The myth of whiteness in classical sculpture
newyorker.com
newyorker.com
It fits right in with my struggle to imagine the 19th century and early 20th century as being anything other than black and white, since almost (exceptions exist [2]) all of the photos from back then were monochrome.
[1] https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/RealityIsUnreali...
[2] https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Alim_Khan_(1880%E2%8...
A fun fact to go with that: quite a lot of what people think of as "gloomy" Victorian-era clothing was actually brightly-colored and just didn't photograph well.
Those sculptures look kitschy and childish when painted.
I assume they went for that style of painting because it was historically authentic? Presumably they don't want to decorate a 50 BC statue with 1750 AD painting techniques.
We should also note that many of these statues were placed outdoors. Colors might seem bright and garish in gallery lighting against muted white backgrounds but wouldn't pop quite so much under bright sunlight in the middle of a public square, especially once they develop a patina of dust and the sun starts bleaching them out (which would take no time at all under the Greek sun).
This makes a lot of sense, the artists who made the statue were likely more able at the coloring aspect than simply solid colors
I was very disappointed in it's appearance when it arrived.I would be much happier if I had bought the plain one.
Also classical paintings before photography reinforce this because of degradation caused by UV Rays has resulted in paintings to appear darker or washed out.
It's always fascinating because even watching videos i took half a decade ago look so inferior to modern day videos!
Yes, they where painted in skin tones, but not like in #ff3399 or something. The reconstructions are unrealistic.
Of course it's still possible that the statues were tacky, but not _that_ tacky. They weren't painted with damn crayons.
I also wonder how much of the time these statues spent freshly painted. It wasn't particularly durable & was often outdoors. So I presume that quite a lot of the time the paint was a bit patchy... and that this was part of why they bothered to use marble (or basalt) in the first place, not just whatever was convenient.
The be fair, we don't know how they precisely were painted. The reconstructions are extrapolations from trace pigments. We have preserved frescos and mosaics from roman times, and they are not garish or childish at all, thy use beautiful colors and lifelike tones and shading.
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Pediment,_Philly_Art...
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Pediment,_Philly_Art...
The massive structures still remain, but they must be ruins compared to their past splendor.
It's interesting to note that this psychological phenomenon has occurred much before the prevalence of social media, and hasn't changed in how significant the cultural influence is of the phenomenon. I'm pretty interested if there's any solution at all to it.
It was also the beginning of the modern sciences using rational methods, including the modern study of ancient art and archaeology.
It wouldn't surprise me, therefore, if Enlightenment scholars and those who followed interpreted ancient aesthetics through their more recently acquired sense of style, or really projected their style on the ancients, since it would have flattered them to think that they shared a style sensibility with the ancients.
As a contrast, in India, where the Enlightenment arrived relatively late, the color intensity of ancient aesthetics has been preserved to a far greater degree.
As good an argument as any for the Greeks getting them back from those ignorant barbarians.
Anything the British have done to the Elgin marbles pales into insignificance compared to the actual blowing up with explosives of the Parthenon at the hands of the Ottomans/Venetians in 1687.
Yes someone absolutely didn't read the article nor look at the examples of the paint remains found on the statues.
> Incredibly bias article
The reason the whole idea of color and whiteness was presented was to answer the question of why did people remove the color from the objects and why wasn't it common knowledge about how they were actually painted objects.
Political against Alt-Right? I have a political ax to grind against Alt-Right and so should you.
Extremely unconvincingly, though; the linguistic accident that we use the same word ("white") to describe a shade and an ethnicity is doing most of the rhetorical work. None of the reconstructions shown in the article looks particularly "non-white". Doesn't it seem more plausible that people removed traces of colours because, as even the article acknowledges, they make the statues look gaudy and childish?
(And to other questions, like how did their society think about these things, and how much has post-classical migration changed the makeup of the people living there. IIRC the African component of North-Africans has increased a bit.)
There is one picture in TFA of an African-looking child. And interestingly they say that this effect was often conveyed by choosing to work in basalt, as well as painting with darker colors. I guess these must be fairly uncommon, I can't recall seeing any in museums?
