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There are many places where you can come face-to-face | 0:00:02 | 0:00:06 | |
with the ancient world, | 0:00:06 | 0:00:08 | |
but I have to say, this is hard to beat. | 0:00:08 | 0:00:13 | |
This colossal stone head is almost 3,000 years old. | 0:00:22 | 0:00:27 | |
It was made by the Olmec, | 0:00:27 | 0:00:29 | |
the earliest civilisation in Central America. | 0:00:29 | 0:00:33 | |
It really is big. | 0:00:37 | 0:00:39 | |
His eyeballs are more than a foot across | 0:00:39 | 0:00:42 | |
and he weighs in at almost 20 tonnes. | 0:00:42 | 0:00:46 | |
Between his lips, you can just about glimpse his teeth. | 0:00:46 | 0:00:50 | |
And his irises are traced out on his eyes, | 0:00:51 | 0:00:54 | |
and he has a furled, slightly frumpy brow. | 0:00:54 | 0:00:58 | |
It's hard not to feel just a little bit moved | 0:00:59 | 0:01:02 | |
by this close encounter | 0:01:02 | 0:01:04 | |
with the image of a person from the distant past. | 0:01:04 | 0:01:08 | |
Since it was unearthed in 1939, | 0:01:11 | 0:01:14 | |
this head has been a real puzzle. | 0:01:14 | 0:01:17 | |
Who does it depict? | 0:01:18 | 0:01:20 | |
Why was it made? | 0:01:20 | 0:01:22 | |
And why just a head? | 0:01:22 | 0:01:25 | |
The Olmec left us very few clues. | 0:01:25 | 0:01:29 | |
But what they did give us is a powerful, in-your-face reminder | 0:01:29 | 0:01:33 | |
that, no matter where in the world, when civilisations first made art, | 0:01:33 | 0:01:39 | |
they made it about us. | 0:01:39 | 0:01:43 | |
I want to explore why that is. | 0:01:46 | 0:01:49 | |
What were those early people doing this for? | 0:01:49 | 0:01:53 | |
What part did images of the body play | 0:01:54 | 0:01:58 | |
in the societies which first created them? | 0:01:58 | 0:02:02 | |
I'm not just going to be concentrating on the artists - | 0:02:02 | 0:02:05 | |
I want to take a different approach. | 0:02:05 | 0:02:07 | |
I'll be trying to see these bodies through the eyes of the people | 0:02:09 | 0:02:13 | |
who lived with them, used them, and looked at them. | 0:02:13 | 0:02:19 | |
And that's not all. | 0:02:19 | 0:02:21 | |
I want to show how one particular way of representing the human body - | 0:02:24 | 0:02:30 | |
one that goes all the way back to ancient Greece - | 0:02:30 | 0:02:34 | |
became more influential than any other, | 0:02:34 | 0:02:39 | |
coming to shape our Western ways of seeing. | 0:02:39 | 0:02:42 | |
And returning in the end to the Olmec, | 0:02:44 | 0:02:47 | |
we'll see how the way we look can confuse and even distort | 0:02:47 | 0:02:53 | |
our understanding of civilisations beyond our own. | 0:02:53 | 0:02:58 | |
Can we ever look through the eyes of people in the distant past? | 0:03:40 | 0:03:45 | |
It's hard, but just occasionally we get the chance. | 0:03:46 | 0:03:50 | |
It was some 2,000 years ago | 0:03:52 | 0:03:54 | |
when the Roman Emperor Hadrian arrived in Thebes | 0:03:54 | 0:03:58 | |
with his entourage. | 0:03:58 | 0:04:00 | |
He'd come for a look-see around the fringes of his empire, | 0:04:02 | 0:04:07 | |
and to take in the wonders of ancient Egypt, | 0:04:07 | 0:04:10 | |
already thousands of years old. | 0:04:10 | 0:04:13 | |
Hadrian was by far the most committed traveller | 0:04:16 | 0:04:20 | |
of all the Roman emperors. | 0:04:20 | 0:04:21 | |
He seems to have got everywhere. | 0:04:21 | 0:04:23 | |
And on this occasion, he wanted to visit | 0:04:23 | 0:04:26 | |
perhaps the most famous heritage site in Egypt, | 0:04:26 | 0:04:31 | |
perhaps the greatest five-star tourist attraction | 0:04:31 | 0:04:36 | |
of the whole of the ancient world. | 0:04:36 | 0:04:38 | |
It wasn't the great pyramids he longed to see, | 0:04:40 | 0:04:44 | |
but these colossal statues. | 0:04:44 | 0:04:46 | |
Made around 1300 BC, | 0:04:48 | 0:04:51 | |
they were originally statues of the Egyptian pharaoh Amenhotep, | 0:04:51 | 0:04:55 | |
marking his tomb. | 0:04:55 | 0:04:57 | |
But over time, their meaning had changed. | 0:04:57 | 0:05:02 | |
And by Hadrian's day, | 0:05:02 | 0:05:04 | |
they were thought to depict a mythical African king, Memnon. | 0:05:04 | 0:05:10 | |
And what had made them such a draw | 0:05:10 | 0:05:13 | |
was that one of the statues could do things no other statues could. | 0:05:13 | 0:05:17 | |
If you were lucky and came early in the morning, | 0:05:19 | 0:05:22 | |
believe it or not, he could sing. | 0:05:22 | 0:05:26 | |
It was a bit like a lyre with a broken string. | 0:05:26 | 0:05:31 | |
And even in its prime, | 0:05:31 | 0:05:33 | |
it couldn't be relied upon to make a sound every day. | 0:05:33 | 0:05:36 | |
It was taken as a very good omen if it did. | 0:05:36 | 0:05:39 | |
What's amazing is that Hadrian's encounter is recorded | 0:05:41 | 0:05:46 | |
thanks to a piece of vandalism. | 0:05:46 | 0:05:48 | |
For ancient tourists, part of the fun was to have their reactions | 0:05:48 | 0:05:52 | |
carved onto the statue's leg. | 0:05:52 | 0:05:55 | |
In Hadrian's party, the vandal was a lady-in-waiting, Julia Balbilla, | 0:05:55 | 0:06:00 | |
who recorded her impressions in Greek verse. | 0:06:00 | 0:06:04 | |
I've waited half my life to be up here, | 0:06:05 | 0:06:09 | |
searching out Balbilla's poetry. | 0:06:09 | 0:06:12 | |
Here is one of the things she wrote, | 0:06:14 | 0:06:16 | |
and in some ways this is the beginning of her diary | 0:06:16 | 0:06:20 | |
of the Memnon experience, | 0:06:20 | 0:06:22 | |
because on this occasion she says that they got here really early | 0:06:22 | 0:06:26 | |
but didn't hear anything. | 0:06:26 | 0:06:28 | |
But there's another one. | 0:06:28 | 0:06:30 | |
It's got Julia Balbilla's name written at the top | 0:06:30 | 0:06:34 | |
and this is a bit more triumphalist | 0:06:34 | 0:06:36 | |
cos here she says her Lord Hadrian actually heard Memnon. | 0:06:36 | 0:06:41 | |
The truth is, it's not great poetry, | 0:06:42 | 0:06:45 | |
but the verses do give us that kind of first-hand glimpse | 0:06:45 | 0:06:49 | |
of what it felt like to be here. | 0:06:49 | 0:06:52 | |
And there's something touching about being able to | 0:06:52 | 0:06:55 | |
tread in the footsteps of Hadrian's party, | 0:06:55 | 0:06:59 | |
to share their gaze, | 0:06:59 | 0:07:02 | |
even if we can't actually hear the singing. | 0:07:02 | 0:07:04 | |
Nobody knows exactly how the sound was made or why it stopped | 0:07:07 | 0:07:12 | |
