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Fourth Century and the
Hellenistic Period |
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Between 334 and 323 B.C.,
Alexander the Great
and his armies conquered much of the known world,
creating an empire that stretched from Greece and Asia
Minor through Egypt and the Persian empire in the Near
East to India. This unprecedented contact with cultures
far and wide disseminated Greek culture and its arts,
and exposed Greek artistic styles to a host of new
exotic influences. The death of Alexander the Great in
323 B.C. traditionally marks the beginning of the
Hellenistic period.
Hellenistic art is richly diverse in subject matter and
in stylistic development. It was created during an age
characterized by a strong sense of history. For the
first time, there were museums and great libraries, such
as those at Alexandria and Pergamon . Hellenistic
artists copied and adapted earlier styles, and also made
great innovations. Representations of
Greek gods
took on new forms ). The popular image of a nude
Aphrodite, for example, reflects the increased
secularization of traditional religion. Also prominent
in Hellenistic art are representations of Dionysos, the
god of wine and legendary conqueror of the East, as well
as those of Hermes, the god of commerce. In strikingly
tender depictions, Eros, the Greek personification of
love, is portrayed as a young child .
One of the immediate results of the new international
Hellenistic milieu was the widened range of subject
matter that had little precedent in earlier Greek art.
There are representations of unorthodox subjects, such
as grotesques, and of more conventional inhabitants,
such as children and elderly people. These images, as
well as the portraits of ethnic people, especially those
of Africans, describe a diverse Hellenistic populace.
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entire article:
Art of the Hellenistic Age and the Hellenistic Tradition
Visit Metropolitan Museum
of Art site:
http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/haht/hd_haht.htm |
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Map of Greece created by David Lindroth, Cartographer:
original source.
Layers added, Lorali Deming, Mahwah,
NJ: 2007. |
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Tansey and de la Croix in Gardener's Art Through the
Ages:
Philosophy: Apollonian
command “Know thyself” which Socrates has taught the
people as he spoke with them in their daily gathering
places changed the Greek point of view to a more
individualistic one.
Plato established man’s intellectual independence in his
doctrine of such eternal forms as “virtue”, “justice,”
and “courage which served as the rational model model on
which the individual could construct his life.
Aristotle formulated the operations of reason in the
science of ”logic”. Among his fundamental
contributions is the outline of the sciences of nature.
Gradually separating himself from
the old assurances—the gods, their oracles, and
time-honored custom—as prime interpreters of the meaning
of life, the Greek carried on his search to know himself
and to achieve knowledge of the work and life through
observant experience. His dependence on the city-state
lessened, and boasted with Diogenes: “I am a citizen of
the world.” |
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humanizing tendency...achieved characteristic expression
in the sculpture of the 4th century solemn grandeur and
representations of the greater gods gave way to those of
the lesser gods, and the naturalistic view of the human
figure became fully focused. Compare the sculpture of
mid 5th century Classical and mid 4th century
Hellenistic Art: |
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ca. 450-40
B.C. Polykleitos' Doryphoros |
c.340 BC Praxiteles' Hermes and Dionysos |
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| Note the broad change in artistic
attitude and intent that took place between the
mid-fifth to mid-fourth century. Majestic strength and
rationalizing design of the earlier sculpture are placed
by an order of beauty that appeals more to the eye than
to the mind. In the later sculpture there is a double
distribution of the weight of the figure giving the pose
with its fluid axis, the form of a sinuous shallow
S-curve. The infant reaches for something in space.
Hermes is looking into space with a dreamy expression,
half smiling. |
| The most renowned sculptor of the second
half of the fourth century Lysippos, court sculptor to
Alexander the Great. Apoxyomenos which represents a
young athlete scraping mud and oil from his body before
taking his bath. The figure embodies two important
innovations of the time. One was a new canon of
proportions which required a more slender supple and
tall figure, a direction evident in Praxiteles work. The
second was the full realization of the figure as if
moving in space. The figure now seems to move in a kind
of free spiral through the space around it; it is made
to be seen from a variety of angles, and it is related
to things in its environment other than itself. The
earliest Greek figures had been in a stiff frontal
position, with the planes closely related to the stone
block from which they had been carved; they were
best seen from only one or two positions. |
| View Sculpture in 360 degrees, Click here: |
Statue of a kouros (youth), ca. 590–580 B.C.;
Archaic |
| http://viamus.uni-goettingen.de/pages/quickView?Object.Inventarnummer:record:ustring=A
357&resolution=high&mimetype=quicktime&height=515&width=333 |
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Compare other sculptures:
http://www.accd.edu/sac/vat/arthistory/arts1303/Greek3.htm |
View other images of
Hellenistic Art:
http://www.art-and-archaeology.com/timelines/greece/hellenistic/hellenistic.html |
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Visit the Metropolitan Museum of Art
http://www.metmuseum.org/explore/Greek/Greek1.htm |
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Visit the British Museum
http://www.britishmuseum.org/the_museum/departments/greek_and_roman_antiquities/galleries.aspx |
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Visit the Louvre
(copy and paste
link in browser)
http://www.louvre.fr/llv/oeuvres/oeuvres_choisies.jsp?FOLDER%3C
3Efolder_id=2534374302024492&CURRENT_LLV_DEP%3C
3Efolder_id=1408474395181112&CURRENT_LLV_DIV%3C%
3Efolder_id=2534374302024492&bmUID=1124914497702&bmLocale=en |