I'm curious about the vibrancy of the colors. The reconstructions they show don't have any shading or color modulation. This came up with the Sistine Chapel restoration. Criticism that it was too bright, too one-dimensional. As I understand it the colors are based on slight remaining paint left on the statues. I'm wondering if some shading may have been lost.
I'm sure it has. If you look at the hunting scene of Mithras from Dura Europa there is a corner of Mithras' face that retains shading and finer details, i.e. it was more protected when it fell off. Since any shading/detail, et al, was applied atop a base layer of paint, it's WAY more fugitive and will be the first to go.
Ive always wondered that too. Especially given the detail that went into these sculptures, it doesn't seem right that the artists would provide flats then consider it done
Agreed. Really bad coloring here. It’s hard to imagine it looked this bad at the time it was made. I have to imagine there was more shading, and overall more detailed painting.
The problem isn't the color, but the amateurish way they reconstructed it, with no gradients, color layering, nothing - just plain opaque primary colors. If the original sulptores went to so much trouble to sculpt every little detail, the original painters probably did a better job at painting them than what the current reconstructions show.
You make an assumption by pressuming they sought to make color as realistic as the sculpture. First of all because many of the more complex statues were indeed painted properly, the goldens and brass tones on the statues are proper of what you'd expect of mediterranean europenas and north africans. Second, realistic is not always the goal, even if it sometimes combines with something "realistic". Consider that many of these statues were meant to represent myths and legends, they had to have vibrancy and an air of wonder, dare I say something unrealistic. Colors, especially vibrant ones, are used to catch your eye, which in a well populated area, with many buildings, people and objects, would be easy to spot. Not every culture seeks art to be realistic. We can see that as well with a lot of chinese art, which focused more on simple lines meant to portray the feeling the object gave, more than how much it ressembled a camera picture.
This. They remind me of those amateur 'restoration' botch jobs gotten famous by the internet a while ago. These look rushed and half-done. Yes, you can have bright colours and the end product looking good. There are the medieval sculptures for you. Heavy colour but lots of shading and detail.
Paint without shading disguises the 3d features that are so admired. It is very simple: people don't like the paint because it is much lower in quality than the sculpture itself. There is very fine detail in the sculpting, not in the painting. There are a great many scultor/painters they could have studied to see relation of detail. Look at the ladies toes.
Exactly my thoughts Just imagine if, for example, Leonardo da Vinci had re-colored those sculptures; the differece it would make! da Vinci's obviously not around anymore, but I'm sure we could find somebody, even if half as good, that could get the job done
Exactly, I honestly feel that the painted recreations aren't as detailed and accurate as they would've been at the time either. If you're a part of society that's creating such incredibly detailed and accurate sculptures as all these, you definitely have people who are able to paint them properly as well. Even in videos like this, modern people are constantly underestimating the intelligence and skill of our ancestors. And acting like the West is the one who is the greatest threat and detractor to this kind of art, this art that is revered as priceless to us and protected and studied in our museums as our cultural origins, when so many countries in the East would love to destroy it all without a second thought, is very telling about the maker's intent.
I don’t believe such garish colors were used, and with no shading. When you look at ancient Greek and Roman art (like tomb-portraits, wall frescos or mosaics), you don’t see gaudy colors but muted earthy colors, with shading. Why would the Greeks use tasteful colors for everything else, but suddenly switch to flat gaudy colors when it came to their statues?
I feel like one of the main reasons people don’t like the colored versions it’s because the way is done today it has no shading. This makes the sculptures look weird and uncanny. If you see baroque sculptures for example, they are colored, but they are shaded properly to give the artistic effect the artist wanted. I doubt in ancient times it was much different.
I think that at least for me, the reason I prefer the unccolored statues is because there is a perceived gap between the skillfulness of the sculpture itself and its color. The sculptures appear ornate and life-like, yet the color is flat. It's as though a great artist drew a sketch but it was colored in by a child.
