Greek and Roman Art

Were Greeks basically learning to become Romans? No, and that is the really big myth we're gonna tackle today in this introduction to Greek and Roman art. This is part of a course, but you do not have to watch the whole course, but why would you not? Now, I will tell you that there's lots of videos on the internet about Greek and Roman art. This is probably the basis of a lot of what we think of as Western art history. That said, I didn't see a lot of ones that give you some really big themes to help you create sort of a framework that will help you understand art in general. So that's what we're going to focus on today. You can watch this as a standalone or, as I said, watch the course. So this is some of the earliest Greek art. This is Cycladic art. This is Roman art. This is the Laocoon, and we are going to go from this span, but what I want you to think about is this is not an evolution. It is not like they couldn't figure out realism and they're such geniuses. It is not like that. What you should look at is the big ideas of these cultures and what they were trying to solve with their art and architecture, because it is not a skills question here. It is really about how these societies start changing and how their goals for their art and architecture changes alongside that. So with that in mind, let us look at Cycladic art. Cycladic art is from around 2500 BC. It is ancient Greek. One of the challenges is we don't quite know what's happening here. So we don't know the function of this and how it fit into society. What we do know is, though, that they created and replicated this kind of visual personhood, and many of these are quite large. And so what we should think is that what they were really aiming for was to create a form that they could replicate over and over and over and that would make sense right away. And, you know, we have this kind of thing in our society, a logo, right? Like, we have these needs in our society for diagrams or things that are replicatable, I should say, easily and understood easily. This also is in the same vein as a sign like to walk now, that kind of thing. The other thing we see with ancient Greek art is immediately the art becomes also functional. So you have things like this vessel. Now, did it also have ceremonial purposes? We don't know. But you see there's a lot of them that have octopi on them. So you see that they're creating functional things. And then we get to something like the Minoan's Great Palace at Knossos and it is enormous. So what we also see is that, okay, we go from being able to create something symbolic, also making functional ceramics and then building big. And that actually is something that we see in Greek art, Roman art, and in general in art. That people who can sculpt something interesting are probably building big and also making things that are functional attractive. Actually, that's true in our society as well. So this palace was found in 1900. These are reconstructions of what it might have been. But what we're looking at is around, so what we're they built this enormous palace. They had already created all that ceramics and then they decorate this palace. And so we know that they have things like these frescoes that have not just like something that's sort of stylized, but it's actually very aspirational, right? Like you can see this person, like this is like, wow, wow. You really understand what's happening here. You're where we know that they must have had some sort of fascism. We don't know exactly what it is, but we see these sort of goddess sculptures. And so that they are basically in, you know, obviously they're showing that the dress was also very finely made. What you should see is, this is a society that is filling absolutely all the needs the way they need. So realism was not what they wanted. They wanted these kinds of stylized images that helped them with their kind of sort of visualization of society. So next, let's talk about what's sometimes called archaic Greek. So archaic Greek art is art that is meant to kind of give you a sense of power. In this case, the power of the human form. This is called a or a young man. One thing I also read on the internet is, God, they're so bad. They can't do realism. But remember, this is rough. This is about a hundred years earlier. So these are like 500 BC. They are looking to their peers, the Egyptians who create these stylized images. This is not about realism. That's not what they want. They want to show the ideal form. So this in some ways, like if somebody came to our society and looked at all the airbrushed people, and they could say like, wow, they can't even like depict real skin. It's because we don't prize that. And so when you look at this, try to think of their framework and their framework was one that created the ideal. They wanted to see the ideal in their spaces. What you do see a little bit more realism in ancient Greek life in general is in their vessels, because their vessels were supposed to tell stories and they had a very rich ceramic culture, partly because they really prized beauty in their homes and in their functional objects. So all of these happen to be associated with things like wine or oil, and they wanted the best, the thing that holds the oil to be beautiful. And that is something that you can see is probably the hallmark of Greek society. Beauty was an important part of life, idealized beauty. And so they were going to put the money into that and making it appealing and attractive and decorative. And so a lot of times the things that we think of as important realism was not important for much of the history of ancient Greece. We're now here at 400 BC, so 490 BC. So we're still looking at a group of people who for centuries wanted to focus on decorative arts. So when does that change? In the late Greek period, we see the rise in naturalism. So it's not realism like perfectly exactly real, but it certainly goes from this to this. And so you see his face becomes much more like you might see in a photograph. You also see that his body is a little bit, this is a little more stylized. This is more naturalistic, more like a photograph. So