AMERICAN COLLEGE OF THESSALONIKI

Course: ART HISTORY 101

Research paper:

Instructor: Student:
Ms. Daphne Lamprou Faton LEKAJ
20040172
 December, 2004
INTRODUCTION

Art was one of the earliest manifestations of culture. This is because it

fulfills our needs to interpret everything around them including their world and

spiritual beliefs. Through art people release themselves, show their culture and

believe in it. During all the period of human development many civilizations were

formed, many wars were fought and many theories and things were invented.

These, of course, affected people’s way of living, people’s thoughts, attitudes,

culture as well as art. In this context, it is impossible to talk about great changes

in our world without mentioning the effects and wealth that ancient Greece gave

to the mankind. Greece has always been associated with the great minds like

Aristotle and Socrates, with the first ‘democracy’ and with its myths, mythology

and of course the natural beauty. Besides the great minds that enlightened our

way of thinking, besides the democracy that enriched our values, Greece

influenced the world with their beautiful art and architecture.

Greek art and architecture has lasting influence with its simplicity and

reasonableness on the history of Western civilization and art. For thousands of

years the course of Western art has been guided by the legacy of the Greeks.

Their astounding creative power and aesthetic vision affected our art and

architecture. Greek civilization measured its glory as much by the beauty of its

monuments, paintings, sculptures as by its great political and military

achievements (Papaioannou, 12). Greeks stated many of permanent themes,

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attitudes, and forms of Western culture. Greek artists first established mimesis

(imitation of nature) as a main principle for art. The nude human figure in Greek

art reflects a belief that "Man is the measure of all things". Another Greek legacy

that the West has inherited its architecture. Many of the structural elements,

decorative motifs, and building types that were established in Ancient Greece are

still used in architecture today. Thus we commonly accept Greek culture as the

“foundation” or “roots” of our own metaphorical terms which strongly connote the

concept of stability, a stability that Western culture has deemed a primary and

necessary element of its own self-definition (Fullerton, 23).

When you hear about ancient Greek art, the first things that come to your

mind are the great Acropolis, the temples dedicated to gods and many Byzantine

churches and monuments around the land. Personally, as I go along and read

about the ancient Greek art there are lots of things that remain in my mind. It

seems that every period of Greek art has its own importance, significance and

unity. I appreciate a lot the creations of peaceful and nature lovers, Minoans, the

houses of the Mycenaean that the Greeks continued to build long after and the

pottery during the geometric period. Also what impressed me a lot are, the

archaic style developed from the use of oriental motifs, the sculptures of

Polyklytos during classical period and the masterpieces of sculpture during the

Hellenistic period. However, what I can not take out of my mind are the beautiful

sculptures made by great hands of Praxiteles during the late classical period.

These great works of him with their reflection of people at that time, depicted

perfectly, somehow are attached to my mind and make me think of people at that

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time and their great achievements. With respect to this, below I will explain firstly

the late classical period, the principles of Praxiteles work and two master

examples of his work.

LATE CLASSICAL PERIOD

This period has an immense importance in the Classical Greek art due to

its different focus and approach towards art. After the sculptures made according

to the Canon of Polyklytos and the construction of the Parthenon according to

mathematical formulas, in the late classical period Greek art began to focus more

on the individual and on the real world of appearances rather than on the

community and the ideal world of perfect beings and perfect buildings. Also at

this time there was an increased emphasis on the expression of emotion in art.

Anatomical accuracy has been achieved and the sculptors tended to make

bodies more absolutely symmetrical than they ever are in life (Boardman, 12).

Powerful emotional effects are typical of the sculpture and a new feeling for

individualization and three-dimensional movement appeared in the art of this

period.

Personally, I can say that I understood and felt the changes in this period

in the works of Praxiteles. The new approach to art is immediately apparent in

his works, one of the greatest masters of that time (Kleiner, 145). He is one of the

most famous and esteemed sculptors of Greek culture. Praxiteles style always

set him above the other sculptors of his time. He always tried new techniques to

make his artwork "ripple with life" and be as natural as possible. To get that

naturalistic representation he would use smooth curves, light and shadow. One

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of the techniques that he used was to polish the marble (which was his favorite

stone to sculpt with) to make the light reflect and contour off of the statue giving it

a lifelike essence. His sculpting style was delicate and luminous, and gave to the

body a sensuous texture. The characteristics of his work – relaxed and graceful

stand, extraordinary models and delicate contours, are shown in his best known

sculptures, the Aphrodite of Knidos and Hermes with infant Dionysos.

