We must be soldiers for Art!

Tag: istanbul

  • The Greatness of Mankind

    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.

    Early Greek archaic period. Altes Museum, Berlin
    Greek archaic period, Cyprus. Neues Museum, Berlin
    Red painted sculpture, Greek archaic period from Attica. Neues Museum, Berlin
    Rear view of the red painted sculpture. Neues Museum, Berlin
    Kouros of Naxos, Greek archaic period. Altes Museum, Berlin
    Kouros, Mid-6th century BC, Thasos, Greece. Istanbul Archeological Museum

    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.

  • Revolutionary Architecture

    I waited forty-five years to see the Hagia Sophia and was finally able to see it in October 2024. Some might wonder why I’m calling a church built in the reign of Justinian “revolutionary,” but it was! This building launched architecture in a whole new direction.

    Previously, large buildings were constructed in the basilica style, which is the style you still see in church architecture today. It’s a large rectangular-shaped building with rows of columns supporting the roof. Since the walls also had to support the roof to some extent, there were not many windows in the walls and those that were there were small.

    The Hagia Sophia instead consists of a large square center with enormous piers at the corners, that spread out into triangular areas at their head, which are called pendentives. The pendentives and piers are strong enough to support a glorious dome. Although domes were already known, this dome’s size made it unique for the time. I’ve read some descriptions that say the dome appears to float atop the church (I agree.) Another consequence of having weight-bearing piers and pendentives is that they could put large windows in the walls and those in turn lent a beautiful light to the interior. The sense of soaring height and natural light must have been a wonderful spiritual experience at the time. Heck, it’s a wonderful experience today even after all the innovations we’ve seen in architecture.

    The church has suffered a much damage from earthquakes and war over the fifteen centuries since it was built and today it has a lot of external buttressing to keep it together. Exterior photos can therefore be very clunky-looking but I would argue that the dome is still spectacular!

    Hagia Sophia, Istanbul, Turkey
    Interior of the Hagia Sophia, Istanbul, Turkey