REFLECTION OF SOCIAL VALUES IN ANCIENT GREEK ART

Origins of today’s modern western civilization lie in Ancient Greece. So anything concerning the Greek civilization has been drawing mankind’s attention throughout the centuries. Certainly, it’s visual art is the first side that attracts attention.
Whenever Ancient Greek art is mentioned, the monumental sculptures of gods’ are remembered initially. But one wonders, under which inspiration did the human being conceive the world of gods before sculpting these god resemblances?
According to Nietzsche, the reason why the Greek gods existed or the philosophy which constituted the background of the world of gods was the Silenus legend. According to the story; king Midas chases Silenus, the divinity of the woodland and the fountains to benefit from his prediction. After catching him, he asks what the best is for the human race. The answer is; not to be born and the second best is even if you were, to die at once .
The enviromental conditions that man was born into are one of the most important agents determining the view of life. When the natural character of Greece and Western Anatolia is thought it is natural that the ancient Greek thought which was developed within this area had a optimistic philosophy of life. As Nietzsche stressed; the Greeks had known the merciless and ugly aspects of life. But the success and wisdom of the Greek lied in concealing the dreadful side of life. He did this by creating the world of gods who ruled at Olympus .
The passion for Ancient Greek civilization increased as a result of the excavations in Pompeii and Herculanium in the 18th century. Thinkers such as Goethe, Schiller, Kant and Hegel tried to explain the Ancient art in the light of the Enlightenment era thought. Schiller noticed the strong expression of an ideal person in Greek aesthetics. “In the union of form and contents, with a philosophical and creative but also sensitive and vigorous way, we see that the Greeks joined together the youthfulness of imagination and the bravery of logic in a bright mankind” .
We know that the most important element which differed the Ancient Greek civilization from it’s contemporaries was the value it gave to being a man. This culture ascended on the humanistic values. Man was the most important element both in thought and art. Poets such as Hesiod and Homer related and shaped the world of anthropomorphic gods in their legends. The world of gods in Hesiod’s “Theogony” and the relations between the divinities and human race in “Iliad” and “Odyssey” reflect this point of view perfectly.
The world of gods which Hesiod and Homer created did not only provide material for visual arts but also played a part in the formation of Ancient Greek philosophy. According to Aristotle; Homer was the first philosopher. Because he mentioned the fight between humanwill and godswill in his poems .
The philosophical movement known as nature philosophy that was born in the 7th Century B.C in the western Anatolia was established in the shape of a challenge against anthropomorphic gods’ fact. The activity which was started by thinkers such as Thales, Anaximenes and Anaximander opposed to the idea which accepted the formation of the universe and the rise of human race as a deed of anthropomorphic deities. But it should be emphasized that; despite this rationalistic thought which was born at an early stage, the anthropomorphic gods’ fact maintained it’s presence among people . Because just as Homer mentioned, a deity had a right to comment on not only cities’ but also individuals’ destinies.
Another image which existed along with the world of gods was the one of heroes. It is known that the heroism ideal and thought had an important place within the public life of Ancient Greece. Honor was as the same as courage whether at war or sports activities . While the Homeric heroes were honoring their parents, in the social practice of the 6th Century B.C or with the Archaic period, the winners of a war or sports activities were the source of honor for the whole society . The statues of brave soldiers and vain athletes were being erected and in return they would display the happiness of their victories with various votive offerings.
When expressing the place of heroism legend in daily life, Plato said a soldier who escaped without looking back during a war should have been punished . According to Aristotle; one of the elements forming happiness was being athletically built .
It has to be emphasized that the civilization of Ancient Greece was formed within a society that had an identity comprehension. Althought they could not have a political union until the Roman times, the Greeks could achieve a cultural union. They called themselves as “hellen”s and the others as “ barbarian”s with the comprehension of being a race with a common ancestor, language, religion and culture . Politically, they might have lived within separate city states but would come together through the religious rituals, sports activities or theatre festivals in specific times of the year .
If we look for the reflection of this thought in visual arts, whether on a vase painting or a relief we see -except for the narrative manner of art- that the barbarians were described as odd creatures or giants.
Ancient Greek culture showed an extraordinary tendency to form and beauty with the effect of the geography it was born into . In thought, concepts such as beauty, uprightness, moderation and goodness melted with each other. Especially in the Classical Period (5.Century B.C) ideal beauty was searched by numerical orders and proportions in art as seen on Polykleitus’ statues . In thought, according to Socrates, the ideal humanbeing was the virtuous one . Plato, the pupil of Socrates thought that, the beautiful was in the universe of ideas which he conceived as a world of abstract concepts. According to him; whatever existed on earth, whatever we saw in it, they were only the replicas or reflections of their originals. Aristotle thought that; it was possible to know the beautiful only if it existed among what we perceived . Without art, how could we recognize it?
Ancient Greece went away from it’s own identity in the Hellenistic Age (4.-3. Century B.C) after Alexander the great of Macedonia captured Greece. With the effect of this conquest and his campaings which spread into Asia, a complicated era began both in politics and daily life of the society. On the one hand he certainly made a political union among the city states possible but on the other because of the wars and struggles, life for an ordinary man became much difficult. As a result, a realistic philosophy of life occured and
personal happiness became the essential goal rather than the prosperity of city .
The realism concept created a description idea in art which was unknown until that age: Realistic portraits. When an older woman or a black boy might be the objects of art, the statues of statesman and the sculptures of philosophers were also made. In architecture the smaller temples took the place of the bigger ones.
Conclusion or Interpreting The Art Of Greece;
Throughout the ages it has been thought that art was a matter of inspiration. It was also believed that being an artist requiered talent. But today we know that art has an intellectual dimension and it is limited by the values of the society that the art is born into. In other words, art is directly connected to the general philosophy of life of the society.
It is possible to understand and interprete Greek art only if we know the social life and thinking style of the Greeks. One who is ignorant of the idealism thought of the Classical Period see the beauty in a goddess statue with a different point of view when the other one who is acquainted with this concept perceive it differently. An art lover who knows the Hellenistic realism doesn’t find a statue of a black boy odd. And in architecture, he or she notices that the monumentality of a Classical temple may not be peculiar to the Hellenistic one knowing that when the first one took shape on the basis of ostentation the second was built with the utilitarian comprehension.
Thanks to the science of archaeology, we acquire valuable knowledge about the Ancient Greek culture or in other words, it’s thought and art. But this information is so extensive that can’t be covered with a short study like this. So it’s aim is to emphasize the thought-art relation in Greek world or to show the social basis of Greek art only with tiny examples.