smithsonian magazine published an article this month about greek statues that has been blowing my mind for the past weekend. a german archaeologist is on a mission to prove that greek statues were actually painted and colorful, and to be honest, really tacky-looking.

he’s using ancient texts (euripides: “If only I could shed my beauty and assume an uglier aspect / The way you would wipe color off a statue”) and chemical analysis to prove that pigments were used on the statues — statues that we all have automatically assumed were white.

To us, classical antiquity means white marble. Not so to the Greeks, who thought of their gods in living color and portrayed them that way too. The temples that housed them were in color, also, like mighty stage sets. Time and weather have stripped most of the hues away. And for centuries people who should have known better pretended that color scarcely mattered.

think about this: an entire era of art, neoclassicism, assumes that the statues that were recovered from ancient times were as white in pre-jesus times as they were when they found them. the entire idea of marble-white simplicity as beauty is probably based on a lie. the white house, capitol building, city hall, etc. all have roots in the pristine greek aesthetic.

i consider this a paradigm-shifting revelation for myself. and check out the slideshow. the world is a really scary, lonely place right now.

Tags: art, smithsonian | Comments (5)