This morning in The Washington Post Robin Givhan wrote about the arts “At their best, the arts help people to think more deeply and more broadly. They help people grasp commonalities across expansive divides. Sometimes they highlight the greatness of man, but more often and more powerfully, they remind people of their fallibility.”
In this blog I primarily want to talk about how the arts highlight the greatness of man because I want to celebrate what we humans can do that is superlative.
Today I want to discuss Greek sculpture during the start of the great flowering of the arts in Greek antiquity. Early Greek sculpture, usually called the archaic style, was a highly realistic style that was, however, still rather stiff. Note the beauty of the rendering of the human figure, yet they are still not quite naturalistic. Arms are held stiffly at the side or otherwise close to the body. They nonetheless celebrate the human form.
So to Ms. Givhan’s point, these help us to realize the commonalities humanity across an expansive divide of time and space.
Tomorrow I’ll write about the succeeding period in Greek sculpture usually referred to as the classical style.
We must be soldiers for Art! 