The Theater at Epidauros

Theater at Epidauros, c. 300 BCE

Greek art begins in geometry. By the time of the 3rd century BCE and later, after the death of Alexander the Great - known as the Hellenistic age - artists were moving away from the expression of abstract geometric harmonies. This design, however, is geometric through and through.

Theatrical productions began in Greece with ritual and communal dances performed by choruses. The circular orchestra here is the performance space. Originally, a squarish skene building (where we get our word scene) would have been just behind the orchestra. The audience sat in the amphitheater, which carved into a mountainside in conic sections. The combination of geometrical forms is basic.

It is as if, by the human mind’s capacity for abstract thought, nature has been transmuted into geometry. The orchestra becomes a perfect circle, the hillside the interior of a truncated cone, the backdrop a simple cubic form (Pollitt, 171).

The Parthenon 2

The Parthenon Refinements, 447-432).

The lines of the Parthenon, essentially, or apparently, verticals and horizontals, were designed by way of subtle yet significant variations from the norm, so that what appears to be straight is in fact curved, and thus the stylobate, as Pollitt points out, becomes a “subtle dome” (72) I love that notion. The dome is there, but only if you measure for it. Greeks apparently had no use for arches and domes and such, unless they were invisible. Wait for the Romans for arches and domes and such to appear, so beautifully in connection with Greek trabeation such as this.

What are we to make of these so-called refinements? Pollitt says that those “delicate variations meant that virtually every architectural member of the Parthenon had to be carved, like a jewel, to separate, minute specifications.” Does this not feel like sculpture?

I first learned, I forget where, that the Parthenon refinements actually make the lines look more uniform, straighter, more regular. That is how I taught the term entasis - the slight swelling of the column at the middle - as I pat my belly - that makes it look straight when seen from below. This is the theory proposed by Vetruvius, who knows a thing or two; apparently, without those variations the lines at those dimensions would look crooked.

Pollitt points out two more reasons for the variations, and then goes on to suggest that they all work pretty well. In addition to the compensation theory, he says that the “anti-Vitruvian” theory has it that the variations in fact make the temple stand out by way of its different lines and exaggerated optical effects.

Pollitt’s third reason for these refinements is that they are

...intentional deviations from ‘regularity’ for the purpose of creating a tension in the mind of the viewer between what he expects to see and what he actually does see. The mind looks for a regular geometric paradigm of a temple with true horizontals, right angles etc., but the eye sees a complex aggregate of curves and variant dimensions. As a result, the mind struggles to reconcile what it knows with what the eye sees, and from this struggle arises a tension and fascination which makes the structure seem vibrant, alive, and continually interesting. (Pollitt 77)

I should say how enormously grateful I feel, not just to the Parthenon, of course, but to Pollitt and others like him who have taken the trouble to point such things out to me.

The Parthenon 1

The Parthenon, Athens, 447-432

Beauty, I suppose, would be the answer, if the Parthenon were a question or riddle. Here as everywhere, but even more so, we regret having to talk about something that is not here, or, rather, about something where we are not there. Though I suppose our best reactions to a work like this are not, as we walk about and breathe it in, to start talking. Still, the experience is the all, and while talking is part of the experience, the pictures don't bring us there.

We have been taught to think of the Dipylon Vase as a kind of sculpture. Architecture is not sculpture, but will submit - sometimes quite readily, I think - to being considered as such. Especially a ruin, or fragment, such as this one, when all measure of utility and practicality are useless, might seem sculptural, if the Greeks, that is, ever really went in for abstract sculpture; abstract qualities in sculpture they certainly excelled in, but abstract sculpture itself, except as almost metaphorically here, or in pedestals and such - which are not sculpture either - not.

In Archaic Greek art the genre of particular things had outweighed their specific, individual qualities in artistic representation. Hence abstraction, expressed through the geometricization of natural forms, dominated Archaic art. In the fourth century, as we shall see, it is possible to detect the first indications of a taste, which would mature in the Hellenistic period, for the representation of specifics without any emphatic suggestion of the genre or form (in the Platonic sense) from which they were derived. Realism, in short, began to undermine the long-standing role of abstraction in Greek art. In the art of the High Classical period, and particularly in the art of the Parthenon, these two poles of artistic thinking—the absolute and the relative—seem to have been magically balanced. (Pollitt, 96)

