1863–1942
[0:00] [music]
Dr. Steven Zucker: [0:05] We’re in the room in the Metropolitan Museum of Art that’s devoted to Archaic Greek sculpture.
Dr. Beth Harris: [0:11] Most of it funerary, so sculpture meant to mark graves.
Dr. Zucker: [0:15] I just saw a man walk over to this 2,600-year-old sculpture and put his hand as a kind of caress against her backside. Of course, this is wrong in so many ways. What happened is for him, 2,600 years collapsed. That sculpture was this sensuous female figure.
Dr. Harris: [0:32] That man walking through the Met felt something that the ancient Greeks felt when they made these sculptures. They were a lot of other things, but they were also deeply sensual.
Dr. Zucker: [0:42] We came into this room to look at a kouros, a funerary sculpture of a young man. It’s a life-size marble.
Dr. Harris: [0:49] We should say a nude young man because as we’ve just learned, although the female figure is clothed, when the Greeks made these, the female figures were clothed and the male figures were nude. Both were equally sensual.
Dr. Zucker: [1:00] The only thing he’s wearing is a little choker around his neck, and a headband, a fillet. What struck me was that the man who sculpted this kouros figure was creating something that was meant to trespass lifetimes, to exist longer than any individual.
Dr. Harris: [1:17] It’s made of stone, and it endured for millennia. It was made to mark a tomb. Indeed, it was meant to last and to serve as a reminder not only of his life but of his connection to his family, of his family’s lineage across time.
Dr. Zucker: [1:33] It’s important to note that this would have been made for an aristocratic family. It’s also important to note that this is not a portrait in the way that we think of that in the modern era. It’s not in any way a likeness. It is, instead, a symbol.
Dr. Harris: [1:45] An ideal of manhood, of perfection. I’m interested in the way that in the 6th century [B.C.E.], we have sculpture during this Archaic period that’s made largely for aristocratic families, for the elite in Athens and the surrounding area.
[2:02] When we move into the 5th century [B.C.E.], with the developments toward democracy, we have sculptures that are made and commissioned for the state and by the state that are very different than what we see during the Archaic period.
[2:14] This early Greek image, so clearly dependent on the ancient Egyptians. We could go through the ancient Egyptian galleries and see figures very much like this. Usually they’re wearing a loincloth or some kind of clothing representing the pharaoh, representing the kings of Egypt.
Dr. Zucker: [2:29] There’s a real distinction here, which is that this figure is cut away from the stone. The stone between his legs is removed. There is no stone backing. He stands upright in this gallery, in the middle of the room, completely unaided by anything but his own two legs. There is a kind of extraordinary autonomy that results.
Dr. Harris: [2:48] Well, autonomy and so much more, because when the Egyptians embedded that figure in the stone, they gave it a sense of transcendence, of timelessness, of being godlike in some way.
[2:59] By freeing the figure from the stone, we immediately have a sense of him being much more like us. Much more human.
Dr. Zucker: [3:06] Existing in our space.
Dr. Harris: [3:07] Exactly. Moving into our space, striding forward.
Dr. Zucker: [3:11] Look at his stance. His shoulders are squared. His hips are squared. His leg is forward.
Dr. Harris: [3:17] There’s a sense of movement, but no real movement.
Dr. Zucker: [3:20] Those limbs are locked in place, even as they’re representing symbolically the forward movement of the figure.
Dr. Harris: [3:27] So during the Classical period, in the next century, the Greeks will make figures that stand in contrapposto. That is, they’ve shifted their weight. Their weight is firmly on one leg. One knee is bent and the whole body becomes asymmetrical.
[3:39] Here, really, aside from that one foot being forward, the figure is very symmetrical. It occupies a very strange place between being here present with us and also being absent from us. That’s in the gaze, too. There’s a way that he looks past us. He doesn’t engage us.
Dr. Zucker: [3:57] The lack of contrapposto, the symmetry, does place him in some ways firmly in a world that is not ours. A kind of ideal, perfect world.
Dr. Harris: [4:06] His features have been reduced to geometric shapes. Even his body parts are very geometric.
Dr. Zucker: [4:13] As a result, very much isolated from each other. You have an arm which seems distinct from the torso, as opposed to creating a smooth transition. In fact, you might even look at this sculpture and see it as very cubic.
[4:24] Perhaps even referencing the four sides of the stone that this was carved from. One can imagine a block of marble that the sculptor is approaching from four different sides.
Dr. Harris: [4:33] Actually drawing the figure on those four sides and then cutting the stone away and using a system of proportions. Very much like the Egyptians did.
Dr. Zucker: [4:43] The sculptor has been really careful about creating a kind of alternation between flat areas, for instance of the face, against much more complex and deeply carved areas, the braided or beaded hair, which creates this beautiful frame for the face.
[4:57] Now this is a huge block of stone. It weighs about 2,000 pounds. It’s about a ton of stone that remains. It really is a tremendous feat, being able to create a sculpture that is balanced and supported on essentially two narrow ankles.
Dr. Harris: [5:11] Without falling over.
Dr. Zucker: [5:12] But you’ll notice that the sculptor has left a little bit of a bridge between the clenched fists at his side and his hips to help support those arms. Because if they were free-hanging, they would be too fragile.
Dr. Harris: [5:24] Even so, you can see that this sculpture is 2,600 years old. It was obviously put back together by the museum. Over time, it broke. It’s always interesting to look for that and to notice what may be a reconstruction and what’s original, although here, I think everything that we’re seeing is original.
[5:41] [music]
