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The Greek Miracle of Sculpture |
| Section: THE ARTS / ART |
| Author: Olga Palagia |
| Publication:
The World & I Online |
| Issue Date: 1/1/1993 |
| Size: 2,727 Words, 16,899 Characters |
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Although the classical style did not spring up immediately at the inception of democracy after 510 B.C., and had moreover begun to emerge before the Greek triumph in the Persian Wars in the first two decades of the following century, it is difficult not to associate it, however indirectly, with historical circumstances. Just as the writing of history gradually emerged in Athens as a science, Greek sculpture was emancipated from the conceptual idiom of the Orient and directed toward a naturalistic representation of the visual world. It is often asked why Greek artists abandoned the archaic tradition in which they had worked successfully for two centuries. The classical moment seems to have developed as a result of mental adjustment from the timeless to the temporal and from the objective to the subjective: as mythology gave way to history, so was formulaic art replaced by the art of illusion. Free of the magical associations of the East and permeated by the individuality of the artists, classical sculpture was based upon perception of changing visual phenomena. Its emergence was based on ceaseless experimentation with ever more lifelike renderings of the human form, which was almost its sole subject.
It is only by comparison with earliest art forms that we begin to understand the impact of the classical. Archaic Greek sculpture (650-480 B.C.), which was a product of visual abstractions operating through a rigid set of proportions adapted from Egyptian and Near Eastern prototypes, is exemplified by the sixth-century kouros from Mount Ptoon. Ruled by the laws of symmetry and frontality, the figure is split in half by a vertical axis running through its spine. ...
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...tic rendering of drapery. The grave relief of Hegeso, dated to the first decade of the fourth-century, exhibits the new trends in sculpture, leading to the classicism of the fourth-century. Hegeso's hairstyle, drawing on a Pheidian model for Aphrodite, the opaqueness of her dress, and a rather restrained mood herald the new style, which will be based on a new interpretation of the classical.
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Publication Details
(The World & I Online) |
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The World & I Online is a
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Originally published monthly in print as The World & I, our site
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