The Parthenon is one of the great masterpieces of human consciousness. It can be seen as a point of departure by which Western civilization and culture marks a significant achievement that transcends the local and expresses for all who experience it as such something about how our minds interact with the world around us. For this reason, it has become for many a kind of personal way point, a touchstone of experience which, like any great work of art, seems constantly and energetically at work with us. In part and in whole—and both the parts and the whole have been extensively and significantly damaged over time so that all that remains is fragmentary by nature, and most of the best sculpture is in London at the British Museum—the Parthenon invites us to look and to consider, both at the same time, so that we consider or think about how we are seeing it, how we become aware of it through our senses, and also we can begin to acquire a sort of sense perception of how we consider, or think. The stone does not (of course) come alive, but rather something in us seems to come alive as we look both at the architecture and the architectural sculptures, which are found principally in the metopes, the frieze, and the pediments. The work becomes an event, or, more likely, a series of events, which we experience singly and together. The physicality of the work draws us in not only to the world of material things but also to a sense of how we experience the material world through our senses, so that the experiencing the Parthenon becomes like experiencing thought itself. This is, as I say, a quality it shares with other great works of art, but in the Parthenon we have one of the earliest and grandest of such effects.

The Parthenon is the work of many hands—and minds. The architect is known to be Iktinos; the designer of the sculptures Pheidias, though the extent of his contributions is impossible to gauge Perhaps Pheidias provided sketches and ideas for others to work out, though he may have been more intimately involved. Pheidias is, in any case, regarded as one of the master sculptors of Ancient Greece, although the two pieces he was best known for, both colossal chryselephantine (of gold and ivory) cult images, one of Athena in the Parthenon and the other of Zeus at Olympia, have disappeared.

Perhaps the most important single person responsible for the Parthenon is Pericles, whose influence over the general culture his time is perhaps unparalleled. he is a favored statesmen in the humanities because of his support for arts and culture. Pericles is perhaps best known for his funeral oration:

In the same persons there is at once a concern for private and for civic affairs; and even among those whose attention is usually turned to their private occupation, there is no lack of understanding of civic matters. For we alone regard the man who takes no part in civic affairs not as unconcerned, but as useless….

Here is something of what Plutarch had to say about him in his Lives:

Pericles learned most from Anaxagoras, who imparted to young Pericles the majesty and gravity he had in all his sayings and doings, superior to all arts of popularity. Anaxagoras was the first philospher to attribute the order of the world to intelligence, rather than to chance or necessity, and to explain power as the affinity of similar things. With his mind occupied by such thoughts, Pericles was dignified in his language and serene and calm in his movements. Nothing could shake his majestic composure.

One day, Pericles was in the marketplace of Athens doing business, and all day long some noisy pest kept following him around, yelling vituperation. He even followed Pericles home. Throughout the ordeal, Pericles maintained his composure. It was dark by the time Pericles arrived home, so he gave orders for one of his servants to take a torch and guide this critic safely back to wherever he lived. Some people said that Pericles was only trying to fool the public with a false front of virtue. But Zeno replied that if Pericles were faking virtue, his detractors should do the same, because even pretending to be good, if this is continued for long enough, will give a man the desire and practice that is needed for good habits.

... The Parthenon and all of the famous statues and buildings of Athens were paid for using the money that had been collected from the Greek allies to finance the war against the Persians. 4 The aristocrats in Athens vehemently objected to such use of the money, saying that the allies would be right to consider this an open act of tyranny when they saw that the money raised for the war was being embezzled to adorn Athens like a whore. But Pericles responded that the Athenians could do as they pleased with the money because they really deserved it. Moreover, said Pericles, there were enough military supplies, so it was proper to spend the surplus on buildings that would give Athens eternal honor and create jobs. Thus most of the artisans and craftsmen of Athens owed their pay to Pericles, along with the soldiers and sailors.

The plans for the construction were on a very grand scale. With all of these buildings going up at the same time, there was such a rivalry among the craftsmen that they not only built them exquisitely well, but also quickly, so that their masterpieces could be admired. In only a few years, most of the construction was finished. As the work was in progress, Thucydides and the aristocrats managed to get a vote that the expense was excessive.

Pericles then said to the Athenians: "Then let the cost go to my account, not yours, but also let the inscription on the buildings be my name." After hearing this, the Athenians changed their minds and ordered Pericles to go ahead and to spare no expense. (from Plutarch's Lives, Pericles the Olympian)

Temple at Paestum

Temple of Athena, Paestum, c. 500 BCE

To me this is one of the most satisfying works of art in the world. I can only think of it as we have it now, a ruin; its spare, bare qualities and open roof emphasize and at the same time diminish its immense physicality and weight. The rhythmic nature of the peripteral colonnade sets a standard. It presents Doric strength with the most compelling and inviting qualities. The textures and colors, which can only hover uncertainly about any reproduction, contribute much here.

