The glory of ancient Greek art can be roughly divided into five periods: the Aegean culture period is the prelude and overture to the emergence of ancient Greek culture. In addition, it can be divided into the Homeric period, the Archaic period, the classical period, and the Hellenistic period. period.
The first is the Aegean cultural period
(approximately 3000 BC - 2000 BC) before the Dorians and Ionians, the main ethnic groups who created Greek classical civilization, arrived on the mainland. , there once existed a fairly developed culture in the Aegean region of the northeastern Mediterranean, including countries from clan society to the early stage of slavery society. In the history of art, this culture is called "Aegean culture" or "Crete-
Mycenaean culture". .
The art in this area of ??Crete is mainly concentrated in the Minoan Palace. The walls of the palace are decorated with murals, which depict decorative figures and patterns with smooth curves and bright colors. The techniques are related to Egyptian art. Among them, "Paris Girl", "Women Conversing", "Picture of a Maid", etc. are the most famous. Some small statues were also unearthed in Crete, which are characterized by a combination of realism and decorative techniques. One of the more typical ones is "The Girl Who Charmed the Snake".
Mycenaean culture flourished from 1500 BC to 1200 BC. The cities built by the Mycenaeans have shown a military defensive purpose. The "Lion's Gate" on the Acropolis of Mycenae is carved with a pillar on a large triangular stone slab, with a pair of lions standing opposite each other on both sides. The shape is thick and powerful. It is the earliest monumental decorative sculpture in the West. The reliefs on the gold vessels unearthed at Mycenae are elegant and exquisite, especially the scenes depicting hunters hunting bison.
Then there is the Homeric period (12th century BC - 8th century BC)
The Homeric period is named after the author of Homer's epic poem, which is the end of clan society. This period was the formative period of Greek mythology and the budding period of plastic arts.
The earliest period of plastic art in the Homeric period was the pottery period in the geometric style, with simple shapes and different sizes, used for worshiping gods and burials. Funerary statuettes from this period are also geometric in shape and lack detailed depictions. Therefore, this period is also called the "Geometric Style Period"
The Archaic Period (7th to 6th century BC)
The Archaic Period was the formative period of plastic arts. During this period, Eastern culture had an impact on Greek art through trade exchanges, and Greek art formed its own style by absorbing the strengths of Eastern culture and gradually getting rid of Eastern influence. The artistic achievements of this period were mainly painting, architecture and sculpture.
Painting: Pottery was the main daily utensil and export commodity of the Greeks. Athens and Corinth were important production centers for pottery. During the Archaic period, the type of episodic painting had already been established, and three styles appeared successively: Oriental style, black painting style, and red painting style.
The paintings of the 7th century BC were mainly oriental style, with animal-headed human figures, plant patterns, etc. influenced by Egypt and the Mesopotamia region. The black painting style appeared in the early 6th century BC. It paints the main figure black, and the background remains the ocher color of clay, making the outline of the image prominent, like a silhouette, and the details are slightly outlined. Representative works of this period include "Achilles and Ajax Playing Dice" and so on. The red painting style appeared at the end of the 6th century BC. It is exactly the opposite of the black painting style. The background is painted with black, leaving the main part in ocher, and the details of the characters are depicted with lines. This style was mainly popular during the classical period. The paintings mostly express plot scenes, mainly mythological themes and daily life themes. Smooth and beautiful lines express various characters, dramatic and moving scenes and delicate emotions.
Architecture: The main buildings in Greece are temples. During the Archaic period, Greek temple architecture formed its typical form - peristyle, that is, the building was surrounded by colonnades. Two basic architectural column styles have been formed, namely Dorian and Ionian. Later, a Corinthian column became popular in Asia Minor in the late classical period. The Corinthian column developed on the basis of the Ionian column to a more ornate decoration, with the capitals being densely decorated with blue flowers. Famous buildings in the Archaic period are the Temple of Athena in Aegina and the Temple of Artemis in Ephesus.
Sculpture: Sculptures from the Archaic period were influenced by Egypt, with figures in a stiff, upright position. Both male and female statues have the same smile on their expressions, which is commonly known as "ancient smile". The characters are usually colored, and the clothing patterns and hair depictions are often decorative. In the later period, new factors began to appear in sculpture, resulting in some more vivid and natural male figures. This kind of male figure statues are collectively called "Apollo". "Man Carrying a Calf" created in the 6th century AD is a masterpiece of the Archaic period.
This was followed by the Classical Period (5th to 4th century BC)
This period It was a period of prosperity for Greek art, with great achievements made in all categories of art, among which architecture and sculpture had the most profound impact on later generations.