because the statue is completely silent now. | 0:07:12 | 0:07:14 | |
But one thing I think is clear - | 0:07:15 | 0:07:18 | |
the story of Memnon's statue is a great example | 0:07:18 | 0:07:22 | |
of how images of the human body operate in the world. | 0:07:22 | 0:07:26 | |
Not just as passive objects to be admired or wondered at, | 0:07:26 | 0:07:32 | |
but as players, as part of an interactive, two-way relationship. | 0:07:32 | 0:07:37 | |
Singing might be a rarity, but images often do something. | 0:07:37 | 0:07:42 | |
Even more, the story is a reminder that the history of art | 0:07:43 | 0:07:48 | |
isn't just the history of artists, | 0:07:48 | 0:07:51 | |
of the men and women who painted and sculpted - | 0:07:51 | 0:07:55 | |
it's also the history of the men and women like Julia Balbilla | 0:07:55 | 0:07:59 | |
who looked, who interpreted what they saw, | 0:07:59 | 0:08:02 | |
and of the changing ways in which they did so. | 0:08:02 | 0:08:05 | |
If we want to understand images of the body, | 0:08:05 | 0:08:09 | |
I think we've really got to put those viewers | 0:08:09 | 0:08:12 | |
back into the picture of art. | 0:08:12 | 0:08:14 | |
And one of the best places to do that is ancient Greece - | 0:08:17 | 0:08:21 | |
in particular, the city of Athens from around 700 BC. | 0:08:21 | 0:08:27 | |
Never much more than a small town in our terms, | 0:08:28 | 0:08:32 | |
it was a place where you could find people of different classes | 0:08:32 | 0:08:35 | |
and backgrounds cheek by jowl in a grand experiment in urban living. | 0:08:35 | 0:08:41 | |
And one of the most distinctive things about Athenian culture | 0:08:43 | 0:08:47 | |
was an intense focus on the youthful, athletic body. | 0:08:47 | 0:08:52 | |
This body was a symbol of political and moral virtue. | 0:08:55 | 0:08:59 | |
And Athens became a whole city of images devoted to the human form. | 0:08:59 | 0:09:05 | |
Greek art almost never means landscape. | 0:09:08 | 0:09:12 | |
It almost never means still life. | 0:09:12 | 0:09:15 | |
Greek art means statues and drawings, | 0:09:15 | 0:09:18 | |
paintings and models of human beings. | 0:09:18 | 0:09:23 | |
These images were everywhere. | 0:09:23 | 0:09:26 | |
They were out in the world playing their part. | 0:09:26 | 0:09:30 | |
Imagine the public plazas and the shady sanctuaries | 0:09:30 | 0:09:34 | |
full of people in stone as well as people in flesh and blood. | 0:09:34 | 0:09:38 | |
We begin to get the point of all this if we look at the art form | 0:09:42 | 0:09:46 | |
that contained more bodies than any other. | 0:09:46 | 0:09:49 | |
The red and black of Athenian ceramics. | 0:09:51 | 0:09:54 | |
These are some of the finest examples we have. | 0:09:58 | 0:10:02 | |
Made from around 600 BC, | 0:10:05 | 0:10:08 | |
they were produced in luscious colours | 0:10:08 | 0:10:10 | |
using an intricate process of multiple firings. | 0:10:10 | 0:10:14 | |
They were turned out in their millions. | 0:10:17 | 0:10:20 | |
And with almost every surface displaying pictures of people, | 0:10:20 | 0:10:24 | |
it was pottery that made the human image ubiquitous across Athens. | 0:10:24 | 0:10:30 | |
These are two of my very favourite Greek pots. | 0:10:32 | 0:10:35 | |
This is ordinary crockery, | 0:10:35 | 0:10:38 | |
it's everyday homeware, | 0:10:38 | 0:10:40 | |
the kind of thing you might have found on the kitchen shelf | 0:10:40 | 0:10:44 | |
in an Athenian house. | 0:10:44 | 0:10:47 | |
The larger of the two is a rich man's wine cooler | 0:10:47 | 0:10:50 | |
to be brought out at his drinking parties. | 0:10:50 | 0:10:53 | |
The smaller one is an ordinary water jug. | 0:10:53 | 0:10:57 | |
But the images on both are much more than just pleasing decorations. | 0:10:57 | 0:11:02 | |
These images are telling the Athenians how to be Athenians. | 0:11:03 | 0:11:09 | |
This one here is, in a sense, a template | 0:11:10 | 0:11:13 | |
for being an Athenian wife. | 0:11:13 | 0:11:15 | |
There she is. | 0:11:15 | 0:11:17 | |
She's sitting down, she's being handed her baby | 0:11:17 | 0:11:20 | |
by a servant girl | 0:11:20 | 0:11:22 | |
and, at her feet, she's got a wool basket. | 0:11:22 | 0:11:26 | |
That about sums up the answer to the question, | 0:11:26 | 0:11:29 | |
what were Athenian wives for? | 0:11:29 | 0:11:33 | |
They were for making babies and making wool. | 0:11:33 | 0:11:36 | |
This one is a bit different | 0:11:38 | 0:11:40 | |
because it's covered with mythical creatures called satyrs | 0:11:40 | 0:11:44 | |
who are half human and half animal, | 0:11:44 | 0:11:48 | |
and they're all over this getting absolutely plastered. | 0:11:48 | 0:11:53 | |
They're balancing goblets in very silly places | 0:11:53 | 0:11:58 | |
and this one here is having wine poured straight into his mouth | 0:11:58 | 0:12:04 | |
from an animal skin. | 0:12:04 | 0:12:06 | |
It's kind of the equivalent | 0:12:06 | 0:12:08 | |
of drinking whisky straight from the bottle. | 0:12:08 | 0:12:11 | |
Now, what was that doing on the drinking party table? | 0:12:12 | 0:12:17 | |
If this pot was telling Athenian women how to be women, | 0:12:18 | 0:12:25 | |
this one was raising more difficult questions | 0:12:25 | 0:12:30 | |
about where the boundary really lies | 0:12:30 | 0:12:34 | |
between the human and the animal, | 0:12:34 | 0:12:37 | |
about how much wine you have to consume | 0:12:37 | 0:12:41 | |
before you really do turn into a beast. | 0:12:41 | 0:12:44 | |
These aren't government health warnings in our sense, | 0:12:46 | 0:12:50 | |
but the images are one way in which the Athenians paraded | 0:12:50 | 0:12:55 | |
their idea of what civilisation was, | 0:12:55 | 0:12:58 | |
defining themselves against the barbarians beyond the city. | 0:12:58 | 0:13:02 | |
And it's a version of civilisation that's a long way | 0:13:03 | 0:13:07 | |
from the lofty ideas of Greek culture we're often pedalled. | 0:13:07 | 0:13:11 | |
It's deeply gendered and rigidly hierarchical, | 0:13:12 | 0:13:16 | |
and it explicitly derides all those | 0:13:16 | 0:13:19 | |
who have faces or bodies or habits that somehow don't fit - | 0:13:19 | 0:13:24 | |
from barbarous foreigners to the old and ugly, | 0:13:24 | 0:13:28 | |
the fat and the flabby. | 0:13:28 | 0:13:30 | |
But, like it or not, | 0:13:30 | 0:13:33 | |
what we are seeing here are visual images | 0:13:33 | 0:13:37 | |
constructing one idea of a civilised human being. | 0:13:37 | 0:13:43 | |
