Marble Carving

Well it has been quite a long time since the last update. I wish I had more to say. There are only few pieces of news. First, it's still September weather in November here (a sympathetic shout out to all the poor sleet-enduring people in Williamstown, MA and elsewhere). I'm in the process of NaNoWriMo (linked, if you're interested) which is eating my life, as always, but I'm trying to hit my word counts by typing inside museums and cafes so I keep myself immersed in Athens. Last, classes have essentially doubled in their workload, so I'm suddenly having to take care of that as well. As such, there has been very little travel as of late, and very little worthy of updating.

However, tonight, I managed to remember to take my camera to marble carving class, so I thought I'd share some of that. Class meets for 3 hours on Tuesday evenings, and consists of myself, 3 other CYA students, about 7 or 8 Athenian citizens (depending on the day) and two teachers. The first class, we were each given a slab of marble and a few sheets of paper and told to design a relief sculpture. We could carve anything we wanted, with only minor suggestions on relative size and complexity. I chose to base my piece on a sculpture fragment I had seen in the Acropolis Museum (where we aren't allowed to take pictures) that had really inspired me.

The basic design, with the progress that's been made up through today. It's really slow work. I've carved out maybe half a centimeter's depth of the background fully (this picture was taken at the beginning of class) and that has taken well over 7 hours. Still, it's rewarding.

JK working on his piece, which currently consists of two heraldic horses. We take the chisel and hammer and chisel out tiny pieces of marble one hammer strike at a time. After three hours, it can really hurt your hands and wrist if you aren't careful.

BB working on her marble (a cat)

The primary instructor (I think his name is Dimitri. He barely speaks any English, but I think he's learning for our sakes) helping me with my piece. One tap of the hammer in his hand does approximately 4x the work of mine. He's extremely good at what he does, and manages to be encouraging, even when it's obvious that we've messed up.

More of the class, all hard at work. The woman in the foreground speaks English very well, and we're starting to make friends with her as we're all at about the same skill level.

A very talented member of the class who speaks no English and is working on a 3-dimensional limestone carving.

Another man, who is also working in 3-dimensions. Not only is he amazing at carving, and does he speak English pretty well, he also baked brownies and brought them to the class tonight! I'm hoping to return the favor before the classes end.

DD, the third CYA student, working at his marble (his hand is almost as steady as the instructor's!) which is an octopus.

BB has to date used more different tools than the rest of us combined. She has used the regular chisel, a smaller, fine chisel, an enormous serrated chisel, and as of today, some heavy-duty sandpaper.

After the class, the two instructors always serve drinks and refreshments. It's incredibly sweet of them to serve wine to everyone after such a long, intense class. I wish I could stay and hang out with them more, but three hours is already a very long time to put off homework. The two instructors are in the blue shirt (Dimitri?) and in the white shirt (I think his name is Giorgos, but again, I'm not sure.)

Impromptu picture of the CYA group!

So, that's the scoop in Athens these days. The bombs you may have heard about in the news didn't really disturb the city at all. It seems that such protests are relatively run-of-the-mill here and no one gets too worked up about them. We were advised to maybe-possibly stay away from the embassy for a few days, but that was the extent of it. The incidents seem to have basically fallen out of the public memory already, or been reduced to jokes. 

I will try to update more frequently again soon. I have a friend studying in Istanbul coming to visit this weekend, so I'll be forced to go out and do things again, so updates should happen then!

Καληνύχτα!

Another Weekend in Athens

A surprising amount has happened since I got back from Santorini. When everything re-opened on Friday after National Resistance Day, we all went to the Open Market to stock up on food for the week. It feels really nice to be cooking for myself again, rather than eating out all the time. However, I didn't buy nearly enough as I'm already running low on a lot. There will be a lot of creativity in the dinner department this week.

That afternoon, I went back to the National Archaeological Museum to fully explore the vase collection on the second floor. When you think of Ancient Greek vases, one particular form usually comes to mind - the black figures on a red clay pot. This is, of course, a very common form of pottery, but it's certainly not the only one. This was the first time I had ever seen such a wide range of pottery in one condensed location, and it put the scope of ancient pottery in a lot of perspective.

