>> In the nineteen-thirties, restorers at the British Museum polished the Elgin marbles, the most treasured sculptures from the Acropolis, until they were as white and shiny as pearls.
As good an argument as any for the Greeks getting them back from those ignorant barbarians.
Anything the British have done to the Elgin marbles pales into insignificance compared to the actual blowing up with explosives of the Parthenon at the hands of the Ottomans/Venetians in 1687.
I'd love to see the pyramids when they were first built. They are still very impressive 4000 years later, but to see them when just completed, with the golden top and the polished limestone and all the other decoration that probably existed then...
The massive structures still remain, but they must be ruins compared to their past splendor.
Ditto Hadrian's Wall [0] in the UK. It's still impressive as it cuts across the Northern moors, but is a mass of grey stone. Back in the day, it was believed to have been plastered and whitewashed, creating a stunning 70 mile long visual marker of the Northern extent of the Roman empire
we wuz sculpted n shit, these beautiful works of art that demonstrated sculpting skill that is impressive to this day were actually tacky garbage because we hired self-hating retards to paint over them with crayola to own the whites
> By Margaret Talbot
> Her brothers are both journalists. Stephen Talbot is a long-time documentary producer for public television (Frontline, Sound Tracks: Music Without Borders) and David Talbot is the founder of Salon.com
oy vey what a coincidence
> edit: already flagged
post-2016 HN is absolutely pathetic. I can sense Sam Altman's tongue drooling on Hillary's necrotic #&*!$^ as I speak.
> political axe to grind starting straight away with the title
Yes someone absolutely didn't read the article nor look at the examples of the paint remains found on the statues.
> Incredibly bias article
The reason the whole idea of color and whiteness was presented was to answer the question of why did people remove the color from the objects and why wasn't it common knowledge about how they were actually painted objects.
Political against Alt-Right? I have a political ax to grind against Alt-Right and so should you.
Are you trying to say a title including "The myth of whiteness" isn't trying to allude to something else? Injecting American ID pol onto non-Amercian cultures is incredibly toxic and colonial.
> The reason the whole idea of color and whiteness was presented was to answer the question of why did people remove the color from the objects and why wasn't it common knowledge about how they were actually painted objects.
This has been common knowledge for a long time - this article isn't really about that once you actually read through it.
> Political against Alt-Right
Facts have nothing to do with the Alt-Right they don't tend to like them, however using other people's history to take a shot at different political groups is gross it doesn't matter what side you're on.
Be real; you didn't actually read my comments at all, did you? Otherwise you wouldn't bother posting such an inane response; so void of any critical thinking you just post buzzwords you think will shut people up.
'Abusive language' - are you gaslighting me? You are the only one who got personal when you aggressively called someone a 'coward'.
Then I had a centrist accusing me of reading Breitbart when it's likely I'm far more left wing than either of you. Debate facts not people please, and stop responding to me like you're a robot filled with pre-programmed responses who's not actually been reading what I've wrote.
> The reason the whole idea of color and whiteness was presented was to answer the question of why did people remove the color from the objects
Extremely unconvincingly, though; the linguistic accident that we use the same word ("white") to describe a shade and an ethnicity is doing most of the rhetorical work. None of the reconstructions shown in the article looks particularly "non-white". Doesn't it seem more plausible that people removed traces of colours because, as even the article acknowledges, they make the statues look gaudy and childish?
It is a bit strange how the article veers between ethnicity and paint. I mean both are interesting, but the fact that we came to think of the naked marble of these statues as the canonical version seems largely unrelated to whether the greeks were, well, greek.
(And to other questions, like how did their society think about these things, and how much has post-classical migration changed the makeup of the people living there. IIRC the African component of North-Africans has increased a bit.)
There is one picture in TFA of an African-looking child. And interestingly they say that this effect was often conveyed by choosing to work in basalt, as well as painting with darker colors. I guess these must be fairly uncommon, I can't recall seeing any in museums?