Architecture: Each part of the column-style building in the classical period began to form a fixed format and proportion, and the general trend was concise and reasonable. The architectural achievements of this period are considerable, the most outstanding representative of which is the Acropolis complex in Athens. The Acropolis of Athens was rebuilt in the early classical period. It includes the Propylaea, the Parthenon, the Temple of Nicaea, the Temple of Icleon and other buildings. Its main building is the Parthenon dedicated to the goddess Athena.
The Parthenon is 70 meters long and 31 meters wide, with a column ratio of 17:8 and a column height of 10.5 meters. It adopts Dorian column style, and the frieze adopts Ionian relief friezes. The pediment is decorated with high relief sculptures. It has a well-proportioned structure, reasonable proportions, and a rich sense of rhythm and rhythm. The architectural structure and decorative elements, monumentality and decoration, content and form have achieved a high degree of unity, making it one of the most perfect architectural examples in the history of world art. The Temple of Ecleon has a slender and beautiful Ionian column. There is a group of caryatids on the south side. They are light in posture, dignified in image, and completely free of tension.
Sculpture: Sculpture in the classical period has completely got rid of the restraint and decoration of the ancient period, producing realistic and ideal human bodies, reaching the heyday of Greek sculpture art, and a group of outstanding sculptors appeared .
Milon was a sculptor in the early classical period. The modeling of his works is accurate, and he has a deep understanding and communication of the inner bones and muscle movements of the characters. His masterpiece "Discus Thrower" shows the continuity of movement in a fixed action, brilliantly solves the problem of the center of gravity of the human body's weight on one foot, and changes the upright formula in the sculpture.
The greatest sculptor of the High Classical Age was Phidias. He designed the architecture of the Acropolis and created numerous sculptures and decorative reliefs within the Acropolis. His works create elegant, serene images and are examples of the ideal beauty of classical sculpture. The statue of Athena he created for the Parthenon Temple is 12 meters high. It is made of gold and ivory on a wooden base. It shows the goddess holding a small goddess of victory in one hand and holding a shield in the other. It was favored by contemporaries and descendants. of worship. In addition, he also created a statue of Athena holding a spear for the Acropolis Square in Athens, which is 9 meters high. It is said that the flash of the gilded spear tip can be seen on the sea. The high-relief sculptures he created for the east and west pediments of the Parthenon are regarded as the most perfect specimens of classical sculpture. The three goddesses of fate in the period have graceful postures and active clothing patterns, which not only bring out the plump figure of the goddess, but also have fluidity. Soft and sporty.
In the late classical period, sculpture began to focus on the depiction of individuality, expressing people's personality and emotions. The characters were full of the interest of life and inner passion. This personalized description marks the further maturity of Greek sculpture.
Praxiteles is characterized by softness and lyricism. His characters are always in a quiet and pleasant atmosphere, but they are also full of youthful vitality, giving people a cordial and poetic feeling. He likes to describe mythological characters, such as the happy and unrestrained Satyr, and the reserved and elegant Hermes. He also created the earliest fully nude female body, "Aphrodite of Nidos", and his graceful and smooth human body expression quickly conquered the audience.
Contrary to the tranquility and lyricism of Praxiteles, Scopus's sculptures convey an inner turmoil and tragic conflict. The heads of his characters are often in strong twists, with deep-set eyes, prominent brows, open mouths, and full and curved lips. The large fluctuations in the face create a strong contrast between light and dark, showing strong uneasiness, excitement, and Painful, longing feelings. The group portrait "Niobe" may be his work. The facial expressions and movements of the statue express the characters' complex expressions of despair, grief, anger and unwillingness to surrender.
Leusippus inherited and developed the theory of Polykletus. He proposed the standard that the ratio of the human head to the body is 1:8. The difference from Polycletus is that his characters have a strong body like an athlete, but also have complex emotions and an inner world full of contradictions. His mythological figure Hercules shows the hero at rest, his muscular body contrasting with his brooding facial expression.
The last was the Hellenistic period (the end of the 4th century BC - the 1st century AD). During this period, King Alexander of Macedonia led his army to conquer various Greek city-states and established the Alexander Empire. With the continuous conquest and expansion of the empire, the spread of Greek culture to the East and the exchange of cultures with the East occurred. This period is also called the "Panhellenic period".
The art achievements of this period were mainly sculptures, and sculpture art formed various styles centered on different regions.
The native region still maintains the Greek classical tradition, and the skills are more mature. "The Goddess of Victory of Samothrace" expresses the joyful mood of the winner with her stretching and rotating movements, vivid and natural postures, and clothing patterns fluttering in the wind. The figure faces the ocean, stands on a bow-shaped base, and is placed on a cliff. It complements the environment and forms an organic whole.
In Egypt, custom carvings are popular. The sculptor showed a large number of lower-class characters, such as tramps, fishermen, beggars, drunkards, etc., and also focused on describing the details of life. For example, "Child and Goose" shows a vivid plot of children playing with animals.