Of course, the human body can do many different things | 0:13:45 | 0:13:49 | |
and so can its images. | 0:13:49 | 0:13:52 | |
And the Athenians exploited that range, | 0:13:52 | 0:13:55 | |
creating other bodies for very different purposes. | 0:13:55 | 0:13:58 | |
This is one of the most gorgeous memorial statues | 0:14:02 | 0:14:05 | |
ever to have been found in ancient Greece. | 0:14:05 | 0:14:08 | |
Her name is Phrasikleia | 0:14:10 | 0:14:12 | |
and that means something like "aware of her own renown". | 0:14:12 | 0:14:16 | |
Phrasikleia was carved in marble around 550 BC, | 0:14:19 | 0:14:24 | |
and was only rediscovered in 1972. | 0:14:24 | 0:14:27 | |
She has a wonderfully patterned dress, | 0:14:30 | 0:14:33 | |
clothed for eternity in her finest. | 0:14:33 | 0:14:37 | |
And the traces of red pigment are a useful reminder | 0:14:37 | 0:14:41 | |
that most Greek sculpture was richly, even gaudily, painted. | 0:14:41 | 0:14:45 | |
And she wears that smile - | 0:14:46 | 0:14:49 | |
that sign of life so common in early Greek sculpture. | 0:14:49 | 0:14:53 | |
What I like about her so much is the way that she engages us as viewers. | 0:14:55 | 0:15:02 | |
She's looking straight ahead | 0:15:02 | 0:15:04 | |
and she's challenging us to look back at her. | 0:15:04 | 0:15:07 | |
She's got a flower in her hand - | 0:15:07 | 0:15:10 | |
it's not quite clear whether it's for her | 0:15:10 | 0:15:13 | |
or she's about to give it to us. | 0:15:13 | 0:15:16 | |
And in the inscription, she actually almost speaks to us. | 0:15:16 | 0:15:21 | |
It says that it is the tomb sculpture of Phrasikleia | 0:15:21 | 0:15:26 | |
and then, as if in her own voice, it says, | 0:15:26 | 0:15:29 | |
"And I shall always be called a maiden | 0:15:29 | 0:15:33 | |
"because I got that name from the gods, instead of marriage." | 0:15:33 | 0:15:40 | |
That is, she died before her wedding day. | 0:15:40 | 0:15:44 | |
But what's great about it is the encounter it sets up, | 0:15:44 | 0:15:49 | |
and it's the encounter that, if we try hard, | 0:15:49 | 0:15:52 | |
I think we can still enjoy. | 0:15:52 | 0:15:54 | |
Phrasikleia faces death in the most forthright way, | 0:15:57 | 0:16:02 | |
resolutely refusing to be forgotten. | 0:16:02 | 0:16:05 | |
But can an image of a person ever fix time, | 0:16:07 | 0:16:13 | |
suspended death, | 0:16:13 | 0:16:16 | |
or even, for a moment, deny it? | 0:16:16 | 0:16:19 | |
That's what these vivid faces from Roman Egypt appear to do. | 0:16:26 | 0:16:31 | |
Though 2,000 years have passed since these people died, | 0:16:35 | 0:16:39 | |
it feels like they're still with us. | 0:16:39 | 0:16:42 | |
They looks like the kind of portraits | 0:16:42 | 0:16:45 | |
that hang on gallery walls. | 0:16:45 | 0:16:47 | |
And that's where we often see them. | 0:16:49 | 0:16:51 | |
But these portraits actually belong on coffins. | 0:16:53 | 0:16:58 | |
Few have remained intact, but this is one of them. | 0:17:01 | 0:17:05 | |
It contains a man named Artemidorus, | 0:17:07 | 0:17:10 | |
and his extravagant sarcophagus portrays | 0:17:10 | 0:17:13 | |
a cosmopolitan way of death. | 0:17:13 | 0:17:16 | |
His mummy is a wonderful amalgam | 0:17:19 | 0:17:22 | |
of the traditions of Egypt, of Greece and of Rome. | 0:17:22 | 0:17:27 | |
On the casing, you can see typically Egyptian scenes - | 0:17:27 | 0:17:32 | |
there's a mummy being laid out on a couch, | 0:17:32 | 0:17:35 | |
and those strange animal-headed Egyptian gods. | 0:17:35 | 0:17:39 | |
His name is Greek. | 0:17:41 | 0:17:43 | |
"Artemidorus, farewell," it says. | 0:17:43 | 0:17:47 | |
His face is a quintessentially Roman portrait. | 0:17:49 | 0:17:54 | |
Of course, other cultures before had represented the human face, | 0:17:54 | 0:17:59 | |
but it was the Romans who made this kind of individual likeness | 0:17:59 | 0:18:03 | |
very much their own. | 0:18:03 | 0:18:04 | |
Modelled with light and shade, | 0:18:05 | 0:18:08 | |
flesh layered in paint and wax, | 0:18:08 | 0:18:12 | |
and a clever catch light in the eyes, | 0:18:12 | 0:18:15 | |
these were the means by which Roman painters captured | 0:18:15 | 0:18:19 | |
the infinite variety that we see in the human face. | 0:18:19 | 0:18:23 | |
When Romans thought about where the impulse to portraiture came from - | 0:18:25 | 0:18:29 | |
even the impulse to painting as a whole - | 0:18:29 | 0:18:32 | |
they had a very vivid story to tell | 0:18:32 | 0:18:34 | |
about a young woman who was the creative genius | 0:18:34 | 0:18:38 | |
behind the very first portrait. | 0:18:38 | 0:18:41 | |
Her lover was going away on a long journey | 0:18:41 | 0:18:45 | |
and before he went, she got a lamp | 0:18:45 | 0:18:49 | |
and she threw his shadow against a wall | 0:18:49 | 0:18:52 | |
and traced round it to create a silhouette. | 0:18:52 | 0:18:56 | |
She was trying not just to memorialise him, | 0:18:56 | 0:18:59 | |
but to keep his presence in her world. | 0:18:59 | 0:19:02 | |
I think there's something like that going on | 0:19:04 | 0:19:07 | |
with the face of Artemidorus. | 0:19:07 | 0:19:09 | |
Domestic ware and tear, | 0:19:10 | 0:19:12 | |
even children's scribbles on some coffins, | 0:19:12 | 0:19:15 | |
suggest that they weren't instantly confined to the grave. | 0:19:15 | 0:19:19 | |
For a while, they may have stood in the land of the living, | 0:19:19 | 0:19:23 | |
perhaps in the family home. | 0:19:23 | 0:19:27 | |
These portraits, then, are not just memorials - | 0:19:27 | 0:19:31 | |
they're attempts to keep the presence of the dead | 0:19:31 | 0:19:35 | |
among the living | 0:19:35 | 0:19:36 | |
and to blur the boundary between this world and the next. | 0:19:36 | 0:19:41 | |
Painted faces and sculpted bodies always played vital roles | 0:19:44 | 0:19:49 | |
in the lives of ancient people who lived with them and looked at them. | 0:19:49 | 0:19:53 | |
But how do we make sense of those ancient statues | 0:19:58 | 0:20:02 | |
that were not designed to be seen at all? | 0:20:02 | 0:20:05 | |
China, as we know it, was born around 200 BC, | 0:20:11 | 0:20:16 | |
united under its first emperor, Qin. | 0:20:16 | 0:20:20 | |
Just as the Romans would do in the West, | 0:20:24 | 0:20:27 | |
he standardised everything in his efforts to exert control. | 0:20:27 | 0:20:32 | |
Currency, weights and measures, taxes, roads and transport. | 0:20:35 | 0:20:41 | |
They were sweeping reforms | 0:20:41 | 0:20:44 | |