The Geometric styles of the earliest pottery is much more beautiful in person than in pictures as in the pictures it just looks like an overwhelming amount of design that doesn't fit together on a pot. In life, you are forced to look at the details one at a time and the geometry tells stories in and of itself. It's much easier to portray huge ships and immense armies on a pot where everything is tiny and repeated. Some of those designs look like epic battles straight from Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings movies.

As the Geometric style progressed, the figures began overtaking the repeated patterns, which begin to form a sort of border for various scenes. They also got more abstract, and you can tell that the artists were starting to have fun with their work, sometimes mimicking the pot's shape with the design on it, and sometimes anthropomorphizing their work.

Hello!

How are you today?

I don't recall if there was a purpose to this practice or not, beyond artistic expression (I know Professor McGowan told us this in Ancient Greek Art and Myth, but I can't remember!) but it's very funny to look at, and the faces instill an oddly natural happiness when you look at them. I can't tell you how many disaffected tourists smiled at these in the museum. 

Before going any further into Archaic and Classical pottery, which is the style of figures on either black or red clay that most people are so familiar with, I cam across something that I never expected to see.

Wood.

Real ancient pieces of wood with the paint still on them that had not decomposed since they were created in 540-530 b.c. I have no idea how that happened (the plaque didn't say) but they were still so beautiful after so long, and it amazed me that they are in such great condition!

Back to pottery, this plate of Herakles and Athena, which I love for its tenderness, is much more typical of many people's idea of Greek pottery. Look at the amazing detail in their hair and clothing, though. I cant imagine holding my hand stead enough to draw that in paint or etch it in clay.

Two lovers. This seemed, to me at least - based on what I was seeing elsewhere in the museum, to be unusual subject matter. The pose, the expression and the melding of the two figures into one with the drapery of their garments is all superbly executed, though. The ancient artists were much more prone to experimentation than I ever believed or understood.

A lengthwise view of one sculpture hall in the museum. There are about 20 of these on the first floor alone. This place is HUGE.

Young boy on a horse in bronze, with scale models. It's the largest piece in the museum that I had no previous knowledge of. The craftsmanship (not to mention the level of preservation) is astounding!

Friday night was the JF's birthday. her parents and brother were in town to see her and they took a large group of us out to dinner. It was quite fun, even though we didn't go to the Japanese restaurant for sushi like we had planned (JF is a bit tired of Mediterranean cuisine). We went to Applebee's instead. Rest assured my non-existent craving for American food over Greek food is still non-existent. Still, it was a fun and lovely night. 

Saturday morning I woke up to do laundry and spent most of the day planning out the Thanksgiving trip to Italy. Everything is set except for a place to stay in Milan (anyone have suggestions? Put them in the comments!) I'm pretty excited about that! I woke up far too late to go take sunrise pictures on the Acropolis and thus have missed my daylight-savings-time window. I'll just have to try again near the end of the semester when the sun is rising at 7:30 again. 

Saturday night, when I finally left the apartment, I went to the Greek National Opera to try to get rush tickets to Marathon-Salamis. I haven't seen much opera, but of those I have seen, I decided that understanding the words wasn't a high priority for overall enjoyment. I would have had no trouble getting a seat, but I got especially lucky in that, while waiting for the student rush line to open, an older woman walked up to me and gave me a ticket that she wasn't using, then left before I could do more than thank her. Pity, as I would have loved to give her something in return. It was an 8th row orchestra seat, so it probably cost her about 70€. 

The opera itself was phenomenal. I had googled the synopsis before going and found that I didn't need to know the individual lines beyond that at all. The singing was fabulous, the costumes were incredible and the set was overwhelming. It was very freeing not to have to pay attention to the words (in Italian with Greek subtitles) and just concentrate on the stage itself. There was an especially powerful moment in the third act where the main characters all traveled to Delphi to receive the famous oracle on how Athens could defeat the invading Persians ("Put your faith in your wooden walls" ie. ships). They recreated onstage what I believe to have been the creation of the Delphic oracle and the relationship between the god Apollo and the first Pythia who prophesied for him. The ballet at that point was mind-blowing. 

