Greek Art [antikvár]

Introduction 'Some girls affect what is called the Grecian bend' commented the Daily Telegraph in 1869, and the Irish ballad applauds the 'sort of creature, boys, that nature did intend, to walk right through the world' without that affectation. It is a measure of the popular view of Greek art and of ancient Greeks in general that 'Grecian bend' was coined for the affected gait, leaning forward from the hips, seen in nineteenth-century England. It is hard to see just what Classical poses inspired the term, but it became current soon after the arrival in England of the Elgin Marbles. They had recently been rescued from the Acropolis in Athens and offered English artists and scholars their first opportunity to appreciate a large complex of original Greek statuary of the finest period. It need hardly be said that there were many dissenters who preferred still the slick prettiness of Classical artists like Canova (who himself appreciated the Elgin Marbles: 'Oh! that I had but to begin again') and derived their notion of Greek art from them. The notion dies hard too, together with other misconceptions about ancient Greece. The 'Greek profiles' of actors of the silent film were admired, and even Schliemann expressed naive surprise when he excavated the skeletons of the Greeks who died at the Battle of Chaeronea and saw that they had not got 'Classical' noses. Isadora Duncan dancing on the steps of the Parthenon would have looked far odder to the ancient Athenian than the chorus of Hair. The grammar of Greek architecture is now readily understood, however transmuted, for we see it dimly stiU in aU sorts of construction - from the façades of banks to the dentils incongruously crowning a pillar-box. There are even straight copies, and the Erechtheion in Athens has contributed its Caryatid porch to the Church of St Paneras in London and its north porch columns to many another church façade. This popular view of Greek art is so commonplace and the truth so subtly different, that it is worth while considering for a moment how we have come to know the art of the ancient Greeks. We have also to distinguish it from that of Roman copyists and the Renaissance, for these are the intermediaries who cherished the Classical tradition in Western art.