and he left his mark on all aspects of Chinese life. | 0:20:44 | 0:20:48 | |
But no Roman emperor would ever be buried on the same grand scale | 0:20:49 | 0:20:54 | |
as Qin, or with so many bodies. | 0:20:54 | 0:20:59 | |
-TV: -It was just a mile away from the mound to the east | 0:20:59 | 0:21:03 | |
that the Chinese made their historic discovery. | 0:21:03 | 0:21:06 | |
It was 1974 when farmers in Shaanxi province discovered | 0:21:07 | 0:21:13 | |
fragments of human forms buried in the earth. | 0:21:13 | 0:21:16 | |
Scenes of mass archaeology followed, | 0:21:18 | 0:21:21 | |
the finds assembled in an extraordinary display. | 0:21:21 | 0:21:25 | |
It lies beneath this vast hangar-like structure. | 0:21:26 | 0:21:29 | |
It would capture the world's attention | 0:21:33 | 0:21:35 | |
as the most surprising archaeological find | 0:21:35 | 0:21:38 | |
of the 20th century. | 0:21:38 | 0:21:40 | |
It was, of course, the Terracotta Army. | 0:21:45 | 0:21:49 | |
It's a menacing sight, | 0:22:00 | 0:22:02 | |
this grey, ghostly remnant of an army, | 0:22:02 | 0:22:07 | |
rows and rows of life-sized terracotta soldiers. | 0:22:07 | 0:22:11 | |
These figures represent the Imperial Guard of the Emperor Qin. | 0:22:14 | 0:22:18 | |
They were buried with him at his funeral | 0:22:19 | 0:22:22 | |
and stand guard over his tomb. | 0:22:22 | 0:22:25 | |
There were once more than 7,000 of them, | 0:22:27 | 0:22:30 | |
but only a fraction have been excavated, | 0:22:30 | 0:22:33 | |
and that alone gives an idea of the vast scale of this whole complex. | 0:22:33 | 0:22:39 | |
This is quite simply the biggest tableau of sculpture | 0:22:39 | 0:22:45 | |
made anywhere in the planet ever. | 0:22:45 | 0:22:49 | |
Millions come here to be wowed by the sight of the army. | 0:22:58 | 0:23:03 | |
But it's not just the scale that's impressive - it's the detail, too. | 0:23:06 | 0:23:10 | |
Up close, you can see the individual plates and rivets of their armour. | 0:23:14 | 0:23:20 | |
And their heads have been modelled so no two look alike. | 0:23:24 | 0:23:28 | |
The contours of their faces differ, | 0:23:33 | 0:23:35 | |
eyes and ears delicately worked. | 0:23:35 | 0:23:38 | |
And a range of styles and textures have been used for the hair. | 0:23:42 | 0:23:47 | |
But the individuality that we're at first so struck by | 0:23:49 | 0:23:53 | |
isn't quite as simple as it seems. | 0:23:53 | 0:23:56 | |
It's true that no two of these figures are quite alike | 0:23:56 | 0:24:00 | |
but the differences between them that the craftsmen have introduced | 0:24:00 | 0:24:05 | |
turn out to be rather formulaic. | 0:24:05 | 0:24:07 | |
There's not much more than a handful of different eyebrow types | 0:24:07 | 0:24:11 | |
or different moustache types, for example. | 0:24:11 | 0:24:14 | |
They're a very standardised, institutionalised version | 0:24:14 | 0:24:20 | |
of individuality. | 0:24:20 | 0:24:21 | |
As one archaeologist has nicely put it - | 0:24:21 | 0:24:24 | |
their faces are likenesses, | 0:24:24 | 0:24:27 | |
but they are likenesses of no-one. | 0:24:27 | 0:24:30 | |
They're not, in the terms of Western art history, true portraits. | 0:24:30 | 0:24:35 | |
Some have admired this ancient form of artistic mass production, | 0:24:38 | 0:24:43 | |
others feel it a perfect way of expressing a regimented army. | 0:24:43 | 0:24:48 | |
Whatever you feel about them, | 0:24:48 | 0:24:50 | |
they certainly raise all kinds of questions about what a likeness is. | 0:24:50 | 0:24:56 | |
But one thing is for sure - | 0:24:59 | 0:25:01 | |
in the scale and complexity of the tomb | 0:25:01 | 0:25:05 | |
and even, I think, in the artistic detail | 0:25:05 | 0:25:08 | |
that the Emperor, dead or alive, could command, | 0:25:08 | 0:25:11 | |
there's a strong assertion of imperial power. | 0:25:11 | 0:25:16 | |
And that's definitely the message of what happened | 0:25:16 | 0:25:19 | |
just a few years after the Emperor's death. | 0:25:19 | 0:25:23 | |
Because the famous Terracotta Army that we see | 0:25:23 | 0:25:26 | |
were discovered in pieces, | 0:25:26 | 0:25:28 | |
smashed and burnt by a rebel | 0:25:28 | 0:25:31 | |
against the dynasty of the first Emperor | 0:25:31 | 0:25:34 | |
who launched a direct attack on his tomb. | 0:25:34 | 0:25:38 | |
There's something in that keen desire to destroy them | 0:25:39 | 0:25:45 | |
that gives us our clearest sense of the power of these images. | 0:25:45 | 0:25:50 | |
It was one thing to destroy the images | 0:25:53 | 0:25:56 | |
of the Emperor's terracotta protectors, | 0:25:56 | 0:26:00 | |
and so to nullify his power beyond the grave... | 0:26:00 | 0:26:04 | |
..but power in the here and now called for | 0:26:09 | 0:26:12 | |
bodies of an entirely different order. | 0:26:12 | 0:26:15 | |
This is the figure of Ramesses II, | 0:26:28 | 0:26:33 | |
who ruled Egypt around 1200 BC. | 0:26:33 | 0:26:37 | |
He was the pharaoh who invested more in his image than any other. | 0:26:37 | 0:26:42 | |
And his figure is found all over Egypt. | 0:26:42 | 0:26:46 | |
But by far the most imposing and memorable | 0:26:47 | 0:26:51 | |
are these great colossal statues | 0:26:51 | 0:26:53 | |
that stand guard at his temple in Thebes. | 0:26:53 | 0:26:57 | |
The one thing you really get here is that size matters. | 0:26:59 | 0:27:04 | |
These vast monumental figures | 0:27:04 | 0:27:07 | |
with that nice hint that they'd be even bigger | 0:27:07 | 0:27:10 | |
if they bothered to stand up for you, simply dominate. | 0:27:10 | 0:27:13 | |
They take over your field of vision. | 0:27:13 | 0:27:16 | |
It's an assertion of the power of the Pharaoh | 0:27:16 | 0:27:19 | |
through his huge, superhuman enthroned body. | 0:27:19 | 0:27:24 | |
However fragile that power might have been in real life, | 0:27:26 | 0:27:31 | |
the modern world has comprehensively bought in | 0:27:31 | 0:27:34 | |
to the monumentality of the Egyptian ruler. | 0:27:34 | 0:27:38 | |
And it's impossible not to think that when people walked past here | 0:27:39 | 0:27:44 | |
3,500 years ago | 0:27:44 | 0:27:46 | |
that they, too, would have got what the message was intended to be. | 0:27:46 | 0:27:52 | |
This kind of bombastic, bare-chested display | 0:27:54 | 0:27:58 | |
fits the picture we have of autocrats today. | 0:27:58 | 0:28:02 | |
Impressive though such images are, | 0:28:02 | 0:28:04 | |
I'm sure some ancient Egyptians would have found them as vulgar | 0:28:04 | 0:28:09 | |
