Ever since I moved to Melbourne I have been wanting to catch one of the trains out to the country, but other things (such as exploring the city and plays in Sydney) seemed to always get in the way – that is until I saw these flags fluttering over Latrobe Street:

Suddenly, I had an excuse to go to Bendigo (or at least to go for a ride on one of the V/Line trains).

Initially I was going to write about my experience at the gallery (and will still do so) however since I have had a fascination with the Greek world since I was in high school, and that there is so much I can write about the exhibition itself, I will dedicate this post to ‘The Body Beautiful’.

At first I thought this was just going to be an collection of Greek statues, and I also had the impression that I wouldn’t be allowed to take photos, but that didn’t matter because I’ve got tonnes of photos of Greek statues, such as these which were taken at the Vatican Museum:

You might be thinking that since I have been to the Vatican Museum (and Greece) that I have probably seen so many Greek statues that I could not possibly want to see any more.

Personally, I can never look at enough Greek statues.

Anyway, it turned out that I could take photos, so upon discovering this I rushed back to where I had stored my bag and grabbed my camera (I put it in there because I had expected to get told off if I had tried to walk into the exhibition with my camera dangling around my wrist), so here is a photo of a couple of vases that were on display:

Whenever I look at these vases I wonder why the Greeks would have gone to so much trouble to create such artwork only to use it to store wine, until I realised that we do that as well.

I also wondered when they dug these vases up whether they were covered in ancient wine stains (among other things), though I believe that a lot of the ones that were used ended up being thrown onto the trash heap. I believe (though don’t quote me on this – I only have an arts degree where I specialised in Ancient Greek and Roman culture) many of these vases came from the multitude of shipwrecks that are scattered across the Mediterranean seabed.

It goes without saying that the Greeks have had a significant impact upon our culture,which probably had something to do with Greece having a significant impact upon the Roman culture. It is not just the the myths and legends that have been passed down to us, but also their art, sculpture, and architecture. Books such as The Odyssey are probably a staple on many bookshelves (or computers, since many of us read off portable devices these days), and we all know the stories of Perseus and Medusa, Theseus and the Minotaur, and Jason and the Argonauts, which can be found in Apollodorus‘ Library of Greek Mythology and to a lesser extent, Ovid‘s Metamorphoses.

I certainly found it interesting that the Greeks themselves produced abstract art, such as this figurine from the Greek islands which dates around 2600 to2400 BC:

Even though we are all familiar with the incredibly life like statues, such as this one:

The exhibition had a section purely dedicated to Hercules, which also included a bust:

I quite liked how they had quotes from the ancients on the wall, which reflected in part the theme of the particular gallery (though some galleries, being quite large, would have multiple themes). The quote I liked the best was this one from Euripides‘ Medea:

This was in a room with some pieces of art dealing with marriage and childbirth,and from this room I discovered that one of the rituals involved in aGreek wedding (which would no doubt be nothing like this Greek wedding) was a mock abduction of the women from her parents’ house to the house of her new husband. This no doubt relates to a practice that occurred in the much more chaotic periods of Greek history,though we should remember that the whole farce that was the Trojan War came about because Paris abducted Helen, the wife of Menelaus, king of Sparta. Though there was a reason for this as Aphrodite had promised Paris the hand of Helen in marriage if he judged her to be the most beautiful of the gods.

 

Further Reading

 Another article on the history of Greek sculpture can be found on the Hellenic Period blog.

A wordpress blog that has pictures of a whole range of sculptures (and this is just one post).