Chris Olston

"For a long time I stayed away from the Acropolis. It daunted me, that somber rock. I preferred to wander in the modern city, imperfect, blaring." Thus Don DeLillo’s character James Axton in The Names. People are attracted to imperfection. Collectors scramble to acquire stamps, action figures, and baseball cards with factory defects. Sport spectators delight in viewing "bloopers." Tourists flock to Pisa to see its leaning tower. We also adore imperfection in our heroes: Superman’s weakness to kryptonite makes him all the more appealing as a superhero and Cindy Crawford’s beauty mark has become her signature characteristic as the ultimate supermodel. This modern attraction to imperfection was apparently present in archaic Greece as well. Many instances of human sculpture were rendered with less than perfect anatomy, despite the sculptors’ proven abilities in this matter. Why?

Before we proceed to tackle this question, let us examine the evidence for deliberate imperfection in archaic Greek sculpture. Sculpture carved in the period before the Persian Wars (c. 479 BC) exhibits features that are very finely sculpted, while other features on the same piece are very crudely etched on. For example, Kleobis and Biton from Delphi have very well sculpted arms and pectoral muscles yet the bottom of the rib cage is an unrealistic etched line. Moreover, the hair projects forward in a way that seems to defy gravity, and the transition between the side and front of the torso is closer to a sharp corner than a gradual curve. The Rampin Rider also exhibits this blockiness of torso, as well as an unrealistic etched navel and beaded hair and beard.

In the same vein, consider the Kouroi of this period, where again both realistic and strikingly unrealistic characteristics are found in the same work. The Munich Kouros, for example, has a very realistic stomach with sculpted abdominal muscles, calves, pectoral muscles, heel bone, and gluteus maximus. However, the same Kouros has rather un-lifelike etchings on his back. Other Kouroi exhibit the same duality. For example, the Tenea Kouros has very realistic and smooth contours with the exception of an etched and artificial navel. The contrast in style between the realistic sculpted contours and the rather unrealistic etchings on these pieces is rather striking. It appears as though parts of the sculptures’ anatomy were purposely rendered with less perfection than the rest of the piece.

Why would the ancient Greeks intentionally create imperfect sculptures when they were capable of more realism? Could it be that the Greeks were initially threatened by perfection? Going back to DeLillo’s character James Axton, we find that he is threatened by classical Greek art that does attain a certain level of perfection: "Beauty, dignity, order, proportion." He is reluctant to visit the sculpture, saying: "We have our self-importance. We also have our inadequacy."

To be threatened to some degree by perfection seems to be a fundamental human trait. To take a modern example, many people feel somewhat threatened by the prospect of intelligent machines. This latent fear is illustrated in films such as Terminator-2 and 2001: A Space Odyssey. In both cases, computers become more intelligent than their creators and wreak havoc. However, it is doubtful that the early Greeks feared that their sculpture would come to life and wreak havoc on their own Odysseys. Alternatively, consider that the ancient Greeks may have suffered from the beauty magazine syndrome. In the modern era, some people are threatened by idealized images found in beauty magazines. Might the ancient Greeks have feared the beauty magazine syndrome and therefore avoided complete realism in their early sculpture?

Perhaps an alternate or complementary explanation for deliberate imperfection is that perfect copies are boring. In modern times, most people would prefer to visit a Rodin sculpture exhibit than a wax museum, even though the latter does a better job of perfectly imitating people. The fact is, we already have access to perfect renditions of the human being: our friends, neighbors, lovers, and ourselves.

What we seek in art is something other than perfect imitation. How else can one explain, for example, the continued appeal of black and white photography despite the invention of color photography? Even some recent motion pictures have been intentionally filmed in black and white. For example, the 1998 film Celebrity portrays a contemporary subject yet is filmed entirely in black and white. Why the anachronism? The answer is simple: art is not meant to perfectly mimic reality.

Moreover, art is fundamentally incapable of perfectly mimicking reality. The mediums in which art is rendered have intrinsic limitations in this respect. For example, photographs are two-dimensional projections of an instant in time. The medium of stone used by the ancient Greeks also has inherent limitations in its ability to exactly replicate the human form. It has a different color, texture, and obduracy than human flesh. Stone doesn’t move, breathe, or talk. Stone doesn’t live nor does it die. How can anything carved out of stone be considered an exact copy of a human being?

Art historian G.M.A. Richter asserts that the Greeks were on a mission to come as close as possible to creating perfect copies of human beings, given these intrinsic limitations. However, as we have discussed, quite a bit of evidence suggests that this may not have been the case. In fact, it appears as if the ancient Greeks were deliberately holding back from portraying humans as perfectly as they could.

Consider the possibility that the Greeks were not aiming to perfectly copy the human form but were instead trying to adapt the human form to suit the medium of stone. This phenomenon of tuning art to fit the medium can be observed in a multitude of modern cultural artifacts: computers, television, and magazines. The login screen in the Stanford computer laboratories displays a photograph of campus that has been deliberately granulized into exaggerated pixel rectangles to appear more "digital." Television sitcoms portray one-dimensional characters engaged in a one-dimensional plot, which when combined seem fitting for a two-dimensional screen. Skinny fashion models are plastered with glossy makeup to match the flat, glossy magazine pages.

Archaic Greek sculpture exhibits similar correspondences between the entity being portrayed and the medium. Many early archaic Greek sculptures such as Kleobis and Biton and the Rampin Rider are blocky and marked by etchings. This suits the medium of stone, which, in nature often appears blocky and with defined edges. Moreover, the body language of many archaic Greek sculptures seems to fit the stone medium. Their solemn expressions match the coldness of the stone. Stone cold expressions are found on the New York Kouros as well as on Kleobis and Biton. The rigid stances taken by early archaic statues like Kleobis and Biton and the early Kouroi mimic the solidity of stone mountains.

In modern examples as well as in archaic Greek art, this tendency to conform to the medium cannot always be attributed to a simple lack of appropriate technology or ability. In the television world, real life television is only beginning to emerge, even though live television technology is rather old. Similarly, Stanford has the ability to capture a realistic image of the campus for the computer login screens yet a granulized image is used instead. We have presented similar evidence in the case of archaic Greek sculpture. The Munich Kouros, for example, is very finely sculpted with the exception of the rather un-lifelike etchings on his back. The ancient Greek sculptors appear to have deliberately crafted their art so as to suit the medium of stone. It is interesting to speculate as to whether this practice had strictly artistic and aesthetic motivations or if religion may also have played a role.

The ancient Greek word for their works of art and sculptures was "agalmata" or "things to delight the gods." What was the nature of the gods the ancient Greeks strived to delight? In Homeric verse, the gods can often pass for mortals, but there are subtle differences. For example, when Athena disguises herself and visits Telemachus in Odyssey I, Telemachus pretends to take her for a mortal, "but in his heart he knew it was an immortal goddess." Homer’s gods and goddesses are made of something that surpasses flesh. Athena’s "seagray eyes" have a special glint, and she can "level battalions of heroes in her wrath."

According to ancient Greek religion, the superhuman gods created imperfect copies of themselves in the medium of flesh: the ancient Greeks. The Greeks, in turn, created imperfect copies of themselves in stone: agalmata. In this way they delighted the gods by being exactly what the gods created them to be – imperfect copies of gods – imperfect beings that create even less perfect copies of themselves. As for modern times, last August scientists at Brandeis University were delighted to announce: "The robotic system is creating little toy robots completely automatically."