Greek Style: Ancient Greek Art and Architecture Marshall High School Mr. Cline Western Civilization I: Ancient Foundations Unit Three IB * Ancient Greek Architecture • Of all the ancient architectural styles, Greek architecture has proven to be the most enduring. • Sure, the Egyptians built some impressive structures, and the Romans pulled off some amazing feats of engineering. • But you don't see us building pyramids anymore - at least, nowhere but Vegas - and even Roman engineering marvels incorporated Greek form and style. • Greek architecture is more than just impressive, it is timeless. • You don't have to dig in ruins to find Greek architecture; it's all around you. • Don't believe me? Go visit a civic structure, city hall, a theatre, a bank, a library, a museum. • Or, if you're really ambitious, head to DC (or any Western capitol for that matter). • What do you see? * Ancient Greek Architecture • Columns, columns, columns, columns, columns. • In short, if you want a Westerner to think something is important, put columns on it - and not just any columns, Greek columns. * Ancient Greek Architecture • Orders of Greek Columns • Greek columns come in three varieties, or orders: Doric, Ionic and Corinthian. • All three share the same fluted column, or drum. • Where they differ is at the top, what is called the capital of the column. • And what better place to learn about column capitals than at our nation's capitol? • For of all the world's cities, none is more indebted to classical Greek architecture than Washington, DC. • Let us start with the Lincoln Memorial. • Look at those lovely columns. • These are columns of the Doric order. • They're the simplest of the Greek columns, with a tapered disc supporting a square top. * Ancient Greek Architecture • Orders of Greek Columns • Now let's skip along to the Jefferson Memorial. See those little curlies at the top? That tells us that these are columns of the Ionic order. * Ancient Greek Architecture • Orders of Greek Columns • Let us end our tour at the Capitol Building itself. • See that fancy filigree at the top of the columns? • It sort of looks like a very symmetrical plant tried to grow at the top? • This is a column of the Corinthian order. • Corinthian columns come in many forms, each more ornate than the last, but they all share the same undeniably leafy quality. There; now you know the three orders of Greek columns and can impress or annoy your friends by pointing them out as you walk around town. Yet there was more to Greek architecture than just columns. The Greeks built breathtaking temples, as well as treasuries, stadiums and theatres. Temples Your basic Greek temple is a roofed rectangle surrounded by columns. That's me in front of a particularly old Greek temple in Corinth. What sort of columns are those? That's right, Doric. Well done. Decorations on the entablature separated by triglyphs are called metopes Metopes Anyway, these temples had a long, angled roof, peaking on the short ends to form a triangle called a pediment. These shallow shelters were filled with life-size sculptures. The roof rested upon an even plane called an entablature, which spanned the gaps between columns to provide a solid surface. As temple-building developed, architects added decorations to the entablature called metopes, separated from each other by three lines called a triglyph. Further developments and bigger temples led to the addition of a second row of columns with a continuous decoration called a frieze running along the top. Inside the temple was a smaller enclosure called a naos lined with its own columns. This was the holiest place of the temple and usually housed an idol of the deity for whom the temple was built. Sometimes the Greeks would switch up column styles within the naos, putting the hefty Doric on the outside and the delicate Ionic or Corinthian within. Perhaps the most famous Greek temple is the Parthenon. The Athenians began building this temple to Athena in 447 BCE and did not complete it until 15 years later. Like all Greek city-states, the Athenians built their most impressive temples atop the highest point in town, called the acropolis (literally 'high city'). The Parthenon had all the elements of a Greek temple: the columns and entablature, the pediment full of sculptures. It even had the extra features: metopes depicting a battle between Centaurs and Lapiths, the second row of columns with their accompanying frieze depicting a civic procession of Athenians in exquisite detail, and, within, the naos, recreated here by the fine folks at Nashville's Centennial Park: big idol of Athena on the inside. Yet these images cannot convey the overall effect of this building. You simply have to be there. Standing among the columns, you see the clever tricks of the eye Greek architects used to make the Parthenon tower imposingly. You can see how they tapered the columns at the top to make the building seem taller, a trick they called entasis. As you examine more closely, you notice that there is not a single right angle or straight line in the entire Parthenon. Yet the mind expects right angles, it expects straight lines. By taking advantage of the mind's expectations, the Greek architects could make the Parthenon appear even larger than it actually was. The overall effect is one of airy grandeur. Entasis refers to tapering columns toward the top to make the building seem taller Entasis Treasuries and Stadiums Treasuries and stadiums pop up in important pan-Hellenic sites like Delphi and Olympia, places where all the Greeks came to worship, meet and compete. Stadiums provided a place to watch competitions. These stadiums were not the massive round affairs that we have today but rather tiered benches along the side of a long track called a stade, which is where we get the name 'stadium.' Competitors would race down the stade and back again. Here's me and some friends running the stade at Delphi. Of course, the Greeks would have done this naked, but there were ladies present. My friend Mel and I were actually arrested months later for running naked through the ancient stadium of Olympia. Apparently the Greek police don't know a historical reproduction when they see one. Still, they were good sports and dropped us off at our hotel, though we never got the chance to recover our clothes. For all I know, they're still there, part of the historical record. Another way city-states competed at these holy sites was by making lavish donations to the god, which they housed in treasuries. Being full of treasure, treasuries lacked the airy openness of Greek temples. They were squat, strong houses with opulent facades to declare the glory of the polis that built it and hint at the wealth stored within. The form of these treasuries is often mimicked by today's banks. Theatres Yet perhaps the most distinctly Greek piece of architecture is the theatre. Indeed, an archaeologist can identify a Greek colony based on little else. Greeks used their theatres for more than just entertainment. Theatre was both religious and competitive, and the Greeks took theatre and music competitions as seriously as their sporting events. If the Greeks had refined their engineering skills in their temples, they mastered it in their theatres. Greek theatres are an engineering marvel: vast enough to seat thousands yet precisely designed to carry the slightest sound all the way to the back. At the center of every Greek theatre lays a small stone. This is the sweet spot of the theatre. That's Mel, of the Olympia debacle, standing on the sweet spot at Epidaurus, home of the largest and best-preserved of the Greek theatres. From that spot, even the slightest whisper resonates, and spoken words ring like the voice of God. I've been a singer all my life, and I could not resist. I stood upon that sweet spot and sang my face off, and let me tell you, no stage, no hall, no cathedral can match the acoustic mastery of the Greek theatre. Greek theatres were precisely designed to carry sound all the way to the back Greek Theatres Legacy The Greeks left us an architectural legacy that, in my humble opinion, we have failed to improve upon. In 3,000 years none have matched the Greek balance of elegance and power, grace, and gravity. Sure, Roman arches are quite useful, and their domes defied gravity. Medieval castles can be beautiful, and Gothic cathedrals near take the breath away. Yet Roman architecture, like the Romans themselves, was always more practical than artistic. Castles are beautiful relics. And we don't build many Gothic cathedrals these days. Steel and glass have replaced stone, and steel and glass have allowed modern architects to construct marvels unimagined by the Greeks. Yet the very vastness of our skyscrapers does not lend itself to a human experience. They are not built to a human scale. You might spy them from afar, gape upwards from their base or downward from their top, but you cannot really grasp the entirety of a skyscraper; it is simply too big. So while it may seem that we have achieved with steel what the Greeks merely suggested with curves and angles, Greek architecture, by tailoring itself to human perception, somehow contrives to be grander than the tallest tower. No Rental Hall Required When planning a wedding or reception - as most grooms are displeased to find - there can be literally thousands choices to make. Perhaps the most important is where to hold the event.