I'm beyond suspicious, the hypothetical application of the colour is flawed. They have identified the right vribrant pigments but not their transparency verses opacity in application. Use of subtle modelling etc
@@jonathantan2469 maybe you're talking about certain stylistic choices, but overall color IRL or photography has a lot of details/shades/nuances/expressiveness that we might not always perceive actively but we're thrown off when it's missing, that's kind of what happened with these statues. Most artists would use different shades of colors to create a face or show a folding in a cloth (depending of course on the art style, but let's go with a more realistic painting fitting to realistic sculpting) while with these remakes it seems to be the 'flat color' (the base color all that was left to detect this many years later). We of course will never know the whole original design of these statues and maybe they actually were colored this basic since they used to be up on buildings... but considering the details that went into the sculpting process (creating single locks + every detail in the cloth and face of the statue) we assume that the same love for detail & expressiveness would've gone into the painting of the statues, which is def. not the case in these replicas and leads to a perceived 'gap in skillfulness' ^^
I think some of that can be attributed to the fact that the colors we're seeing were applied by modern restorationists with limited information, as opposed to the sculptures' shapes, which have relatively been well preserved over the centuries.
That's because it was basically painted by a child. The people who painted it aren't artists, they're archaeologists and historians. They are trying to reproduce pigments, rather than reproduce art.
I've known for a few years already that they were painted (yes even medieval church sculptures) but there's just something magical about a realistic bare marble statue. It's like a person has been enchanted and turned into stone.
I doubt they didn't have any concept of shading like these painted reproductions show. They made realistic statues but paonted them like garden gnomes? Yeah, I'm not buying it. I'm sure they were better at painting than these reproductions show them to have been. By the way, there is no conspiracy. People have learnt they were painted and have been thought that they were for a while, now. I guess everyone loves a clickbait title.
If the sculptors took so much energy to recreate the ripples of muscles and the other nuances of the human form, don't you think the paint applied in that period would have been equally nuanced depicting folds of cloth, fabric detail, the shadows of the face, the gradations of hues ? As presented by these modern recreations, there is none of that in the majority of these color reproductions. They look as if they are paint-by-number or an adult coloring book owned by one's great aunt---or worse, by some Spanish grandmother attempting to restore a chapel piece like Ecco Homme. Instead of creating the sense of amazement and relatable common identity that the raw, unpainted stone statures allow, these poor attempts remove the awe and move into a discomfort similar to the uncanny valley. Instead of allowing an Andy Warhol pop art approach, consider an approach similar to a Lucien Freud type, an attempt to recreate the color in a more life-like manner. Perhaps the so-called discomfort comes from the fact that these wonderfully sculpted life-like pieces are treated as unlifelike in their colorized depictions. When painting, layers are placed, built up to create the end result. What is scanned today may be the under layers, a basis upon which to build the image through layers allowing a more life like depiction. Instead of using these scans as the end all result, they should be treated as a direction to move from and thus recreate a depiction more worthy of the talent reveled by the stone structure.
Well said I totally agree. Where are the nuances, the shading,shadowing and details? I can even picture them using an almost water color effect. Fluid and life-like as the sculptures appear.
What a very astute observation! I wouldn’t have thought about this until you mentioned it, but this is so damn true! And the “paint by numbers” comment was freaking spot on 😂
The shocking fact that they had colors doesn't mean they were painted with such basic saturated and frankly unflattering colors. The lack of colors can feel more realistic due to your brain imagining the missing elements and details. But painting them with such disharmonious and flat colors gives them an uncanny fake appearance. I don't know if they actually liked flat colors back then but I don't.
Maybe but also keep in mind paint technology was much less advanced than what we’re accustomed to today. What would have given the paint that nuance you refer to is oil. But oil was very precious and not widely used at the time
My question with the reconstructions is not the vibrancy of colour but its application. Medieval sculptures are vibrant but they also have more modeled tonality and areas of transparency. QUESTION: are the reconstructions accurate in this sense? I am highly suspicious that they are not. Identifying a pigment is one thing. Paint application another.
Maybe it's just me but I think the "Chromo-phobia" is an Uncanny Valley Issue... with the Statuary being the Humanoid form, when you add flesh tones and the corresponding 'make-up' effects it highlights not only that certain physical features are 'off' but the 'flesh tones' aren't exactly fleshy... whereas in the Bleached/Weathered version these issues of 'not quite right' in scale, or proportion can be dismissed as 'artistic choices' or the limits of the medium...