Pergamos in Asia Minor was one of the art centers of the Hellenistic period, where Scopos' pathos style continued to develop. "Altar of Zeus in Pergamos" is his masterpiece. This altar was built to commemorate the conquest of Gaul. The reliefs on the altar show the plot of the battle between gods and giants. The battle scene is very fierce. There is also a set of round sculptures of the Gauls, which show the stubbornness and pain of the powerful foreigners after being defeated, such as "The Dying Gauls" and "The Gauls Who Killed His Wife and Suicide." Rhodes' "Laocoon" is close to the style of Pergamos, showing the painful twisting and struggling of the characters in the tragic plot.
During the Hellenistic period, portrait sculpture developed, and portraits praising emperors and dictators appeared. The biggest feature of these portraits is the emphasis on extraordinary personality, with a tendency to combine idealization and personalization, such as "Portrait of Alexander". At the same time, many portraits of philosophers, poets, and writers appeared.
Looking at the works of various periods, we can summarize that ancient Greek art has the following characteristics:
First, slavery in Greece was different from Egypt, with more democracy. and the color of freedom, so art works not only reflect the aesthetics of slave-owning aristocrats, but also reflect the ideals and requirements of the broad free national class. Second, ancient Greek art is closely related to ancient Greek myths and legends. Ancient Greek artists depicted and shaped gods according to people in daily life, so the artistic images they created were quite humane and interesting in life, and gods and humans were of the same gender. Third, Greece attaches great importance to expressing optimism in worldly life, and the characters in its art works are mostly happy.
Fourth, Greece is a seafaring country, which affects its artistic style to a certain extent. It is relatively open and unconventional. keep. Fifth, ancient Greek artists regarded the invisibility of the body as a characteristic of the gods. Their admiration for nudity was the product of humanism, and the expression of the perfect human body was the highest ideal. Sixth, ancient Greek architecture emphasized lively rhythm and balanced composition.
However, when Rome conquered Greece, Greece's position as the world's cultural center was replaced by Rome. Does this mean the disappearance of Greek art? No! Ancient Greek art will never disappear!
Militarily, the Romans were the victors, but in art, they were the Greeks
"Captive". Ancient Greek art has always influenced Roman art and the development of human art as a whole. Marx once said:
"...They can continue to provide us with the enjoyment of art. , and in some aspects it also serves as a standard and unattainable norm."
Engels mentioned in his book "Anti-Dühring":
"There is no Greece and Rome. Without the foundation laid, there would be no modern Europe." Ancient Greece is the cradle of Western civilization. Therefore, in the Western cultural world, there is a phenomenon of "
It must be said that it is Greek." It can be seen that ancient Greek art has great influence on It had a huge influence on later generations, especially on Europe.
At the end of the Renaissance, the interpretation of Greek themes and styles, and the mythology of the Middle Ages were based on Roman interpretations. The earliest Athens under the rule of the Turks Living Westerners still think that the place now called Herod Atticus Theater is the Academy of Socrates. The famous painter Raphael once painted the immortal work "Academy of Athens". The floor plan of the villa built by Pladio Like a Greek cross, its main corridor uses Ionic columns, and the entire structure is designed according to rules and accurately calculated dimensions. In addition, after careful analysis of this building, people also discovered that there are Greek elements hidden in Roman architecture. Elements.
The influence of Greece in modern art is huge and comes in many forms. In ballet art, neoclassicism is a precocious fashion. Nizhensky in his "Fau "Nus" adopts a style with a very strong Greek flavor, and the Greek elements in it are very strong.
Ancient Roman literature refers to the ancient Roman literature that flourished around the epoch of the ancient Roman regime (including the Roman Empire and and the Roman Empire). Its main language is Latin. Although the Roman Republic was born in 510 BC (getting rid of the rule of the Etruscan dynasty), according to convention, the true ancient Roman literature begins in 240 BC
< p>The culture of ancient Rome mainly inherited Greek culture and gradually developed. During the Hellenistic period, Rome imported many Greek works, translated them and imitated them. After Rome destroyed Greece in 146 BC, it took all Greek mythology, poetry and drama as its own, and found many slaves captured from Greece to serve as tutors, allowing them to write scripts, poems, and study various sciences. , which gave ancient Roman literature a strong Greek color. Taking mythology as an example, after contact with Greek culture, many Roman gods were combined with Greek gods. For example, the main god Jupiter believed by the Romans is equivalent to the Greek Zeus, and his wife Juno is equivalent to Hera. As for the sun god Apollo and the goddess of literature and art, the Muses, they entered Roman mythology directly without even changing their names.The traditional virtues of simplicity and pragmatism, the strong emotion of love for the motherland, the religious attitude of piety and godliness, the habit of observing laws and regulations, and being practical and pragmatic - the most important characteristics of Roman culture
In terms of architectural art, circles are the mainstay.
