Bellwork

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Bellwork

• List 2 things you already know about the Greeks
  their culture
• List 1 thing you still want to learn
• List one way in which the Greeks have influenced
  American art or architecture.

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Todays Objective

• I will be able to analyze the stylistic
  conventions of Cycladic, Minoan, and Mycenaean
  art and architecture

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Analyze

• To break apart

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• Vocabulary

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Cultural Context

• Geography
• Timeline Events

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Geography
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Geography
Mycenae
Cyclades
Crete
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Timeline

• 3000 Cycladic Minoan cultures begin
• 1700 - Linear Script A
• 1600 Mycenaean culture begins
• 1450 Widespread destruction on Crete
• 1400 Linear Script B
• 1200 Destruction of Mycenaean palaces
• 1100 End of Pre-Historic cultures

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Cultural Notes

• Prosperous due to sea trade
• Sea also provided defense
• Development of palaces
• Development of written language
• Unique cultures

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ART OBJECTS
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Cycladic
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Cycladic

• Lots of marble
• Naxos Paros
• Very abstract, geometric
• Smooth, polished texture
• Some were painted
• Appear very modern today
• Mostly nude women with arms crossed

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Figurine of a woman

• Syros (Cyclades)
• Circa 2500-2300 BCE
• Marble
• Approx. 1' 6 high

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Figurine of a woman

• Grave site (offering)
• Flat, idealized
• Geometric (triangles)
• Proportions
• The dead or fertility?

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Male lyre player

• Keros (Cyclades)
• Circa 2700-2500 BCE
• Marble
• Approx. 9 high

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Male lyre player

• Geometric
• Flat, idealized
• Playing for the dead?
• Bill on lyre?
• Swan was the animal of Apollo
• The lyre was his instrument

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Minoan
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Minoan

• Island of Crete
• Palaces around 2000 BCE
• Kings, priestesses, etc.
• Destruction around 1700
• Rebuilding comes shortly afterwards
• Golden age of Crete
• first great Western civilization!
• Gardners, p. 81

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Minoan

• Palaces
• Royal homes, commercial centers, also religious
  and artistic centers
• Large, comfortable, handsome
• Staircases, courtyards, theaters
• Storerooms, offices, shrines, etc.
• Ashlar masonry stones set in clay Light and
  ventilation
• Bathrooms!!

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The Minotaur
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Bull-Leaping fresco

• Palace at Knossos (Crete)
• Circa 1450-1400 BCE
• Fresco
• Approx. 2' 8 high

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Bull
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Bull-Leaping

• Dark skinned boy
• Light skinned girls
• Profile with frontal eye (Mes. Egypt)
• Curly hair waist
• Line and shape of the bull suggests motion
  energy

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Snake Goddess

• Palace at Knossos
• Circa 1600 BCE
• Faience
• Approx. 1' high

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Snake Goddess

• No evidence of large temples or statues to gods
• Frontal
• Fertility
• Mortal vs. goddess?
• Snakes a leopard
• Power over animals

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Mycenaean
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Mycenaean

• Whered they come from?
• Came late, but flourished fast
• Became most powerful after destruction of Crete
  (Minoans)
• Advanced architecture
• Defense
• Cyclopean masonry
• Corbels

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Tholos tomb

• Mycenae, Greece
• Circa 1300-1250 BCE
• Approx. 43' high

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Tholos tomb

• Tholos tomb
• a beehive-shaped tomb with a circular plan
• Tholoi (pl.)
• Corbeled
• vs. post lintel or arch

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Tholos tomb

• Cyclopean masonry
• A method of stone construction using massive,
  irregular blocks without mortar
• Named after the mythical one-eyed giants, the
  Cyclopes

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Tholos tomb

• Covered under earth
• Finished surface inside
• Very sophisticated
• Largest know vaulted space without interior
  supports until the Roman Pantheon
• 1500 years later
• Used concrete

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Warrior Vase

• Mycenae, Greece
• Circa 1200 BCE
• Approx. 1' 4 high

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Warrior Vase

• Krater
• An ancient Greek wide-mouthed bowl for mixing
  wine and water
• Soldiers marching off to war
• Woman bids goodbye

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Warrior Vase

• Groundline (frieze)
• Rhythm
• Front eye w/profile

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Greek Culture

• Gods
• Human (anthropomorphized)
• Immortal but with human form flaws
• Remember, the human form is the most beautiful
  image to the Greeks

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Greek Culture

• Not a single people
• Polis (poleis pl.)
• Dorians of the north
• Ionians in Turkey
• Olympiad 776 BCE

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Greek Culture

• The Greeks Nothing New!!
• the enormous debt Greek civilization owed to
  the earlier great cultures of Egypt and the Near
  East.
• Gardners, p. 98

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Geometric
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Geometric

• After the Mycenaean culture falls apart, a dark
  age comes
• Loss of knowledge
• Populations grows smaller
• No contact with other cultures
• Around 700 BCE, culture returns
• Olympics
• Trade
• Formation of city states

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Geometric

• Return of the human figure
• But very abstract

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Geometric krater

• Athens, Greece
• Circa 740 BCE
• Approx. 3' 4 high

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Geometric krater

• Marked a grave
• Wealth of family
• Open bottom
• Registers
• Honoring the dead
• Narrative
• Twisted perspective
• Horses

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Orientalizing
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Corinthian black-figure amphora

