Art History

• Students will recognize Greek methods of construction, even in non-Greek buildings.
• Students will identify types of Greek sculpture.
• Students will differentiate the three Greek orders of columns.
• Students will apply their knowledge of ancient Greek pottery to differentiate the periods.
• Students will analyze Greek sculpture to identify key aspects of Greek culture.
• Students will compare modern social/political values as manifested in contemporary art with Greek social/political values as manifested in Greek art.
• Students will compare early/late Greek sculpture and demonstrate ability to differentiate them.

Time & Place

Imagine yourself making anything that people would still be admiring three thousands years from now. Much of what the Greeks introduced to the world has had that amazing ability to endure. In fact, it is said that Western civilization was born in Greece during that tiny country's rise and fall from world power. Divided into powerful city states by it's rugged geography of difficult to cross seas and rocky mountains, Athens became the center of power.

Lewis Thomas in his Lives of a Cell posits that humans' essential purpose may be to transport bits of information (as a bee's purpose in life may be to carry pollen from plant to plant). Greek travelers carried bits of their culture to their destinations, often returning home with snippets of culture from the places visited. They learned from what they saw. They borrowed what they needed and discarded what they didn't.

King and warrior, Alexander III (the Great) was led by his prowess to conquer and unify Greece for the first time. His prowess - and perhaps his curiosity - inspired him to march his army into and conquer nations in the Near East, Egypt and even India. He carried the Greek arts to those places with him, and he brought their arts home to Greece.

Much of ancient Greek art survives only in the written descriptions or copies made of it. Greece's noble ideas of human dignity and beauty, however, and some of its artifacts, survive to this day.

Religion & Philosophy

The pagan Greek religion was ruled by a group of gods known collectively as the Olympians. Aspects of nature were personified as gods, too, so nature demanded the utmost respect. The gods encouraged creativity and beauty.

Zeus was the leader of this group of gods, whose stories are recorded in the writings of Homer, among others. The Olympians were an interesting lot, getting into all sorts of god-human mischief. Zeus, for example, was married to Hera, but had a wandering eye (and more). After a tryst in a meadow with his illicit girl friend, a mortal princess named Io, he had to turn her into a cow to hide her from his wife. This story gets even better, but read it for yourself.

For more background on the stories of the gods, called somewhat derisively Greek Myths, look at this site: Mythography. For a great read, check out Edith Hamilton's Mythology or Bulfinch's Mythology , two of the best available in most libraries.

The Greeks believed in humanism - man is the measure of all things. They valued people, reason and nature. From their concern with the divine in each individual person came the birth of a form of government intended to create a good life for everyone - democracy. In such a climate, where self-control and dignity prevailed, every man could ripen into his fully realized potential. The body was valued and developed. The mind was valued and developed. The will was valued and developed. All effort pointed to perfection. Beauty was important, not a frill. You will see in Greek art this philosophy of perfect mind-perfect body in the way it shows the figures of men and women.

The arts were viewed differently by the Greeks than we view them today. The Art of Medicine, (which we hold highest today), the Art of Teaching, and the Art of Farming were all held in high esteem but considered bound by a common quality. All those arts merely help along a process that already happens naturally, i.e. bodies naturally tend to heal on their own, minds tend to learn even without instruction, and plants and animals grow whether cultivated or not. The Art we know today (Fine Art), however, was, in the Greek mind, a category all by itself, because art does NOT happen on it's own. It is created ~ solely by man.

Art Content

Drama was their greatest art, and much of Greece's narrative theater survives and is enacted today. Even vases and sculptures told stories. As the culture matured, Greek artists moved from stiff stylized figures to more accurately observed figures, often lovingly perfected. Greek artists introduced movement to figure sculpture. In addition to gods, the common man was a frequent subject and representations were lifelike. Please look at this excellent site about Ancient Greek and Roman Art to see the progress Greek artists made from the early Archaic Period on the the Classical and Helenistic Periods.

Materials and Technology

The Greeks used harder tools for sculpture than earlier peoples had. The Greek Islands provided a source for beautiful hard marbles for sculpting. They used post-and-lintel construction and structured columns using dry masonry to create beautiful buildings.

Art Styles and Contributions:

Architecture

Greek architecture was really walk-in sculpture. Greek architecture focused on the dwellings of the gods, while ordinary people lived more simply. Those wooden homes have long since vanished. The temple designs devised by the early Greeks have features still commonly used today.

For example, post-and-lintel construction was elevated to an art. A child setting two Legos on end with a space between, then placing a larger one one across the top, making a sort of doorway, has understood basic post-and-lintel construction. The Greeks elevated this simple concept to design stunning buildings.

