Transcript for:
Exploring Ancient Egyptian and Greek Artistry

so here's we're going to set up our comparison with the world of ancient egypt and the world of ancient greece if you remember the fapa for ancient egypt are 3 000 years of unchanged art style now let's look at this fapa for ancient greece the most rapid advancement in the depiction of the human form so the egyptians have three thousand years of depiction of the human form that is unchanged with one exception and then we've got greece that has this super rapid evolution so we go from this to this to this to this to this to this in just a few hundred years and nobody else does that why number one greek gods took the human form now remember that egyptian gods were some were human some were animal and some were composite and so this depiction of the gods as human is going to be very important another important part of the story is the greek obsession with athletics and working out this is the home of the olympic games where there was tremendous amount of body consciousness the competitive nature of the ancient greeks brought everyone together for the olympics and this competitiveness this athleticism the fact that men worked out in the nude made the avail availability of the human form very present so it was important religiously it was something that was in front of them all the time it was something that was important to them from a societal nature as well in relationship to the olympics so let's take a look at this form so this is a geometric greek style marble sculpture so the style greek geometric the technique marble sculpture and it is a grave marker you're like now wait a minute lady you just showed me a a big pot that was a grave marker well what's wrong with having a three foot tall terra cotta flower pot as a grave marker what's going to fall over and break isn't it and so then shortly they decide well let's make a form that recalls the deceased now this one has an awkward name because it was located the fine spot was not where it was supposed to be so somebody took it from greece and carried it all the way to france and it was buried and then later excavated in a place called ausair this is not its original spot but it's named after that which is one of the obnoxious habits uh in archaeology this is a kuros figure and we form is almost always dressed and the male form is almost always nude and the other interesting thing about this two foot sculpture is what you don't see and it's a very important part of art history for multiple reasons and that is greek sculptures were brightly painted they use an encaustic technique remember so that is pigment suspended in hot wax and stone is porous and there are traces of the colored paint in the little microscopic pores of these sculptures do you notice how she is rigid and frontal she has sort of a frozen-like stare her hands are highly stylized there's lots of interest in her costume detail which of course is not as dramatic when you look at the form as it exists today so it's important to remember this second fundamental principle of art history is that greek sculptures and architecture were brightly painted do not assume that and antiquities look today as they did when they were created this part of the story is important for us here in the united states because recall that the founding fathers of our country modeled our democracy after what they thought greek democracy was like now they didn't interpret it correctly and when it was time to develop our national architecture they chose the form of a greek temple but greek temples were not pure and white they were brightly painted and that's something that gets lost in the history so these kuros figures then are marble carved sculptures they're grave markers and look what happens now he is rigid he is frontal his body is stylized it is not realistic we're at 600 bce all right so now let's see what happens at 5 30 480 the female form dressed and keep those figures in mind because we will pick up again in another 100 years and we will see big changes in the depiction of the human form but it only took a few hundred years to go from this to this to what we see happening here so let's talk about architecture now and this evolution that we see in religious structures so remember we have a megaron in the aegean world a big square room with a fire at the center opposite the entrance and so we've got to then assume that we've got a connection between the ancient religious spaces where we know little and these greek spaces where we know quite a lot we are interested in not only the components that make up these buildings but how we look at them the different plans and views because it's an important part of the story trust me when i can tell you that every little part of a greek building has a name but we're focusing on the areas that are important for our introduction to greek architecture we're interested in this triangle at the top called impediment because there's going to be a lot of sculpture placed there we're interested in the columns because the column capitals are going to tell us when the building was made and what the architectural influences were and then we're going to be interested in how the interior of the space is laid out and how that changes over time so a plan view a bird's eye view the roof is off we're flying over like a bird looking down inside similar to what we've seen in other religious buildings you and i are not allowed inside only the priests are so we're standing outside and we're looking in and inside this interior cella cell or room there might be an important sculpture and if you put the columns right in front of the door then people outside can't see in a structure that is surrounded by columns is called a collinated structure so remember these are all made from marble and when you line them up over time you can see we have a simple structure with just a few columns a few stairs looking into the central cella and then as time goes by they become longer more complicated more columns are added sometimes double or triple rows of columns with more elaborate smaller columns on the inside and eventually we'll even see a tholos temple a temple in the round so the oldest up here with the example of a the quote unquote newest here at the temple of f so those column capitals show us the melding of the early greek cultures d is for doric and d is for dull that's how i remember the difference in the column types so remember the dorians were the mainland people and the ionians were the seafaring people the ionians bring this spiral we call that an ionic capital and that is what they bring to the architectural playbook it is the column capital then that is going to set forward how the rest of the temple is designed in a doric temple we've got alternating artistic information at this level of the structure called the freeze the freeze band and we've got metapees and triglyphs metapee we care about because there's going to be a piece of sculpture here and a triglyph tri try as in tricycle is going to be three vertical bands and that's all okay in the ionic order we've got our ionic capital and then a freeze band with solid sculpted information and that's why we care because we care about where the sculpture is the sculpture in the pediment or the sculpture in the freeze there's a third order referred to as the corinthian from the island of corinth and it is sort of a a plant-like or vegetal form and what they're trying to depict is the leaves of the acanthus plant the acanthus plant is something that grows here in southern california and so we're going to want you to be able to identify the doric the ionic and the corinthian orders we call them the classic greek order order refers to the style of the column capital we'll also want you to be able to identify the metapee and the triglyph as an important part of the story so here is a artist's reconstruction showing you a layer of columns so this is a colonnade a double colonnade stairs up you and i stand down here the priest goes inside there is the pediment that is filled with artistic information and alternating metapease and triglyce so we always want to look and see where the art is