Indeed. And of course some of what was Greece has now became Turkey, and for which enough Turks must have shown up to switch the language... I don't know the current data here but I'm sure it's improving rapidly.
It was a response to this research why there is a political tone:
> She is not the only classicist who has been targeted by the so-called alt-right. Some white supremacists have been drawn to classical studies out of a desire to affirm what they imagine to be an unblemished lineage of white Western culture extending back to ancient Greece.
> None of the reconstructions shown in the article looks particularly "non-white".
Your mixing modern and ancient ideas. The issue is how the Greeks viewed pale skin. This is not about how they were not "white" but that in Ancient Greece there was no pro-bias for white over dark skin.
"Nor did the Greeks conceive of race the way we do. Some of the ancients’ racial theories were derived from the Hippocratic idea of the humors. Rebecca Futo Kennedy, a classicist at Denison University, who writes on race and ethnicity, told me, “Cold weather made you stupid but also courageous, so that was what people from the Far North were supposed to be like. And the people they called Ethiopians were thought of as very smart but cowardly. It comes out of the medical tradition."
"Pale skin on a woman was considered a sign of beauty and refinement, because it showed that she was privileged enough not to have to work outdoors. But a man with pale skin was considered unmasculine: bronzed skin was associated with the heroes who fought on battlefields and competed as athletes, naked, in amphitheatres."
The article itself is doing that. "it was time we all accepted that ancient sculpture was not pure white—and neither were the people of the ancient world. One false notion, she said, had reinforced the other" - but how so? "Some white supremacists have been drawn to classical studies out of a desire to affirm what they imagine to be an unblemished lineage of white Western culture extending back to ancient Greece" - but none of the reconstructions the article shows would threaten such an affirmation.
> a man with pale skin was considered unmasculine: bronzed skin was associated with the heroes who fought on battlefields and competed as athletes, naked, in amphitheatres.
This sounds like an attempt to make something out of nothing, particularly given the lack of an picture (in an article that's otherwise full of them) that would commit to what shade of "bronzed" they're actually talking about. Ancient Greeks thought men looked better with a tan? Sure, so do many modern people.
> that would commit to what shade of "bronzed" they're actually talking about.
Um bronze metal. They would gold leaf or cover in bronze statues. Wasn't because we are talking about the different skin tones of modern Greece with modern Greece. It was that it wasn't the thing that defined people. Your origin was much what defined you and not your skin color.
> This sounds like an attempt to make something out of nothing,
I studied and even read Classical Greek for a few years in college. I can tell you that if you take that point with women it is absolutely true and this idea is more universal in Ancient Near East. Most cultures prized pale skin woman who did not have a tan since only the wealthy could afford such a life style. The Song of Solomon in the Bible even states that.
Song of Solomon 1:5-7
How right they are to adore you. 5 I am dark but beautiful, O women of Jerusalem dark as the tents of Kedar, dark as the curtains of Solomon’s tents. 6 Don’t stare at me because I am dark the sun has darkened my skin. My brothers were angry with me; they forced me to care for their vineyards, so I couldn’t care for myself my own vineyard. 7 Tell me, my love, where are you leading your flock today? Where will you rest your sheep at noon? For why should I wander like a prostitute among your friends and their flocks?
Your wealth was seen by your lack of tan similar to how we view people wealthy based on cars and homes.
> Um bronze metal. They would gold leaf or cover in bronze statues.
Bronze metal doesn't look at all like what we generally call "bronzed skin"; Kennedy knows she is talking to a modern (popular) audience, so it's unlikely that the shade of bronze metal is what she means.
> It was that it wasn't the thing that defined people. Your origin was much what defined you and not your skin color.
This claim keeps being repeated, but it doesn't seem to be backed up by the actual sculptures. If there were people the Ancient Greeks considered Greek who had a skin tone that modern people would not consider "white", why don't any of the statue pigments that this whole article is supposedly about show those skin tones? (The "African boy" is clearly not "white" to modern eyes, but it doesn't sound like he was "Greek" to the ancients either).
