Art History: Greek Art

All right, my little art friends, let's talk about the art of Greece. Where's Greece? Right here on the map. Did you know where Ambrosia was? I didn't, but there it is. There's a big difference between Egyptian art and Greek art. One is that Egyptian art, they tried to keep everything the same for like 3,000 years. They didn't want any changes, but the Greek artists were trying to reach a level of perfection, and we're going to talk about that in a minute. But first, let's start with the first and famous of Greek art, which is the Greek vase. Now, look at these vases here and try to think what the purpose of it was. There were two types. There's black figure and red figure. All right? They told stories of gods, heroes, and Greek myths, so when you looked at your vase, you could be like, hey, I know that story. I know that war story. It's pretty cool. Now, black figure is when they used black slip and they painted the figures. There you go, black figure. Makes sense. And then the background could be, you know, red clay, and they'd use like a stylus to cut into it to make like the marks and stuff like that. So that was cool. Do you know Yes, I said that wrong, but it's okay. You know why he's our favorite? Because he didn't just make the vases, he painted the vases. That's right. Back in the day, sometimes you'd have one artist like make the vase and then another guy paint it. But this guy was so cool, he did both. All right, next, red figure. Now, red figure is simply the opposite of black figure. You can see here the figures are in red and the background's black. That's how you can tell the difference. Pretty simple. Red figure, black figure. Black figures, you're painting a positive. Red figures, you're painting the black negative. All right, that makes sense. Let's move on. Greek sculptures. They, like I said before, they were trying to reach an ideal in beauty and proportion. Look at this disc thrower. You know, it's not even a Greek piece of art. No, it's a Roman copy, but that's okay. It shows what the Greeks were doing. There was one Greek sculpture named Polykleitos. He made this artwork, Achilles. It's like Achilles heel. And you know what? He was pretty cool because he was trying to get everything right. He even developed a set of rules we called the canon. And it was like using these rules, he could come up with the ideal proportions. Like, we don't know what the canon was, but maybe it was like, you know, three fingers is the same length as your chin or something. We don't really know, but that's what he did. And to illustrate it, he made this copy of this sculpture. Actually, this isn't the one he made. It's a Roman copy, but it's okay. You get the difference. Now, look, compare the difference between Egyptian art and Greek art. Look how stiff that Egyptian art looks. It's like he's sitting there like a rock, but the Greek art is like, he's got some weight shifted on one foot. He's like, he's all cool. Okay. Polykleitos was pretty cool. This is what he did. He actually made two sculptures. And when people would come into his studio, he would show them the first sculpture and be like, Hey, what's wrong with it? And they'd be like, Hey, you should change this. You should change that. The other sculpture he made, he stuck to his guns and he used his canon to develop it. When he was done, he displayed both of them. And like all the people were laughing at one of them and being like, ha ha ha, look, you did such a terrible job, Polykleitos. And Polykleitos was like, man, the one that you find fault with, that's the one you made. That's why I followed your advice. And the one you marvel at, that's the one I made. Yeah. That's why Polykleitos was so cool. Okay. They also made Venuses. There's a lot of different Venuses, so I don't want you to get confused. So I'm going to go through this really slowly. First is our Greek Venus de Milo. You probably heard of Venus de Milo. She has no arms. She's probably one of the most famous all the Greek sculptures. Anyway, it's supposed to depict Aphrodite and that's the Greek version, but in Romans, they called the same God, the God of beauty and love, Venus. So we're going to use that name and stick with it. And that's why it's called Venus de Milo. Do you know where she's from? She's from Milo. That's why it's called Venus de Milo. We'll learn more about that when we talk about Leonardo da Vinci. All right. Let's not get our Venuses confused. First, you got your Venus of Willendorf made out of limestone. That's pretty cool. And I know they look similar. Try not to confuse the two Venuses. You got Venus de Milo, Venus of Willendorf. All right. Got that? One time on The Simpsons, they were making fun of it and they made a gummy version of Venus de Milo. And Homer wanted to eat the gummy version and he kept saying gummy. So I don't want you to get confused. If you see this Venus de Milo, it's made out of gummy, like a gummy bear. Okay. So there's three Venuses. You got your Venus de Milo. That's made of marble. You got your Venus of Willendorf. That's made of limestone. And you got your gummy Venus from The Simpsons. Really, I know this can be confusing, especially when you add our other Venus of Hohes Fell. She's made out of mammoth tusk. That's pretty cool. Okay. So that's all the art we're going to learn about this week. And that's it. We'll see you next week.