or as irritating as we might. | 0:28:09 | 0:28:11 | |
But beyond the gates of the temple there's another set of statues | 0:28:12 | 0:28:17 | |
whose power and purpose is harder to fathom. | 0:28:17 | 0:28:20 | |
Deep inside, we're dominated by yet more vast images of Ramesses | 0:28:23 | 0:28:29 | |
that can't be explained away as propaganda to the people. | 0:28:29 | 0:28:33 | |
Only those closest to the king were allowed | 0:28:36 | 0:28:38 | |
into this part of the temple. | 0:28:38 | 0:28:40 | |
So what was the point of these towering statues? | 0:28:42 | 0:28:46 | |
Some think they were aimed at powerful elites | 0:28:48 | 0:28:51 | |
to remind them who was boss. | 0:28:51 | 0:28:53 | |
Others think they were aimed at the all-seeing eye of the gods. | 0:28:55 | 0:28:59 | |
I've got a different viewer in mind. | 0:29:00 | 0:29:04 | |
And that's the pharaoh himself. | 0:29:05 | 0:29:09 | |
Those of us with no inkling of power on a grand scale often forget | 0:29:09 | 0:29:16 | |
how hard it must be to believe in oneself as monarch or autocrat. | 0:29:16 | 0:29:23 | |
The person who really needs to be convinced that he is pre-eminent | 0:29:23 | 0:29:29 | |
above the common herd | 0:29:29 | 0:29:31 | |
is that ordinary human being who is masquerading as omnipotent ruler. | 0:29:31 | 0:29:37 | |
That's why, as a basic rule of thumb, | 0:29:37 | 0:29:40 | |
we find more pictures of kings and queens in all their finery | 0:29:40 | 0:29:45 | |
in royal palaces than anywhere else in the world - | 0:29:45 | 0:29:50 | |
and here in Egypt, too. | 0:29:50 | 0:29:53 | |
Monumental images of pharaohs, | 0:29:53 | 0:29:56 | |
commissioned by pharaohs themselves in vast numbers, | 0:29:56 | 0:30:01 | |
played their part in convincing the pharaoh | 0:30:01 | 0:30:05 | |
of his own pharaonic power. | 0:30:05 | 0:30:08 | |
These sculptures help the name of Ramesses live on. | 0:30:11 | 0:30:15 | |
But the style of this statuary would have a different | 0:30:16 | 0:30:20 | |
and very extraordinary legacy. | 0:30:20 | 0:30:22 | |
Almost certainly inspiring the earliest statues | 0:30:24 | 0:30:27 | |
of the human form in Ancient Greece. | 0:30:27 | 0:30:30 | |
We are now on the Greek island of Naxos. | 0:30:37 | 0:30:40 | |
It's a place famed since ancient times for its marble. | 0:30:42 | 0:30:45 | |
With a coarse grain and grey-blue tint, | 0:30:50 | 0:30:54 | |
it was easy to quarry and easy to work. | 0:30:54 | 0:30:57 | |
From way back, it was shipped off to make | 0:31:07 | 0:31:09 | |
some of the earliest monumental Greek sculptures. | 0:31:09 | 0:31:13 | |
They were large, rigid and stylised figures like this. | 0:31:14 | 0:31:19 | |
And up in the hills of Naxos, there's a disused quarry | 0:31:24 | 0:31:29 | |
where you can find one of those giant figures | 0:31:29 | 0:31:32 | |
which never made it off the island. | 0:31:32 | 0:31:34 | |
I've read lots about this. | 0:31:38 | 0:31:40 | |
But I've never actually seen it. | 0:31:42 | 0:31:44 | |
What it is, is a vast marble statue, | 0:31:47 | 0:31:53 | |
half-finished, still in its quarry. | 0:31:53 | 0:31:56 | |
This half-man, half-mountain was hewn out perhaps as early as 700 BC. | 0:32:00 | 0:32:08 | |
As you can see, it was going to be | 0:32:10 | 0:32:13 | |
one of those massive, static early Greek sculptures. | 0:32:13 | 0:32:16 | |
Here are his feet. | 0:32:20 | 0:32:22 | |
And I'm now walking up past his legs. | 0:32:24 | 0:32:28 | |
This thing here, this must be his outstretched arm | 0:32:31 | 0:32:37 | |
and then right up here, we come to his head. | 0:32:37 | 0:32:44 | |
And by the looks of it, | 0:32:44 | 0:32:47 | |
he was going to have a beard, and they have already | 0:32:47 | 0:32:49 | |
roughed out the shape. | 0:32:49 | 0:32:52 | |
LAUGHS: Makes me think that some men can be very stubborn. | 0:32:52 | 0:32:57 | |
But this guy hasn't budged in 2,500 years. | 0:32:57 | 0:33:02 | |
Quite why he's still here is a mystery. | 0:33:04 | 0:33:07 | |
Something must have gone wrong but, whatever, this figure gives us | 0:33:07 | 0:33:11 | |
a great view of how the Greek sculptors went about their work. | 0:33:11 | 0:33:16 | |
They must have cut a trench out all the way round it | 0:33:16 | 0:33:20 | |
in order to get to it to work, | 0:33:20 | 0:33:22 | |
and you can see a rather neatly worked trench at the back. | 0:33:22 | 0:33:27 | |
For me, it's just a wonderful illustration | 0:33:28 | 0:33:31 | |
of the number of people | 0:33:31 | 0:33:34 | |
that must have been involved in making a statue like this. | 0:33:34 | 0:33:38 | |
And every one of these little pockmarks | 0:33:38 | 0:33:40 | |
has been made by somebody's tool, | 0:33:40 | 0:33:42 | |
with hundreds of men hacking away to get this statue like this. | 0:33:42 | 0:33:48 | |
I find it a bit sort of weirdly surreal. | 0:33:55 | 0:33:58 | |
But his feet make an extremely nice place to sit. | 0:34:00 | 0:34:03 | |
Forever lying here in repose, | 0:34:07 | 0:34:10 | |
he's a remnant of the style | 0:34:10 | 0:34:11 | |
that the Greeks were soon to leave behind. | 0:34:11 | 0:34:14 | |
Because shortly after he'd been abandoned, | 0:34:17 | 0:34:19 | |
Greek sculptors developed an astonishing new style | 0:34:19 | 0:34:23 | |
that was distinctly their own. | 0:34:23 | 0:34:25 | |
There is a fundamental | 0:34:30 | 0:34:32 | |
and universal paradox at the heart of the sculptors' art. | 0:34:32 | 0:34:35 | |
The lived human body, | 0:34:38 | 0:34:41 | |
its mobility, it's warmth, | 0:34:41 | 0:34:43 | |
its changing character, has to be fixed... | 0:34:43 | 0:34:47 | |
..suspended in the cold and lifeless mass that is stone. | 0:34:48 | 0:34:53 | |
It's always an artificial compromise. | 0:34:56 | 0:34:58 | |
But the beginnings of the fifth century BC | 0:35:03 | 0:35:06 | |
sees Greek sculpture spring almost to life. | 0:35:06 | 0:35:10 | |
The rigid figures of the past give way | 0:35:12 | 0:35:15 | |
to daring experiments in form... | 0:35:15 | 0:35:17 | |
..nuance and subtlety... | 0:35:20 | 0:35:22 | |
..movement and musculature. | 0:35:24 | 0:35:26 | |
In under 200 years, Greek sculptors seemed to have developed | 0:35:28 | 0:35:33 | |
the tricks and techniques to weave the illusion of a living human body. | 0:35:33 | 0:35:38 | |
So radical was the change | 0:35:40 | 0:35:42 | |
that it has been called the Greek Revolution. | 0:35:42 | 0:35:46 | |
The exact cause of this revolution | 0:35:50 | 0:35:52 | |
