Abstraction and Idealism in

Greek Sculpture
- A ‘Naturalistic’ Case of Antiquity
“… there are few more exciting spectacles in the whole
history of art than the great awakening of Greek
Sculpture and Painting between the sixth century and
the time of youth towards the end of the 5th century BC.”

-E.H. Gombrich
ART AND ILLUSION; Reflections on the Greek Revolution
 Classical Naturalism
 Classical ‘Naturalism’ is characterized as an artistic language
with a heightened capacity of natural bodily responses

 Classical statues of deities interact with the viewers and share

their space in a way which archaic counterparts refuse

 How this 5th century ‘naturalism’ functions within and without

the socio-religious institutions of the age becomes a
significant issue

 The antinomy of form and colour further problematizes the

issue
 Late 6th and 5th Century BC-
The Classical Epoch
 520 BC: Pythagoras

 510 BC: Greeks invent Grammar, Logic and Rhetoric

 480 BC: Herodotus invents History

 440 BC: Socrates

 400 BC: Xenophenon; Plato

 Language of the Divine Body
 A distinction using the human body and its appropriation:
Parthenon Frieze- Athena: ‘boyish’, virgin-warrior goddess;
Aphrodite- ‘fuller, fleshy figure’, goddess of sexual love

 The Sophists’ ideal of the Human Body serves as a reference

in this context

 The functionality of the sculpture was aided by hymns,

fragrance of flowers, pools of water, shiny floor surfaces to
amplify the radiant aura of the deity
 Pausanias’s* memoirs account for an outlook of Greek
sculpture and the mythical and ritualistic values associated
with the Greek Sculpture.

 An interesting case of flowers: Poppies for Demeter, lilies for

Hera and for Aphrodite myrtle

 Besides the body and the closely associated fabric of the

drapery, the flowers in offering enhanced the sculptural
space- the heavy clusters of myrtle adding to the sexual
charm of Aphrodite
 Plate I

Myrtle Bushes… for Aphrodite

“ I suggest that the key differences between archaic
‘schematism’ and classical ‘naturalism’ lie in the
semiotically distinctive way each visual language
appropriates the viewer’s body in the construction of
affective commitment to contemporary religious culture
and social culture.”

-Jeremy Tanner

Nature, Culture and Body in Classical Religious Art

 In classical ‘naturalistic’ statues, conventional culturally
arbitrary attributes are supplemented by iconic signs to
appeal to the viewer’s aesthetics based on practical sensual
experiences

 The ‘images of the mind’ as proposed by Plato are somewhat

pre-initiated by this sensual reading

 Artemis* is represented as a young girl with flat or only

budding breasts and a rather narrow sharp featured face.

 Aphrodite is represented as a mature woman, full-breasted,

increasingly wide-hipped with a more sensuously, fleshy soft-
throated face and head.
 Plate II

Artemis of Gabii, Roman Copy

after Praxiteles
Plate III-detail
Plate IV

Aphrodite, Praxiteles
Plate V

Aphrodite of
Cnidus, Praxiteles
 Plate VI

Aphrodite, Praxiteles, 4th

century BC, Louvre
 *Artemis- Homer refers to Plate VII
her as Artemis Agrotera ,
Potnia Theron: Artemis of
the wild land, Mistress of
Animals. “The Arcadians
believed she was the
daughter of Demeter.

 Cretan Origin

 Later Hellenistic times:

Assumed the role of
Eilethyia in aiding child-birth

 Roman equivalent: Diana

Artemis Temple of Crete; 700 BC
“ What is normal to man and child all over the globe is the
reliance on schemata, on what is called “conceptual art”.
What needs explanation is the sudden departure from
this habit that spread from Greece to other parts of the
world.” *

E.H. Gombrich
Ibid.
Possession of an image: Its totemic aspect
 Traditionally change to ‘naturalism’ has been interpreted as
the birth of autonomous art, freed from the theocratic
constraints characteristic of the Oriental cultures from which
significant components of the visual language of Archaic
Greek Art had been inherited

 The legend of Aiakos in the Persian War at Salami (479 BC)

suggest otherwise. The statue sent to the battlefield is
believed to have won the battle

 Possession of an image was tantamount to control the sacred

power it embodied
 Hermes of Aenos: Reputedly
made by the mythical Plate VIII
carpenter Epeios during the
siege of Troy