Of course, ancient Roman literature is not all imitations of ancient Greek literature, because after all, it is a product of Roman society, and the language it uses is Latin. In Western academia, ancient Roman literature is considered part of the broad Latin literature. Different from the maritime peoples of ancient Greece, the ancient Romans were an inland people who mainly survived by farming and herding. They had the characteristics of vulgarity, ignorance and simplicity of ancient farmers and herdsmen. After the founding of the country, ancient Rome advocated force and pursued the strength and perfection of society and the country, law and centralization. Its literature had a stronger rational spirit and collective consciousness, and had a solemn and noble temperament, but it also lacked the lively aura and unrestrainedness of Greek literature. Childlike innocence. Ancient Roman literature emphasized balance, rigor, and harmony in art, paying attention to rhetoric and syntax, and tended to be more polished and pretentious in technique.
Poetry
There were many all-round writers among the early ancient Roman poets. The poet Aeneus (239 BC - 168 BC) not only rewrote and created tragedies, but also wrote dramas and 4 to 6 volumes of satires. His epic "Chronicle" traces the history of Rome, beginning with Aeneas's experience and ending with the wars in the author's life. It spans 18 volumes, but has been basically lost, with less than 600 lines left. From the perspective of literary history, "Chronicles" abandoned the ancient Shennong meter and adopted the hexameter long and short meter used in Homer's epic poems. But in style, there are obvious traces of imitating Homer. Aeneus had a profound influence on ancient Roman literature. Cicero, Lucretius and Virgil all said that they had been influenced by him. He was revered as the "father of ancient Roman literature".
Comedy
Platus (approximately 254 BC - 184 BC) was proficient in ancient Greek and was the most famous playwright of the Christian era. It is said that Plautus wrote 130 plays, but according to research, only 21 were written by him, and the others were forged by later generations. His comedies are mainly based on the comedies of manners by the Greek new comedy writer Menander, satirizing the corrupt habits of Roman society. His main works include "Twin Brothers", "Captive", "Businessman", "Donkey", "Locust", etc.
Terentius (190 BC - 159 BC) was born in Carthage. He was a slave and was later freed. He wrote six comedies in his lifetime, including "Mother-in-law", "Two Brothers" and other representative works, which were adapted or translated from ancient Greek new comedies. Its comedy structure is rigorous, the language is elegant but not vivid, the inner conflicts of the characters are delicately depicted, and the characters are natural. His comedies were less interesting than those of Plautus, and were only enjoyed by educated audiences at the time. Terrence had a considerable influence on the comedy of later generations. His works were imitated by Molière in France and Steele and Sheridan in England.
Roman Sculpture
Roman sculpture art was learned from Greece, but it has its own characteristics compared with Greece.
1. Roman sculpture art has an aristocratic flavor, and most of the statues are of nobles and emperors.
2. The characters are not as vivid and beautiful as those in Greece, but have more strict and reserved expressions, but the emphasis is on truth and individuality.
3. It lacks the rich imagination and depiction of power and dynamic beauty found in Greek sculptures, and most of the characters are lost in contemplation.
Representative works: Statue of Octavian, "Equestrian Bronze Statue of Mark Aurelius", Statue of the Lady of Flavius, etc. There are also reliefs on the Peace Altar, Commemorative Pillars and the Arc de Triomphe.
The architectural art of ancient Rome is the inheritance and development of the architectural art of ancient Greece. The architecture of ancient Rome not only developed the brilliant achievements of ancient Greek art with the help of more advanced technical means, but also integrated the harmonious, perfect and noble characteristics of ancient Greek architectural art style into the new social and cultural background. "Temple" is transformed into the secular world, giving this style a new aesthetic interest and corresponding formal characteristics. The basic principles of architecture should be "regularity, arrangement, symmetry, balance, propriety and economy". This can be said to be a theoretical summary of the characteristics of ancient Roman architecture and its artistic style. Among these characteristics, there is obviously still the harmonious, perfect, and sublime style content of ancient Greek architecture, but the lever of "appropriateness and economy" has obviously transformed the "divine" meaning of ancient Greek architectural style into secular human will. This can be seen directly from the building type and the design of the building appearance.
Ancient Roman architecture is an architectural style in which the ancient Romans followed the architectural techniques of the Etruscans on the Apennine Peninsula, inherited the architectural achievements of ancient Greece, and made extensive innovations in architectural form, technology and art. . Ancient Roman architecture is generally characterized by thick masonry walls, semicircular arches, door frame decorations protruding from floor to floor, and cross vault structures.