is one of the great mysteries of the history of art. | 0:35:52 | 0:35:55 | |
Some believe it was Greek democracy, | 0:35:56 | 0:35:59 | |
of its new respect for the individual that launched it. | 0:35:59 | 0:36:01 | |
Others, that Greek artists just got better. | 0:36:03 | 0:36:06 | |
In truth, we don't know. | 0:36:08 | 0:36:09 | |
But whatever the causes, over the next centuries, | 0:36:11 | 0:36:15 | |
it was to have some truly astonishing artistic consequences. | 0:36:15 | 0:36:20 | |
This is one of the places that the Greek Revolution leaves. | 0:36:43 | 0:36:46 | |
It's impossible not to see this as an amazing work of art. | 0:36:49 | 0:36:52 | |
Dating is hard, but my guess is that it was cast around 100 BC. | 0:36:59 | 0:37:04 | |
Here, the hallmarks of the Greek Revolution | 0:37:05 | 0:37:08 | |
are brought together and trained on the body | 0:37:08 | 0:37:11 | |
of a battered and bruised boxer. | 0:37:11 | 0:37:12 | |
Boxing was always an important part of the ancient athletic repertoire. | 0:37:15 | 0:37:20 | |
And you can tell that he once had a fit body, | 0:37:20 | 0:37:24 | |
but it's really suffered. | 0:37:24 | 0:37:26 | |
What is equally striking is the loving care | 0:37:28 | 0:37:32 | |
with which this wreck of a human being has been depicted. | 0:37:32 | 0:37:36 | |
He's got a broken nose and cauliflower ears, | 0:37:37 | 0:37:41 | |
flabby from where he has taken all those blows. | 0:37:41 | 0:37:44 | |
And, in fact, he is still bleeding from fresh wounds. | 0:37:44 | 0:37:49 | |
There, the blood is shown in copper | 0:37:49 | 0:37:52 | |
and the bruises on his cheeks are brought out | 0:37:52 | 0:37:56 | |
by the slightly different colour | 0:37:56 | 0:37:59 | |
of a slightly different bronze alloy. | 0:37:59 | 0:38:02 | |
It's almost as if the bronze | 0:38:03 | 0:38:06 | |
has become the man's skin. | 0:38:06 | 0:38:09 | |
What makes the boxer so impressive | 0:38:12 | 0:38:14 | |
isn't just the extraordinary technique. | 0:38:14 | 0:38:17 | |
It's the point the piece is making. | 0:38:17 | 0:38:20 | |
The artist has used the descriptive powers | 0:38:21 | 0:38:24 | |
of this version of realism to launch a devastating attack | 0:38:24 | 0:38:28 | |
on the body culture that obsessed the Ancient Greeks. | 0:38:28 | 0:38:33 | |
He introduces a very different type of character | 0:38:33 | 0:38:37 | |
from those early, youthful, well-toned athletes. | 0:38:37 | 0:38:43 | |
Not just in the wounds and the scars, | 0:38:43 | 0:38:46 | |
but in the emotional collapse. | 0:38:46 | 0:38:48 | |
In a world in which there was something of a cult | 0:38:52 | 0:38:55 | |
of youthful athletic prowess, | 0:38:55 | 0:38:59 | |
all those telling realistic details add up to a reminder | 0:38:59 | 0:39:03 | |
that the body beautiful was not so very far from the body brutalised. | 0:39:03 | 0:39:09 | |
This work of art is prodding | 0:39:11 | 0:39:13 | |
at the awkward underbelly of Greek culture. | 0:39:13 | 0:39:16 | |
It's the incisive brilliance of sculptures like The Boxer | 0:39:19 | 0:39:23 | |
that gives the impression that the Greek Revolution | 0:39:23 | 0:39:26 | |
was an unalloyed triumph of artistic achievement. | 0:39:26 | 0:39:30 | |
But there is another way of looking at the Greek Revolution, | 0:39:32 | 0:39:36 | |
and at its losses as well as its gains. | 0:39:36 | 0:39:39 | |
Remember Phrasikleia, who died unmarried? | 0:39:43 | 0:39:46 | |
She was made long before that revolutionary change. | 0:39:47 | 0:39:51 | |
What I love is her elegance and simplicity. | 0:39:54 | 0:39:57 | |
The way she reaches out, offering a gift, or meeting us eye-to-eye. | 0:39:58 | 0:40:03 | |
That directness is exactly what gets lost in the Greek Revolution. | 0:40:07 | 0:40:13 | |
Later sculptures may be more supple than Phrasikleia, | 0:40:13 | 0:40:17 | |
they may seem to move more adventurously, | 0:40:17 | 0:40:21 | |
but they don't engage us in the same way. | 0:40:21 | 0:40:24 | |
In fact, if you try to look them in the eye, | 0:40:24 | 0:40:27 | |
many of them coyly avoid your gaze. | 0:40:27 | 0:40:31 | |
And many of them, like The Boxer, seem lost in their own world. | 0:40:31 | 0:40:37 | |
It's almost as if the involved viewer | 0:40:38 | 0:40:41 | |
has become an admiring voyeur, | 0:40:41 | 0:40:44 | |
and we are one step on the way to sculpture becoming an art object. | 0:40:44 | 0:40:51 | |
Phrasikleia is determinedly resisting being an art object, | 0:40:52 | 0:40:57 | |
and one thing she is not is coy. | 0:40:57 | 0:41:00 | |
But the problems of the Greek Revolution don't stop here. | 0:41:03 | 0:41:07 | |
Just a few hundred years after Phrasikleia, | 0:41:17 | 0:41:20 | |
this is what female sculptures in the Greek world had become. | 0:41:20 | 0:41:24 | |
This sculpture exposes some of the dangers | 0:41:30 | 0:41:34 | |
in the pursuit of realism, | 0:41:34 | 0:41:36 | |
and that blurry and perilous boundary between artefact and flesh. | 0:41:36 | 0:41:42 | |
This notorious body belongs to the Greek goddess Aphrodite. | 0:41:46 | 0:41:51 | |
It is a Roman version of a ground-breaking | 0:41:51 | 0:41:54 | |
statue by the sculptor Praxiteles | 0:41:54 | 0:41:57 | |
in the fourth century BC. | 0:41:57 | 0:41:59 | |
In the ancient world, this was celebrated | 0:42:00 | 0:42:03 | |
as a milestone in classical art | 0:42:03 | 0:42:07 | |
because it was the first naked statue of a woman. | 0:42:07 | 0:42:11 | |
Today, it's difficult to see beyond | 0:42:13 | 0:42:16 | |
the ubiquity of images like this | 0:42:16 | 0:42:19 | |
and recapture just how daring and dangerous | 0:42:19 | 0:42:22 | |
it would have been for the ancient Greeks. | 0:42:22 | 0:42:25 | |
This sculpture broke through social conventions. | 0:42:28 | 0:42:31 | |
It wasn't just that up to this point | 0:42:33 | 0:42:36 | |
female statues had been clothed. | 0:42:36 | 0:42:39 | |
In some parts of the Greek world, real-life women - | 0:42:39 | 0:42:43 | |
at least among the upper-class - went around veiled. | 0:42:43 | 0:42:46 | |
But, in fact, it wasn't just the nakedness - | 0:42:47 | 0:42:51 | |
this Aphrodite broke the mould in a decidedly erotic way. | 0:42:51 | 0:42:57 | |
Just look at her hands. | 0:43:02 | 0:43:04 | |
Are they modestly trying to cover herself up? | 0:43:04 | 0:43:08 | |
Are they pointing us in the direction | 0:43:09 | 0:43:12 | |
of what we want to see most? | 0:43:12 | 0:43:13 | |
