Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

The Discobolus, the Venus de Milo and the Parthenon frieze are sculptural masterpieces of worldwide renown. But our appreciation of them as works of art, enshrined in museums, is far removed from the way in which the ancient Greeks saw and perceived them. In order to fully comprehend Greek sculpture, it is important to recreate the conditions of its production and consider those who commissioned, used and viewed it, as well as the sculptors themselves. displayed, and restores its former cultural significance. In its original, intended setting, Greek sculpture not only looked quite different - massed together or elevated on pediments and friezes, and brightly painted - but it also served surprising social, religious and political purposes. Illustrated with diverse examples, this text draws upon literary, historical, and archaeological evidence to explain the techniques of the manufacture of Greek sculpture, tracing its production over a period of some 700 years from the eighth century BC to the Hellenistic period.

Reviews provided by Syndetics

CHOICE Review

It is difficult to say something fresh and provocative about Greek sculpture, but Spivey (classics, Cambridge) has done so in an excellent, perceptive book. He rejects the dehistoricized treatment of Greek sculpture as aesthetically charged museum objects in favor of establishing the original circumstances of its existence as the collective expression of an attitude about man/woman, nature, and the gods, binding together makers, patrons, and viewers. With the exception of Pheidias, whom he equates with Michelangelo, Spivey has written a history of art without attributions, describing the invention of the male athletic body as an organizing convention for representing kalokagathia ("good-laden beauty"), the technical developments that progressively enhance that imagery, and the cumulative effect of the sculptural assemblies of gods and humans in the great sanctuaries and public places. His analysis of the rise of hero cults and their imagery shows how these set the stage for the Athenians' exploitation of Marathon as the programmatic basis for the arts that culminates in the monuments of fifth-century Athens. There is much more in this objective, but not dispassionate, encomium of Greek sculpture, great in technique, subject matter, and precedental imagery that will reward close reading. Illustrations, unfortunately, are mediocre. Upper-division undergraduate; graduate; general. R. Brilliant Columbia University