Greek Art

4 Pages 927 Words

GREEK ART

Ancient Greece: A Comparative Essay Ancient Greece 950 BCE was a culture that took great pride in perfection, excellence and overall greatness. The people weren’t what today’s society would consider modern, but of their time they were. The Greeks essentially molded the creative world with their intelligence in art, architecture, and astronomy for many cultures to come.

The Romans, who claimed the Greeks developments as their own, destroyed many of their ideas and art forms. Even though so much of the Greeks culture has been destroyed, much of it still remains within society today. So many aspects of modern day life have been in some way, influenced by the Greeks. The Greeks were a culture that strived for perfection, and harmony. They were fascinated with the human form, and this is revealed in most of their artwork.

The Greeks were the first to glamorize the perfection of the human body during the archaic period. Using balance and proportion they sculpted what they considered to be the perfect male and female forms. They called the male the Kouros. He was considered to represent Apollo (a Greek God) or the perfect male athlete. The Kouros was always depicted nude in a contrapposto position, meaning one foot in front of the other, and facing forward. He had braided hair, no eyeballs, (Greeks believed that the eyes were the windows to the soul) and an archaic smile. The female figure was called the Kore; she was a freestanding fully clothed figure, usually depicted draped in jewelry. The Kore was much more youthful looking than the Kouros. She also had no eyeballs and the infamous archaic smile. These two forms of Greek sculpture along with others can be related to our society today. The Kouros and Kore served as antique models. What the Greeks considered to be ideal body types have influenced our own views. Men should be muscular and strong, and women youthful and well dressed. The Kore was depicted more full fi...