"There are also reconstructions of naked figures in bronze, which have a disarming fleshiness: copper lips and nipples, luxuriant black beards, wiry swirls of dark pubic hair. (Classical bronze figures were often blinged out with gemstones for the eyes and with contrasting metals that highlighted anatomical details or dripping wounds.) Throughout the exhibition, the colored replicas are juxtaposed with white plaster casts of marble pieces—fakes that look like what we think of as the real thing."
The other context of bronze means tanned, but they actually covered part or the whole statue in metal sometimes.
What your trying to do is make White an issue. The thing is White isn't the issue and wasn't even a way a person would categorize or see themselves. I can't give you a short clip or a sound bite because this is history and is just a given understanding that the idea of whiteness is a fairly new way for people to think of themselves. That is why the Alt-Right and White Nationalist are just 100% wrong.
It's due to a small worldview. The average person never went more then 14 miles from where they were born their whole life.
This is a textbook example of the trope reality is unrealistic [1]. Those sculptures look kitschy and childish when painted. Seeing them that way destroys my childhood image of the ancient Greeks. It's so strange!
It fits right in with my struggle to imagine the 19th century and early 20th century as being anything other than black and white, since almost (exceptions exist [2]) all of the photos from back then were monochrome.
In addition, it's also hard to imagine how they looked to people then. By which I mean that people would not have seen so much other color in their everyday lives -- obviously trees & flowers were as now, but paint and dyes were expensive and nowhere near as bright & varied as today.
Those sculptures look kitschy and childish when painted.
Perhaps that's partly because painting techniques have advanced a lot since the ancient Greeks, while realistic figure sculpting hasn't changed that much?
I assume they went for that style of painting because it was historically authentic? Presumably they don't want to decorate a 50 BC statue with 1750 AD painting techniques.
It has to do with material wealth values as well. Those pigments were far more expensive then and possibly gathered from around the world. Apparently the same thing happened with fashion in the UK at very least - colorful men's fashion when it was expensive but after it became cheap and widespread it was considered gauche.
In the article one of the scholars posits that the restorers tend to go for the most vivid and saturated versions of whichever colors they detect.
We should also note that many of these statues were placed outdoors. Colors might seem bright and garish in gallery lighting against muted white backgrounds but wouldn't pop quite so much under bright sunlight in the middle of a public square, especially once they develop a patina of dust and the sun starts bleaching them out (which would take no time at all under the Greek sun).
I took a three week vacation to China in 2001. While I was there, I purchased a replica Terra Cotta Soldier, and I chose to have it painted in "authentic colors."
I was very disappointed in it's appearance when it arrived.I would be much happier if I had bought the plain one.
The original artists didn't have a whole palette of colors to choose from, just the paint colors that had been invented in their time. Lead white, cinnabar, Egyptian blue
This is true, but I'm sure the original painters were very skilled at working within these constraints. While quite a lot of reconstructions seem content to get the base colors only.
I also wonder how much of the time these statues spent freshly painted. It wasn't particularly durable & was often outdoors. So I presume that quite a lot of the time the paint was a bit patchy... and that this was part of why they bothered to use marble (or basalt) in the first place, not just whatever was convenient.
Oh they got a lot of abuse. There's a Greek play where a lady asks "Have you got a statue penis in your pocket? Or are you just glad to see me" or something on those lines. Apparently they got vandalized often enough to make it a thing!
Also kind of goes without saying, but the statues wouldn't have had 800 watt New Yorker flashbulbs on them. Between natural shadow on the 3d sculpture, weathering from the various dirty light sources, it probably blended into a decent melange of colors.
> It fits right in with my struggle to imagine the 19th century and early 20th century as being anything other than black and white, since almost (exceptions exist [2]) all of the photos from back then were monochrome.
A fun fact to go with that: quite a lot of what people think of as "gloomy" Victorian-era clothing was actually brightly-colored and just didn't photograph well.
>It fits right in with my struggle to imagine the 19th century and early 20th century as being anything other than black and white, since almost (exceptions exist [2]) all of the photos from back then were monochrome.
