ART REVIEW : The Human Form in Classical Bronze

Pompeii shook as Vesuvius erupted, invitations to the first Olympic Games went out, and first editions of Homer’s “Iliad” and “Odyssey” hit the streets. These historic events occurred at various points between the 8th Century B.C. and the 3rd Century A.D., when Greek civilization was at its pinnacle and man, vain creature that he was and ever shall be, first declared himself the measure of all things.

Obsessed with physical perfection, the Greeks made the human form the central subject in classical art for 12 centuries. And, as can be seen in “The Gods Delight,” an exquisite exhibition of 74 small Greek, Etruscan and Roman bronzes on view at the County Museum of Art to April 9, they allowed for little deviation from their definition of the physical ideal.

While the art on view can be broken down into five distinct approaches (a schematic treatment of the figure, an idealized interpretation, an obsession with accuracy, the form isolated in space and the form moving through space), these differences tend to be secondary characteristics in work that more often than not pays worshipful homage to masculinity and strength.

Children and women, for instance, were virtually nonexistent during many periods of Greek art. Moreover, despite the fact that the Greeks were fascinated by deformities, they depicted them only in foreigners and ethnic types, preferring to show themselves in the metaphorical form of mythological gods, wise old sages who look as if they might have been close personal friends of Aristotle, and perfect young men with firmly muscled loins and pious faces. The grandiose idealism at the heart of this style lends these small works a monumentality that belies their actual scale.

Concurrently exploring the evolution of the depiction of the physical form, the final flowering of paganism prior to Christianity’s initial burst of popularity, and the all-encompassing effect the imperialistic Romans had on the cultures they conquered, “The Gods Delight” is a model of scholarship and charm.

Organized by the Cleveland Museum of Art and drawn from private and public collections, it includes several classical bronzes, all of which were made using the lost wax process. Twin figures of the cloven-footed god Pan--looking particularly mischievous--are perhaps the most whimsically engaging pieces on view, while a figure of a female dancer from the early Hellenistic period takes the prize in purely sculptural terms. An impeccably designed sequence of sensual curves and angles, the piece fully exploits the sculptural medium as it invites the viewer to move around it in order to see it in its entirety.

While the classical bronze style remains fundamentally the same throughout the 12 centuries that it flourished, various innovations did appear along the way. The influence of Egypt and the Near East, for example, is evident in Greek pieces from the 7th Century B.C., while artists of the Hellenistic Era were drawn to the expressive possibilities of fabric and to unusual situations (sickness, poverty). A late Hellenistic figure of an elderly beggar depicts a battered and misshapen man who’s lost a leg to amputation.

Artists took an interest in psychological states during the final flowering of pure Greek art that preceded the Greco-Roman period (Rome conquered Greece, but the Romans admired Greek art and adapted many aspects of it onto their own; hence, Greco-Roman art), and Greek artists of the 5th Century B.C. were fond of depicting figures suspended in a state between sleep and death. In an early Etruscan piece titled “Sleep and Death Carrying Off the Slain Sarpedon,” we see helmeted soldiers bearing the body of a young boy--nude and perfectly built, of course--away from the battlefield.

The decline of bronze statuary during the 2nd Century A.D. is generally attributed to the widespread availability of marble, the introduction of mass-produced terra cotta statues and, of course, the shift in religious beliefs that centered around the embattled world of early Christianity. The Christians wouldn’t tolerate paganism, so that was the end of votive figures, most of which were originally cast as offerings to the gods. Nonetheless, the ease with which we respond to these magical objects suggests that our taste for the pagan has yet to be squelched. And, how astonishingly contemporary they seem reminds us of how slowly we’re evolving as a race.