GREEK ART.
1. Architecture.
Characteristics:
- They designed buildings to a human scale.
- They used stone and marble.
- They had columns and a double-sloped roof.
- They introduced orders, column arrangements, that aimed for proportion and ideal beauty. There were three: doric, jonic and corinthian.
- There were two main types of buildings:
- Temples: The house of a particular god. Inside, there is a statue of the god. The parts of the greek temple were:
- pronaos, a vestibule.
- naos, the main room where the god's statue was located.
- opisthodomos, another room where the offerings made to the god were kept.
The most important were built in the 5th century in the Acropolis of Athens: the Partenon and the Erecteion.
- Theatre:was used for the performance of theatre plays and was built to the advantage of mountain slopes. Delphi theatre
2. Sculpture:
Characteristics:
- About the materials, first the used wood, later polychrome marble, bronze and sometimes, ivory and gold.
- Tried to achieve idealised beauty, using a canon, a set of proportions applied to the human body.
- Great variety of subjects: gods, heroes, athletles, religious scenes and battles.
- We can distinguish several periods:
- Archaic: Rigid figures and almond-shaped eyes: Kouroi, Male naked athletes; Kouroai: Dressed females.
- Classical period: Figures in movement, more realistic but still idealised. Examples: Dyscobolus, Myron, Relief of The Parthenon and Athena, Phidias.
- Hellenistic period: They represented movement and expressions of feelings in faces and bodies. Examples: Laocoön and Winged Victory of Samothrace.
3. Pottery.
Characterised by a great variety of forms for every sort of use: storing grain, transporting water and mixing wine and water, etc.
In Athens there were two types according its decoration:
- red figures painted on a black background.
- black figures painted on a red background.