Or are they simply a tease? | 0:43:15 | 0:43:17 | |
Whatever the answer, | 0:43:20 | 0:43:21 | |
Praxiteles has established that edgy relationship | 0:43:21 | 0:43:27 | |
between a statue of a woman | 0:43:27 | 0:43:29 | |
and an assumed male viewer | 0:43:29 | 0:43:31 | |
that has never been lost | 0:43:31 | 0:43:33 | |
from the history of European art. | 0:43:33 | 0:43:35 | |
But that difficult boundary between statue and flesh | 0:43:37 | 0:43:41 | |
was understood by the Greeks themselves. | 0:43:41 | 0:43:44 | |
They told a tale that shows how they, too, knew of the perils | 0:43:45 | 0:43:49 | |
they faced in creating what they saw | 0:43:49 | 0:43:52 | |
as realistic images of the human body. | 0:43:52 | 0:43:55 | |
One night, it was said, a young man became so aroused by this statue, | 0:43:56 | 0:44:01 | |
he forced himself upon it, leaving a stain of lust on her thigh. | 0:44:01 | 0:44:07 | |
He later threw himself over a cliff to his death, in shame. | 0:44:07 | 0:44:12 | |
That story of the stain not only shows | 0:44:15 | 0:44:20 | |
how a female statue can drive a man mad, | 0:44:20 | 0:44:24 | |
but also how art can act as an alibi | 0:44:24 | 0:44:29 | |
for what was - let's face it - rape. | 0:44:29 | 0:44:32 | |
Don't forget - Aphrodite never consented. | 0:44:32 | 0:44:36 | |
But however troubling | 0:44:40 | 0:44:41 | |
the Greek Revolution was in its own time, | 0:44:41 | 0:44:44 | |
there's a deeper legacy that reaches the modern age. | 0:44:44 | 0:44:48 | |
One to which we are often blind. | 0:44:48 | 0:44:50 | |
Inherited by Ancient Rome, rekindled in the European Renaissance, | 0:44:59 | 0:45:04 | |
faith in the Greek version of realism persisted through time. | 0:45:04 | 0:45:08 | |
And as the reverence for the classical style grew, | 0:45:18 | 0:45:22 | |
it would be invested with even greater meaning. | 0:45:22 | 0:45:25 | |
Not just as a model for figurative art to aspire to, | 0:45:27 | 0:45:32 | |
but nothing less than a barometer of civilisation itself. | 0:45:32 | 0:45:37 | |
To understand the forces at work, | 0:45:42 | 0:45:44 | |
you have to follow in the footsteps of the classical bodies | 0:45:44 | 0:45:48 | |
that left their original habitat of Greece and Rome... | 0:45:48 | 0:45:51 | |
..and by the 18th century | 0:45:56 | 0:45:58 | |
had found themselves in distinctly foreign worlds, | 0:45:58 | 0:46:03 | |
adorning the mansions and palaces of Northern Europe. | 0:46:03 | 0:46:06 | |
Syon House was once the fashionable country house | 0:46:13 | 0:46:17 | |
of the first Duke and Duchess of Northumberland. | 0:46:17 | 0:46:20 | |
In the mid-1700s, they transformed the house | 0:46:25 | 0:46:29 | |
into a vivid and imagined expression of the classical world. | 0:46:29 | 0:46:34 | |
Here, we're in the company of ancient bodies - | 0:46:39 | 0:46:43 | |
both originals and imitations. | 0:46:43 | 0:46:46 | |
And it can seem an oppressive space | 0:46:49 | 0:46:52 | |
in which no other way | 0:46:52 | 0:46:54 | |
of representing the human form is permitted. | 0:46:54 | 0:46:57 | |
The climactic set piece of the house | 0:47:02 | 0:47:05 | |
is in a central hall | 0:47:05 | 0:47:07 | |
where two great masterpieces of ancient sculpture face off. | 0:47:07 | 0:47:11 | |
At one end, the Dying Gaul... | 0:47:13 | 0:47:16 | |
..a figure who is said to embody the ancient virtue | 0:47:18 | 0:47:21 | |
of nobility in defeat. | 0:47:21 | 0:47:24 | |
But in this room, | 0:47:29 | 0:47:30 | |
he is forever overshadowed by what stands opposite. | 0:47:30 | 0:47:34 | |
By far the most important sculpture in the entire house is this one. | 0:47:44 | 0:47:49 | |
It's a replica of a classical work | 0:47:51 | 0:47:53 | |
originally made perhaps around 300 BC. | 0:47:53 | 0:47:56 | |
In the 18th century, it would achieve | 0:47:58 | 0:48:01 | |
unparalleled fame as the greatest sculpture ever made. | 0:48:01 | 0:48:07 | |
He is known as the Apollo Belvedere. | 0:48:07 | 0:48:09 | |
The Apollo takes his name from the Belvedere Sculpture Court | 0:48:13 | 0:48:17 | |
in the Vatican, where, since the early 16th century, | 0:48:17 | 0:48:21 | |
he stood on display. | 0:48:21 | 0:48:23 | |
Lovely as he is, that is probably where he would have stayed, | 0:48:24 | 0:48:28 | |
one sculpture among many, had it not been for the international fame | 0:48:28 | 0:48:34 | |
given to him by one man - Johann Joachim Winckelmann. | 0:48:34 | 0:48:39 | |
"This was quite simply", he wrote, | 0:48:42 | 0:48:45 | |
"the most sublime statue of antiquity | 0:48:45 | 0:48:48 | |
"to have escaped destruction. | 0:48:48 | 0:48:50 | |
"An eternal spring time," he went on, | 0:48:51 | 0:48:55 | |
"clothes the alluring virility of his mature years | 0:48:55 | 0:49:00 | |
"with a pleasing youth | 0:49:00 | 0:49:03 | |
"and plays with soft tenderness upon the lofty structure of his limbs." | 0:49:03 | 0:49:09 | |
"How is it possible," he asked, "to describe it?" | 0:49:10 | 0:49:13 | |
Winckelmann had worked his way up as librarian | 0:49:17 | 0:49:20 | |
and right-hand man to some of the biggest art collectors of the day, | 0:49:20 | 0:49:25 | |
and, finally, he had become Director of Antiquities | 0:49:25 | 0:49:28 | |
at the Vatican itself, | 0:49:28 | 0:49:30 | |
and the author of some of the most important books on art history ever. | 0:49:30 | 0:49:34 | |
Winckelmann was a man who had enthused over | 0:49:35 | 0:49:39 | |
any number of Greco-Roman bodies, | 0:49:39 | 0:49:42 | |
but the Apollo Belvedere really tipped him over the edge. | 0:49:42 | 0:49:45 | |
But Winckelmann offered more than words of adoration. | 0:49:53 | 0:49:56 | |
He would devise a brand-new theory | 0:50:00 | 0:50:03 | |
that would leave an awkward and lasting legacy. | 0:50:03 | 0:50:06 | |
In the library at Syon is the book | 0:50:09 | 0:50:11 | |
in which Winckelmann first laid out his theories. | 0:50:11 | 0:50:15 | |
Originally published in 1764, | 0:50:18 | 0:50:21 | |
it was in these pages that the Apollo was elevated | 0:50:21 | 0:50:25 | |
above a mere artwork to stand | 0:50:25 | 0:50:28 | |
as the ultimate symbol of civilisation itself. | 0:50:28 | 0:50:32 | |
This is Winckelmann's most influential book, | 0:50:37 | 0:50:40 | |
History Of The Art Of The Ancient World, | 0:50:40 | 0:50:44 | |
and on the front page, there is, in fact, | 0:50:44 | 0:50:46 | |
a lovely drawing which includes the Apollo Belvedere. | 0:50:46 | 0:50:51 | |
