Art History 101 Midterm: Archaic Greek Art

volute

A volute is a spiral scroll-like ornament that forms the basis of the Ionic order, found in the capital of the Ionic column

triglyphs

Triglyph is an architectural term for the vertically channeled tablets of the Doric frieze, so called because of the angular channels in them, two perfect and one divided, the two chamfered angles or hemiglyphs being reckoned as one. The square recessed spaces between the triglyphs on a Doric frieze are called metopes.

kourous and kore statues

he kouros and kore statues are the experimental workshops in which Greek sculptors solved all of the problems about how to make a piece of stone or a piece (or pieces) of bronze look exactly like the highly idealized nude body of a young man, or the idealized, but dressed body of a young woman. As was the case with the kouros type, once the inherent problems in the kore type had been solved, the sculptors dissolved the type and began posing new problems for themselves .

Ionic Order

It was a development in architectural form that perhaps originated in Asia Minor to create an order more decorative and elaborate than the austere and earlier Doric. Its columns have bases ornamented with a variety of mouldings, and are more slender, with deeper flutes and no sharp or vulnerable edges as in the Doric Order. Capitals have a pair of spiral volutes extending out on either side, front and back, over a ring of egg-and-tongue moulding round the top of the column. There are no triglyphs. A volute is a spiral scroll-like ornament that forms the basis of the Ionic order, found in the capital of the Ionic column

Greek Sculpture

Owing to the good services of Greek mercenaries, in the early seventh century BCE an Egyptian pharaoh gave the Greeks two settlements in the Nile Delta. The Greek artists attracted to these settlements learned much from the Egyptians, especially the ability to construct buildings of stone and statues of both stone and hollow-cast bronze. Archaic Greek statues of standing men are called kouroi (pl.) or kouros (sing.) and are one of the few images Greek artists borrow from Egypt (website image). They superficially resemble their Egyptian counterparts, but differ in intention or meaning and development. Unlike most Egyptian standing male statues, Greek examples are nude, completely free-standing (i.e. unattached at the back to the original block of stone), and, at least initially, more abstract, sacrificing the sense of organic continuity present in the Egyptian statue for an attempt to represent the anatomical components individually. Greek statues did not serve as alternate bodies for the ka to inhabit, but were on public display as cult images of the gods in their temples; as public markers or monuments over graves or tombs; or dedicated in sanctuaries as pleasing offerings, agalmata (pl.) agalma (sing.), to the gods. Unlike the apparently changeless appearance of their Egyptian counterparts, too, Archaic Greek statues develop quickly from abstract beginnings (ca. 650 BCE) to naturalistic ends (ca. 480 BCE).

corinthian order

The Corinthian, with its offshoot the Composite, is stated to be the most ornate of the orders, characterized by slender fluted columns and elaborate capitals decorated with acanthus leaves (The acanthus is one of the most common plant forms to make foliage ornament and decoration.) and scrolls. he Corinthian style is fancier and heavier than the Ionic style. In Corinthian temples, the columns have a fancier base to stand on. At the top of the columns, on the capital, there's a stone carving of acanthus leaves, under the architrave (ARR-kuh-trayv). On the architrave, as in Ionic temples, there is a continuous frieze where the triglyphs and metopes would be on a Doric temple.

Kleitias (painter) and Ergotimos (Potter),

The François Krater, 570-565 BCE, Archaic Greek attic black-figure, volute krater, (krater: used to mix water and wine). divided into six different registers. is signed. identifying themselves as artists. being a potter or painter os sculptor: significant to rome and greece, from part of register: guy from the illiad. thesius and the minotou

Dying Warrior

c. 500-490 BCE, From west Pediment of Temple of Athena Aphaia, Aegina, Archaic Greek

Gigantomachy

c. 530 BCE, from the north frieze of the Siphnian Treasury, Delphi, Greece, Archaic Greek Gigantomachy: or battle between the gods and the giants. relief structure (janson 5.21) more naturalistic. emotions, realistic depiction of battle. calf muscles present- interest in anatomy and how the body would respond in situations. nobeling of a genre scene. something not too extravagant associated with mythology to make the scene significant. dynamism and movement.

