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Art and Science. Eliane Strosberg
Читать онлайн.Название Art and Science
Год выпуска 0
isbn 9780789260567
Автор произведения Eliane Strosberg
Жанр Изобразительное искусство, фотография
Издательство Ingram
The three Greek architectural orders
The Greeks used three orders as modules: Doric, based on early Eastern models, Ionic, and later Corinthian, which defined the proportions of the whole building. Concerning the strict rules of the Doric order the Roman architect Vitruvius said: “Of whatever thickness they made the base of the shaft, they raised it along with the capital to six times as much in its height. So the column began to furnish the proportions of a man’s body strength, and grace.”
Early Greek temples were like shrines containing a statue. The cult of human-looking gods institutionalized by the Olympic Games (ninth century B.C.) spawned a new form of architecture. The typical Greek construction, supported by stylish columns, became a place of public worship. Its wide porches and brightly painted friezes encircling the building beckoned from all sides.
Stone blocks were shaped with exacting precision and fitted together without mortar. No classical Greek architectural plan has been found, but it is evident that temple design based on ideal proportions was standardized. Only small variations were accepted in the overall scheme.
Ideal proportions, rather than the simple grid as used in Egypt, played a key role in determining the appearance of sculptures and buildings in Ancient Greece, as well as shaping theories. Plato (427–347 B.C.), who was interested in the intrinsic beauty of forms rather than in fashionable design, believed that geometry provided the key to the mysteries of nature, science and art.
Convergence of the Parthenon columns, Philippe Comar
The Parthenon’s forty-six columns theoretically converge at a point 6,500 feet (2,000 m) high (which would be situated at infinity if the columns were parallel). The Greek builders were aware of the illusion which makes a bright object appear bigger than a dark one. To offset this effect, columns viewed against dark walls are thinner than the corner columns, which are seen against the sky.
Making the world intelligible in mathematical terms was one of the great advances of human thought, bringing abstraction into play. Order, hierarchy, ethics and aesthetics were intricately interwoven. Plato, who had a special interest in education, advocated: “Let your children’s lessons take the form of a game. Learning through play is linked with sympathy, and conformity with beauty and reason.”
Aristotle (384–322 B.C.) thought that facts should prevail over elegant concepts. His pupil, Alexander the Great (356–323 B.C.), took geographers and engineers along on his military campaigns and sent back plant and animal specimens from wherever he traveled. (Legend has it that the great empire-builder was an amateur naturalist and had a special glass vessel built to facilitate his underwater observations.)
Alexander’s collection—in which every creature was believed to have a function in the Great Design—prompted Aristotle to compile an encyclopedia that was to contain all knowledge. Thereby he stimulated the switch from speculative to empirical thinking. In addition, he provided a framework for the discussion of philosophy and disciplines such as logic and physics. One of his many noteworthy achievements was to prove formally that the earth is round.
Some early thinkers even precisely calculated the earth’s circumference (just 15 percent greater than the actual measurement), and others went so far as to oppose Aristotle’s geocentric view by asserting that the sun is the center of what we now know as the solar system. Unfortunately this theory was quickly forgotten.
The Platonic Bodies
A theory of solids was based on aesthetic considerations. Philosophers enamored with the concept of symmetry supported the argument that there had to be a continent on the other side of the earth to maintain its equilibrium. Almost 2,000 years later, James Cook, while searching for it, found Australia!
Greek scientists created and followed trends, just as artists do today. Some believed that the four elements (earth, water, fire, air), thought to constitute the universe, could be altered by forces such as love or strife. The elements, themselves a subdivision of the general cosmogony, were viewed as the constituents of the human body.
Natural philosophers made analogies to transformative processes in crafts, such as pottery and metallurgy, to explain the functioning of the body and the formation of the earth. The fundamentals of Western alchemy were established by these observations.
A vast amount of information was generated, and learning eventually entailed organized study in schools. New architectural concepts emerged: stoas, buildings with colonnades where students could talk and walk, lycea and academies. The Museum of Alexandria was a teaching center that attracted scholars of all types, and employed about a hundred state-paid professors.
Empirical methods in science found echoes in art’s new freedom and naturalism. Realistic sculptures decorated multi-story buildings. At the same time, pragmatic inventors, forerunners of today’s engineers, Archimedes of Sicily (c. 287–212 B.C.), Philon of Byzantium (c. third century B.C.) and Heron of Alexandria (first century A.D.), invented mechanical devices used for stage scenery as well as for military purposes. Improved weapons with high-velocity projectiles also influenced architectural design.
Meanwhile, in Rome, networks of paved roads were being built. Across the expanding empire a large-scale uniform construction program was carried out—as Rome had a monopoly over natural materials such as marble and travertine.
The Romans exploited mines in England, imported silk and spices from the East and cereals from Russia. In the south of France, mills produced enough flour to meet the year-round needs of almost 100,000 people; most of it was exported to feed the troops.
The Romans, whose strengths were essentially administrative and organizational, made two major contributions to architecture: they developed the potential of concrete—a light-weight, fire-resistant material composed of rubble, water and mud, produced on building sites; and they extended the use of the arch which enabled them to create the biggest interior spaces made until that time.
The Ancient Greeks used arches on a small scale and found them unappealing. Under the Romans, arches became ubiquitous, used in new classes of buildings and in improved versions of traditional ones. Basilicas for gatherings, hospitals for soldiers, amphitheaters and hippodromes, and public baths decorated like contemporary art galleries, sprang up. Mega-projects such as dams, aqueducts, canals and tunnels, some of which are still in use, were built throughout the empire.
In Rome, the Colosseum (c. first century A.D.) accommodating more than 50,000 people, remained the world’s largest amphitheater until 1914 (the year of the construction of the Yale Bowl). Similarly, the capital’s crowning monument, the Pantheon (c. 30–126 A.D.) remained the largest dome for centuries. Nine-tenths of it was built of concrete, a material that had been upgraded and refined over a period of two hundred years. Over its cement core, the Pantheon (the symbolic home of all the gods, as its name indicates) was faced with luxurious materials. Egyptian porphyry, granite and the finest Greek marble covered the massive building.
Porch of the Maidens, Erechtheum, the Acropolis, 421–405 B.C.
Sculpture was an integral part of this structure, which reflected human proportions. Tinted wax was used to color the hair, lips and costumes of the figures.
Digital reconstruction of the Pharos of Alexandria
Constructed in the third century B.C., this