Defining beauty: the body in ancient Greek art

Beautiful exhibition at the British Museum looking at the human body in Greek art.

The first room was quite bare except for the stars of the show. Three fabulous statues by famous students of Ageladas as well as recently found bronze of an wrestler cleaning themselves after a fight. I had been to a lecture by one of the curators just before I went round and she had talked about the contrast in tension which made a great statue with the whole thing being about balance and contrast between tense and relaxed muscles. All of these were perfect examples.

This was a beautifully presented exhibition and I liked the way it used some of the Elgin marbles putting them back into the context in which they were made. It was interesting to see a room about how the figures would have been coloured. They look so garish to our eyes. I prefer them plain but then I have a hardened old Western art historic eye!

There was an interesting section on drapery. Apart from statues of Venus women were not shown naked but some of the figures with drapery were almost as revealing. I loved a small bronze of a dancing girl completed coverer in drapes but you could see a perfect outline of her legs and the pose was beautiful.

I also loved a figure of an acrobat on a crocodile near the end with perfect little feet.

The whole thing was so beautiful that by the end I wasn’t taking in what it was trying to tell me and show me as the objects themselves were just so lovely. I need to go back again and so the tape tour and concentrate a bit more at the end.

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