How Did Ancient Greek Culture Influence Western Art And Culture

The classical era in Ancient Greece helped shape western art and culture, this moved on into creating a modern and humanist era. Greeks looked to sculptors and statues to illustrate the classical ideals through the various eras and how Ancient Greece developed a world view.

Greeks developed a strong belief in classical ideals in how for and representation should be in their culture. The Greeks moulded their world through the influences of art such as paintings, sculptures and temples. Ancient Greece became the precursor of art in the third era, the architects of the Classical age.

From the Archaic age major developments moved Ancient Greece forward in the Classical era. Sculptures began to develop from being Stationary and solid to a more

fluent, natural creation. In more realistic poised formations, drawing comparison between the Archaic period (figure 1) to the Development of the Classical period where sculptures began to demonstrate style, fluidity and detail in features.

Ancient statues were representations of Christian religion and ethics. As well as religion this period also prompted a deeper meaning of power, ambition and the ideal.

Classical ideals revived the Renaissance and viewing things differently, for example Michelago’s biblical figure David changed the perception of Sculpture. Giving a seemingly earthly figure the notion that he could in fact be seen with a grand status such as a god or deity would have been sculpted.
In relation this brought through humanism and link through with the classical ideal of an individual and the beauty of the natural world in human form. Although at this time in the Renaissance religious art was till very popular. The creation of David sculpture became controversial, as it was more acceptable to paint or sculpt saints or holy figures. The classical ideal was revived with more of a focus on realism and naturalism and finding the ideal in the real.

When picturing the ideal in a painting of a landscape many artists in the Renaissance aimed to create beautiful settings that viewers would exhume as an ideal representation of a natural landscape.
Paintings of the 17th century in particular changed the views of the outside world. In following up to the end of the dark ages, the outside world was perceived as a scary, dangerous and unpleasant place.

With the movement of the Picturesque coming into effect it changed the perception that the outside landscapes weren’t simply dangerous and undesirable, but began to be embraced for its wild untamed beauty. Paintings began to picture landscapes in a more romanticised manner.

Renaissance Art started capturing the beauty of natural landscapes to the point where they became picturesque. It began juxtaposing the real as it separated from naturalism and realism. Although a picturesque painting is perceived as the real and is believable, these landscapes are logically unattainable. The Picturesque is a dressed up reality it is elevated to be more than what it is in its natural raw form. In relation to the picturesque, Claude Lorrain (see figure 3) depicts Apollo and the Muses, in a picturesque landscape.
In this landscape painting a temple is placed highly on the hillside in a placid landscape where people are seen dancing in the greenery, animals peacefully placed in nature and a man (Apollo) laying in the sun calm and relaxed. Its scenes like these where a viewer would see the picturesque. As one would not find tall temples in such a natural rural setting, or a group of people dancing and playing along side the presence of wildlife. In reality people dancing and in such a large group at that time would most likely not be found in the middle of the wilderness, and would most likely have startled the animals and scared them away.

Photography began to be present in the late 18th century and was invented by Louis Jacques Mande Daguerre. This is where the term Daguerreotype was a prominent name for photography and was derived from the inventer’s name. The invention of photography broadened representation and allowed users to capture specific moments in time with ease “Photography democratized the visual image and created a new relationship to past space and time.” – Nicholas, Mirzoeff.
Although photography captured representation accurately, it was deemed by some critics to be not art.

The battle between whether photography was or wasn’t art was difficult at the time of its surface.

Photography captured the real and captured a moment such as a painting would do, but was also not accepted as the real. As you could view the image of a place or time and could have never have been present of seen that location in reality.

There was a thin line between the truth it conveyed but also a false reality due to the fact it captured images in the same way a painting could.

Critics felt photography could not be placed in the same genre as Art as in the 19th century Art was created by the talented and captured through hand made paintings, sculptures and drawings. To take a photograph required practically no skill or talent supposedly giving anyone the ability to take a photo (create art).

“for the fist time, it was possible the ordinary person to record his or her life with certainty and to create personal archives for future generations” – Nicholas Mirzoeff. Photography in the Renaissance had captured an ordinary person in their world through ideal representation, and allowed anyone to document their own life without needing to be a powerful or famous

figure.

Technology expanding allowed our view of certain locations to be more controlled, in paintings figures were painted in full figure and hardly breached the frame, where as in photography cropping objects and figures were easily accomplished.

In line with cropping and controlling what the eye sees in photo is it also found to be present in other medias such as advertising and film.
In advertising what a viewer sees is easily controlled and often gives viewers a more glorified perception, such as making a destination more pleasant than perhaps what the reality is. For example taking a photograph of a beautiful flower, that is found in a swamp. Could become a scopic regime as the photograph could control what the viewer sees, by cropping the surroundings of the flower. Making it more appealing than what it is in reality.

This leads back to representation and how reality can still be distorted and manipulated to being seen as more ideal than real.