Art History For Dummies. Jesse Bryant Wilder
shapes that seem to flow like waves with the sturdy-as-a-mountain forms of Egyptian art (see Chapter 6) and Mesopotamian art (see Chapter 5). The latter two were both river-based cultures, hemmed in by deserts. The Minoans were the first civilization to be surrounded by sea. The tides of the Aegean seem to wash refreshingly through the Minoans’ art and culture.
Exuberance: If art reflects the people who make it, the Minoans must’ve been a fun-loving folk. Their murals feature diving dolphins, creepy-crawly octopi, lovely and lively floral landscapes, and wavelike patterns inspired by the sea. A Minoan palace looked a bit like an indoor SeaWorld. But perhaps their culture was too fun loving and easygoing to survive in a brutal world.
rostislavv / 123 RF
FIGURE 7-1: The Minoans didn’t run with the bulls like they do in Pamplona; they somersaulted off their backs, as shown in The Toreador Fresco from Knossos, Crete.
After the Trojan War, Mycenaean culture collapsed, falling to another wave of invading Greek tribes called the Dorians, who settled in Sparta and the Peloponnesian peninsula. The Ionian Greeks, who’d migrated centuries earlier, were entrenched in Athens and surrounding Attica, where they had resided since the era of the mythical Theseus and the Minoans.
After the fall of Mycenae, several centuries of squabbling passed before Greece settled into what became classical Greece, a constellation of far-flung city-states from Asia Minor and the Greek mainland to Sicily and the Mediterranean coast of France. Although a common language and culture united the Greek states, they were often at war with each other. For about 400 years after the conquest of Mycenae, the Greeks produced no significant art; they were too busy fighting. In the calmer eighth century BC, the first buds of Greek culture sprang up in the visual arts and literature. The Iliad and The Odyssey were created in the eighth and seventh centuries BC, initially as oral poems (imagine reciting 24 books from memory!).
Greek Sculpture: Stark Symmetry to a Delicate Balance
The Greeks absorbed the rigidness of the Egyptians, with whom they traded, and the fluid forms of the Minoans. They gradually combined the two into an idealized but naturalistic art that many people consider the greatest art of the ancient world.
Kouros to Kritios Boy
The evolution of Greek sculpture from the rigid kouros statues of the seventh and sixth centuries BC to the naturalistic Kritios Boy (circa 480 BC) corresponded with a seismic political change in Athens that spread to other city-states. Despotism (rule by one) was replaced by democracy (rule by all male citizens) in 508 BC. Kouros (“youthful boy”) statues represented the old order and the aristocracy — rigid, powerful, proud. The more naturalistic Kritios Boy represents democracy — relaxed, graceful, and realistic. Kritios Boy looked like an idealized version of the man in the street, as opposed to a stiff superhero like kouros.
The Archaic period
Eventually, the Greeks put their own stamp on all cultural imports. But in the seventh and sixth centuries BC, during the Archaic period (650 BC–480 BC), Greek sculptures look like hand-me-down Egyptian tomb statues. The artists obviously spent time in Egypt or studied the imports closely.
mfa.org (sculpted in roughly 2515 BC). Almost everything about the Archaic Greek statue says, “I’m Egyptian.” The kouros is as symmetrical and rigid as the pharaoh’s statue, though the Menkaura sculpture is more refined. Both the kouros and King Menkaura have these similarities:
Squared shoulders; straight, rigid arms and legs; and clenched fists held firmly at their sides
The left foot stepping slightly forward
Pronounced, geometric kneecaps, and the same angular calves, as if they’d been shaped with an old-fashioned wood shaver
Fletcher Fund, 1932 / The Metropolitan Museum of Art
FIGURE 7-2: Marble Kouros statue from Attica (Athens and surrounding area).
But there are differences. The kouros is completely naked. Pharaohs were never represented nude; in fact, only Egyptian children were routinely shown in the buff.
The female version of the Archaic statue is called a kore, which means “maiden.” Kores are never nude. Only Greek men were allowed to prance around town in the altogether. Greek women usually stayed indoors to do the sewing and cooking (except in Sparta). When they went out to collect water, for example, they wore long gowns.
The Greeks gradually shed strict Egyptian symmetry for a more subtle form of balance. The kouros in Figure 7-3, sculpted circa 525 BC, about 60 years after the kouros at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, is much more realistic, though he’s still stuck in the same Egyptian pose. Notice how much more lifelike the finely modeled curves of the shoulders, arms, and thighs are than in the earlier version. The older statue looks like a stone man. The later one is nearly a flesh-and-blood athlete; he’s almost ready to learn to walk.
Lefteris Papaulakis / Shutterstock
FIGURE 7-3: Although still at attention like a frozen soldier, this later kouros, called Kroisos, shows the Greek progression toward naturalistic sculpture (making stone look like real flesh).
But giving statues the semblance of motion took another hundred years. First, sculptors had to learn to depict the body in a relaxed rather than rigid posture.
The Classical period
In the Classical period (480 BC–400 BC), Kritios Boy (named after the artist who may have sculpted him) has learned to take it easy (see Figure 7-4). The artist has redistributed his weight. The left hip is now slightly higher than the right, and Kritios Boy’s bulk rests comfortably on his left foot instead of both feet as in the kouros (see the preceding section). The contours of the graceful thighs are utterly lifelike, as is the gentle swelling of the belly. The face, too, is more human than kouros faces; its still-masklike appearance is due to the holes where inlaid eyes used to be.