As an extra surprise, after leaving the opera, there was a group of accordion players just outside looking to catch generous, music-loving patrons. They did catch quite a few and some people leaving the opera joined in the song and dance with them. The whole scenario felt straight out of a movie and I couldn't stop smiling all the way home.

The four main accordion players

And from the back, trying not to be too obvious with my flash. They were quite friendly about the pictures.

I got back to the apartment around 11:30 to the great surprise of my apartment mates watching "Hocus Pocus" (with Bette Midler and Sarah Jessica Parker) while eating popcorn and homemade rice krispies. So I got to join in the last 20 minutes of that as well. M has a guest who she was showing around the town, and K's mom came in this morning right after I woke up (again, very late).

I have to go back to classes tomorrow, which will be good in that it will get me back on a regular schedule, but I will miss the freedom and exploration of these last two weeks. Also, I'm going to miss the lack of homework. Still, the semester must move on and Italy and London draw ever closer.

Happy Halloween from a country where the holiday isn't celebrated (though I'll bet All Saints day will be) and Καλημέρα!

A Full Day at the Museum

I overslept this morning by about 4 hours and thus completely missed the Acropolis morning shots I had been planning on. Just one more things for after the Peloponnese trip. So instead, I once again left the apartment a little before noon, camera in hand, and got on the bus, this time headed for the National Archaeological museum. Now I've been to this museum before, but I had only seen a portion of it (the Minoan and Mycenean galleries) and I didn't really know what to expect. Most of the museums around here have been very interesting but small - not because there isn't a lot of stuff, but just because there are so many museums that everything is pretty spread out around the city. This museum was an exception. It's not the Metropolitan Museum of Art, but it's by far the most organized, extensive and interesting museum I've seen so far. They also let you take pictures almost everywhere - and the one place they don't allow pics, they don't allow drawings either, so sketching was out. I took over 250 pictures, and my camera died before I finished the second floor. I need to go back and spend another full day, with a fully charged camera to try again. In the meantime, here are some images from today's adventure!

A display case of broken marble hands. I love the attention to detail on the part of the museum here. They could display these all in a line, or they could not display them at all, but they choose to make a composition not unlike a sketchbook here to draw people's eyes to the detail in every piece of the statues. I will say I have huge amounts of respect for every statue, even those of "lesser quality and complexity" after a single marble carving class!

A sphinx!

A very tall (about 7 feet with pediment) Kore (read: unknown female). I can finally show what I've been talking about in every sculpture post up to this point - the color! I really believe in the painted statues now and can see how it was supposed to look. A little red remains here and it makes the marble even more lovely.

 Detail of the feet and intricate garment of the Kore above.

Another, much smaller Kore. Here you can really see the paint left on the statue.

Same as above. I'm in so much awe over how much detail went into every tiny statue.

Zeus about to kick some mortal/immortal butt. This is an incredibly famous statue, and it was a bit of a shock to suddenly run into it unexpectedly. He stands over 7 feet, and then is on a plinth (museum patrons for scale), so you can see he's a bit imposing. One guy in the museum tried posing in front of him for a picture and the guard got really upset. It was really amusing, though, and I wish I'd been quick enough to take the picture myself before the guard started yelling.

Advancing Nike (victory) from a temple somewhere. I love how she leaps out further than her weight can support. When you walk around the statues, you can really feel the movement.

Best find of the day: an entire hall dedicated to Athena statues, including this miniature reproduction of the Athena Promachos (ready for battle Athena) that would have stood, covered in gold in the Parthenon. Much prettier than the drawings and tourist reproduction make her out to be. :-) This one is out of ivory like the original would have been.

This very odd statue of Athena is based off the east pediment on the Parthenon. I'm fond of the statue as it, but extremely confused by its inscription to Artemis... SS and I couldn't figure that out... 

I love the broken marble faces in the museums. They are so powerful in that they look alive at first glance and then they suddenly become unrecognizable and inhuman as you walk around them. They also look like modern art which continually blows my mind.

There were many lovely large scale grave steles (basically a giant, intricate family tombstone) but this was the most powerful for me. The woman on the right (seated) is an image of the deceased, and her infant son reaches out to her, struggling against its surrogate mother. Some things are truly universal.

Lovely large statue of Artemis. I love her loose, thrown together outfit and modern/awesome shoes.

