Artwork Analysis Blog Post (Due September 9, 2020)


 

The Archaic period marked significant change in the artistic character of Greek art. Instead of the stylistic rigidness that characterized the art of the previous era, Greek artists embraced a more naturistic style.

This shift in art style is most obvious in the sculptures modeled after people – the artists hyper-focused on a more accurate representation and simultaneously, the beauty of human anatomy. This piece of art was modeled after a young, male Athenian aristocrat. Along with the detailed anatomy, this piece is sculpted in a rigid, straightforward pose that was common with many statues depicting humans in this era. This is widely theorized to set a viewer’s focus on appreciating individual minutiae rather than the sculpture as a whole. The nudity was also a very common facet of these statues, again derived from the theorized desire to display the anatomy in its entirety.

This piece is said to have been one of the earliest of this period, so it isn’t nearly as anatomically exhaustive as creations of a later time. In fact, compared to future works, this seems to have embraced a more abstract take on the human body.

 

Works Cited

Dr. Renee M. Gondek, "Introduction to ancient Greek art," in Smarthistory, August 14, 2016, accessed September 7, 2020, https://smarthistory.org/greek_intro/.

The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica. (2018, May 11). Archaic period. Retrieved September 07, 2020, from https://www.britannica.com/art/Archaic-period

Marble statue of a kouros (youth). (n.d.). Retrieved September 07, 2020, from https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/253370

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