And what he did that no-one had systematically done before | 0:50:51 | 0:50:55 | |
was to say that the best art | 0:50:55 | 0:51:00 | |
was made at the time of the best politics. | 0:51:00 | 0:51:05 | |
It was almost as if he was wanting to argue | 0:51:05 | 0:51:08 | |
that you could track the history, | 0:51:08 | 0:51:11 | |
the rise and fall of civilisation | 0:51:11 | 0:51:14 | |
through the rise and fall | 0:51:14 | 0:51:17 | |
of the representation of the human body. | 0:51:17 | 0:51:19 | |
Winckelmann's views would seduce | 0:51:21 | 0:51:23 | |
even our most esteemed art historians. | 0:51:23 | 0:51:26 | |
-KENNETH CLARK: -This is the figure of the most admired | 0:51:29 | 0:51:32 | |
piece of sculpture in the world. | 0:51:32 | 0:51:34 | |
The Apollo surely embodies a higher state of civilisation. | 0:51:35 | 0:51:39 | |
For more than 200 years, | 0:51:41 | 0:51:43 | |
Greek sculpture was regarded | 0:51:43 | 0:51:46 | |
as a beacon of a superior Western civilisation. | 0:51:46 | 0:51:51 | |
The northern imagination takes shape in an image of fear and darkness. | 0:51:51 | 0:51:56 | |
The Hellenistic imagination | 0:51:58 | 0:52:00 | |
in an image of harmonised proportion and human reason. | 0:52:00 | 0:52:03 | |
But for me, Winckelmann's legacy goes even further. | 0:52:06 | 0:52:10 | |
The inheritance of Winckelmann | 0:52:11 | 0:52:13 | |
has been a distorting and sometimes divisive lens, | 0:52:13 | 0:52:19 | |
deeply affecting the way people in the West | 0:52:19 | 0:52:22 | |
have encountered and judged | 0:52:22 | 0:52:25 | |
the art of other very different civilisations. | 0:52:25 | 0:52:28 | |
I think Winckelmann | 0:52:30 | 0:52:32 | |
has caught us in a narrow way of seeing | 0:52:32 | 0:52:36 | |
that's difficult to perceive, much harder to escape. | 0:52:36 | 0:52:39 | |
But there is a place we can pin down the legacy of Winckelmann. | 0:52:45 | 0:52:50 | |
It is back where we started, with the art of the Olmec. | 0:52:50 | 0:52:54 | |
It was 1964, | 0:53:01 | 0:53:03 | |
and Mexico was investing in a new national identity | 0:53:03 | 0:53:07 | |
that asserted the glories of its ancient past, | 0:53:07 | 0:53:11 | |
and central to the project was art. | 0:53:11 | 0:53:14 | |
A new museum was purpose-built | 0:53:19 | 0:53:22 | |
to showcase the depth of Mexican history... | 0:53:22 | 0:53:24 | |
..and the treasures of its great civilisations | 0:53:27 | 0:53:30 | |
laid out for all to see. | 0:53:30 | 0:53:32 | |
Of vital importance | 0:53:34 | 0:53:36 | |
was the celebration of Mexico's earliest civilisation - | 0:53:36 | 0:53:41 | |
the Olmec. | 0:53:41 | 0:53:42 | |
Along with this and other colossal heads | 0:53:44 | 0:53:47 | |
was an array of extraordinary Olmec bodies. | 0:53:47 | 0:53:50 | |
This gathering of stone figurines | 0:53:55 | 0:53:57 | |
was found exactly as you see them. | 0:53:57 | 0:53:59 | |
Whether religious symbolism or ancient vanity, | 0:54:04 | 0:54:08 | |
this clay figure clasps a mirror to its chest. | 0:54:08 | 0:54:11 | |
And what looks like a baby | 0:54:16 | 0:54:18 | |
was one of hundreds known from Olmec cemeteries. | 0:54:18 | 0:54:22 | |
But star of the show was a brand-new acquisition. | 0:54:26 | 0:54:31 | |
It was the statue known as The Olmec Wrestler. | 0:54:37 | 0:54:41 | |
Its display of anatomical detail | 0:54:42 | 0:54:45 | |
and Greek-style proportion | 0:54:45 | 0:54:47 | |
made it one of a kind in Olmec art. | 0:54:47 | 0:54:51 | |
Held as proof that the Olmec Civilisation | 0:54:56 | 0:55:00 | |
was every bit as sophisticated as any in the classical world, | 0:55:00 | 0:55:04 | |
he quickly became a poster boy. | 0:55:04 | 0:55:07 | |
Not just for the Olmec, but for all of ancient Mexico. | 0:55:07 | 0:55:12 | |
And it is with The Wrestler that we see the impact of Winckelmann | 0:55:17 | 0:55:22 | |
and his version of classical form on our Western way of seeing. | 0:55:22 | 0:55:27 | |
What appeals to us about him are those shades of Greco-Roman art | 0:55:35 | 0:55:40 | |
that seem to fit with our own expectations | 0:55:40 | 0:55:42 | |
of artistic achievement - | 0:55:42 | 0:55:44 | |
the expressive twist of the body, | 0:55:44 | 0:55:47 | |
the apparently naturalistic muscles | 0:55:47 | 0:55:50 | |
and strikingly realistic face. | 0:55:50 | 0:55:53 | |
There's even the name that he's been given | 0:55:53 | 0:55:55 | |
with its echo of classical Greek sport. | 0:55:55 | 0:55:58 | |
If this is the work of an outstanding Olmec sculptor, | 0:55:59 | 0:56:03 | |
it's one who, by chance, got later Western tastes spot-on. | 0:56:03 | 0:56:10 | |
But so perfectly does he measure up to Western ideals, | 0:56:12 | 0:56:16 | |
that some now believe that he is, in fact, a fake - | 0:56:16 | 0:56:21 | |
the work of someone who understood the all pervasive allure | 0:56:21 | 0:56:26 | |
of the classical style. | 0:56:26 | 0:56:29 | |
If true, it shows how Winckelmann's legacy | 0:56:29 | 0:56:32 | |
can cloud our appreciation of other cultures, | 0:56:32 | 0:56:35 | |
even taint our understanding of the past. | 0:56:35 | 0:56:39 | |
But, real or fake, | 0:56:40 | 0:56:42 | |
The Olmec Wrestler shows that ancient images of human figures | 0:56:42 | 0:56:47 | |
can tell us much about the past, and even more about ourselves. | 0:56:47 | 0:56:52 | |
When we admire The Olmec Wrestler, | 0:56:54 | 0:56:57 | |
we are also facing our own assumptions | 0:56:57 | 0:57:01 | |
about what makes a satisfying image of a human being. | 0:57:01 | 0:57:05 | |
But it does more than that. | 0:57:07 | 0:57:09 | |
Because it always shifts the focus onto us as viewers | 0:57:09 | 0:57:14 | |
and onto our own prejudices. | 0:57:14 | 0:57:15 | |
So in a way, The Wrestler is an acute reminder | 0:57:17 | 0:57:22 | |
of one fundamental truth of the art of the body - | 0:57:22 | 0:57:26 | |
that it's not just about how people in the past | 0:57:26 | 0:57:29 | |
chose to represent themselves or what they looked like. | 0:57:29 | 0:57:33 | |
It is also about how we look. | 0:57:33 | 0:57:37 | |
The Open University has produced a free poster | 0:57:41 | 0:57:44 | |
that explores the history of different civilisations | 0:57:44 | 0:57:47 | |
through artefacts. | 0:57:47 | 0:57:48 | |
To order your free copy, please call... | 0:57:50 | 0:57:52 | |
Or go to the address on screen | 0:57:58 | 0:58:00 | |
and follow the links for The Open University. | 0:58:00 | 0:58:02 |