I'm recovering from cataract surgery and so have to foist woefully inadequate and esoteric posts on you for a few days. My hunch is that a few readers are going to like them. The first one has to do with...
THE ASTONISHING DIFFERENCE BETWEEN ANCIENT AND RENNAISANCE SCULPTURE
The top five scuptures were executed in Rome sometime in the 1st or 2nd century A.D. The bottom two are Rennaisance scuptures by Donatello and Michaelangelo. Look at the difference! The Romans seem stern, manly and efficient. The Rennaisance heads seem thoughtful, sensitive and subject to doubt. What a difference! Click on the pictures and see for yourself!
Here are the two Rennaisance sculptures. What are these heads trying to tell us? Would modern heads resemble either of them?
21 comments:
still good post nonetheless. here is my uneducated assumption. could it be that first sculptures were done in the tradition of making busts/homages to leaders, or that they were a way of reproducing a famous leaders image where as the 2nd pictures were done a time where artists had more freedom to indulge in a fuller range of emotion focusing on historic/biblical figures that were more "delicate" and introspective. It might be similar to egyptian art/sculpture of mummies who were adorned with gold and other ornaments to let them be remembered as rich hotty-totty ruler types when weird archaeologists would dig them up.
Yes...what s.g.a. said. Give me the Greeks also. And a speedy recovery to you, Eddie.
Get well soon Eddie!
Wishing you a speedy recovery from surgery!
First things first - speedy recovery, Uncle Eddie!
As to your question about Roman v. Renaissance - In Rome, a good, noble Roman was strong and stoic. In the Renaissance era, beauty and softness was king. This reflected in the artwork and sculptures.
Roman sculptures were always portrayed with strong features and serious faces - even the women! If you look at the surviving sculptures of the emperors, you can see that the sculptors tried to give them stronger facial features and serious faces. A perfect example is the sculpture of Claudius, who was (according to history) handicapped. By looking at his sculpture, one would never know that he stammered, limped, drooled, lost his temper, and had nervous tics.
The Renaissance was all about beauty, which meant softer features and thoughtful looks. Like their Roman counterparts, Renaissance artists frequently took artistic license to make their subject as beautiful as possible. There are a number of stories about how a portrait or sculpture was not necessarily a realistic depiction of the subject.
Also remember that the Romans were very full of themselves. The senators actually saw themselves as gods. For the statues to portray them as anything less than god-like would be treason.
The renaissance however was the era where the heavy yolk of the Catholic church was lifted and artists were free to explore any subject and express it in any way they could. They could portray man as they saw him rather than as what some senator or pope told them to convey.
Y'know, if you take what I said in the previous paragraph and said the opposite, you'd have the system that runs animation today. That's just too sad.
Hey Eddie,
Have you any interest in African sculpture?
Hope you recover quickly from your surgery!
Well, I've dabbled in sculpture. Here are two heads that I did. I don't know how 'modern' they are, maybe you could tell me!
EDDIE! YOUR POOR EYEBALL!
IMO
The Roman busts arn't actually beautiful genuine art but just ego decorations. They are of famous war heros or something. "LOOK HOW STRONG WE ARE WE WIN! LOOK AT our MANLY CHINS!" they are a fantasy to help the confidence of a community.
All the other busts are of real people with actual meaningful expressions. These are beautiful becasue they are true. Truth=beauty
marlo
P.S.
can i be on your theory show?
Eddie you scared me. At first glance, I thought you had been subject to Shoddy Second rate surgery. I was suddenly picturing you in the back of a chinese take out place having your eyes carved by a bus boy on his cigerette break.
I hope you heal at miraculous speed!
Your Pal
V
The Romans were interested in The Classical Ideal, weren't they? Not in plain old ordinary human beings, but in icons, images of perfection; something to strive for and worship and admire if not achieve. Beauty=perfection.
The Renaissance sculptors had plenty of ideas about Beauty, bu they also saw(as Marlo notes)the beauty of the ordinary man--the beauty of the sharp, individual features of specific people rather than idealizing the latest senator in a godlike vein. Truth=beauty--like Marlo said! In fact she said it all first and better! : D
What the hell, I add my verbosity anyways!
Hi Eddie
Do they have to poke your eyeball out to do the surgery?
