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1000 Scupltures of Genius. Patrick Bade

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1000 Scupltures of Genius - Patrick Bade

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New York, USA

Art © Estate of Alexander Rodchenko/RAO, Moscow/Licensed by VAGA, New York, NY

Art © The George and Helen Segal Foundation/Licensed by VAGA, New York, NY

The works 839–841, 874–876, 891, 901–903, 977–979 have been reproduced by permission of the Henry Moore Foundation

Introduction

The Classical World

The ancient Greeks, at first an isolated and provincial people among many population groups in the Mediterranean basin, rose to cultural, military, and political prominence, but they stood on the shoulders of giants and learned from the traditions of other ancient Mediterranean and Near Eastern civilisations. In the sphere of the arts, the Egyptians, in particular, had already developed a culture of idealised, well-proportioned human figures, a narrative tradition in painting and relief sculpture, and temple architecture that incorporated the display of a variety of sculptural elements. Yet the Greeks, in altering the static forms of the Egyptians, sought to craft sculptural figures that expressed life, movement, and a more fundamental and humane sense of moral potential. This development is seen in its early phase in the growing naturalism and subtlety of facial expression in sculpture produced in the Archaic period of the seventh and sixth centuries B.C.E. greater freedom of invention appeared during that time in vase painting, but sculptors, restrained by the intractability of stone and by convention, lagged somewhat behind. Reflecting a philosophical search for the ideal, the sculptors aimed at achieving timeless beauty. Just as Greek philosophers considered the nature of the ideal republic, perfect justice, or the ideal Good itself, artists brought forth a host of perfected forms. In their subject matter, sculptors often favoured the naked, youthful male body, a reflection of the Greek penchant for athleticism and military prowess, and an indication of the fluid boundaries of their range of sexual appreciation. A widespread and important form was the kouros, a free-standing male figure often placed at tombs in honour of the deceased. Kore, female equivalents of the kouroi, were clothed, following the convention of the time, but equally focused on youth, charm, and ideal beauty.

During the fifth century B.C.E. a mood of great confidence developed among the Athenian people, spawned by their victory over the Persians in 490–479 B.C.E. and by continued Athenian leadership among the collected Greek city-states. Indeed, the Athenian leader Perikles, in his famous oration (431 B.C.E.) for soldiers fallen in the Peloponnesian War, affirmed the superiority of Athens in cultural affairs, stating that their dedication to citizenship, sacrifice, and intellect formed the moral core of Athenian greatness. This was a moment of revolution in artistic style. Ever more explicitly based on the ideals of the perfect body, sculptured figures expanded in movement and emotion, but always with a moderating balance of weight, proportion, and rhythm. Equally important was the sense of palpable reality; sculpture, rather than being made of unadorned marble or bronze, was often enhanced by details in other media to achieve, in restrained fashion, an extra degree of naturalism. In later eras, a belief in the “purity” of the art of the Greeks led critics to overlook these additions, but the Greeks themselves gave life to their figures by painting on the marble key parts such as lips or eyes; in bronze sculpture, the highest and most enduring form of artistic technique, one found such additions as glass eyes and silver eyelashes. Later Greeks and Greek colonists would make a specialty of coloured terracotta figurines. The realm of ancient Greek sculpture was a lively and at times colourful world.

In Classicism, beauty bears a numerical component. Just as musical intervals and chords could be defined proportionally through the ratio of numbers, and geometry and mathematics informed planetary movements, similar proportional aspects found a place in Greek sculptural and architectural design. Polykleitos’ Canon, or Spear-bearing Youth, was only the most prominent of many works informed by proportional ideals: the ratio of lengths of fingers, hands, arms, legs, and heads were adjusted to stand in relationship to other parts and the whole. We know of his system in part from a description by Galen, a medical doctor who lived in the second century A.D. Galen discussed Polykleitos’ artistic system, and seemed to accept the idea that the human body truly comprises a set of ideal proportions. This principle would endure throughout the history of art; Classicism in the Renaissance and neoclassical periods would also incorporate some kind of mathematical or numerical system of proportionality.

The Greek city-states were weakened by warfare during the fourth century B.C.E., although striking developments in their sculptural traditions continued unabated, the works of that time were enhanced by a new sense of elegance and spatial play. By the end of the century, faced with powerful opposition, the Greek city-states had lost their independence and were united by the Macedonians under Philip II and Alexander the Great. Greek citizens were incorporated into a far-flung empire that occupied lands from Italy to the edge of India, and even after the division of this empire into various kingdoms, the various Greek city-states remained parts of larger political entities. Such dramatic changes could only lead to a changed perception of one’s place in the universe, and it is hardly surprising that novel artistic results occurred in all of the visual arts. One new strain was a pragmatic, realistic attitude that seemed to respond to the new Realpolitik of changing conditions, in which the ideal of local democracy was shattered. In the new state of things, the individual had to get by in a difficult, changing, and dynamic world. The Hellenistic period saw the diffusion of genre scenes, some of which were of great pathos: an old woman struggling to walk to market, tired boxers, children tussling,

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