Ancient Greek Art: Geometric, Archaic, And Hellenistic

Ancient Greek art can largely categorize into four periods, Geometric, Archaic, Classical, and Hellenistic. This is excluding the Protogeometric Period and the Orientalizing Period. The Protogeometric Period took place before the Geometric period during the Greek dark ages. Before that, most works of art are categorized as Aegean Art. The Orientalizing Period took place between the Geometric Period and the Archaic Period though stylistically is relatively unimportant and is largely absorbed by the two larger periods surrounding it. That said however this is where we start to see early examples of the black figure. The Geometric Period, though largely ignored, was defined by linear, geometric motifs.

In the Archaic period, there was a move towards more representational style. It was during this period that we saw life sized stone carvings of people starting to emerge. This was likely inspired by the works of the ancient Egyptians. The Greeks started with rigid and lifeless looking statues. For whatever reason their culture seemed to push towards more realistic sculptures, and so the Greeks started to study the human body. They did so in a way that had never been done before. Maticulessly studing every detail of every part of the body. With each generation working on …show more content…
The stone was carved smooth like skin, appearing tightly drawn and stretched over the bones underneath. Apparent tension in the toned muscles within and yet gracefully draped on the inside of joints. Kritios Boy was the pinnacle of realism. With the goal of absolute realism achieved and no clear new goal in sight, human nature started to take hold. Within a single generation artists stopped making realistic statues and began to exaggerate the features. Since the most primitive versions, humans have wanted to exaggerate art as seen in the Venus of Willendorf, but now, for the first time in history, we were properly equipped to do