 Was washed away in a flood

of the river Scamander,
dragged in the fishing nets
off Thrace
Hermes of Aenos
 Such objects endowed their
holders with a religiously
based prestige
 At Sikyon, female temple servants and virgin priestess were
allowed to enter the cella of the Aphrodite temple, all others
should behold the goddess from the entrance and address her
in prayer from that place (Pausanias)

 The classical sculpture produced a ‘state of altered

consciousness’ characteristic of religious awe at the
‘mysterium tremendum’ of the manifestation of sacred power

 What seems to have been valued in the artist’s techne*, was

the capacity to produce statues which might facilitate such
religious experiences
 Plato’s Dilemma
 Plato’s dilemma was particularly on this- the magico-religious
illusion created by ‘naturalistic’ and hence imitative statuary
thereby disturbing the highly rationalized mind of the citizen.

 Plato’s approval of the ‘constancy’ in Egyptian art supports the

argument

 Analogy of the ‘Divided Line’

 Allegory of the Cave

 The truth in forms is the only reality as perceived by Plato

 Plate IX

Analogy of the Divided Line

 Reality- Forms- Ideas- Ideal- Truth- Association with
‘Goodness’- LAW, ORDER, BEAUTY} Forms and Formal Beauty

 Artists of the classical mould seeking not the ideal, but the
imitation of the idea} The theory of Mimesis

 Contemplation of Forms, i.e. the ideas would lead one to the

understanding of reality, hence truth, hence ‘all that is
beautiful’

 “What we are shadows of justice and not Justice itself”

Plate X

Allegory of the Cave

 Banishment of art with the words- ‘Since we ourselves are
very conscious of her spell’; Raises the problematic
connections between art and religion, or artistry and
spirituality

 Dio Chrysostome refers to the same in context of symbols to

connote a pure form of truth which Venturi distinguishes
‘intuitive symbol of the artist and the arbitrary symbol of
religion’

 Pantomimic Arts problematized the gulf between

conventional opposites: ‘fact’ and ‘fiction’

 The representation will fabricate an essence which is not the

truth as it itself may be incorrect
 As if one’s cuisine or costuming or sexuality was an
embodiment of one’s ‘truth’

 Mimesis would potentially destabilize the imagination of

ordinary citizens, causing them to literally think other than
what they are legally compelled to believe

 Mislead the citizens of the Ideal State by fabricating ‘what is

not’; Destabilize the unquestionable authoritative belief- the
divine rule of the philosophers
“Art was clearly understood in European antiquity
amongst the most powerful, dangerous and terrifying of
human phenomena, evoking ‘divine terror’ or sacred
fear (theios phobos). While this may seem
incomprehensible today, understanding what was at
stake for Plato is essential to our understanding of what
joins and separates ‘art’ and religion today.”

-Joann Wincklemann
Reflection on the Imitations of Greek Paintings and Sculptures
 Antinomy of Form and Colour

 According to Plato, beauty in itself is not found in the living

creatures or their representations, but in geometrical figures,
“These are beautiful in themselves, by their own nature”

 Aristotle confirmed the mathematical origin of the beautiful

 Vitruvius: “While in ancient times people appreciated only

talent of the artist and perfection of his work, today they
praise only one thing: the splendour of colours. The science of
the painter no longer counts.”
 “When asked which of his works in marble he liked the most,
Praxiteles used to say, ‘ Those to which Nikias has set his
hand’- so highly did he esteem his colouring of the surface”

 19th century archaeological excavations subverted the neo-

classical theory of white marble sculpture of ‘noble simplicity
and quiet grandeur’

 Reconstructions in colour of the Peplos Kore or the

pedimental sculpture of the Temple of Aphaia alter the
connotations of the image and therefore the aesthetics,
altogether
Plate XI

Peplos Kore, Athens

One visitor even memorably wrote in the
visitor’s book- “Didn’t like the painted
woman”
 Plate XII

Peplos Kore Reconstructions, MET

 Plate XIII

Pedimental sculpture, Temple of

Aphaia, Aegina Islands
Plate XIV
Plate XV

Head of the Rampin

Horseman, Louvre
“It doesn't matter how the paint is put on, as long as
something is said.”

- Jackson Pollock