Temple of Artemis at Ephesos

c. 560 BCE, Turkey, Archaic Greek Ionic Order

Aspasia" kore

ca. 470 BCE, Roman marble copy of Greek hollow-cast bronze original, Archaic Greek

Brygos Painter, Red-figure Kylix,

ca. 480 BCE, Archaic Greek symposia- lavish dinner for upper class black vs red: black mythological, red genre, red more detail clay is negative space, rest is raised (?) warning about moderation- figure is vomiting. not enabling in any way, a warning not to drink too much during the symposium.

Douris, Eos Carrying Her Dead Son Memnon

ca. 490 BCE, red-figure technique (see slide: starting point of more naturalistic, three dimensional illusionistic images) kylix, Archaic Greek compositional and emotional intensity kylix: is a type of wine-drinking glass with a broad relatively shallow body raised on a stem from a foot and usually with two horizontal handles disposed symmetrically. The almost flat interior circle on the interior base of the cup, called the tondo, was the primary surface for painted decoration in the Black-figure or Red-figure styles of the 6th and 5th century BC. As the representations would be covered with wine, the scenes would only be revealed in stages as the wine was drained. They were often designed with this in mind, with scenes created so that they would surprise or titillate the drinker as they were revealed.

Kritios Boy

ca. 490/480 BCE, Archaic Greek Greek artists dissolved the type and began to pose new problems for themselves as can be seen in the *Kritios Boy.

Kouros from Akragas (Agrigento, Sicily)

ca. 490/480 BCE, Archaic Greek The Akragas kouros represents the last stage in the development of the type. Having solved all the problems inherent in it, Greek artists dissolved the type and began to pose new problems for themselves as can be seen in the *Kritios Boy.

Temenos (sancturary) of Athena Aphaia

ca. 510-490 BCE, Aegina, Greece, Archaic Greek

Siphnian Treasury

ca. 530 BCE, Sanctuary of Apollo, Delphi, Greece, Archaic Greek Doric Order Considered from the ancient Greek point of view, this ornate building really does approach the outer limits of good taste. Karyatids, statues of women (korai) act as the posts or columns in the porch - notice that the building does not have a peristyle. There is a continuous Ionic sculptured frieze course (i.e. no division into triglyphs and metopes) the subject of which is a Gigantomachy or battle between the gods and the giants. There is a sculptured pediment, and there appear to have been akroteria, too. The giant being mauled by one of the lions pulling the chariot of Dionysos in the frieze is one of the great passages in Greek pictorial art of the Archaic period, again communicating not only the mythological event, but intense emotional response, too, on the part of the paticipants.

Exekias, Achilles and Ajax playing board game during a lull in the Trojan War

ca. 530 BCE, black-figure (see slide) technique amphora, Archaic Greek Besides being a wonderful design, Exekias' ability to convey emotion through gesture is remarkable.

Temple of Artemis at Corcyra (Corfu)

ca. 580 BCE, Greece, Archaic Greek Doric Order

Pediment with Gorgon,

ca. 580 BCE, from the Temple of Artemis at Corcyra (Corfu), Greece, Archaic Greek Doric Order, pediment

Kouros

ca. 600 BCE, marble, Metropolitan Museum of Art, Archaic Greek Art

contrapposto

stance which alters the internal composition of the sculptures from verticals and horizontals to verticals and diagonals. Both the Kritios Boy and the Aspasia stand in this stance.

doric frieze

the areas containing the metope and the triglyphs

Dying Warrior (2)

From East Pediment of Temple of Athena Aphaia, Aegina, Archaic Greek

Metope

In classical architecture, a metope (μετόπη) is a rectangular architectural element that fills the space between two triglyphs in a Doric frieze, which is a decorative band of alternating triglyphs and metopes above the architrave of a building of the Doric order.