Boy on horse. Giant. Awesome.

Go, go, Gryffindor! (Actually pediment topper from Temple to Asclepius - healer god).

Another grave stele. I love the emphasis on the hands grasping each other and the gesture of supplication towards the chin. Beautiful.

 A pair of bronze arms. Again, the museum's emphasis on composition in the littlest things. It's so helpful to draw the eye to detail.

A pair of posers who didn't get caught, providing both humor and scale reference to the hand of Zeus.

An example of ancient "meta" (a word which derives from Greek, after all!) This is a statue of Aphrodite who is leaning on (you guessed it) a statue of Aphrodite. Goddess of vanity, indeed!

Bronze torso of Octavius, I assume on a horse, originally. The plaque didn't say. But I like how his clothes flow out.

Sculpture of a sleeping Maenad (follower of Dionysus) surrounded by the busts of Roman rulers and one scale tourist.

I love this statue for many reasons (the elongated fingers that don't reappear in art until Goya, the way the metal folds under the out stretched arm, the too slender torso that elongated the figure, etc.) But the first thing I saw (and probably the first thing you saw, too) was the smashed in face. I'm so glad they didn't try to reconstruct it. It looks so much like a Picasso I have a little trouble believing that it's from the 3rd century AD or so. 

Downstairs by the cafe, a large mosaic of geometric patterns and probably Aphrodite. Also, a museum worker on break.

Back inside, on the second floor now, some ancient marionettes! They're only a few inches high and so cute!

this red figure pot looks like many others, and I don't really know what's going on in it, but there is something unusual. Some of the original gold leaf remains intact on the pot! How cool is that?! I can barely get that stuff to stay on my modern day paintbrush long enough to get it on canvas!

Lastly a depiction of Herakles (Hercules) destroying some priests who deserved it (I forget the details of the myth). I'd seen this pot before in pictures, but was amazed by it in person for its unusual completeness and a small detail you won't be able to see unless you zoom in. Herakles' hair is painted with raised, individual shining black paint. And it survives perfectly! I stared at that for a full minute trying to comprehend it. The technique is flawless and gorgeous!

After this, my camera died. So, expect more pictures, primarily and particularly of vases after the Peloponnese trip (which I should really start packing for eventually.) After coming back from the museum, I got a gyro for lunch/dinner and went to a screening of Rent that JK was hosting in the student center at CYA. Very fun, even if there weren't as many people as expected. More popcorn for the rest of us. :-P

Tomorrow is classes as usual, and then we leave for the Peloponnese Tuesday morning at far too early (8:00am). It will be worth it.

Kαληνύχτα!

Agora, National Gardens, Midterms, etc.

Trying to get back into the swing of at least weekly blogs.

Yesterday morning, I woke up bright and early for an on-site class at the Ancient Agora. I'd been there before, so a lot of what we talked about wasn't new, but this professor is a particularly good lecturer and I definitely enjoy on-site classes more than regular ones. We also got special access to a second level of the Acropolis museum where I probably wasn't supposed to take pictures, as nothing looked ready for public display, and thus probably hasn't been officially published yet. Oh well, no one told me to stop or to delete the pictures. I probably would have played innocent anyway, as I quite liked these statues better than the one downstairs!

A torso of Artemis, about 4 feet tall. I didn't get a good picture of it, but there are carvings depicting  fabric around her arms that don't at all correspond to her dress. A form of ancient underwear on the goddess?

A similarly sized torso of Athena. Shockingly, one of the better ones I've seen, including those at the Acropolis Museum. I have no idea why this isn't on display...

The view of the hills from the second story of the Agora Museum. Love that bright blue sky!

View of the Temple of Hephaestos from the same place. The group in front of it is another CYA class.

Prof. Diamant, teaching away on-site. He teaches the Art and Archaeology course.

A close up of the stone he's describing. He finds it so funny that the stone speaks in first person. Is it odd that I find it perfectly logical and almost normal?

After the lecture, a classmate, JK, and I walked around for a few minutes to take some more pictures and discuss the site. We came to what is believed to be the Roman Gymnasium and I took some pictures of the relief sculpture marking the entrance.

