Greek Art and Architecture

Abstract

Abstract The arts of the western world have been dominated by the art of the Greeks. Even the alternative arts of Celtic Europe or the Asian steppes were infiltrated by classical imagery. Although this record makes it easy for us to isolate those characteristics which distinguish Greek art from the arts of other cultures, contem¬porary or later, it has probably also made it the more difficult to assess on its own terms, to judge its role and the response of those for whom it was practised, and to value justly its profound innovations. And the attempt to define its characteristics may also do less than justice to that other remarkable phenomenon, the rapidity of its evolution from virtual abstraction to realism; while if its history is defined in such bald terms we may also miss other fundamental qualities-its unusual (for antiquity) subject¬ matter and its preoccupation with form and proportion.