TICE ART 1010 Greek and Roman Art

Arturo Pettore here, but you can call me Art. This is Explorations in Art History, starring me! And a hand. Hello? What about the rest of me? Hello? People watching from around the world, and I'm stuck waiting on some five-fingered prima donna. Oh, okay. That's better. Woo! The Mediterranean wind feels pretty breezy. It looks like we'll be talking about the Greek and Roman period. Leave it to the Greeks to turn geometry into art. 1000 to 700 BC marked a period in Greek art called the Geometric Period because of the decorations on the pottery of the day. Simple geometric designs were combined into a repeating pattern that circled the pot. Later abstract figures of animals and people appeared. They used pots for storing wine and oil, for eating and drinking, as prizes at athletic games, and even as burial markers. Start as a tot, end as a pot. Um, hey, uh, it was a joke. Let me out. You gotta open. Here. Guys. In the Archaic Period, their art began to move toward more realistic portrayals of the figure. From the Egyptians, Greeks learned the trick of adding hair down the back of their marble statues to give strength to the neck area, and spreading the stance of the legs to give a statue stability. Ow! Too much stability! Male statues were called kouros, and the females, koure. Greek pottery styles changed as well. They created the popular black-figure-wear style, which showed black figures on red pots. And then they reversed the formula into another popular style called red-figure-wear, showing red figures against a black background. Red figure or black? Which one makes me look thinner? Greece, however, wasn't one big happy country at the time. Instead, they had several Greek city-states. The two top dogs, Athens and Sparta, were often at odds, jockeying for position and power, until the Persians attacked in 480 BC. Then Athens and Sparta dropped their differences for the moment, and together they repulsed the invaders. But not before Persia had done some serious damage to the city of Athens. It was time for the Athenians to rebuild! Surging with confidence after their triumph over the Persian Empire, the Greeks launched into a golden age called the Classical Period. Pericles, the leader of Athens, ordered the rebuilding of the temples on the Acropolis, where the famous sculptor Phidias decorated the Parthenon, a temple dedicated to Athena, the founding goddess of Athens. Classic sculptures became more realistic, and at the same time, idealistic. Sculptors like Polykleitos searched for the mathematically perfect proportions of human beauty. Poses became more natural by using principles like contrapposto, a pose that gave an elegant balance to the figure by shifting the angles of the shoulders to the pelvis. Using the ratio of the size of the head to the body, Greek artists discovered that the average male or female has a proportional height of 6.5 to 7 heads. By increasing the size of the body to the head, they discovered a more visually appealing proportion. Even today, comic book artists use these idealized proportions to draw superheroes. Art will smash! Yeah! In 336 BC, Alexander the Great took power and spread the Greek Empire from Egypt to the borders of India. His death ended the Classical Period. In the Hellenistic Period, Greek sculptors still popped out amazingly lifelike sculptures, but now they added more emotion and action, like poor Laocoon and his two sons being strangled by two giant snakes sent by the gods as punishment. The sculptor Praxiteles broke the long Greek tradition of portraying male subjects in the nude and the females clothed with his Aphrodite of Nidos, which became the first nude woman. More Roman copies were made of this Greek sculpture than any other. The idea of empire appealed to the Romans, too, and in 214 BC, they took control of Greece. The Romans loved Greek culture. They copied Greek statues, paintings, and architecture. They even adopted the Greek gods, though they renamed them all. Zeus, meet Jupiter, Poseidon, meet Neptune, Aphrodite, meet Venus. The Romans, though, were much more interested in portraiture of real people, instead of seeking the ideal, they sought for a true likeness of their subject. Words and all. Also, Romans used art as propaganda to promote a political agenda and glorify emperors and their exploits. Emperor Augustus had himself portrayed as a strong, young military leader in his warrior's breastplate, even though he was much older at the time. Kind of like some people's Facebook picture. Trajan's column is like movie scenario in stone, the sculpted scenes depicting Roman battles and their ultimate victory. Roman architects became masters of the arch and the dome. The arch was a huge innovation for the creation of bridges and aqueducts. And the dome became the staple of big, official buildings, like the Pantheon, which became one of the most influential buildings in Western architecture. The expansion of the Roman Empire spread Greek and Roman ideas throughout Europe, which formed the foundation of Western culture. Even today, we are still influenced by ideas developed in ancient Greece and Rome.