Also classical paintings before photography reinforce this because of degradation caused by UV Rays has resulted in paintings to appear darker or washed out.
It's always fascinating because even watching videos i took half a decade ago look so inferior to modern day videos!
A story from several years ago was the restoration to their original colors of Renaissance and later artwork, such as Old Masters and in particular the Sistine Chapel. Many people were confused and disappointed that the artwork had vivid colors, rather than the yellowish patina which they had acquired with age and which viewers had grown up associating with the art - as if, until the impressionists, people lived in a sepia-toned world and had no experience of or interest in colors and their beauty (that was only in Oz, I suppose).
> Those sculptures look kitschy and childish when painted
The be fair, we don't know how they precisely were painted. The reconstructions are extrapolations from trace pigments. We have preserved frescos and mosaics from roman times, and they are not garish or childish at all, thy use beautiful colors and lifelike tones and shading.
For more examples of what this might have looked like, see the Philadelphia Museum of Art, where the statues on the pediment are painted in the old style:
Another thing that was "whitened", or rather, polished: medieval armor. A lot of it was painted, but the paint was removed by collectors and "conservators" in the 19th and 20th century.
"As the artist and critic David Batchelor writes in his 2000 book, “Chromophobia,” at a certain point ignorance becomes willful denial—a kind of “negative hallucination” in which we refuse to see what is before our eyes. "
It's interesting to note that this psychological phenomenon has occurred much before the prevalence of social media, and hasn't changed in how significant the cultural influence is of the phenomenon. I'm pretty interested if there's any solution at all to it.
Professor Bond and this finding are discussed as a case study of 'polarization cycles,' where innocuous claims somehow give rise to controversy in the book "Coddling of the American Mind." (this is obliquely referenced around the middle of the OP). For those interested in these online social dynamics I'd highly recommend the book.
The Enlightenment, among many other things, was characterized by a movement toward simpler styles of attire, especially among men of higher means - i.e. no more high heels worn by men. That sort of dress became seen as superfluous.
It was also the beginning of the modern sciences using rational methods, including the modern study of ancient art and archaeology.
It wouldn't surprise me, therefore, if Enlightenment scholars and those who followed interpreted ancient aesthetics through their more recently acquired sense of style, or really projected their style on the ancients, since it would have flattered them to think that they shared a style sensibility with the ancients.
As a contrast, in India, where the Enlightenment arrived relatively late, the color intensity of ancient aesthetics has been preserved to a far greater degree.
63 comments
[ 3.4 ms ] story [ 104 ms ] threadAs good an argument as any for the Greeks getting them back from those ignorant barbarians.
Anything the British have done to the Elgin marbles pales into insignificance compared to the actual blowing up with explosives of the Parthenon at the hands of the Ottomans/Venetians in 1687.
Next thing we'll be reading that crap again about Africans being the kings of Egypt.
I'll be happy when this hard on for POC is over and the NPCs move onto the next minority to defend. Pedophiles seem to be trending.
The massive structures still remain, but they must be ruins compared to their past splendor.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hadrian%27s_Wall
> By Margaret Talbot
> Her brothers are both journalists. Stephen Talbot is a long-time documentary producer for public television (Frontline, Sound Tracks: Music Without Borders) and David Talbot is the founder of Salon.com
oy vey what a coincidence
> edit: already flagged
post-2016 HN is absolutely pathetic. I can sense Sam Altman's tongue drooling on Hillary's necrotic #&*!$^ as I speak.
Yes someone absolutely didn't read the article nor look at the examples of the paint remains found on the statues.
> Incredibly bias article
The reason the whole idea of color and whiteness was presented was to answer the question of why did people remove the color from the objects and why wasn't it common knowledge about how they were actually painted objects.
Political against Alt-Right? I have a political ax to grind against Alt-Right and so should you.
> The reason the whole idea of color and whiteness was presented was to answer the question of why did people remove the color from the objects and why wasn't it common knowledge about how they were actually painted objects.
