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Part III

We have come to appreciate the art of the Greeks as timeless. We know that it comes to us through the vast reaches of distant time. In our visions of white marble ruins and sunlit temples, we tend to forget that Greek history itself spans nearly one thousand years. The 6th century BC, the 5th century BC, the 4th century BC, the 1st century BC.

A very early Greek statue like this one from the 6th century before Christ had to wait one hundred and fifty years before it was joined by this figure. The famous Aphrodite of Melos, we call her by her Roman name – Venus, was carved near the end of the Greek era, around the first century before Christ. The arts of the Greeks are the record of their history. Through the changes in architecture, sculpture, and painting, we can scan the years, to see the ever evolving continuity and duration, the constant becoming, the flowering, and the decline of Greek civilization.

The earliest period in which the Greeks made life-size stone sculpture is called the Archaic Period. It left a rich and vivid record of how the Greeks idealized the human form. The figures are massive, crude, abstract. They are not meant to be portraits of men, but rather, they stand for certain ideas and ideals.

This figure expresses a larger-than-light, monumental feeling – a sense of changeless eternity. The figures retain the rigidity and blocky form of the stone from which they were cut. This very technique is suggestive of supernatural and immortal power. The figure stands poised and serene as well as powerful and awesome.

For this early Greek artist space, time and motion meant little, because the physical realities of space and time were not a part of his consciousness. He simply didn’t think about them. His sculpture is not the manipulation of shapes in space, as in this modern work. It is, rather, a carved surface cut into a solid block.

How the figure was to stand, the clench of the fists, the arms pressed against the side – all were borrowed from the time-honored traditions of the Egyptians. Can you see these elements in the Egyptian figure on the right? The face on these early Greek statues is mask-like and serene. The frozen expression, which we call the Archaic smile, is intended to represent the ideal face of a god or a hero. The figures represented the universal, not the particular. Individualism was carefully excluded. For the earliest Greeks, unlike other early civilizations, even the gods, who symbolized the great forces of nature, were represented in the shape of man.

Centuries passed. The Greeks gradually became more worldly, sophisticated, materialistic. They made agriculture more of a business. They became merchants. They respected their gods, but now had a higher regard for man and his physical existence. Athletes and war heroes were more respected. Their image was captured on vases, in bronze, and in stone. Their models were now real men, not idealized formulas. This is seen in the Charioteer, from the early 5th century BC. It is from a sculptural group, which once must have included horses and a chariot and which may have looked something like this. The Charioteer is not as simplified and geometric as the earlier archaic figures we just saw. However, his robe hangs straight and still. His body is stiff and erect. We do not see the drama and action of the event. Rather, the sculptor has given us the idealized symbol of the Victor. The features of the face are emotionless and general. Isn’t he still more than an ordinary human? Yet now there are touches of realism in the youthful down of the sideburns and the unshaven face. This subtle human touch was totally absent in the art of the previous century.

The Discus Thrower, a few decades later, vividly indicates the change that was taking place in the Greeks’ view of their world. Now the arms reach out into space. The head is turned, the tense body crouches slightly, poised in anticipation of the throw. He is a man about to be in violent motion. And motion suggests time and space. We are no longer in the archaic world of the eternal and the changeless. We have entered the three-dimensional world of the physical, of time and of motion.

Thus, classical history shows us the change to an age not only of men as gods, but of men as men. These Archaic warriors march into battle like mechanical robots. But later, by the middle of the 5th century BC that stiff angularity is no longer present. These horsemen from the Parthenon procession symbolized a new age, relaxed and confident – the Classical, or Golden Age, of Greece. The face of this earlier hero is like a mask fixed into a conventional smile. His body is rigid and unyielding. This Parthenon horseman, on the other hand, is soft and flesh-like. More of man, less of god. The pose is natural, not geometric. Both figures, however, reflect the dignity and restraint admired by the Greeks. Their difference is the difference between the Archaic style and the Classical style.