Just curious as to how grusome it might be.
See ya
Steve
EYEBALL SURGERY MOVIE
Jenny, i love your posts. very insiteful. i SWEAR it's not because of your compliments.....! i love your work and i'm the one with the admiration.
want to have sex? hahaha kidding. or am i?
atleast we should metaphorically!
we should bond artistically. in sketching sessions of passion!
Hey Uncle Eddie - when you are better and when you resume the guest theories, I vote for Marlo as the next guest.
a boring post, but the roman staturs are way better. the one dude looks so bad ass, he looks like he's gonna run through you wiht a sword. it makes me want to go listen to The Showdown. they remidn me of robert de niro
the renaisance guys look like they're on their period but tampax hasn't been invented yet and they're REALLY REALLY craving hostess twinkes, and OH MY GOD, the store was, like, out of them!
We will await your pearls of wisdom with baited breath.
Steve
Most imperial Roman sculpture of the emperors that survives to us is the product of standardized reproduction in order to populate the empire with three dimensional images of the emperor; not the best medium for emotional subtelty. Coinage played a related role until the reign of Gallienus, when standards dove and recognizable numismatic imperial portraits disappeared. Before Gallienus, however, various Imperial figures on coins have clear personalities.
This was an innovation that barely preceded the imperium; no living Roman had been portrayed on the coins of Rome itself until Julius Caesar. Despite his assassination on the basis of the underlying lack of modesty embodied in (amongst other things) his portrait coinage, the other players in the imperatorial period adopted the innovation, and Augustus continued it on his elevation to emperor.
David: Senators did not see themselves as gods, or if they did they had the good sense to kee quiet about it. Roman political history had Republican Rome very wary of kings (the reason Julius Caesar was assassinated).
Under the empire, the emperor himself was commonly worshipped in the provinces, in continuation of how local custom had treated pre-Roman rulers. While there was an official cult of the living emperor within Rome, it would be inaccurate to say most pre-Christian emperors demanded treatment as gods within Rome (and obviously the post Constantinian emperors did not expect religious worship; not even Julian the Apostate).
There were a number of insane emperors who did demand worship, but they didn't last very long (altho to be fair, only a small minority of Roman emperors died of natural causes). And any emperor who was well thought of during his rule was generally raised to godhood after death (again, before the empire became Christian).
Hey Eddie! I hope your eye is well! If not, you could always wear an eye-patch and get a motorbike.... or a ship. Seriously though, I hope your eye is doing good!
Roman stuff can bores me, but Rennaisance stuff always gets my gizzard! The folks of Rennaisance were kind of like rebellious hippies, expect they actually enlightened themselves instead of just staring at the stars with guitars like a hippie would.
I have a theory about another rennaisance that I believe will happen soon... maybe I should draw it up.
Hi everybody: The hospital generator went on the Fritz and my eye operation was postponed till tomorrow morning. I spent part of the day cleaning so I'd have a spotless house to recuperate in.
A Vietnamese woman who lives down the street told me that cataract surgery is no big deal. When she was a kid in Vietnam that kind of thing was done in a store front by an old woman with a razor and a sharpened piece of porcelin to scrape with. Can that be true?
I'm amazed by the erudition of the people who comment here. There were some terrific comments on the scuptures. For my part I think the best Roman heads were artful even though people may have had practical reasons for ordering them.
I wish you could have seen the book I got them from. It's one of the best photographed books on sculpture I've ever seen. It's called "Roman Portraits" --no author--printed by The Oxford University Press, maybe in the mid 50s. I also like the Donatello book by the same publisher. Both these books are Far, far better books than anything you could buy now.
Marlo: I'll give you the Theory Chair as soon as I can, probably in a few days!
Eddie
Donatello! Yummy.
When I discovered him at age 12 I thought I was going to die. That "David"...wow. What a figure.
>A Vietnamese woman who lives down the street told me that cataract surgery is no big deal. When she was a kid in Vietnam that kind of thing was done in a store front by an old woman with a razor and a sharpened piece of porcelin to scrape with. Can that be true?
Ooooh! Do that one! If tehy mess up you'll be like Tex Avery... or you'll die a painful death... Hmmm... tough choice!
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