This has been common knowledge for a long time - this article isn't really about that once you actually read through it.
> Political against Alt-Right
Facts have nothing to do with the Alt-Right they don't tend to like them, however using other people's history to take a shot at different political groups is gross it doesn't matter what side you're on.
Then I had a centrist accusing me of reading Breitbart when it's likely I'm far more left wing than either of you. Debate facts not people please, and stop responding to me like you're a robot filled with pre-programmed responses who's not actually been reading what I've wrote.
Extremely unconvincingly, though; the linguistic accident that we use the same word ("white") to describe a shade and an ethnicity is doing most of the rhetorical work. None of the reconstructions shown in the article looks particularly "non-white". Doesn't it seem more plausible that people removed traces of colours because, as even the article acknowledges, they make the statues look gaudy and childish?
(And to other questions, like how did their society think about these things, and how much has post-classical migration changed the makeup of the people living there. IIRC the African component of North-Africans has increased a bit.)
There is one picture in TFA of an African-looking child. And interestingly they say that this effect was often conveyed by choosing to work in basalt, as well as painting with darker colors. I guess these must be fairly uncommon, I can't recall seeing any in museums?
> She is not the only classicist who has been targeted by the so-called alt-right. Some white supremacists have been drawn to classical studies out of a desire to affirm what they imagine to be an unblemished lineage of white Western culture extending back to ancient Greece.
> None of the reconstructions shown in the article looks particularly "non-white".
Your mixing modern and ancient ideas. The issue is how the Greeks viewed pale skin. This is not about how they were not "white" but that in Ancient Greece there was no pro-bias for white over dark skin.
"Nor did the Greeks conceive of race the way we do. Some of the ancients’ racial theories were derived from the Hippocratic idea of the humors. Rebecca Futo Kennedy, a classicist at Denison University, who writes on race and ethnicity, told me, “Cold weather made you stupid but also courageous, so that was what people from the Far North were supposed to be like. And the people they called Ethiopians were thought of as very smart but cowardly. It comes out of the medical tradition."
"Pale skin on a woman was considered a sign of beauty and refinement, because it showed that she was privileged enough not to have to work outdoors. But a man with pale skin was considered unmasculine: bronzed skin was associated with the heroes who fought on battlefields and competed as athletes, naked, in amphitheatres."
The article itself is doing that. "it was time we all accepted that ancient sculpture was not pure white—and neither were the people of the ancient world. One false notion, she said, had reinforced the other" - but how so? "Some white supremacists have been drawn to classical studies out of a desire to affirm what they imagine to be an unblemished lineage of white Western culture extending back to ancient Greece" - but none of the reconstructions the article shows would threaten such an affirmation.
> a man with pale skin was considered unmasculine: bronzed skin was associated with the heroes who fought on battlefields and competed as athletes, naked, in amphitheatres.
This sounds like an attempt to make something out of nothing, particularly given the lack of an picture (in an article that's otherwise full of them) that would commit to what shade of "bronzed" they're actually talking about. Ancient Greeks thought men looked better with a tan? Sure, so do many modern people.
Um bronze metal. They would gold leaf or cover in bronze statues. Wasn't because we are talking about the different skin tones of modern Greece with modern Greece. It was that it wasn't the thing that defined people. Your origin was much what defined you and not your skin color.
> This sounds like an attempt to make something out of nothing,
I studied and even read Classical Greek for a few years in college. I can tell you that if you take that point with women it is absolutely true and this idea is more universal in Ancient Near East. Most cultures prized pale skin woman who did not have a tan since only the wealthy could afford such a life style. The Song of Solomon in the Bible even states that.
Song of Solomon 1:5-7 How right they are to adore you. 5 I am dark but beautiful, O women of Jerusalem dark as the tents of Kedar, dark as the curtains of Solomon’s tents. 6 Don’t stare at me because I am dark the sun has darkened my skin. My brothers were angry with me; they forced me to care for their vineyards, so I couldn’t care for myself my own vineyard. 7 Tell me, my love, where are you leading your flock today? Where will you rest your sheep at noon? For why should I wander like a prostitute among your friends and their flocks?
