done by manipulating the amount of oxygen in a kiln. Here you have a story of Achilles and Ajax -- they're both ready to go back into the Trojan War, or go back into warfare at any time You can see that they've got their shields and helmets ready. But, they're playing a game of dice, which actually doesn't have a literary story that accompanies it, that we know of, but anyone who looked at it, would have known the story of the Trojan War. They would know know the story that Achilles would eventually die -- that he would be killed, and that actually Ajax would go off and try and win his armor -- try to win the armor of Achilles, but he would fail -- it would go to Odysseus -- and that he would eventually commit suicide. So, presumably you have that in mind -- you would know the story as a Greek viewer. You would know also because of little speech bubbles coming out that Achilles was the victor. He says something like "I have four" and Ajax says "I have three" so you would know that Achilles, who was the greatest warrior the Greeks, was the victor in this game. Exekias is the potter, and he was considered one of the masters of black- figure pottery. And, now we're moving towards the end of the Archaic period, moving into what's sometimes called the "severe" style towards a more naturalistic style of the classical period. So, we see some dramatic differences in what are called the dying warrior sculptures. So, this is from a pediment or a triangular area of a temple -- called the Temple of Aphaia at Aegina. And, this is also from a triangular pediment -- right in the corners at the edge of the temple. And, this is from about 500 to 490 BCE, and this is from about 490 to 480 BCE. And what we can see is this dying warrior is becoming much more naturalistic: he's turning, he's becoming more dynamic, more attention to the muscles in his legs and arms, a more attention to how expression should be, how drama should be incorporated, how one would actually look if one had been stabbed. So, both these figures are removing spears from their chests. This one is in a relatively awkward position trying to remove his spear. You can see there's still remnants of an "archaic smile", which is a trace or a sign of the Archaic style -- where sculptors seem to have been struggling to get the curvature the lips around the mouth -- so it's not a sign that they actually smiling when they're dying, so that's good. But, here you can see this one's just much more naturalistic. You get a greater sense of gravity and weight, as the figure is trying to pull himself up so this gives us a sense that after the trauma of the Persian invasion. After all things that happened during the Persian invasions, the art style does seem to have changed. This temple was damaged during the Persian invasions, so this east pediment needed to be replaced, so this is what was produced, so we know this is produced following the Persian invasions, and some the destruction at Aegina. So, the Persians -- by the Persians I mean the Achaemenid Persians, who we referred to earlier -- remember they have a huge empire, and there were some revolts in Ionia -- over here -- and they began encroaching on the the Greek area on this side. Darius came in with the first invasion -- or under Darius -- there was a first invasion, and then Xerxes comes in for a second invasion around 480 BCE, so Darius' invasion are around 490 BCE, and Xerxes are around 480 BCE. So, we have a couple key battles The Battle of Marathon was the victory with primarily Athenian troops, which indicated that they could be victorious. The Battle of Thermopylae is very famous later on for a battle where Xerxes was battling a relatively small number of Spartan troops and the Persians did win, but the Spartans were greatly outnumbered, and the story goes that they were betrayed. And then finally we have the battle of Plataea, which is the final land battle between the Greeks and Persians, and the Greeks wins, and this seems to be the end of the Persian invasions. So, similar to this dying warrior, which indicates a move towards naturalism in the Archaic period, we also have what's known as the "Kritios Boy" so this figure here -- compared to a figure from about 500-490 BCE known as "The Strangford Apollo". So, the "Kritios Boy", what we see is, again, a much more naturalistic form. Some people say he looks like he might turn and say hello to you -- so he looks more alive. His proportions are much more naturalistic. You can see the weight of his hips shifting, and we call this a "contrapposto" pose, so he is moving his hips, and his body is moving in response, so all this indicates that following the Persian invasion, there's a fundamental shift in the art that's being produced, and in the naturalism of the human form.