Ideas: A History of Thought and Invention, from Fire to Freud

by Peter Watson

In classical art, two things go together. There is first the sheer observation of the natural world, from the finest points of anatomy and musculature to the arrangement of flowers in a nosegay, the expressions of horror, lust or slyness, the movement of dogs, horses or musicians, much of it not lacking a sense of humour either. There was a down-to-earth quality about all this, and a growing mastery over the materials used. This is most clearly shown in the way drapery is handled in sculpture. Greek sculptors became masters in the way they represented clothing in stone, the way it fell, so as to both conceal and reveal the human form underneath. (The figure of a woman touching her sandal from the temple of Athena Nike, in the Acropolis, is a superb example.) But, beneath and beyond this observation and realism, there was a restrained quality, a serene harmony of the figures, a ‘bridled passion’ which the Greeks valued because it epitomised their achievement–the discovery of the intellect, or reason, as a way forward.87 This restraint is sometimes misconceived as an emotional coldness and, certainly, in the centuries which followed, ‘classicism’ and ‘romanticism’ have often been contrasted, as opposing forms of sensibility. But this is to misconceive the Greeks, and classicism. They made a distinction between techne, what artists knew, and sophia, what poets and musicians knew, but they were not passionless. One of Phrynichus’ plays, The Taking of Miletus, made the Athenian...