The Aphrodite of Knidos (Fig.1) is representative of a distinct style that

Praxiteles initiated in Greek sculpture; however, it also may have reflected the

influence of women in his life. "The first female nude in Greek monumental

sculpture, she was represented as placing her clothes on a hydria in anticipation

of a bath, her right hand modestly concealing her genitals. The bracelet on her

left arm betrays the courtesan Phryne as the artist's model. Praxiteles's creation

excited the imagination of antiquity and inspired later images of Aphrodite, by

imposing the rich anatomy of Phryne on the formulaic scheme of balance"

(Dictionary of Art, 434). The lost original sculpture of the Aphrodite of Knidos,

carved from Parian marble, is known only through copies of Roman date, but

Pliny considered it as “superior to all the works, not only of Praxiteles, but indeed

in the whole world.” It made Knidos famous and many people sailed there just to

see the statue, where “it was possible to view the image of the goddess from

every side”. According to Pliny, some visitors were “overcome with love for the

statue”. The figure was enormously influential later in many derivative versions,

where the concealing motif is made more explicit by her attempt to cover both

belly and breasts (Boardman, 54).

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Fig.1

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 Yet there can be no question that the statue’s immense fame derives from

its flouting of convention. Its contravention of communally constructed

assumptions about gender, sexuality, and propriety would have forced a complex

discourse in the mind of the viewer, whether male or female (Fullerton, 74).

Praxiteles’ unprecedented step of presenting the goddess of love completely

nude caused such a sensation in his time. Female nudity was rare in Greek art

and had confined almost exclusively to paintings on vases designed for

household use. In addition, Praxiteles’ Aphrodite is not a cold and remote image.

In fact the goddess engages in a trivial act out of everyday life. She has removed

her garment, draped it over a large hydria and is about to step into the bath. All

these characteristics make this sculpture a revolutionary step in Greek art which

affected future sculptures and masters and make it one of the greatest works in

its time.

The Praxitelean manner also may be seen in a statue once thought to be

by the hand of the master himself but now generally considered a copy of the

highest quality. The statue of Hermes and the infant Dionysos (Fig.2) found in

the Temple of Hera at Olympia brings to the realm of monumental statuary the

theme the Phiale Painter had chosen for a white ground krater a century earlier

(Kleiner, 146). Hermes has stopped to rest in a forest on his journey to Nysa to

entrust the upbringing of Dionysos to Papposilenos and the nymphs. Hermes

leans on a tree tank and his slender body forms a sinuous, shallow S-curve that

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is the hallmark of many Praxiteles’ statues. He looks of dreamily into space while

he dangles a bunch of grapes (now missing) as a temptation for the infant, who is

to become the Greek god of the vine. This is the kind of tender and very human

interaction between an adult and a child that one encounters frequently in real life

but that had been absent from Greek statuary before the fourth century.

Furthermore, in this sculpture Praxiteles was able to capture the temperament of

the subject through great facial expression. You do not even have to look at the

body for an example of what the subject was feeling. All you need to do is to

look at the face. From this statue we can conclude that Praxiteles did take great

pleasure in creating the human form. He used the nude human form in almost all

of his full body sculptures. Beauty was mere seductiveness to him and he

explored greatly into the more sexual aspect of sculpture. Praxiteles's greatest

ambition was to produce the illusion of life. He wanted his works to be as real as

possible. Praxiteles identifies and emphasizes this in the sculpture of Hermes

with infant Dyonisos that looks like it could jump to life at any moment. This was

explicitly Praxiteles’s style.

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Fig.2

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Conclusions

At the end I can say that the late classical period had a great impact in

further developments of Greek art. The different focus and approach towards art

has made this period unique in the history of Greek art. The period focused

more on the individual and the real world appearances. Powerful emotions and

feelings are typical of sculptures of this time. The period is characterized by

distinctive individual styles and works. Among the great style, it is worth to

mention the dreamy, beautiful divinities of Praxiteles which had an enormous

appeal. It was impossible to write about ancient Greek art in general and not to

mention the master works of him. He was unique and his sculptures were

inspiring for other sculptors as well. Considering all the works of him, personally I

can say that I found Praxiteles a ground-breaking artist. He may not have been

the best, but his uniqueness in style set him above all the old masters of his time.

His stylistic mannerisms set a very high standard for excellence in sculpting and

blazed a path for sculptors later in time. He gave the body natural life and a

luminous essence that no other sculptor had ever come close to before.

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Bibliography:

1. Avery Catherine, B. The New Century Handbook of Greek Art and

Architecture. New York: Appleton Century Crofts – Meredith Corporation,

1972

2. Boardman John. Greek Sculpture, The Late Classical Period. London:

Thames and Hudson Ltd, 1995.

3. Carpenter Rhys. Greek Sculpture, A Critical Review. Chicago: The

University of Chicago Press, 1960.

4. Fullerton Mark, D. Greek Art. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,

2000.

5. Kleiner, Fred S. et co. “Gardner’s – Art through the Ages”, 12th Edition.

USA: Thomson – Wadsworth, 2005

6. Papaioannou K. The Art of Greece. New York: Harry N. Abrams

Incorporated Publishers, 1989.

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