High school students who take four years of Arts score 100 points higher on the SAT

The Arts teach the skills essential for success in the global marketplace: risk-taking, out-of-the-box creative thinking, team problem solving, excellence as the standard and academic discipline

Students who are involved in the Arts have improved self-esteem and are less likely to skip school or engage in disruptive classroom behavior

Students who take Art have improved attention spans, increased interest in school and foundations of success on which to build

Participation in the Arts promotes tolerance for other cultures, Art is about working together, about communication, about bridges and connections.

 

April, 2004

Greek Sculptures and Polychrome


Greek Sculptures and Polychrome


We think of the sculptures of ancient Greece and Rome as pure white.
In fact, so do most people.
Michelangelo, during the Renaissance, created beautiful sculptures in pure white marble.
Our modern understanding of a beautiful statue is based to a great extent on this and most modern sculpture is admired for form. We think (perhaps I think) that color would diminish the beauty of a statue because it might cover the form and take away from the form.
I think most people must feel this way.
In movies about the ancient world (Gladiator and others) the statues are also always “Plain” and white, showing only the original stone the sculpture is made from.


I remember in “Gladiator” where there is a statue of “Mars” before the Coliseum. This statue is “Plain”
If the producer of the film had wished to make this as realistic as possible, the statue of Mars would have been painted in bright color.
The Romans and Greeks painted their statues in vivid colors to make them look as life-like as possible. This is called polychrome and we know this because these sculptures still carry small amounts of paint in the crevasses of the statues.
By the time of the Renaissance, the paint had washed or worn off, or maybe it had just faded.
Next time you watch a film or television show about the ancient world, remember that the statues were not white; they were painted in bright colors of red and blue.

I still feel that the white marble sculptures that we know today are more beautiful, but it is interesting to know that the Greeks and Romans would think the plain statues of today are very strange.