The abstract rhythms of the beginnings of Greek art were melded in the Classical Period with the individual and human elements, which had been growing in importance as the culture matured. Classical art balances cold intellectual geometry with the warm, emotional nature of man. It is a brief historical balance and comes between two wars, eighty years apart – the Athenian victory over the Persians and the Athenian defeat by the Spartans. But history is not simply a chain of static moments. Even within the span of forty years, continuous changes occur, as illustrated by changes in the artistic style. This relief carving of the Athena, goddess of wisdom, retains hints of the Archaic past. Her robe is molded like the fluting of a column. It obscures the body beneath the cloth. She is portrayed in a pose, which is motionless and changeless.

A sculptor forty years later created the image of another immortal, the figure of Victory. Her clothing, as if it were wet, clings and reveals the form of the body beneath it. While the earlier Athena is remote and other-worldly, the later Victory is filled with life. Her open arms and springing stride seem to embrace life with excitement. In the history of the Greek style, the Golden Age of Greece is marked by that brief moment of balance between metaphysical interests and physical ones, between intellectual values and emotional ones, between material interests and spiritual attitudes. That moment of balance quickly passed.

The blend of abstract rhythm and naturalness seen in the Spearbearer soon changed into soft flesh and smooth muscle, flowing beneath the skin of the 4th century statue. It is Hermes, the Messenger, carrying the infant Dionysus. The body sways into the relaxed S-curve. The marble has been polished to simulate the soft warmth of human skin. Naturalism is overcoming restrained idealism.

By the end of the 4th century, the sweeping conquests of Alexander the Great had spread Greek culture through the Mediterranean and Near East. The centre of later Greek culture moved to Asia Minor. The days of Athens’ greatness were past. The small, self-contained city-state, or polis, was replaced by the sprawling cosmopolis.

The difference between the earlier Classical Greeks and the later Hellenistic Greeks can be demonstrated by a comparison of two temples. Each represents the artistic climax of its age. Perhaps the greatest of the Hellenistic cities was Pergamon, in Asia Minor. As seen in this reconstruction, it had a magnificent acropolis, built during the second century BC. Atop this now ruined acropolis was set the Great Altar of Zeus. It represented its age in the same way as the Parthenon represented the Golden Age in Athens.

The expansion of Greek civilization had given mankind a strong sense of space. That sense of space is expressed in this reproduction of the Great Altar, which invited the worshipper to enter. It presents a huge staircase as its central feature. Worshippers are invited to move inward and upward. On the other hand, the rows of columns of the earlier Parthenon are the dominant structural motif. They enclose the temple and exclude the spectator. The sculptural decoration on the Parthenon, behind and above the great Doric columns, is subordinate to the rest of the structure. The Pergamene Altar, on the other hand, places greatest emphasis upon the sculptural frieze. The frieze was now at the level of the spectator, not high up and remote from view. It is the columns that are high up, over the frieze. Now they function as decoration, subordinate to the sculpture. The Parthenon frieze is shallow in carving, restrained and geometric. Its rhythm is repetitive like the columns. In contrast, the sculpture of the Altar of Zeus is deeply carved, and the forms spill out on to the steps. They tumble into the world of the spectator and involve him violently. The motion is agitated and restless. The rhythms are complex. The War of the Giants and the Gods – what a tremendous emotional impact this must have had.

Gone is the calm dignity of the 5th century Athena. Now she smites her enemies in anger. Compare the relaxed, calm restraint of Dionysus from the Parthenon with the muscular straining and emotional torment of this giant from the Altar of Zeus. The classical love of harmony and balance was forsaken in the Hellenistic Period for an emotional and impulsive worldview, expressed by the hysteria of writhing and twisting bodies. The realism and individuality of the figures is exaggerated for greater shock appeal. The Greek world is no longer small, self-contained and orderly. The Hellenistic Age is international and complex. As the Romans gradually conquer and absorb what is left of Classical Greek civilization, this frenzied and intoxicated satyr, wildly playing cymbals, expresses the termination of the first great age of Western civilization as it clashes with the Latin Legions. He thus orchestrates the end of Ancient Greek life.