DOI article:
No. III: The influence of athletic games upon greek art
DOI Page / Citation link:https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.11444#0437
III.]
APPENDIX.
401
room or calling in the help of the anatomist. And when once the artist
was called upon to commemorate by means of his art the outward form
of the athlete whose perfect development gained him the glory of victory
and monumental fame, we can then see how the sculptor was led away
from the conventional archaic types of gods down to nature in living,
active, and well-formed man.
All this more or less a priori reasoning makes it most probable that
the palaestra was the most important agent in bringing Greek art down
to nature in the fifty years marking the " period of transition." An
actual examination of the facts and a careful study of Greek art with
this question before the mind, give the most conclusive evidence of the
supreme influence exercised by the games and the palaestra. I cannot
hope in this short address to place before you all the instances bearing
upon this subject which I have collected for the last four years, and
which have shown me conclusively that we must ascribe to the palaestra
the chief influence in freeing Greek art from its conventional trammels.
On the other hand I do not mean to appeal to your faith in my personal
statement; but I believe that the instances which I am able to place
before you in diagrams and casts will suffice to illustrate and support the
points to which I shall draw your attention. Still I feel bound to inform
you that the choice of these special instances has often been guided by
mere convenience and readiness of access, and that in many cases, as
with some of the vases, the diagrams were made for other purposes; and
thus it cannot be said that I have chosen but a few instances happening
to prove my generalisations.
From the most general point of view, we must be struck by the fact
that the Greeks, the one people in antiquity whose art is possessed of
nature, were also the one people with whom athletic games were a
national institution, wide spread and part of daily life. I have
endeavoured to show elsewhere how this fact as well as the plastic
predisposition of the Greek race was a necessary outcome of the funda-
mental characteristics of the race and their physical and social surround-
ings, and to point out that Oriental nations and those living in a
tropical or northern climate could not develop the same characteristics.
We must at least note the fact that the two distinctive elements of Greek
life, a high development of athletic institutions and of naturalism in
plastic art, are found together.
But what tends more directly to show the immediate influence of the
athletic games and to solve the main question we have placed before us,
is the fact that the fifty years which,mark the transition from convention-
ality to freedom and nature in art are also the years in which the
W. 26
APPENDIX.
401
room or calling in the help of the anatomist. And when once the artist
was called upon to commemorate by means of his art the outward form
of the athlete whose perfect development gained him the glory of victory
and monumental fame, we can then see how the sculptor was led away
from the conventional archaic types of gods down to nature in living,
active, and well-formed man.
All this more or less a priori reasoning makes it most probable that
the palaestra was the most important agent in bringing Greek art down
to nature in the fifty years marking the " period of transition." An
actual examination of the facts and a careful study of Greek art with
this question before the mind, give the most conclusive evidence of the
supreme influence exercised by the games and the palaestra. I cannot
hope in this short address to place before you all the instances bearing
upon this subject which I have collected for the last four years, and
which have shown me conclusively that we must ascribe to the palaestra
the chief influence in freeing Greek art from its conventional trammels.
On the other hand I do not mean to appeal to your faith in my personal
statement; but I believe that the instances which I am able to place
before you in diagrams and casts will suffice to illustrate and support the
points to which I shall draw your attention. Still I feel bound to inform
you that the choice of these special instances has often been guided by
mere convenience and readiness of access, and that in many cases, as
with some of the vases, the diagrams were made for other purposes; and
thus it cannot be said that I have chosen but a few instances happening
to prove my generalisations.
From the most general point of view, we must be struck by the fact
that the Greeks, the one people in antiquity whose art is possessed of
nature, were also the one people with whom athletic games were a
national institution, wide spread and part of daily life. I have
endeavoured to show elsewhere how this fact as well as the plastic
predisposition of the Greek race was a necessary outcome of the funda-
mental characteristics of the race and their physical and social surround-
ings, and to point out that Oriental nations and those living in a
tropical or northern climate could not develop the same characteristics.
We must at least note the fact that the two distinctive elements of Greek
life, a high development of athletic institutions and of naturalism in
plastic art, are found together.
But what tends more directly to show the immediate influence of the
athletic games and to solve the main question we have placed before us,
is the fact that the fifty years which,mark the transition from convention-
ality to freedom and nature in art are also the years in which the
W. 26