Wednesday, March 10, 2010

Greek beliefs about the human body

For the Greeks, everything revolved around idealism. Greek art began with Egyptian-inspired views and techniques about the human body. This kept going until they figured out how to make everything “perfect” in their own way. One very interesting fact that began with their own ideas was the nudity of men, and the contradicting view of the women, which seemed to always be clothed. The main influence into trying to create that idealism in the statues of humans and architecture begins with their religious beliefs. Their Gods were the most powerful beings on earth, and they were mostly human like creatures. With that in mind, an incredible God could not be depicted as just a normal human being. If a God was going to have some sort of power, than he must have a powerful and again perfect appearance. Therefore, the musculature, the stance, and the perfect anatomy became the Greek stamp into their works of art. So much was their passion for the body of the men that they practiced sports without any clothes. And more crazy than that was when their statues started to be made with mathematical calculations.
This new idea created the perfect anatomic men, on a marble statue. And nowadays, I think we view the same idealism of the human body as the Greeks do, but maybe not with the same obsession that they did. The interesting thing is that nowadays is the opposite role of men and women dressed and clothes less. And even though women did not seem to have a role in this idealism theory back in Greek times, I think is over the years we have created characteristics of what a perfectly anatomic women should look like. Ando so idealism is still around today and maybe we are more acceptable of imperfect in today’s society.

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