Roman Pottery

I visited the Art Institute Chicago to learn about Greek and Roman Art on October 7, 2014. It was really fascinating to view the different types of art of Greek and Roman cultures. I learned about Greek pottery, Roman glass, coins of different emperors, and various sculptures. It helped me to understand more about the class material by letting me imagine the people during those times, the lifestyle conditions that they were experiencing, and how they communicated and essentially wrote history through art.

Pottery was a common art form of the Greeks. Pottery was used for eating and drinking, and also for the storage of wines and oils. Many of the pottery works exhibit scenes from daily life. Pottery was made into many unique shapes and sizes

Two techniques that especially stood out to me were the black-figure technique and the red-figure technique. The black-figure technique was a method where black figures were against a red backround. The red-figure technique was the opposite, where red figures were against a black background. These techniques were used in Athens as a way of decorating jars, bowls, wine cups, mixing bowls, and vases. The Greeks developed geometry into art. The pottery had geometric designs and patterns that were used as decorations on the pottery. One specific medium that I noticed in a lot of the art was terracotta. This is a type of clay that was used to create pottery. It was especially interesting to see what Greeks used in their daily lives in comparison to what we use now. Some of our daily china is made of pottery like stoneware, but in those times one could clearly see the handmade results versus the modern day machine-made

Portraits and sculptures of empires was a big part of Roman art and were made out of marble. The sculptures consisted of naked men and women that showed various stories.

The museum also featured many marble statues. The greek marble statues had two names. The male statues were called kouros and the female statues were called kore. The art institute presented many vessels that was also a form of art that was produced in ancient Greece. The vessels varied from shape and size. The vessels were made in diverse materials, some of which were made from silver, gold, bronze, stone, glass, and terracotta. They were often shaped into animals figures, mythical creatures, human figures, and decorated with geometric patterns.

I got to see the different coins that portrayed different emperors. One side of the coin was a picture of the emperor and the other side was the emperor’s accomplishments. Being able to see Greek and Roman Art was truly a great experience. It helped me understand both Greek and Roman art by being able to read and see the art that was made in those times. It was really interesting to see the different types of pottery and sculptures that were created in Greek and Roman times. I got to see different portraits of empires that were made out of marble and also read the significance of them and what they accomplished. The museum contains a limestone head of bearded man, a portrait of man who was