Greek Sculpture [antikvár]

T I he art of the Greeks is a major factor in any account M of the history and development of the cultures of mankind as a whole. It has had a very deep influence on the formation of a specifically European taste and sensibility and only in very recent times have art forms emerged in those countries that shared its legacy which diverge in any fundamental sense from the canons it established. It is for this reason that Greek art seems so close and so accessible to us today, although this impression of proximity to ourselves is, in part at least, erroneous for the simple reason that Greek art like all other forms of art was closely bound up with the society from which it sprang and it is only through a thorough understanding of that society that its art can really be understood. As a result, this brief survey places a good deal of stress on the historical relevance of the works of art selected to illustrate it. To see art in terms of some basic premise divorced from time and place, as the product of some abstract human conception, is both unjust and irrational. Only by situating the art of a vanished culture firmly in its historical and natural context can we fully understand and appreciate it. Greek art was the product of an exceptionally brilliant and lasting civilisation. It can be traced throughout a period of two thousand years from its beginnings in the first Mycenean works of art dating from the sixteenth century b.c. right up to the start of the sixth century a.d., when the rise of the Byzantine Empire gave birth to a new culture combining the legacy of Greece with Roman tradition and with Christianity.