Keep in mind most of these statues would have been higher off the ground than they are being presented here. The exaggeration of color would have been necessary to fool the eye into seeing what the artist intended. Like David's hands looking so big when viewed straight on, and not from below like intended.
Yeah I think you are right. They blame “uneducated viewers” but don’t consider that there might be other factors at play that makes people like the painted ones less. Not to mention, the original statues may have been painted much more realistically with shading than what they show here.
@@CampingforCool41 this hole deal just seems to just be a politically pressured agenda by the left against white supremacy, because I guess the left can’t stand white supremacy also having good tastes in art and using that to promote their ideologies with. If you aren’t aware if the context in the past and present white supremacists have used Roman and Greek art in their propaganda to say “look what whites could accomplish if we united against the rest” kinda thing.
Anyone in a first year undergrad art history class knows these statues were polychromed. It's hardly a 'conspiracy' of artists or academics. I can't speak for conservationists or curators. (5:00) - Worth noting that Michelangelo's sculpture was influenced by the Greco-Roman pieces he saw excavated around Rome, without their color after centuries in the ground. His Sistine murals, or any other counter-Reformation masterpieces, are hardly lacking color. You're taking modernist concerns with material and plasticity (Hepworth, Moore, Brancusi) and projecting it onto earlier periods with their own interests.
Thank you. We were told from day one inn art history that they were painted. I realise that this is news to laymen, but not to anyone who has studied art. Even worse is when they try and make it some kind of weird racial thing.
It was perhaps a conspiracy 100-300 years ago, when European historians and art dealers scrubbed the paint off and pretended it had never existed. I've heard theories that they did this to match what di Vinci and Michelangelo did during the Renaissance (to drive up prices). I've heard the theory that it was white supremacists who were using the white-washed statues to support their world view (pale=classic=superior). But I hardly think there is a current conspiracy about it. Just a few hardliners, denying what science has proven.
in my context this information is still hardly known. i'm brazilian and just in architecture graduation that was taught to me. i don't see much of a problem if we trace "chromophobia" back to classic aesthetics, seen that renaissance was the very moment western art theory started to take real form. if i'm wrong you can help me!
@@cangjie12 Wow... You've really made a lot of unfounded, unreasoned, and half-thought claims. Let's look at them: 1. Claim: the ancients used muted colours for frescoes. This is a gross generalisation that ignores centuries of artistic development. There are eras of Ancient Greece that preferred bright colours, and eras that preferred muted colours. Your claim also ignores a VERY important aspect of archaeological evidence............ AGEING. The frescoes we have from Ancient Greece are thousands of years old, and they have aged under centuries of soot, smoke, dirt, grime, moisture, etc. Even paintings as relatively young as 50 years can look completely different when surface grime is accumulated, and wouldn't you know what happens to their colours? They become muted. Your entire rant is based on the wrong assumption that the muted colours of the frescoes look today exactly as they did thousands of years ago. I do not think I have to explain why that is wrong. You're also ignoring that within the exhibition, there are works spanning several eras of Ancient Greece and Rome, and most of what is shown in the video comes from the Archaic Era (800-480 BCE)... It's almost like art constantly evolves or something; if you actually used your eyeballs, you'd be able to see that the painted statue of the Small Herculaneum Woman, which is 700 years later (Rome 30-1 BCE) clearly displays an evolution in the technique, showcasing textile transparency, etc. 2. (Implied) Claim: The ancients must have used the same painting techniques both in frescoes, and statues. Why? Why couldn't they have used different colours, and techniques? Correct me if I'm wrong, but I'm quite sure that plaster, and marble are two different media, and therefore require different skills, and approaches. Tell me, do we blend colours, use brushes, and pigments the same in watercolours, and oil paints? Why not? Aren't they media that have co-existed for centuries? Why do Italian renaissance water colour paintings look so different from their oil painting counterparts despite being made in the same time period, same geographical area, and the same artists? Could it be that they required different techniques? 3. Claim: The professors are wrong/ the professors are doing it for "shock value". How do you know, cangjie12? Are you a leading authority in Ancient Greek, and Roman polychromy? Have you read through their research and found a flaw in their methodology, and their conclusions? Do you have evidence that proves them wrong? Or evidence that they're lying, and only preoccupied with "shock value"? Please share if you do have it; we archaeologists love to advance knowledge of the past, so I'd love to read your revolutionary research. Please don't keep it to yourself! Also; even if their generation "loves garish colours" "for a fact (look! another unfounded assertion)" it is irrelevant to the science they have produced. Science is objective, so your ad hominem does absolutely anything unless you can prove that they only painted the statues like that for that reason. 4. Claim: The professors have affirmed that this is how the Greeks MUST have done it. Please. Can you link the exact moment they said this... Oh, that's right... They didn't... It's almost like archaeology so ancient makes it literally impossible to make such an affirmation.
