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Classical statues were not painted horribly

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Re: Classical statues were not painted horribly

#151

Post by [deleted] »

sdenton4 wrote: post #18
dv_dt wrote: post #4

It seems a shame that there is a gap between the limits of what is possible to deduce from direct evidence, and what is likely possible given human ability. And further that the public viewing the reconstructions doesn't take away the subtleties of the difference. To me it's unlikely that some of these works weren't vastly better works of art created by what were likely master artists and craftsfolk of the day. One w…

If only there were some system that could start from some sparse and noisy observations and weave together a plausible completion...

[deleted]

Re: Classical statues were not painted horribly

#152

Post by WorldMaker »

resize2996 wrote: post #124
wisty wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reconstructioniats say that they only show th colours they can prove existed. The article suggests they obstinately do this because they know it creates a spectacle. I think there's another explanation - if they use their own judgement to fill in the gaps (making the statues more classically beautiful) then everyone will accuse them of making it all up, even if they were to base it on fairly rigorous study of e.g. th…

That is how scholarship works. It’s like a math proof: they’re interested in proving the base case. If someone else wants to do more speculative work to theorize what a well-painted version would look like, that would be super cool, but it wouldn’t be scholarship.

"Dance your PhD" exists for several reasons, but one of them is to point out that the divorce between scholarship and art in some academic fields isn't "required" but an accident of how we separated colleges and how hard it can be to do multi-disciplinary work.

You can do both: prove the base case and reach across the aisle to the art college next door to see if someone is interested in the follow up "creative exercise". You can present both "here's what we can prove" and "here's an extrapolation by a skilled artist of what additional layering/contouring might have done".

Re: Classical statues were not painted horribly

#153

Post by notahacker »

pqtyw wrote: post #136
esperent wrote: post #2

I've literally never heard anyone say that classical statues were painted "horribly", and unless I missed it, there's no sources in this article that say that, either (just several links to the same New Yorker article talking about whiteness). What I've always heard is that classical statues were painted "brightly". So, is this something that's so well known in the study of antiquities that no source was required, or…

Why would the painting style they used for statues be so massively different from frescoes, mosaics and paintings during the same period, though?

Statues were typically large and outdoors and viewed at a distance, frescoes were typically viewed in close proximity and needed details adding to not look completely flat. Some of those also were rather "garish" compared with modern tastes, particularly when freshly painted and not after years of fading and being covered up (and very sensitively restored according to protocols which frown on adding pigment)

Re: Classical statues were not painted horribly

#154

Post by notahacker »

pqtyw wrote: post #145
JoeAltmaier wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They show us what the base layers were, and what pigments of the day looked like. It may be an academic point. But they are academics.

Well they might as well show the texture of unprocessed marble as well. This is not particularly different.

I mean, showing the texture of the underlying stone is how the vast majority of statues from classical antiquity are displayed, and indeed how most pastiches are created.

(and half the objection to the paint jobs comes from the fact we've come to incorrectly associate decorative elements from the classical period with the colours of bare stone)

Re: Classical statues were not painted horribly

#155

Post by Der_Einzige »

nyeah wrote: post #120
CGMthrowaway wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The idea that these marvels of artistry were painted like my 10th birthday at the local paint-your-own-pottery store always seemed incongruous, at best. Have you seen medieval art though? https://www.artistcloseup.com/blog/explaining-weird-mediaeva... The technique is quite different from the "old masters" of later periods that we often think of as fine art.

Sure, but medieval European art generally sucked. (Call this a hypothesis if that helps.) Compare the damn cave paintings of buffalo to most medieval European art. Some of the 10k-year-old stuff is much better observed. Europeans between about 500 and 1300 mostly couldn't paint. I'm sorry about that. It's just not always taste. Sometimes it's taste. Sometimes people are bad at making art.

So were the Japanese better at painting circa the 1700s and 1800s? Because you got a whole lot of paints of, uhhh, octopi…

Re: Classical statues were not painted horribly

#156

Post by alistairSH »

pqtyw wrote: post #115
aylons wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The archaeologists know that and say as much in TFA: "The paints used in the reconstructions are chemically similar to the trace pigments found on parts of the surface of the originals. However, those pigments formed the underlayer of a finished work to which they bear a very conjectural relationship. Imagine a modern historian trying to reconstruct the Mona Lisa on the basis of a few residual pigments here and there…

> that these are not exact copies, that we can never know exactly how they looked Meaning that these "reconstructions" are a pretty pointless and have no real purpose.

Idealy, for me as a layperson who is only going to see these in a museum, I'd love to see a series of pieces...

First, the original, untouched (preserved but not restored?) sculpture.

Second, the reproductions highlighted in the article. With appropriate notations about "these are the base layers, not complete, etc"

And third, a best-guess at what the original could have looked like, based on the first two. Yes, this might be wrong and need to change over time.

Re: Classical statues were not painted horribly

#157

Post by langleyi »

A thought I had halfway through reading this article: if, hypothetically, early Medieval European art had been lost, how would it be reconstructed by modern scholars?

Would they accurately capture the lack of 'naturalism' (i.e. that flat, almost cartoonish quality) that often strikes modern viewers of Medieval art, or would they make it 'better', interpolating the gap between Roman and Renaissance styles?

This article hints at the idea that classical sculpture can't have been painted like that, because _it looks bad_ and Romans couldn't possibly have thought it looked good, yet early Medieval art was — presumably — perfectly acceptable to the tastemakers of Medieval Europe.

Re: Classical statues were not painted horribly

#158

Post by WorldMaker »

buescher wrote: post #14

I think the best explanation is that classicists are not makeup artists. I am reminded of reading some classicists' attempt to create garum in the kitchen by making some unpleasant horror of mashed fish or something back in the eighties or nineties. No one ever mentioned in those kinds of write-ups back then that they still make fish sauce in Italy. (I looked for the source I'm thinking of and it's drowned out by mor…

There was a similar, maybe apocryphal, story recently of academic archaeologists stumped about an ancient tool until a person pulled out a crochet kit to fidget with their hands near the exhibit and it became obvious that it wasn't a lost tool they just hadn't put it in the right context.

Re: Classical statues were not painted horribly

#159

Post by EvanAnderson »

CGMthrowaway wrote: post #79

You know what's crazy too is that in colonial America all the brick buildings you see in Boston, etc were also all painted? Well, limewashed technically. You never would have left a bare brick facade. You would put 10-20 coats of thin whitewash on it, or if you wanted it to look like raw brick you would tint the limewash red, and then go in and touch up the mortar lines trompe l'oeil style with white. Bare brick as a…

Did the limewashing impart some kind of protection to the masonry? I know water infiltration and freeze/thaw cycles, particularly with soft brick, can wreck masonry.

Re: Classical statues were not painted horribly

#160

Post by Ekaros »

nyeah wrote: post #120
CGMthrowaway wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The idea that these marvels of artistry were painted like my 10th birthday at the local paint-your-own-pottery store always seemed incongruous, at best. Have you seen medieval art though? https://www.artistcloseup.com/blog/explaining-weird-mediaeva... The technique is quite different from the "old masters" of later periods that we often think of as fine art.

Sure, but medieval European art generally sucked. (Call this a hypothesis if that helps.) Compare the damn cave paintings of buffalo to most medieval European art. Some of the 10k-year-old stuff is much better observed. Europeans between about 500 and 1300 mostly couldn't paint. I'm sorry about that. It's just not always taste. Sometimes it's taste. Sometimes people are bad at making art.

I have my own take that painting as art peaked long ago. And now we are mostly at similar level to that in middle-ages...

Paintings used to be better, and before that they were worse.

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