pediment

Wiki: A pediment is a classical architectural element consisting of the triangular section found above the horizontal structure (entablature), typically supported by columns. The tympanum, or triangular area within the pediment, was often decorated with sculptures and reliefs demonstrating scenes of Greek and Roman mythology or allegorical figures. Professor: they behave in a pictorial manner, like figures in relief, because they are placed against a wall (called the pedimental or tympanum wall) and act out a pictorial narrative that moves perpendicular to the viewer's line of vision. Thus, for the sake of visual clarity, all the forms of the bodies of these pedimental statues tend to be arranged on a single plane, i.e. the composition of the figure, its relationship to surrounding three-dimensional space tends to be very two-dimensional (See Janson figs. 5.22, 5.23, 5.24 and website images). Nevertheless, because these statues were attached with metal rods and dowels to the pediment wall behind and shelf below, the sculptor did not have to worry about the tensile strength of the stone and could represent figures in positions other than the conservative walking ones of the kouroi and korai types without worrying about breakage.Thus pedimental statues formed the workshop in which Greek sculptors experimented with "action figures." The two dimensional compositions of these pedimental statues, the arrangement of the forms of the body on a single plane, will have a surprisingly long-lasting impact on the composition of Greek free-standing statues, both in the late Archaic period and in the Early and High Classical periods.

Doric order

Wikipedia: In their original Greek version, Doric columns stood directly on the flat pavement (the stylobate) of a temple without a base; their vertical shafts were fluted with 20 parallel concave grooves; and they were topped by a smooth capital that flared from the column to meet a square abacus at the intersection with the horizontal beam (entablature) that they carried. The Parthenon has the Doric design columns. **Pronounced features of both Greek and Roman versions of the Doric order are the alternating triglyphs and metopes.** Professor: seems to have arisen first, and though there are clearly differences, both the Doric column and the Doric frieze (composed of trigylphs and metopes) are, like the megaron itself, inspired by Bronze Age prototypes. Columns of the Ionic order are more richly ornamented and may have originated as free-standing columnar bases surmounted by crouched sphinxes as in the *Naxian sphinx and its Free-standing Ionic column from the sanctuary of Apollo at Delphi, ca. 565 BCE (website images). The earliest Ionic columns used as structural elements in a building are those of the *Archaic Temple of Artemis at Ephesos, ca. 560 BCE. With their dense, dipteral ordering and drums decorated with relief sculpture, these columns seem to have a connection with the columns of Egyptian hypostyle halls (ground plan and partial elevation - website images, Janson fig. 5.12) - hypostyle halls turned inside out.

Black-Figure

a Corinthian invention. In this technique, the figures are painted in silhouette on the vase and outlines and internal details were incised through the paint (called engobe) with a sharp metal point called a burin before the vase was fired. This technique reaches its acme in the Athenian vase painter Exekias as can be seen in his one-piece amphora showing *Achilles and Aias (Ajax) playing a board game during a lull in the battle before Troy, ca. 540 BCE (Janson fig. 5.25 and website image).

Caryatid

a sculpted female figure serving as an architectural support taking the place of a column or a pillar supporting an entablature on her head.

Red-Figure technique of vase painting

n this technique, the background is painted in black and the figures left in the orange-red color of the Attic (Athenian) clay. Internal details are added using lines drawn with fine brushes and syringes. Red-figure has great advantages over the black-figure technique. Figures in red-figure could be effectively foreshortened and shown from oblique and frontal viewing points vs. the preferable strictly profile presentation in black-figure. In red-figure, by using dilute paint, the intensity of the line can be varied whereas in black-figure there is no way to vary line intensity. In addition, and unlike the apparently back-lit black figures, red figures appear front-lit and, indeed, to project out optically in front of the black background against which they are isolated. This realization may be the first step in the creation of three-dimensional illusionism in painting. It also contains the seeds of the destruction or dissolution of vase painting as a major art form in the ensuing Classical periods. Last but not least, the red-figure technique aided in speeding up production without a corresponding loss in quality control thus yielding greater profits for vase painters.