• Rhodes, Greece
• Circa. 625-600 BCE
• Approx. 1' 2" high

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Corinthian black-figure amphora

• Amphora (storage) vs. krater
• Orientalizing
• 700 600 BCE
• A period where the Greeks were heavily influenced
  by the Near East and Egypt

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Black-figure amphora

• Corinthian
• Registers
• Animals
• Eastern monsters
• Black-figured painting
• dark figures against a light background of
  reddish clay, with details incised

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Mantiklos Apollo

• Mantiklos
• Thebes
• Circa 700-680 BCE
• Bronze

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Mantiklos Apollo

• Dedicated to Apollo
• Artists name
• Who is it?
• Apollo?
• Mantiklos?
• Someone else?
• Votive offering

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Mantiklos Apollo

• Triangular face and torso
• Long neck
• Attention to anatomy of body
• Compare to Cylcadic
• Orientalizing
• Daedulas

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Auxerre Kore

• Auxerre, France
• Circa. 650-625 BCE
• Limestone
• Approx. 2' high

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Auxerre Kore

• Kore
• (korai pl.)
• Greek, young woman
• Statuette depicting a young woman or maiden

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Auxerre Kore

• Triangular face
• Long hair
• Skinny waist
• Gesture of prayer
• God or human?
• Geometric pattern on her dress

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Archaic
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Peplos Kore

• Acropolis
• Athens, Greece
• Circa. 530 BCE
• Marble
• Approx. 4' high

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Peplos Kore

• Peplos
• Long wollen garment
• Column like
• Originally painted
• All stone statues
• Flesh natural color
• Lips, eyes, hair, clothing, etc.
• Pigment in hot wax

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Peplos Kore

• Archaic smile
• Left arm projected forward
• Ka-Aper?
• Votive offering
• Athena
• Much more natural
• Proportion
• Face, hips, etc.

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Kroisos

• Anavysos, Greece
• Circa 530 BCE
• Marble
• Approx. 6' 4" high

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Kroisos

• Kroisos
• Actual person
• Died _at_ 530 BCE in battle
• Grave marker
• Also painted

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Kroisos

• Kouros
• Greek, young man
• Statuette depicting a young man
• Sometimes thought to be Apollo

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Kroisos

• Egyptian stance
• Archaic smile
• Proportion
• Head
• Neck
• Arms Legs
• Hair more natural
• Softer muscles
• Rounder hips

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Two Main Differences

• The Greek statues are nude
• Again the beauty of the human body
• 2. The figure is released from the stone it was
  carved from
• Trys to represent motion

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Ajax and Achilles playing a game

• Exekias
• Vulci, Italy
• Circa. 540-530 BCE
• Whole vessel approx. 2' high

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Ajax and Achilles playing a game

• Artists began to sign their vases
• Painter vs. Potter
• Exekias
• Master of the black-figure tech.
• Signed as both potter painter

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Ajax and Achilles playing a game

• Voices!
• Ajax calls tesara
• Achilles tria
• No dramatic action
• Yet armed and ready to go

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Ajax and Achilles playing a game

• Balance
• Helmets
• Shields
• Spears
• Bodies
• Details
• Patterns on cloaks
• Archaic smile
• Line
• FRONTAL EYE

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Revelers

• EUTHYMIDES,
• Amphora
• Vulci, Italy
• Circa 510 BCE
• Approx. 2' high

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Revelers

• Red-figure painting
• Light figures are created against a dark
  background by outlining with black slip
• Details also drawn in with this slip

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Revelers

• Three drunken revelers
• Unusual body positions
• How the bodies are depicted
• No overlapping
• Mixed frontal profile
• Foreshortening
• OPTICAL

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Revelers

• Challenge to create appealing images from unusual
  and lesser views of the human body
• Pride of the artist
• Euthymides painted me as never Euphronios could
  do!

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The Greek Temple

• Has influenced a great deal of historical and
  modern architecture
• Originally influenced by columned halls of Egypt
• Hypostyle hall of Karnak?
• Not many early ones exist today
• Wood and mud brick
• Archaic era
• Built of limestone and marble

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The Greek Temple

• Not a gathering place
• Altar was outside on east end
• Temple was a shrine for the cult statue
• House for the god or goddess
• Sculpture was important
• Part decoration
• Part votive offering
• Part narrative
• Even the columns

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The Greek Temple

• THE ENTIRE TEMPLE IS CONSIDERED A WORK OF ART!

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The Greek Temple

• Symmetry
• Compact
• Geometric
• Proportion
• Length of side to width
• 13 or _at_ 12
• Also important in sculpture

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Temple of Hera I

• Paestum, Italy
• Circa 550 BCE
• Approx 80 wide, 170 long

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Temple of Hera I

• Basilica
• A rectangular church or public building with an
  entrance at one end
• Cella
• The central room of an ancient temple where the
  cult statue stood

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Temple of Hera I

• Temple of Hera II stands nearby
• Unusual feature
• Central row of columns through the center of the
  cella
• Caused problems
• Cant see the statue of Hera from outside

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Temple of Hera I

• Columns
• Surrounded by a colonnade
• Heavy and close
• Entasis
• Swelling in the middle of column
• Doric capitals
• Seem squashed under weight of roof, etc.
• Afraid of collapse?

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Closure

• Compare and Contrast 3 things about the Geometric
  and Archaic periods