Art in the Hellenistic Age (original) (raw)
Related papers
Art in Antiquity: An Introduction
What went into the creation of the Parthenon? Who lived in the Tower of Babel? Why do we still care about the buildings, cities, and art of the ancient past? This course offers an introduction to the art, architecture, and material culture of the ancient world in Western Asia and the Eastern Mediterranean worlds. We will explore a diversity of powerful things and monuments from Egyptian pyramids and Near Eastern palaces, to the 'classical' art of Greece and Rome. This course offers a survey of the art of the ancient Mediterranean world. We will explore important architectural monuments, artifacts and works of art from Mesopotamia, Egypt, prehistoric Aegean and the Eastern Mediterranean, Greece and Rome, through visually rich, chronologically structured lectures. The intention is to give students a well-rounded background in the art, visual culture, architecture and archaeology of the Western Asian and Eastern Mediterranean worlds. The course starts with the monumental stone-henge like ritual architecture of the Near Eastern Neolithic, and stretches all the way to the late antique-early Islamic Jerusalem and Byzantine Istanbul/Constantinople. The survey will highlight monuments such as the Hanging Gardens of Babylon, Assyrian Palaces, Minoan palaces and frescoes, Egyptian pyramids and mortuary complexes, the Acropolis and the classical city of Athens, Ephesus, Alexandria and Pergamum, ceremonial capitals of the Persian empire in Persepolis and Pasargadae, cities and victories of Alexander the Great, Hellenistic altar of Zeus from Pergamum, Mausoleum of Halicarnassus and the Seven Wonders of the World, Republican and imperial monuments in Rome, Pompeii, and the great North African cities of the Roman Empire and finish with Istanbul’s Hagia Sophia.
The Greeks of Art and the Greeks of History
Modern Greek Studies Journal of Australia & New Zealand, 2004
“The Greeks of Art and the Greeks of History,” Modern Greek Studies Journal of Australia & New Zealand 11-12: 66-74
Smith/A Companion to Greek Art, 2012
When Percy Gardner was appointed the first Lincoln and Merton Professor of Classical Archaeology at Oxford in 1887, the discipline was still largely in its infancy. His book entitled The Principles of Greek Art, written almost 100 years ago, demonstrates that classical archaeology of the day was as much about beautiful objects and matters of style as it was about excavation and data recording. Now, as then, the terms 'Greek art', 'classical art', and indeed 'classical archaeology' are somewhat interchangeable (Walter 2006: 4-7). To many ears the term 'classical' simply equals Greek-especially the visual and material cultures of 5 th and 4 th c. bc Athens. Yet it should go without saying, in this day and age, that Greek art is no longer as rigidly categorized or as superficially understood as it was in the 18 th , 19 th , and much of the 20 th c. By Gardner's own day, the picture was already starting to change. Classical archaeology, with Greek art at the helm, was coming into its own. The reverence with which all things 'classical' were once heldbe they art or architecture, poetry or philosophy-would eventually cease to exist with the same intensity in the modern 21 st c. imagination. At the same CHAPTER 1
From Aigai to Nikopolis: the Art and Archaeology of Hellenistic Greece
This is a subjective survey, but with an objective proposal: that the material culture of the Hellenistic age, formerly disparaged (as representing a decline from the 'Classical') or else categorized by artificial unities of broad generalization, is at last being studied for what it was: the product of the court-dominated society that first produced Alexander 'the Great' and was then 'cloned' (by his Successors) after his death. Whether Macedonian, Ptolemaic, Seleucid, Attalid or otherwise, the court gives us an explanatory model for the commissions of those monuments and objets d'art we classify by style as 'Hellenistic'. Large-scale projects predominate: however, by collateral effect, or 'trickle-down' mechanism, this model illuminates features of landscape, urban layout, domestic pottery – and even roof-tiles.
Hellenistic Styles in Greek Sculpture (2019)
Handbook of Greek Sculpture, edited by Olga Palagia, 2019
This chapter reconsiders the criteria for stylistic analysis of Hellenistic sculpture and the usefulness and limits of such an analysis for relative and absolute chronology. It maintains the traditional division into three distinctive phases (Early, High and Late) and highlights their characteristics. From the early second century οn, there are classicistic and progressive trends side by side.
R. Lane Fox (ed.), Brill's Companion to Ancient Macedon, 2011
This chapter deals with art in Macedonia between the death of Alexander I11 ("the Great") in 323 BC and the defeat of Perseus, last king of Macedon, at the battle of Pydna in 168 BC. As a result of Alexander's conquest of the Persian Empire, a lot of wealth flowed into Macedonia.' A large-scale construction programme was initiated soon after Alexander's death, reinforcing city walls, rebuilding the royal palaces of Pella and Aegae (Vergina) and filling the countryside with monumental tombs. The archaeological record has in fact shown that a lot of construction took place during the rule of Cassander, who succeeded Alexander's half-brother Philip I11 Arrhidaios to the throne of Macedon, and was responsible for twenty years of prosperity and stability from 316 to 297 BC. Excavations in Macedonia have revealed very fine wall-paintings, mosaics, and luxury items in ivory, gold, silver, and bronze reflecting the ostentatious elite lifestyle of a regime that was far removed from the practices of democratic citystates, Athens in particular." Whereas in Athens and the rest of Greece art and other treasures were reserved for the gods, in Macedonia they were primarily to be found in palaces, houses, and tombs. With the exception of the sanctuary of the Great Gods of Samothrace which was developed thanks to the generous patronage of Macedonian royalty from Philip I1 onwards, Macedonian sanctuaries lacked the monumental temples and cult statues by famous masters that were the glory of Athens, Delphi, Olympia, Argos, Epidauros, or Tegea, to name but a few. The most glorious artworks dedicated by the Macedonians in a sacred context were ruler portraits.