Cardinal Cringe’s Scattered Thoughts

So. Since I'm not too satisfied with my latest works, I've decided to study and copy other works before starting my own work again. I'll start with some statues for the study of volumes and chiaroscuro. In this case, it's the Kronos of Cape Artemisium. It's a bronze statue about two meters tall, one of the very few original bronze statues that has survived to this day! Unfortunately, we don't know who the artist is, and it's not entirely certain whether it depicts Zeus or Poseidon. Personally, I think it's Poseidon, but that's just my personal opinion! The Kronos of Cape Artemisium is in the severe style, an artistic style used between 480 BC and 500 BC. and around 450 BC, a transitional period between statues and works created in the Archaic style and Greek Classicism (for example! An example of the Classical style is the Doryphoros by Polykleitos ✨). The statue is located at the Archaeological Museum of Athens.

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In antiquity, in the Grecco-Roman cultural world across multiple centuries, marble was a common and extravagant material used for sculpture and architecture both. In the centuries since the Roman empire, much of these works fell into ruin, from lack of maintenance or from explicit quarrying for materials by the people that lived there. Between the 1400s and 1800s, archaeology developed and classical art became popular again, as a direct reference to antiquity. This lead to the rise of the Neoclassical movement, a style of art and architecture that sought to directly emulate the stark white marble and architectural forms of Roman art. Cities like Washington DC in the United States were built in this style, to evoke Rome.

It was only with further advances in archaeology was it discovered that Classical architecture and statuary was not white: it was painted. Buildings were colorful and statues were painted to appear as lifelike as possible. But the paints were far less equipped to survive the ages compared to the marble, so the visuals did not persist.

This became a piece of common trivia in the early twenty-first century. Perceptions of classical art are locked to the stark white seen in museums and in neoclassical buildings, so this deviation from trained expectations made for a striking bit of information, similar to dinosaurs having feathers (in violation of previous expectations).

In comparison, Brutalism, an architectural style from the mid 20th century, is explicitly a dreary, colorless brutal style. The drab grey of concrete is the intended feature, made to evoke utilitarianism and drab reality, without ostentation beyond form and function.

joke about classical art

and architecture.

I see an open suggestion…