Power And Pathos Of The Hellenistic Era - 1784 Words

Power and Pathos uses 50 absolute masterpieces to tell the story of the spectacular artistic developments of the Hellenistic era (4th to 1st centuries B.C.), when new forms of expression began to prevail throughout the Mediterranean basin and beyond. There was an extraordinary leap forward in the development of techniques to form the first instance of globalization of the language of art in the known world. Art was in effect, going international. This exhibit has gathered together some of the most spectacular ancient bronze sculptures that still exists today. It displays monumental life sized figures of Gods, Heroes, Athletes and rulers. Ancient cultures invented bronze. They discovered that making an alloy of copper and tin produced a strong metal that could hold great detail and objects cast with it can easily be reproduced. The ancient Greeks prized bronze for its visual worth and they used it create statue of the human body. Unfortunately, because bronze is a metal that can be ca st and is expensive, it can also be melted down. Hence, large bronze statues have rarely survived from antiquity, as most were melted down so that their valuable metal can be reused. The ones that are still preserved today are mostly the same ones that were either lost at sea or buried underground. This paper in particular discusses two of the statues exhibited at the Power and Pathos exhibit at The Getty Center in Los Angeles. It analyses and compares the statuette of Alexander the Great onShow MoreRelatedSimilarities And Differences Between Ancient And Hellenistic Period And The Piombino Apollo1296 Words   |  6 Pagesscholars to distinguish this statue as Hellenistic rather than Archaic. The modelling of the back is one of the biggest alterations that occurs between actual kouros from the archaic period and the Piombino Apollo. The back of the statue is much more artistically advanced than the front regarding modelling (Ridgway 1967: 48). The subtle modelling of the muscular structures and ridges of the spine of the back suggest the desired realism of the Hellenistic era, instead of the basic and ridged ‘idealized’