Showing 2 results for the tag: polychromy.

August 7, 2012

The true colours of the sculptures from the Acropolis

Posted at 1:12 pm in Elgin Marbles, Events, Greece Archaeology

A temporary exhibition at the New Acropolis Museum in Athens aims to give visitors a better idea of the colours that the sculptures on the Acropolis would originally have been, rather than the pristine while marble that we see today.

From:
Acropolis Museum

Archaic Colors

Commencing Tuesday 31 July 2012 and for the next twelve months, the Acropolis Museum wants to conduct research on its unique collection of archaic statues, which retain their colors to a small or large degree, and to open a very extensive discussion with the public and various experts on color, its technical issues, its detection using new technologies, its experimental use on marble surfaces, its digital reconstruction, its meaning, as well as the archaic period’s aesthetic perception of color. So far, scientific research into the color found on ancient sculpture has made great progress and reached surprising conclusions that to a large degree refute the stereotypical assumptions regarding ancient sculpture. It turns out that color, far from being just a simple decorative element, added to the sculpture’s aesthetic quality.
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October 24, 2008

Exhibition of polychromatic Greek sculpture replicas

Posted at 12:42 pm in Acropolis, Greece Archaeology

Despite attempts to publicise the fact that most classical Greek sculptures were originally coloured, in the eyes of the public, they are still very much perceived as pristine & white. Nowhere has this problem of misconstrued opinion been more apparent, than in the 1930s cleaning of the Elgin Marbles under the instruction of Lord Duveen.

A new exhibition in Germany hopes to change people’s understandings of the sculptures, with numerous coloured reconstructions to give people a better idea of how they might have originally looked.

From:
Artdaily

Friday, October 24, 2008
Gods in Color Opens at Liebieghaus Skulpturensammlung

FRANKFURT.- Liebieghaus Skulpturensammlung presents Gods in Color, on view through February 15, 2009. Antique marble sculpture was not white, but colored. This is amply and overwhelmingly attested to by ancient literary sources. Whereas the incontestable fact that ancient sculpture was colored was suppressed during the Italian Renaissance, it was recalled in the nineteenth century; in the twentieth century, it once again paled into insignificance, giving way to an aestheticism directed at clarity. Numerous traces of the original polychromy in antique sculpture have survived. They bear testimony to Greek and Roman statues having worn elaborately ornamented garments painted with precious pigments. Read the rest of this entry »