More Human than Human -- The Measure of All Things: Greek Art and the Human Figure

More Human than Human---The Measure of All Things: Greek Art and the Human Figure

I chose The Measure of All Things: Greek Art and The Human Figure because in More Human than Human, we learned about the human body and the Greeks. I thought that that the other video would touch on the same topics and I would possibly learn more.

Key concepts: The nomads made a statue of how they wished their life to be. The Egyptians created images of the body the way their culture liked them; with order and uniformity.  Ancient Greeks had firm ideas about what a body should look like; an athletic body. They believed their gods took the form of a human- the better you looked, the more godlike you were.  In their buildings, is where they really displayed their gods, people went to the temples to meet their gods.  They made their statues so big to fill the temples and to make their people believe that the statues were the actual gods. An artistic revolution happened when mercenaries helped a man, who was Greek, take over the Egyptian throne. This is when they created life sized statues. This is also when they started to use the ears, eyes and torsos and other real looking body parts in their art. The statue, Chretien boy, was a milestone in art. The statue was very life-like with the realism in its parts and muscles. Humans do not like the way our bodies look in reality. That is why sculptors choose to create exaggerated bodies.

People throughout history have been obsessed with the human body in the form of art. The female form is the most revered type of body. In the 6^th century, the Greeks turned away from the Egyptian style body and turned to a 3-D shape. Greek vulture was the dominate culture in the Mediterranean and eventually spread all over the world. Men competed naked and women were banned from the sports site; in art, it was a different story. Men and women both were the focal points of sculptures. We want to be loved for our inner selves not our outer form.

Relate to the text: Figure 14.14 in the text shows an example of how the Egyptian art was described in the video More Human than Human. The Egyptians painted their humans with a unique uniformity.  Also, in the video More Human than Human, they discuss how the bronze statues were found roughly thirty feet under the surface of the water, this statue can be found in the text as figure 14.24.

Opinion: I really liked the More Human than Human video because it describes Greek and Egyptian art like no other video before. I enjoyed learning how the Egyptians kept their society at the same thinking level on how to create art. All their paintings in the one temple were all the same size over the span of over 700 years. This video added depth to the text reading because it provides a visual to what you read about, makes it come full circle.