Feb 8, 2019
The Parthenon Sculptures (c. 447– 438 BC) British Museum
The visual language devised by the Greeks would be adopted by the Romans, and subsequently, by the entire Western tradition. Indeed, it would become the preeminent means of portraying order, rationality, harmony and power — whether in dictatorships, despotisms, or democracies.
Ironically, though, the lesson which the Greeks understood and which their artists expressed in great works like the Parthenon sculptures — namely that the disruptive and frightening forces of the irrational will always threaten to burst out in human history — that lesson would have to be learned again and again. ↳ The Classical Ideal / Art of the Western World (1989)