When this slide shows up in class I usually ask students to think of it as a kind of self-portrait of the Classical mind. Its harmonies exquisitely call to mind (mind!) a sense of rational inquiry combined with visual pleasure. Idealism is often too far removed or abstract to be felt as a physical sensation, and here the combination of the two is unearthly. With my students, I usually tend to identify the Doric by quick reference to the capital - Doric echoes in our neighborhoods are usually just that - but I always turn back to this temple to remind me of the Order's particular eloquence.

I don't know how accurate I am when I talk about this as a self-portrait of the Classical mind - might one say the same of anything in the Classical canon? - but as a heuristic I believe it helps get at something that was getting at the Greeks. The beauty we locate in the harmonies of proportion is apprehended one way by the architect who has measured and arranged, another to those of us who just look, but in each case a sense of the parts relating to other parts and of how they relate to the whole helps us to appreciate and makes us glad.

Above all others the sense of sight

Ionic Order on a plain shaft egg & dart decoration on the capital between the volutes, abacus, architrave, and what looks like a rosette on the frieze. with dentil molding over the lintel in the background, Chicago

Doric Order with fluted columns and simple capital of echinus and abacus supporting entablature with undecorated architrave, frieze of alternating metopes and triglyphs and guttae and a cornice supporting mutule blocks, showing a coffered ceiling, Chicago

Corinthian Order, Composite Order, Tuscan Order, Nonce Orders-not pictured

All men by nature desire to know. An indication of this is the delight we take in our senses; for even apart from their usefulness they are loved for themselves; and above all others the sense of sight. For not only with a view to action, but even when we are not going to do anything, we prefer seeing (one might say) to everything else. The reason is that this, most of all the senses, makes us know and brings to light many differences between things. (Aristotle)

This majestic observation lies at the heart of the humanities,. Hence, I use it as an introduction to architecture, which in order to learn you have to start looking at and reading about.

For Aristotle, our desire to know defines us as human. This desire springs first and foremost from the senses. Sure, he says, our senses are useful to us, and that helps account for our desire to know. It is through our senses, after all, that we first encounter the world, and are able to negotiate our survival; we live both with our senses and by them. But we also love our senses in and of for themselves, which also accounts for our desire to know. Just as we desire things in any and all of our other senses—taste, touch, smell, hearing—we desire things that we see. Hence, the Chicago window, for example, used so effectively to bring in natural light and to display the merchandise, making it appear more desirable.

Hence too, I think, my interest in teaching and learning about architecture. Seeing things, as Aristotle says, brings to light the many differences among things.

Though most of us don’t hunt, our eyes are still the great monopolists of our senses. To taste or touch your enemy or your food, you have to be unnervingly close to it. To smell or hear it, you can risk being further off. But vision can rush through the fields and up the mountains, travel across time, country, and parsecs of outer space, and collect bushel baskets of information as it goes. Animals that hear high frequencies better than we do—bats and dolphins, for instance—seem to see richly with their ears, hearing geographically, but for us the world becomes most densely informative, most luscious, when we take it in through our eyes. It may even be that abstract thinking evolved from our eyes’ elaborate struggle to make sense of what they saw. Seventy percent of the body’s sense receptors cluster in the eyes, and it is mainly through seeing the world that we appraise and understand it. Lovers close their eyes when they kiss because, if they didn’t, there would be too many visual distractions to notice and analyze. (Diane Ackerman, A Natural History of the Senses)

We see things in the physical world. In order to make sense of them, to distinguish, qualify, and sort them out, we use abstract thinking. If my students learn one thing in their writing, however, I wish it will be to be to give me the particulars, the things they see and feel and touch, shoving most of their abstractions off the table entirely. But only after they've begun to use abstractions to think with. To do that best, I think it helps to gather appropriate groups of words you can use effectively to describe what is going on.

For architecture, then, this might start with (1) the architectural lexicon or dictionary plus (2) some basic formal elements such as point, line, shape (circle, triangle, square), volume (sphere, pyramid, cube), and texture, and finally (3) a handful of general relationship terms-that is, terms that identify both features and how they relate to other features and to the whole-such as, for example, pattern, repetition, juxtaposition, alternation, similarity, contrast, variation, balance, symmetry, rhythm and rhythms, proportion, transformation, and the like.