Greek Masterpieces from the Louvre Museum
National Museum of Singapore
Dec 9, 2007 - Mar 16, 2008
S$4 for NSF, senior citizens, full-time students, S$8 for adults
I loved the exhibition. My favourite piece among the 140 artefacts is the Borghese Ares, a simple, beautiful sculpture of the Greek god of war with a handsome face. It was only till later that Ares was portrayed as a god of the battlefield, complete with armour and weaponry to kill. Often paired up Venus de Milo, where Aphrodite, the spiteful and promiscuous Greek goddess of love, holds an apple in one hand, the two masterpieces represented the value of peace in the old world, upholding love of humanity above war. It's a pity that Venus de Milo was too precious to leave Paris, so only its half (still the dearest artefact in this exhibition!) came.
There were many, many artefacts made of Pentelic marble - I could say almost all, save the terracotta and metal pieces. Pentelic marble was renowned for its quality and beauty in ancient Greece, and was quarried near Athens, the heart of the metropolitan civilisation. It was first used to construct the Parthenon in Athens in 5th c. BC, a temple presumably built as a shelter for a statue of Athena made out of gold and ivory, both of which have perished. Under the ambient lights in the gallery, the marble still shimmered, like white sand mixed with bits of silver. The literal personification of this old, old rock makes me wonder what history the Borghese Ares, along with other statues and busts, has witnessed through his marble eyes. Looking at most of them made me imagine what it was like to live inside a statue, to see every curve and detail being born under the skilful hands of pious artisans, being worshipped and marvelled by the ancient Greeks, witnessing their downfall with the invasion of the Persians and the Spartans, to being buried for centuries and finally being recovered in the modern world. Pentelic marble sure wasn't affordable for the common folk. Sadly, I thought, the effort, resources and exaltation have gone to false gods, and thus, gone to spiritual waste. These works are artistic, aesthetic masterpieces indeed, far more complicated in technicality and conception then the first idol that was made at the foot of Mount Sinai in Exodus 32. However, the pain and woes that came along with sin and judgement were far more painful then the Israelites facing Moses' fury and not entering the Promised Land - they were contaminated even from within, with sexual diseases and illnesses from overwhelming merrymaking, and a meaningless life plagued with a void they refused to resolve with Christ, even after they had heard of Christ in Israel, not far from Greece. The Book of Acts recorded, "And when they heard of the resurrection of the dead, some mocked: and others said, We will hear thee again of this matter." (17:32) The America of the ancient world turned away from the Prince of the glory and the Kingdom above!
Various statues and busts of Athena, note the detail that extends even to the strands of hair and the hands of Athena which have been lost. A significant number of statues and steles were found in broken pieces, only to be pieced together after.
It was a little disappointing that many of the statues of ancient Greek gods and heroes were reconstructions. I thought the Louvre was saving the best for somewhere else, but no, the original artefacts have been lost. Juxtaposed against the ephemerality of a past heralded glory is the declaration of the Living God to all generations, that He is the "Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the ending...which is, and which was, and which is to come, the Almighty" (Rev 1:8, AKJV). There were faithful artisans who carefully copied every detail in the 1st-2nd c. AD, one of which was the greatest Classical sculptor, Phidias. In fact, I think all of the reconstructed models in the exhibition were done by him. It must have been an exciting time in history that Phidias was doing something to preserve the statues, the tangible idols the Greeks chose to cling on to, because some of them were in a vulnerable, perishable state by then. These models have survived till today, and despite some tarnishes here and there, they represent the flawed beauty that has withstood the test of time.
Funerary Stele: a slave holds a baby who reaches for his mother (not in exhibition). Mothers are usually depicted as being seated to convey a sense of immobility and the loss of agency to mother her children, amidst final rest and stability with death.
What left a great impression on me was the display of funerary steles, marble sculptures that were placed at a person's tomb. Death was a subject to be avoided in ancient Greece, in view of the depressing journey and afterlife in Hades. The polytheist ancient Greek religion saw that all mortals were to enter suffering in Hades and separation through death. There was no hope of escaping Hades or whatsoever, unless one was a semi-god, like Perseus or a god (in mythology, of course). I think this greatly explains the self-forcing cycle of myth creation and embellishment - the people embraced carpe diem and sought pleasures and desires of the body, indulging in sex and violence, which in turned made their treasure trove of myths and legends of their gods equally obsessed with sex and violence too. Gods had affairs with one another, and sometimes with mortals, and held competitions even for petty reasons, and were deeply biased, allowing men to kill one another for selfish reasons. The afterlife of an unsaved Greek seemed hopeless to me, and I feel that this lingering fear and unwillingness to part is poignantly immortalised in the steles of mothers, who most probably died of childbirth if the stele depicted her with her young children. The mothers knew there was nothing she could do, nothing to fulfil her role as a mother, to see her child into adulthood. Her child needed milk, who was she going to ask it from? Will the slave, being young and ignorant, know how to take care of the baby? What about her husband? Will he leave for another woman and forget about their child altogether? And lepers were definitely contained and hid away from the city, but what if her child had it? It would be so painful. And what if she died of some disease no one could treat? She had already died, and brought her worries with her into the tomb.
