analyzing art 3.

In class this week we focused on Ancient Greece. One of the most well known pieces of architecture is the Parthenon. Although when we go to the Parthenon today it has been remodeled once and is falling apart it is still an incredible piece of art and is just as powerful. Not only in the book did we discuss the Parthenon, but also in the Pollitt reading. The Parthenon is a fusion of Doric and Ionic Orders. This is because of Greece showing their power of taking over the two regions. The Doric style came from the Doric Mainland and the Ionic style comes from Herackles in Peloponnesos. One thing I did not know before reading Pollitt, is that the Parthenon is curved which gives the illusion that it is straight to the human eye. There are three reasons for why this may be: 1) that if a stylobate was to remain level it would look hollowed out, therefore by curving it it looks thick, 2) It was curved upward to intensify the optical illusion with your eyes and make it look more immense than it actually was, or 3) to create tension in the mind of the viewer by going against regularity.

The Parthenon was originally more inspired by the Archaic Greece art which was inspired by Egypt and Minoan art. When it was taken down by the Persians, Periclean decided to rebuild it and it appeared more of the Classic Greece as we know it today. Pollitt also talks about how Greeks sought to find order in everything and deviated from chaos. You can see by the math and the style of the Parthenon that everything was put into a specific order and was precise. By the order of the temple and the curvature of the building this could not have appeared out of pure chaos.