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osprey_archerMidterm today in Ancient Greek Art History, my favorite, favorite class this term. (Independent study doesn't count as a class.) I love sitting in class and looking at temples and sculptures and vases, picking the myths out of the pictures and learning myths I'd never heard before. I love the names of the vases: krater, kylix, amphora, aryballos, words to conjure with. I even love our textbook (which is Jeffrey Hurwit's The Art and Culture of Early Greece, 1100-480 BC, in case anyone is filled with a sudden yearning to study the Archaic Greeks. Which you should be.)
The Archaic Greek aesthetic is very different from the Classical Greek, and often alien to the modern eye. The statues stand impassive, looking through you - one is struck with the uncomfortable feeling that they are more real than are we. Figures on pots smile even as they die, enigmatic and untouched by mortal pain. The compositions aim toward symmetry, everything patterned into stacks of triangles.
Sometimes, it's breathtaking.
A Black Figure amphora painted by Exekias circa 530 BC, featuring Ajax and Achilles playing dice. The scene is not one from the Iliad, but it's kin to the Iliad nonetheless: the hand of fate presses on the players. Although their faces are inscrutably Archaic, the picture is heavy with tension. It's a game of dice; maybe it's just a game of dice; but it feels like it means means much more.
I love this vase.
I'm thinking I might minor in Art History.
The Archaic Greek aesthetic is very different from the Classical Greek, and often alien to the modern eye. The statues stand impassive, looking through you - one is struck with the uncomfortable feeling that they are more real than are we. Figures on pots smile even as they die, enigmatic and untouched by mortal pain. The compositions aim toward symmetry, everything patterned into stacks of triangles.
Sometimes, it's breathtaking.
A Black Figure amphora painted by Exekias circa 530 BC, featuring Ajax and Achilles playing dice. The scene is not one from the Iliad, but it's kin to the Iliad nonetheless: the hand of fate presses on the players. Although their faces are inscrutably Archaic, the picture is heavy with tension. It's a game of dice; maybe it's just a game of dice; but it feels like it means means much more.
I love this vase.
I'm thinking I might minor in Art History.
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Date: 2010-02-04 03:28 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-02-04 05:40 am (UTC)Seriously, though. I'm glad. So many people seem to dismiss art history out of hand because they think it's a BS subject, but a) if it's properly taught, there's a lot of material you actually do have to learn, and b) the people who make the most digs at Art History are generally the ones who demand extensions on all their papers (which they write at the last minute anyway) and brag about how little of the reading they do. They're obviously projecting onto an easy target.
I think they're bitter because they secretly suspect that the art history students might be having more fun than they are. And indeed, that's probably true.
...I should probably make a post on this.
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Date: 2010-02-04 03:29 am (UTC)The delicate ankles and wrists on the black and red figures on Greek pottery have always appealed to me.
Last Easter I made red-figure Easter eggs (link here (http://asakiyume.livejournal.com/269362.html)--forgive me if you've already seen! Can't remember when we started reading each other's journals...)
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Date: 2010-02-04 05:30 am (UTC)Were they pysanki, or just regular hardboiled? I think it would physically pain me to deshell those to eat them.
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Date: 2010-02-07 08:38 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-02-08 04:15 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-02-04 03:49 am (UTC)How cool is that???
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Date: 2010-02-04 05:31 am (UTC)I'm not sure what. It may just be that Greek pottery is cool.
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Date: 2010-02-04 01:18 pm (UTC)This is very...interesting.
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Date: 2010-02-04 01:14 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-02-05 12:19 am (UTC)