> She is not the only classicist who has been targeted by the so-called alt-right. Some white supremacists have been drawn to classical studies out of a desire to affirm what they imagine to be an unblemished lineage of white Western culture extending back to ancient Greece.
> None of the reconstructions shown in the article looks particularly "non-white".
Your mixing modern and ancient ideas. The issue is how the Greeks viewed pale skin. This is not about how they were not "white" but that in Ancient Greece there was no pro-bias for white over dark skin.
"Nor did the Greeks conceive of race the way we do. Some of the ancients’ racial theories were derived from the Hippocratic idea of the humors. Rebecca Futo Kennedy, a classicist at Denison University, who writes on race and ethnicity, told me, “Cold weather made you stupid but also courageous, so that was what people from the Far North were supposed to be like. And the people they called Ethiopians were thought of as very smart but cowardly. It comes out of the medical tradition."
"Pale skin on a woman was considered a sign of beauty and refinement, because it showed that she was privileged enough not to have to work outdoors. But a man with pale skin was considered unmasculine: bronzed skin was associated with the heroes who fought on battlefields and competed as athletes, naked, in amphitheatres."
The article itself is doing that. "it was time we all accepted that ancient sculpture was not pure white—and neither were the people of the ancient world. One false notion, she said, had reinforced the other" - but how so? "Some white supremacists have been drawn to classical studies out of a desire to affirm what they imagine to be an unblemished lineage of white Western culture extending back to ancient Greece" - but none of the reconstructions the article shows would threaten such an affirmation.
> a man with pale skin was considered unmasculine: bronzed skin was associated with the heroes who fought on battlefields and competed as athletes, naked, in amphitheatres.
This sounds like an attempt to make something out of nothing, particularly given the lack of an picture (in an article that's otherwise full of them) that would commit to what shade of "bronzed" they're actually talking about. Ancient Greeks thought men looked better with a tan? Sure, so do many modern people.
Um bronze metal. They would gold leaf or cover in bronze statues. Wasn't because we are talking about the different skin tones of modern Greece with modern Greece. It was that it wasn't the thing that defined people. Your origin was much what defined you and not your skin color.
> This sounds like an attempt to make something out of nothing,
I studied and even read Classical Greek for a few years in college. I can tell you that if you take that point with women it is absolutely true and this idea is more universal in Ancient Near East. Most cultures prized pale skin woman who did not have a tan since only the wealthy could afford such a life style. The Song of Solomon in the Bible even states that.
Song of Solomon 1:5-7 How right they are to adore you. 5 I am dark but beautiful, O women of Jerusalem dark as the tents of Kedar, dark as the curtains of Solomon’s tents. 6 Don’t stare at me because I am dark the sun has darkened my skin. My brothers were angry with me; they forced me to care for their vineyards, so I couldn’t care for myself my own vineyard. 7 Tell me, my love, where are you leading your flock today? Where will you rest your sheep at noon? For why should I wander like a prostitute among your friends and their flocks?
Your wealth was seen by your lack of tan similar to how we view people wealthy based on cars and homes.
Bronze metal doesn't look at all like what we generally call "bronzed skin"; Kennedy knows she is talking to a modern (popular) audience, so it's unlikely that the shade of bronze metal is what she means.
> It was that it wasn't the thing that defined people. Your origin was much what defined you and not your skin color.
This claim keeps being repeated, but it doesn't seem to be backed up by the actual sculptures. If there were people the Ancient Greeks considered Greek who had a skin tone that modern people would not consider "white", why don't any of the statue pigments that this whole article is supposedly about show those skin tones? (The "African boy" is clearly not "white" to modern eyes, but it doesn't sound like he was "Greek" to the ancients either).
The other context of bronze means tanned, but they actually covered part or the whole statue in metal sometimes.
It's due to a small worldview. The average person never went more then 14 miles from where they were born their whole life.
> The reason the whole idea of color and whiteness was presented was to answer the question of why did people remove the color from the objects and why wasn't it common knowledge about how they were actually painted objects.
This has been common knowledge for a long time - this article isn't really about that once you actually read through it.
> Political against Alt-Right
Facts have nothing to do with the Alt-Right they don't tend to like them, however using other people's history to take a shot at different political groups is gross it doesn't matter what side you're on.