Bit of a Nigecorp workstorm going on, but I can't resist passing on this great good news story from the world of butterflies. Despite having a life cycle apparently calculated to court extinction, this fascinating species has been saved by its human friends - and good for them. Then there's this, the latest on the Parthenon frieze. It's always disturbing (I find) to be reminded of how colourful - to the point of brashness, and probably beyond - the ancient world was. What colours on earth could possibly improve on the marble perfection of that frieze? Or is that just post-classical aesthetic prejudice speaking? In the equally disturbing case of medieval church architecture - where every surface, it seems, was originally painted in strong colours, patterns and pictures - it still seems a very bad idea, and the efforts of the Victorians to revive the polychromatic style seem largely to confirm just how bad. When it comes to classical sculpture, we have to rely on computer-generated simulations - and the effects are shocking. I remember a recent simulation on TV of what the Venus de Milo would have originally looked like, two-armed and in full colour, and it was ghastly. Ah well - the last word should go to Keats. But would he have felt the same if confronted with the full-colour frieze?
Too right about the colours - ruins the whole thing, the essential eternal classicism of the bare marble.
ReplyDeleteLikewise a thing sounds much more profound when uttered in Latin (whereas if Latin was your first language, it would just be another opinion).
Colour in the ancient world offers a different kind of vibe but not an inferior one, at a guess. The grand basilicas and forums were working places, packed with colour and of course with people. So it's good to be reminded of this, perhaps. I'd imagine that one of the bustling temples in southern India would be the nearest one might get to these places today. As for medieval churches, some of the surviving art from these strikes me as wonderful. There are the interiors in the National Museum of Catalan Art in Barcelona, for example. I'm sure some of it would have been a little gaudy to a modern eye but a lot of it would have been scuffed and quickly aged by hordes of folks just doing stuff, not to mention clouds of smoke from lamps, thurifers and, er, sacrifices. Closer to home, think of the front of Wells Cathedral when all those sculptures were gilded and catching the sun. I suppose the gods were once very much here, now and blazing all around with the force of those colours. These days they are some place else. Maybe our closest equivalent is the neon strip, Las Vega style?
ReplyDeleteCall me a cynic, but I suspect a case of archeologists reading too much into scant evidence. That the sculptures were brightly coloured is acceptable, but who decided the decoration was quite so offensive? I'm inclined to believe that the poor buggers who have to paint the reproductions simply don't have to hand the aesthetical intuition and experience of an ancient greek, with garish results. A similar dillemma is faced by whoever paints the artist's impression of dinosaurs, especially since paleontologists decided they too were more colourfully dressed than the muddy browns and greens previously suspected of them.
ReplyDeleteI think to appreciate the virtues of colourful churches and statues you need to place them in the context of a pretty drab world. When almost everything else was a shade of brown the appreciation of colour would have been very different. Today's advert-drenched, car-infested, synthetically-dyed world doesn't need any more stimulation from colour, a reason we find the white austerity of bare stone and marble so refreshing.
ReplyDeleteGaw, you are brilliant and, I am sure, right.
ReplyDeleteCrumbs. Thanks Susan.
ReplyDelete'Crumbs' as in the British expression of surprise (I hasten to add as I believe you may be American!)
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