Hellenistic Art, part 2

I left off before discussing the Seated Boxer, one of many pieces depicting men as strong, but defeated. These gave men dignity and displayed honor, they had a fairly obvious purpose here, but some are confusing with their meanings. One such piece is Old Market Woman (150 BCE - 100 BCE).

Preceeding this era all Greek art consisted of beautiful pieces of the young, strong, attractive and powerful. But this piece shows something quite the polar opposite of the norm and is very characteristic of this age. Here we see a woman wrinkled, tattered, bent with age and her spirit broken. She is weak and haggard. Despite her less than desireabe physical condition she still carries on, but not because she enjoys any pleasure form life anymore, but because she simply must.

I find pieces like this quite interesting. They aren't something most people find aesthetically pleasing, nor do they glorify any particular individual. I believe that this artist, though unknown, wanted to depict things the way they truly were and how he saw the common people around him. It is sort of a precursor for Realism when you think about it. Though a lot of Hellenistic overdramatizes some things this is truthful, but emotional all the same.

Hellenistic art was aiming to depict a social climate much wider than we have seen before. We see soldiers, fighters, and the old or dying. They handle it with sensitivity, but they still maintained some traditions in art, such as scenes including eroticism.

A very famous sculpture that openly explored eroticism is Venus de Milo (150 BCE - 125 BCE) by Alexander of Antioch-on-the-Meander. The area where the artist signed has been lost since. This piece is a roman copy and the use of marble made it a bit more vulnerable to damage, which is obvious in the lack of arms. From the information we've gathered we know that her left arm - which is seperately preserved - is holding an apple, the one Paris awarded her when he judged her to be the most beautiful goddess. And we can only surmise hat the right arm is doing. We tend to believe hat her right hand was loosely grasping at the fabric covering her in an attempt to keep it from slipping futher. This is to intentionally tease the viewer; it plays with sexuality without being outright sexual or crass.

I consider this piece to be more sexual than say the Aphrodite of Kindo where she is entirely nude. One of the many things that arouses people is not knowing and hiding her lower half form the viewer entices them. This makes her more desireable than she might have been had she been entirely nude....though I doubt all would agree with me on that. I guess some would prefer less mytery.

This next piece is more overtly sexual in it's nature, depicting the same goddess; Aphrodite, Eros, and Pan (100 BCE) - artist unknown.

Here you see Aphrodite is resisting Pan's unwanted advances and Eros rushing in to try and protect her from very unspeakable acts. The composition and set up here is quite tense, which was clearly intentional. Her archaic smile smile is interesting here, the detail work is incredible and the positioning of the bodies and twisting makes it very dynamic. I love her stance, you see how defensive she was and feel her panic and her son rushing to her aid is quite heart-warming, despite the situation.

Actually I'm a tad irked by Eros' appearence. Previous to this era he is representd as an adolescent and full of promise, this pudgy-winged-infant is laughable. He looks like the putto depicted in many other works. They were attendants to many maidens. Another issue is how babies are often rendered almost as miniature adults, but that mostly had to do with a lack of understanding of the fragile form. They even seemed to have personailites to match their unusal form. But I can fully air these annoyances another day.

But this piece, which was commissioned by Dionysios of Berytos, is exuding sex and dominance. And considering it was displayed in a buisnessmen's clubhouse you have to wonder about their tastes, though pieces like this were commonplace during this era so it could all just boil down to trends.

Another equally erotic piece is Barberini Faun, also known as Sleeping Satyr (230 BCE - 200 BCE) by Gianlorenzo Bernini. We see a satyr who has consumed too much wine and threw down his panther skin onto a nearby rock and fell into an intoxicated sleep, though it seems a but estless when you note his furrowed brow. It seems to me that this man might be playing the part most female nudes in art tend to; helpless and exposed.

While it has never been unusual to portray a male nude in greek sculpture, I can't really recall it ever being intentionally sexual too often. Sculptures like these are the product of Hellenistic scultors exploring sexuality of the human body.