(relaxing piano music)
- [Instructor] We're in the Metropolitan Museum,
in the galleries devoted to ancient Greek and Roman art.
And we wanted to talk about the difference
between what is classical,
what is classicism and what is classic.
- [Instructor 2] When I think of the term classic,
I think of things like classic cars or classic rock.
And I think often, I associate things that are classic
with being wonderful examples of a certain era.
- [Instructor] And art historians do use the term classic.
For example, we might think about the Classic Maya Period.
- [Instructor 2] When we use the term classic
in reference to certain periods in Mesoamerican history,
it's a reference to periods
that are perceived by modern scholars
as being the art that is considered to be among the best.
- [Instructor] And art historians should know better.
We study history and we know
that fashions in what is considered important,
even into the history of art, changes over time.
So let's move on to classical.
That's usually a reference
to ancient Greek and Roman culture.
This period that lasted over 1,000 years,
a period in which much of the Mediterranean
was dominated by first the Greeks and then the Romans.
- [Instructor 2] Here we are in the court showing lots
of examples of Greco-Roman sculpture
that would be considered classical.
But more specifically,
people talk about the Classical period,
which is a specific time period in ancient Greek art.
These are divisions that are made by art historians
in much later time periods.
- [Instructor] And this "Aphrodite" is such an exemplar
of what comes to mind when we think of the classical.
It's clearly informed by careful observation
of the human body, although idealized, made better.
So although this comes out of a period
that we would specifically refer to
as the Late Classical in ancient Greece,
it is also part of this larger, sweeping period
that we call the classical,
which is a reference to ancient Greece and ancient Rome.
- [Instructor 2] So if we were looking
at the Renaissance era, we could think
about Botticelli's "The Birth of Venus",
where Venus is modeled on sculptures very similar
to this "Aphrodite" sculpture that we're looking at.
We might refer to that looking back
to ancient Greco-Roman culture
as looking back to classical culture.
- [Instructor] Since its revival in the Italian Renaissance,
an interest in classicism has never entirely been lost.
Two events collided in the 18th century
to bring forth what we call Neoclassicism.
There was the rediscovery of the city of Pompeii,
sparking this renewed interest in ancient Roman culture.
But at the same time,
there was an intellectual movement that was taking place,
which we call the Enlightenment,
which would revive the ancient Greek idea of democracy.
- [Instructor] This is when,
you think of buildings like the White House, Monticello,
these are all being constructed,
thinking about the Greco-Roman world.
This is also the time when you have the origins
of the discipline of art history.
Johann Winckelmann is interested
in ancient Greek and Roman art and he's creating
these stylistic categories, like the Classical period
and some of those value judgments that we use today.
For instance, feeling that the classical era
has the most sophisticated, advanced, naturalistic art
comes from that time period.
- [Instructor] But that idea that there
is a static perfection of the past,
that we try to get back to,
came into conflict in the 19th century
with ideas of industrial progress.
Were the Greeks and Romans this epitome, this perfection,
that we can only hope to re-achieve?
Or, in fact, is our society moving forward?
And in the 19th and 20th and 21st centuries,
we've been grappling with that conflict.
- [Instructor 2] When you have people looking
to the ancient Greek and Roman past,
they were re-imagining it as this pure white marble.
The great irony is that much of ancient Greek
and Roman sculpture was brightly painted.
And we can still see traces on many different sculptures.
Although, for those where you don't see traces,
sometimes it was because sculptures were later bleached
to remove the traces of color.
- [Instructor] So the 18th and 19th centuries,
and even early 20th century,
were imposing their aesthetics on these ancient objects,
making them conform to their idea
of what they should have looked like,
even though, we now know, that was wrong.
- [Instructor 2] How different these periods of revival
would have been if only people had been more aware
of the brightly colored art and architecture
of the ancient Greek and Roman past.
(upbeat piano music)