they're moving towards that. Now I will say in this very quick, quick look at Greek art, we should remember that we've missed out on a big part of Greek art. And it's not because I didn't pull the slides, but it's because much of Greek art is gone. So this is one of the rare examples of Greek bronze. It's a good way to remember, even when they did realism, they still stayed to that ethos of idealism. So that's why we often call it naturalism, because not totally real, but also the idea that they only are doing that in the service of telling you a story, an ideal of that story or of that emotion, whatever they want to do. So now let's compare Roman art. So the Romans basically take a lot of concepts from the Greeks in the same way that America takes a lot of things from the British, right? But they change it. And so, for example, you still see a lot of ceramics, but the Romans' goal is to do everything bigger. Those images I just showed you were ceramics that were used in shipping. The Romans really are about expansion. But their art and culture is sort of also very expansive. So this is a Roman ceramic crater, but it is bigger. It is more bold. And then one of the things I would tell you is they also got to see the ancient Greek things closer to ancient Greece. So this is the Parthenon in Athens, but it was originally polychromied. When we start doing neoclassical art, it's because we saw it now where all the polychromy is gone. But the ancient Romans would have seen the Greek original closer to the original, right? Most of our Greek sculptures, as we call it, are actually Roman copies of Greek originals. So the Romans are looking at a different kind of Greece. They're looking at the Parthenon and the beauty and the symmetry of it, and they're taking from there. Okay, so now let's do a few more Roman and Greek comparisons. So we just saw that they make much more exciting ceramics. They also make much more exciting sculptures. So if this is from 490 BC, this is from the first century CE. And what we should see is this is the ideal boy, and this is an emperor, right? But what you should also see is so much more detail, much more narrative storytelling, a lot of hierarchy. So the story is being told by the size of the figures. And then actually, as Roman sculpture keeps going, even more realism. So this is fairly realistic. They didn't want like a completely airbrushed picture, but they become even more so. Similarly, they take a lot of the ideals of order and rational sort of sculpture in the way that architecture is done, and they make it bigger. So the Greek and the Roman, and they continue to make them even larger. But the basically taking a lot of the pieces parts, you know, in this case, we have, you know, the columns, and then they add more complicated columns. They have some, you know, we have, you know, just a little bit at the top here, and then we have a, you know, a whole lot. And they continue that. One of my professors once said, Greek, square, Roman, circular. Now that's not completely true. But what basically you should see is they took this and they were like, how can we continue to expand it and make it sort of more narrative, bigger, more interesting. The other huge thing is that Rome and the ancient Roman civilization span many civilizations, right? They take over the Etruscans, they keep going, they just want to expand and expand and expand. And as a result, they have a huge population. And so they have to create art and culture for many, many people. So if it's very stayed and is only understandable, like, you know, like fifth century Athenian, that was a small group of people who are experiencing the art. The Roman art is for a lot of people. And that's why they're doing much more. So that was a Colosseum in Pompeii. This is, of course, the Pantheon. And so as they're building, they're also changing media. So they're using, for example, concrete. And so they're taking those original things and trying to figure out how to connect to many more people from many more cultures. This is a very global culture you see in ancient Rome. And I think that's the biggest difference between the Greeks and the Romans, that you are going from a artwork that is about a very, very small group of people in comparison to a very large disparate group of people. You are looking at art that is to people who already understand what the art is about. So they can make it very stylized, because that's what appeals to that small group of people. Then you're looking at art that is to connect to lots of people, like an empire. And basically, what you're seeing is that art is functioning to fit the needs of two different societies. They're using a lot of the same aesthetic language, right? The human form. Even these are meant to be scaled to the amount of human form here. So they feel sort of intimate here. So they feel like, wow, this empire is huge. And they'll take care of all of us, as long as we pay our taxes. So what you're seeing is that the differences between these two societies are very much expressed in the art. Now, to summarize, though, our society then took a lot of these norms. Because by the time that we see any of this stuff, it is a long, archaeologically, it's not brightly colored the way it used to be. We don't get to see the Colosseum fully perfect with the ground. The floor, for example, has brought it away. And so for us, we are living in the ruins of these. And so a lot of our neoclassical, the way that we sort of understand these societies and how they impact us for future generations, is really not how those civilizations saw it. So we are often divorced from that. And that's why I think that evolution kind of theory comes out, because that makes sense in our minds, because we cannot take a time machine to these societies. But hopefully that gave you a good snapshot into the difference between Greece and Rome. The next episode in this course, and I don't know why you wouldn't take it, is did the ancient Rome actually fall? And we're going to look at later Roman art and how it becomes Byzantine art. So thank you very much. Like, subscribe, tell a friend. Watch it another time. Have a great day.