You may remember these guys from before.

This was the part where JK and I noticed something rather odd...

These statues don't have legs, but snakes. Turns out that they are Tritons, not Heroes or Giants (as JK and I were expecting to see at the entrance of the Gymnasium) and no one quite knows how the decision to carve these for - originally the Roman Palace - and then the Gymnasium came about. They are Grandsons of Poseidon, sea monsters, and don't seem to have too much mythology beyond that. The three remaining are individualized and from head to "knees" is about as tall as I am. This doesn't say to me "Come to the Gym, Honor the Gods, It's Good for You!" To me, this says "Come to the Gym and Become a Terrifying Sea Monster!" Not perhaps the best recommendation. But I guess I'm not Roman, so my opinion doesn't count for much.

I walked back the long way through the National Gardens, pausing to sketch a little on the way and take a few more photos of a statue I've come across before but never really explored.

 I have no idea who the idealized women are meant to represent (I can't yet translate the Greek on the pediment) but I'm very intrigued that the one who looks strikingly like Hera (the focus of the picture just above this text, with veil and crown) has a sword which she supposedly just used to cut those broken chains at her wrists and feet. Is this Greece becoming independent or is it something more? I feel like it must have some further explanation, or that would be the focus of the statue, not one of four smaller parts. Will continue to investigate.

I made it back to the CYA Academic center much earlier than I thought I would, and so decided to finally go explore the Marble Stadium next door from this inside. This is the one Museum, Site, educational anything so far that the student id does not grant free entrance for, so I probably won't be going back in, but I took my homework and studied for the afternoon's midterm for an hour on the marble bleachers, so I won't complain.

 The Olympic Rings!

The lovely stadium from the back, which somehow make a much more epic picture than from the front.

Special seats at the front and center. Must be for show, as it's not an intelligent place for judges to sit and it definitely doesn't offer the best view.

A close up on the clawed feet of those special seats. It's funny, I don't know how well the picture captures this, but they look not quite animalistic and definitely not quite human. It reminds me most of the Beast from Beauty and the Beast - they're almost Athletes' Feet, but hunched and clawed and disfigured. It's more than a little disturbing when you consider the track and field setting...

The most literal Hermaphrodite I've ever seen sitting in the field. For those who don't know, herms were originally boundary markers around Athens, which sometimes depicted the face of the god Hermes (who was ruler over travelers and boundaries, as well as messages and trouble-making) and almost always displayed erect male bits. This was somehow holy. You see above the same idea (the male face is facing away from us and the bits on that side are definitely pointing up) but with an idealized female face and relaxed genitals on the other side. I'm at a loss as to what that means...

A close up on the dual heads - which are really quite cool and lovely in their own right. This is one of a matching set on the east-ish and west-ish sides of the back of the field. The other one is artificially weathered and doesn't look quite so cool, because it doesn't fit with the reconstructed nature of the surrounding stadium.

After all this adventure, it was lunch time, then class time, then study time and finally midterm time. This was the midterm for Greek Myth and Religion and I really almost needn't have studied at all. It was identifications, primarily of Gods and Myths. That's a hobby for me, not a test subject, which works well for my GPA, but has lure me into what may become a false sense of complacency within the class. As long as we keep discussing myth, I'll certainly be paying attention, but I need to remember to study for any upcoming tests. :-P

Last night I made dinner and was quite lazy (found RED, with Bruce Willis, Morgan Freeman, Helen Mirren and John Malkovitch, online, which isn't the way I'd hoped to see it, but it isn't being released here in time and won't still be in the states when I get home. Go see it - awesome movie!) and stumbled upon the new candidate for worst Mythologically based film in history. No really, this is worse than the new Clash of the Titans. It's called Odysseus and the Isle of the Mists. Avoid at all costs. It wasn't even laughably awful - just sad, and I felt quite bad for the team forced to put it together. Well, that's what I get for watching Vancouver SciFi original movies, I guess. 

Today I am ACTAULLY going to Sounio. It's happening. Really. I'm getting on the train in an hour or so. There will be pictures to prove it, hopefully tonight or tomorrow morning. Camera and phone charged, set and ready to go! Now for something to do on the bus ride...

Kαλημέρα!