Art History For Dummies. Jesse Bryant Wilder
You can find Greek columns, cornices, and pediments in practically every urban corner of the United States.
The Greeks invented three orders, or architectural formulas: Doric, Ionic, and Corinthian (see Figure 7-11). Each order is based on precise numerical relationships so that all the architectural elements in a structure harmonize; like musical notes, they must be in the same architectural key or they will seem visually out of tune.
FIGURE 7-11: The Greeks invented the Doric, Ionic, and Corinthian orders.
In the Doric order (refer to Figure 7-11) every pair of columns is topped by three triglyphs. A triglyph looks like a set of mini columns. A metope is the space between the triglyphs, on which sculptors sometimes carved reliefs. The entire horizontal section, between the columns and triangular pediment (which is also often carved with relief), is called the entablature.
In the Doric order, the columns stand on a three-step base and have these other characteristics:
Groovy flutes: The columns themselves are fluted (refer to Figure 7-11) like all Greek columns, with 20 grooves each; the columns taper toward the top.
Two-part tops: The crown of the Doric column — the capital — is made of two hats. The bottom one (the echinus) is curved like a bowl, and the top one (the abacus) is rectangular.
Doric temples were constructed of stone blocks, which were connected without mortar, so they had to be cut perfectly to give a snug fit and elegant look.
The Parthenon (a Doric temple — see Figure 7-12) was built between 447 BC and 438 BC under Pericles, supervised by Phidias, and designed by two architects, Iktinos and Kallikrates. At 8 columns wide and 17 columns long, it is bigger than the Doric Temple of Hera in Paestum built 100 years earlier, yet the Parthenon seems lighter and more graceful. The architects managed this effect by tweaking the proportions — in other words, by breaking the rules. Here’s how:
Thinning: The legs or columns of the Parthenon are thinner than the bulky ones at Paestum. The tapering (or thinning) of the legs toward the top is more subtle.
Curving: The entablature and platform are not purely rectangular; they curve upward toward the center, giving the structure a feeling of upward lift. All the capitals (tops of the columns) were adjusted to support this slight curving.
Leaning: The columns also lean imperceptibly toward the center, heightening the upward feeling.
Because of this fine-tuning, the weight-bearing columns of the Parthenon don’t seem to have to work as hard as those of Paestum. The Paestum temple is oppressive — you can feel its weight bearing down on you. But the Parthenon uplifts you as if it had magically overcome gravity.
Gloria Wilder
FIGURE 7-12: The Parthenon, a Doric temple, is the architectural high point of Golden Age Athens.
The Ionic order (refer to Figure 7-11) is more elaborate than the Doric. The main difference is that the columns are elongated, the capital (top of the column) is capped by a scroll, and the entablature features a continuous frieze or sculpted band. There are no metopes or triglyphs as in the Doric order.
The most elaborate order is the Corinthian (refer to Figure 7-11), which has slender columns capped by overlapping acanthus leaves.
Greece without Borders: Hellenism
Alexander the Great (356 BC–323 BC) was Macedonian, but he learned to think and feel like a Greek from the greatest Greek of the era, Aristotle. After the death of his father in 336 BC, Alexander became king. In the next eight years, he overran and Hellenized (made Greek-like) most of the known world, planting Greek libraries and Greek city-states in every vanquished kingdom. But when Alexander conquered, he didn’t try to shut down the native culture; instead, he fused it with Greek models. He himself married, among several other women, a princess from Bactria (a country near modern-day Afghanistan) and ordered his officers to take Persian wives to unify the diverse cultures.
After his early death, Alexander’s generals divided his empire three ways:
Seleucus I Nicator ruled Persia, Mesopotamia, and Anatolia.
Ptolemy I Soter governed Egypt.
Antigonus I Monophthalmus controlled Macedonia and Greece.
All these regions eventually fell to the new power rising on the Italian peninsula, the Romans. The last holdout was Egypt, which collapsed in 31 BC when Queen Cleopatra took her own life after Augustus Caesar defeated her and Marc Antony in the Battle of Actium. The Hellenistic period died with a snake bite — Cleopatra’s suicide MO.
Sculpting passion and struggle
The greatest achievements of Hellenistic culture were in sculpture. Hellenistic sculptors replaced the serene beauty of classical sculpture with powerful emotionalism and sometimes brutal realism. The Nike of Samothrace (on the left in Figure 7-13), is a Hellenistic victory statue often attributed to Pythokritos, the great sculptor of the Greek island of Rhodes (second century BC). Nike looks like she’s just landed with her Air Jordans on the prow of a ship, the wind still gusting in her wings and gown. You can feel victory in the folds of her garment and uplifted wings. Also, the sculptor has learned to create art that charges the atmosphere around it. Instead of being self-contained, the statue radiates energy beyond itself into the surrounding space.
Gloria Wilder(left) Takashi Images / Adobe Stock (right)
FIGURE 7-13: Nike of Samothrace and Laocoön and His Sons radiate the energy and realism of Hellenistic sculptures.
Hellenistic sculptors also probed the depths of human suffering for the first time in the history of art. The agony of death was never before so vividly portrayed as it is in these two works:
The Dying Trumpeter, carved in the third century BC in Pergamon (in modern-day Turkey), is a moving depiction of an enemy Celt warrior wounded in a battle with the Greeks who colonized Asia Minor. The statue is carved in a way that enables the viewer to feel the death pains that the man faces with quiet dignity.
Laocoön and His Sons (on the right in Figure 7-13) is a Hellenistic sculpture from Rhodes, which may have been carved by three sculptors — Agesander, Athenodoros, and Polydoros — all highly skilled copyists. Laocoön and His Sons captures the mythical life-and-death struggle between a father, his boys, and two vicious sea serpents. Laocoön was punished by the goddess Athena for trying to expose the Trojan Horse as a fraud to the