Your wealth was seen by your lack of tan similar to how we view people wealthy based on cars and homes.
Bronze metal doesn't look at all like what we generally call "bronzed skin"; Kennedy knows she is talking to a modern (popular) audience, so it's unlikely that the shade of bronze metal is what she means.
> It was that it wasn't the thing that defined people. Your origin was much what defined you and not your skin color.
This claim keeps being repeated, but it doesn't seem to be backed up by the actual sculptures. If there were people the Ancient Greeks considered Greek who had a skin tone that modern people would not consider "white", why don't any of the statue pigments that this whole article is supposedly about show those skin tones? (The "African boy" is clearly not "white" to modern eyes, but it doesn't sound like he was "Greek" to the ancients either).
The other context of bronze means tanned, but they actually covered part or the whole statue in metal sometimes.
It's due to a small worldview. The average person never went more then 14 miles from where they were born their whole life.
1) Coward
2) Are we seeing this post from a political agent?
3) You knew it was wrong to post that.
2) Yes I'm an undercover Russian spy here to manipulate your thoughts
3) Wrong to question a politically bias post on HackerNews? You are wrong to be so aggressive to people online
It fits right in with my struggle to imagine the 19th century and early 20th century as being anything other than black and white, since almost (exceptions exist [2]) all of the photos from back then were monochrome.
[1] https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/RealityIsUnreali...
[2] https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Alim_Khan_(1880%E2%8...
I assume they went for that style of painting because it was historically authentic? Presumably they don't want to decorate a 50 BC statue with 1750 AD painting techniques.
We should also note that many of these statues were placed outdoors. Colors might seem bright and garish in gallery lighting against muted white backgrounds but wouldn't pop quite so much under bright sunlight in the middle of a public square, especially once they develop a patina of dust and the sun starts bleaching them out (which would take no time at all under the Greek sun).
This makes a lot of sense, the artists who made the statue were likely more able at the coloring aspect than simply solid colors
I was very disappointed in it's appearance when it arrived.I would be much happier if I had bought the plain one.
Yes, they where painted in skin tones, but not like in #ff3399 or something. The reconstructions are unrealistic.
Of course it's still possible that the statues were tacky, but not _that_ tacky. They weren't painted with damn crayons.
I also wonder how much of the time these statues spent freshly painted. It wasn't particularly durable & was often outdoors. So I presume that quite a lot of the time the paint was a bit patchy... and that this was part of why they bothered to use marble (or basalt) in the first place, not just whatever was convenient.
A fun fact to go with that: quite a lot of what people think of as "gloomy" Victorian-era clothing was actually brightly-colored and just didn't photograph well.
Also classical paintings before photography reinforce this because of degradation caused by UV Rays has resulted in paintings to appear darker or washed out.
It's always fascinating because even watching videos i took half a decade ago look so inferior to modern day videos!
The be fair, we don't know how they precisely were painted. The reconstructions are extrapolations from trace pigments. We have preserved frescos and mosaics from roman times, and they are not garish or childish at all, thy use beautiful colors and lifelike tones and shading.
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Pediment,_Philly_Art...
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Pediment,_Philly_Art...
It's interesting to note that this psychological phenomenon has occurred much before the prevalence of social media, and hasn't changed in how significant the cultural influence is of the phenomenon. I'm pretty interested if there's any solution at all to it.
It was also the beginning of the modern sciences using rational methods, including the modern study of ancient art and archaeology.
It wouldn't surprise me, therefore, if Enlightenment scholars and those who followed interpreted ancient aesthetics through their more recently acquired sense of style, or really projected their style on the ancients, since it would have flattered them to think that they shared a style sensibility with the ancients.
As a contrast, in India, where the Enlightenment arrived relatively late, the color intensity of ancient aesthetics has been preserved to a far greater degree.