This exhibition is a joint project of the J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angles, Foundazione Palazzo Strazzi, Florence, and the National Galley of Art, Washington, DC in collaoration with the Soprintendenza per i Beni Archeologici della Toscana.
Well, no, and I will comment more below about comparing Hellenistic sculpture with, e.g., Rodin, below.
Here are some of my favorites from the exhibition.
Power
The classical, ideal Greek male body: the athlete. (Larger than life size.)
Another athlete (fragments of a discus thrower).
(Life size.)
Pathos
A weary Herckles. (1/4 life size.)
By “pathos” they frequently mean “the weight of life” as reflected in the furloughs and lines on the face.
Portraiture
They also do portraiture.
An aristocratic boy.
(Though most photos of these statues are face-on, many of these – especially this one – look even more life-like in profile or 3/4 view. That was definitely the case for this one. (I could not sneak a photo because the were photo cops in every room of the exhibition. I had aleady been caught taking the discus thrower photo, and was afraid they would throw me out if they caught me again. )
BTW, this exhibit will be at the Getty in a few months and I will try and organize an expedition to see it.
Aletheia / Veritas: The New Canon, Gianfranco Adornato
The exhibition catalogue contains a number of essays, one of which talks about the ways in which Hellenistic art explored “explored new iconographic themes and sculptural models in a manner that was not different from what was happening in other fields, such as literature, in which the poetic canons underwent alterations, changes, and inversions. Hellenistic works of art explore and expand a thematic repertoire that was completely foreign to the mentality of the citizen of the Classical polis. We see terror in the gaze of Marsyas (fig.) modest and intimate poses in a crouching Aphrodite, erotic abandon in the position of a sleeping Faun, bitter smiles on the faces of toothless old men, affectionate gestures directed towards plump children like an Eros fast asleep on a rock (cat. 20), skeletal and deformed bodies of the diseased and of dwarfs (fig.). These are portraits that faithfully reproduce facial features playing upon the emotional and psychological feeling of involvement and integration the work of art can arouse in the observer. (“Aletheia / Veritas: The New Canon” by Gianfranco Adornato)
Emaciated man, early Imperial Roman copy of a Hellenistic statue, c. second century BC. Bronze, h 11.5 cm. Washington, DC, Dumbarton Oaks Collection, inv. no. 47.22. (From “Power and Pathos: Bronze Sculpture of the Hellenistic World” by Jens M Daehner and Kenneth Lapatin. Exhibition catalogue, “Aletheia / Veritas: The New Canon” by Gianfranco Adornato.)
Hanging Marsyas, detail of the face, Imperial Roman copy of a late Hellenistic sculptural group; from the Auditorium of Maecenas, mid-second century AD. Marble, h 266 cm. Rome, Musei Capitolini, inv. no. 1077. (From “Power and Pathos: Bronze Sculpture of the Hellenistic World” by Jens M Daehner and Kenneth Lapatin. Exhibition catalogue, “Aletheia / Veritas: The New Canon” by Gianfranco Adornato.)
Boxing dwarf, second century BC or early Imperial Roman bronze. h 11.1 cm. Boston, Museum of Fine Arts, inv. no. RES.08.32k. (From “Power and Pathos: Bronze Sculpture of the Hellenistic World” by Jens M Daehner and Kenneth Lapatin. Exhibition catalogue, “Aletheia / Veritas: The New Canon” by Gianfranco Adornato.)
Comparison
Looking at Rodin as a modern counterpoint, his focus was less on the idealized stereotypes/idealizations of the Hellenistic sculptures and more on capturing the Gestault / psychological essence of the situation:
The Kiss
The (condemned) Burghers of Calais (coming out to meet their fate and deliver the keys of the City to the British.)
However, Rodin was fully capable of the highly realistic sculpture of the ideal form, as in the Age of Bronze.
When the “Age of Bronze” was first exhibited in Paris, the “establishment” artists accused him of taking a plaster mold of the young man and casting it. Nothing could be further from the truth. Rodin’s model was a mature, 22 yr old Belgian soldier. The artistic result was a perfect/idealized 17 year old boy.
(One does wonder if Rodin ever saw “Terme Ruler” in Rome:)
Terme Ruler. Statue of a Macedonian Prince, from the Quirinal, Rome, third-second century BC. Bronze, h 222 cm. Rome, Museo Nazionale Romano, Palazzo Massimo alle Terme, inv. no. 1049. (From “Power and Pathos: Bronze Sculpture of the Hellenistic World” by Jens M Daehner and Kenneth Lapatin. Exhibition catalog.)
RA’s Bronze
Several of the works in Power and Pathos also appeared in the Royal Academy’s monumental exhibition “Bronze,” that I will talk about in another post. This was an exhibition that was unique in its scale and scope, and it will probably never be repeated. (The estimated value of the art on display was $1 to $2 billion and no one would insure it. The British Government agreed to indemnify the exhibition, but the major lenders did not really believe this. In the end that pulled it off and the result was astounding.)
Western Marches 