Another funerary stele: A mother, seated, hands a dove to her child. As children were not deemed to be persons important and significant in their own right, not much detail was given as to how they were depicted in ancient Greek art in the few times they are represented, usually in steles. They are usually portrayed as miniature adults instead.
And so I thank God greatly, that in Christ, mothers need not fear about their children, because God's love protects and keeps us, in a family that will continue to testify to His grace and in a larger, spiritual family for eternity. What's more, we have a Heavenly Father, who is far better than our earthly parents (Matthew 7:11) who can see us through our lives on earth, and even has the power and grace to help us through it. In
Reaching the Ear of God by Wayne A Mack, it is noted that the most important relationship with God with which we should identify is Him as our Heavenly Father. The earliest relationship that Jesus preached about was God as our Father, in Matthew 5:16 and has been a main identity of God through the New Testament.
In conclusion, it was definitely a wonderful trip to the museum, to see what has been talked so much about right before me. It was a pity I couldn't touch them, and for a while, I envied the preservation workers who could, nor was photography allowed. But looking beyond the statues and their past glory, I'm reminded of Paul's call to our true God for the Greeks in Acts 17.
Then Paul stood in the midst of Mars' hill, and said, Ye men of Athens, I perceive that in all things ye are too superstitious. For as I passed by, and beheld your devotions, I found an altar with this inscription, TO THE UNKNOWN GOD. Whom therefore ye ignorantly worship, him declare I unto you.
God that made the world and all things therein, seeing that he is Lord of heaven and earth, dwelleth not in temples made with hands; Neither is worshipped with men's hands, as though he needed any thing, seeing he giveth to all life, and breath, and all things; And hath made of one blood all nations of men for to dwell on all the face of the earth, and hath determined the times before appointed, and the bounds of their habitation; That they should seek the Lord, if haply they might feel after him, and find him, though he be not far from every one of us:
For in him we live, and move, and have our being; as certain also of your own poets have said, For we are also his offspring. Forasmuch then as we are the offspring of God, we ought not to think that the Godhead is like unto gold, or silver, or stone, graven by art and man's device.
And the times of this ignorance God winked at; but now commandeth all men every where to repent:
Because he hath appointed a day, in the which he will judge the world in righteousness by that man whom he hath ordained; whereof he hath given assurance unto all men, in that he hath raised him from the dead.
Titled Don't Worry
Ekklesia
Alive Again
(I googled 'swollen head' and I got this picture titled 'toothache', but never mind.)
I just finished reading this book called 'Art For God's Sake' by Philip Graham Ryken, which offers a brief introduction to the biblical theology on arts. (I'm reminded of something I wrote in January this year, Greek Masterpieces from the Louvre Museum.) It helped clear some doubts I had about abstract art, which especially bugs me because I am involved in a choir who experiments greatly with aleatory and structure and sings aleatoric music annually in a church. Abstract art glorifies God too, because (1) God blesses all art forms just as He blessed Bezalel with the 'skill, ability and knowledge in all kinds of crafts' to make His tabernacle in Exodus 31, (2) it is capable of expressing Christian truths (not to say that all God-glorifying art have to be directly linked to Christianity in content). Such realisation has brought me to appreciate my conductor, Mrs Valarie Wilson, even more. The juxtaposition of singing On suuri sun rantas autius in aleatory with God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen interposed in unison shows structure among chaos, that Christ coming to earth brings 'tidings of comfort and joy' to the desolate, dystopian world modern and postmodern art portray. And also, that art is to be beautiful, good and true, just like how the dissonance in John Rutter's Hymn to the Creator of Light opens up to a meditative, quiet singing of the German hymn Deck Thyself, My Soul, With Gladness. Dante Alighieri sees abstract art is the highest level of excellence that an artist can attain, and these examples lead me to see that often, abstract art is a way for especially these artists, especially Christian ones, to glorify God, giving Him their best.