Every art student learns the three main column designs invented by the Greeks (the Doric, Ionic and Corinthian), because they are famously beautiful and still used today. To learn about these important Greek contributions to art, please go to this site on Greek Columns.

Now that you know a bit about post and lintel construction and columns, let's visit The Parthenon.

The Parthenon on the Acropolis (4448-432 B.C.) is the Temple of the goddess Athena, considered to be the most perfect building ever made. It once housed a 40' tall ivory and gold-covered statue of the Goddess Athena, the protector of the city of Athens. It stands with other temples on the sacred hill called the Acropolis (or "high city").

The Parthenon, made of stone, is constructed using the post-and-lintel system. The Greeks stacked huge stone drums to make columns using dry masonry, no mortar to stick the pieces together. A heavy stone piece was laid across the tops of the columns. Although it appears uniform at first glance, it has been discovered that the Parthenon is irregular. Even the distance between columns is not absolutely identical. The columns swell as they go upward and then narrow again at the top. (This process is called entasis.) It was once thought the irregularities were mistakes, but they are echoed in other buildings so must have been intentional.

Whatever the 'imperfection,' people still flock to visit the Parthenon and it's details are still copied. It has been a Christian Church, a Muslim temple, and in the 17th century an ammunitions dump for the Turks. The Venetians blew out the Parthenon's ceiling with a rocket, and although the cella, the central room that housed the statue of the deity, was destroyed, the beautiful columns remain on the Acropolis today.

Painting

Paintings from the ancient Greeks have not survived except on pottery. Greek artists selected a theme or story to illustrate, such as a battle, wedding or game, and then designed figures to tell that story. The figures were usually painted on the wider part of the pottery. The narrow bands around the top and bottom of the clay pots were decorated with geometric patterns .

Please look at this picture of the Panathenaic Amphora. This amphora shows the goddess Athena as race sponsor and protector on one side and a foot race on the other. Greek athletes ran nude, giving artists a chance to study the human body. This amphora was probably the prize given to the race winner.

Amphorae were twin-handled vases sometimes used to mark graves. Some were larger than a person. As today we use plastic, glass or metal for the practical purpose of holding liquids such as water, wine or oil, the Greeks used everyday pottery containers. These objects were first painted in a stylized and geometric manner, but as Greek art developed, they became more lively.

Artists in the Archaic and Geometric Periods painted black stick figures against the natural red background of the clay pots. Later artists switched this scheme, painting the background black, instead of the figures, and using the red clay for the flesh tones of the figures. This gave artists much more flexibility in detail and expression.

Look again this site on: Ancient Greek and Roman Art to see the development over time from the simple black stick figures to the later detailed red clay colored ones. Great two-handled drinking cups, some in the shape of animal heads, were used in male drinking rituals. There is speculation that overuse of these cups inspired the untimely death of Alexander the Great at age 33 from alcoholism.

Sculpture

Greek sculpture emerged as an important art form. The Parthenon is decorated with shallowly carved relief sculptures called friezes, again, often telling a story. These friezes run along the horizontal bands set over columns. See The Horsemen. If you scroll across this site fast enough you can almost see the horses and riders gallop away. See how both horses and men are ideal - strong, active and handsome. Note that the story here is not just recounting the action or the event, but also tells the feelings of the actors through their gestures - casually relaxed bodies or wildly gesturing ones, horses grazing calmly or galloping with ears back, mane flowing and mouth agape. This is more than a simple retelling of an event, but captures a sense of the action and the excitement.

The Greek artists also made many large freestanding figures, sculptures surrounded by space that can be viewed from all sides. In early Greek sculpture,the figures were column-like and stiff. They still looked like the stone from which they were carved. Later, the stone begins to look as if it has melted into flesh. Lines are softer.

The Aphrodite of Melos, a famous Greek freestanding sculpture, (450 B.C. ), is sometimes known as the Venus de Milo. This Aphrodite, the Goddess of Love, shows us the Greek ideal. Note the serene face, the softly undulating S-curves of her body, the graceful drape of cloth as it falls from her waist and catches on her slightly raised knee. Although she is beautiful, she is nobody's fool. She is sensuous, yet she radiates intelligence, strength and dignity - the Greek ideal. This sculpture was discovered accidentally by a peasant poking around in a cavern on the Greek island of Melos in 1820.

Writing

Homer, Sophocles, Euripides and Aeschylus are but a few of the great writers still widely read - and readable - who have come to us from the Greek culture.

Optional Activity

Design a frieze by making a narrative design of an important event in your life, from beginning to end - a family wedding, death, graduation, sporting event or parade. (Plain white shelf paper comes in a convenient inexpensive roll to draw on. You could paint the design in red and black.)