IGX

The archer "Paris" from the West Pediment of Aphaia Temple in Aigina

There's a traveling show which is highlighting the polychromy of statuary in classical antiquity that's pretty cool. It was started by Frankfurt's Goethe University, and coalesced in the first "Gods in Color" exhibition at Munich's Glyptothek museum in 2003; it has since been elaborated by collaboration with many other archaeologists, art historians, and art preservationists. You can see a lot more about it here at the dedicated website:

http://buntegoetter.liebieghaus.de/en

Article about it at The New Yorker: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018 ... -sculpture

The article is somewhat garbage and tries--in the nauseatingly inescapable way of our times--to "racialize" and politicize it, but it still is interesting.

Fat Cat wrote: ↑Thu Oct 25, 2018 10:17 pmThere's a traveling show which is highlighting the polychromy of statuary in classical antiquity that's pretty cool. It was started by Frankfurt's Goethe University, and coalesced in the first "Gods in Color" exhibition at Munich's Glyptothek museum in 2003; it has since been elaborated by collaboration with many other archaeologists, art historians, and art preservationists.

My art history teacher taught us (in the 90s) that the ancient Greek statues were painted – that traces of pigments and whatnot have been found on them, but usually the paints have not survived the passage of time as well as the underlying marble.

I haven't read the piece that you linked. But it's interesting that our sense of the Greek sculpture is of it exemplifying this sort of austere beauty; and the historical reality was so different. Almost tacky & garish: he looks somewhat like a gay elf.

You might like the article; it touches on some of the same things, and also how the (mis)perception of Hellenic standards of beauty during the renaissance led to some ideas of restrained coloring and so forth that we carry with us today.