The Grotesque

Question 1

Kore inscription from the Samain Heraion, Berlin, Altes Musuem

Answer 1

says ‘kalos’ as a descriptor of the statue - there are aesthetic judgments made in epigraphic evidence from the Archaic period onwards

Question 2

The Farnese Hercules

Answer 2

Called Il Bello in the Renaissance /Humanist period, but critics start to emerge in early 19th c. as a new concept of beauty takes over - 1817 John Bell considers it ‘coarse…clumsy’
The Hellenistic decadence / extremism

Question 3

Plate 1 of William Hogarth’s ‘Analysis of Beauty: Written with a view of fixing fluctuating ideas of taste’, 1753

Answer 3

set out to analyse a set standard of beauty, not the philosophical analysis of what the concept of beauty is, but to set characteristics to a standard.

Question 4

The Abuse of Beauty: Aesthetics and the Concept of Art (2003), Danto, A

Answer 4

presumption that art should possess beauty.

Question 5

Burstein, Robertson (1993) talking about the Hellenistic…

Answer 5

says Hellenistic has a fascination with the ugly, talks about the drunken woman or a man with physical deformity, while Robertson argues there are no ugly 5th c. monumental sculptures and that the ugly is a characteristic of Hellenistic art.

Question 6

Dying warrior - west Pediment, Aegina, c.500 BCE

Answer 6

early Classical - shows a soldier dying, compressed into a space. beauty in the aesthetic sense - body is nice to look at, but not a beautiful moment?