@@Sebastian_Terrazas wow, what a passionate response. I won’t answer anything regarding authority and expertise, because that has nothing to do with the validity of an argument. As for claim 4, what i meant to say is that we cannot assume ‘flat colours’ to be the default just because that those were the only pigments that have been detected. And if shading was applied later on top of base coats, wouldn’t that be the first to go, leaving only the base coats behind? In this I was reminded of the argument that many musicians make (especially in the past), that we should not decorate Bach or Mozart’s music, simply because the decorations have not survived and come down to us in written form. But that doesn’t actually mean the music was bare and empty. Similarly, just because only a base coat survives on a statue, it doesn’t mean that more paint wasn’t originally applied over it; so why base the reconstruction on surviving chemical evidence, instead of the stylistic example of classical art whose color has survived? That was what I was expressing in my original comment; perhaps it wasn’t worded as clearly there. I was assuming that these ‘restorationists’ were working from a purely forensic perspective, as opposed to an approach that tried to embody the artistic and cultural expectations of the time. (Which, by the way, was very realistic when it came to statues. It would have been odd indeed, a mismatch, if the form of the statue was realistic but the color scheme was not, i.e. cartoonish instead.) As for claim 1, I have not seen a single ancient fresco (or any other classical work with surviving colour) in garish flat colours (no shading), but do share their names or links to them here if you know any, so we can see them. By the way, even if the fresco/mosaic colours themselves really did go from garish to muted, what about the shading? Weathering cannot have done that. Even if I were absolutely wrong about the tone of the colours, the fact remains that shading was definitely used. By the way, I recently saw online two versions of a fresco in the temple of Isis in Pompeii: Io (the cow-girl) arriving in Egypt and being greeted by Isis. One was very muted indeed (presumably its condition when excavated), and another one was (I assume) a photoshopped version with much more vibrant colour and details. But even the latter version still comes nowhere near the hideously garish and flat color scheme of these modern reconstructions of statues. You’ll probably (rightly) say this isn’t an argument at all, but others might find it interesting. As for claim 2: you are conflating technique and an artistic approach. What i (and other people) am referring to is the artistic/cultural expectation that colours should be one way or another. so yes, you asked, why couldn’t have the approach been different, and to that i would say, well yes, it is more reasonable to assume it would not have been too different from what we see in other media. By Occams razor, it would require more to explain away why mosaics/frescoes were muted while statues were gaudy, than if we just supposed that the statues were painted in the same spirit as the former, with the same cultural expectations of the final artistic result. The thing you need to ask is this: Was there something special and unique about marble statues that compelled their painters to use a flat and bright colour scheme? Was the material used in statues somehow unsuitable for muted colours with shading? Or did the audience for statues prefer gaudy colours when compared to the audience for frescoes? All in all, it’s simpler and more justified to suppose that the statues were painted like the frescoes etc (most likely in more tasteful colours, and certainly with shading), as opposed to flat intense colours. Because the latter would be not an ordinary but an extraordinary claim, which requires more proof. By the way, what I said about ‘shock value’ is true. You can refer to these sources. In the article, the person clearly says that his colorisation of the peplos kore statue was a ‘provocation’ meant to ‘make people think’. ua-cam.com/video/4T1LjxQ0aUs/v-deo.html www.classics.cam.ac.uk/museum/collections/peplos-kore So in the future you could go easy on accusing others of all sorts of things.
"Sit down everybody, the experts are here" but, jokes asside, its really cool that so there are still people who are interested in this sort of stuff, maybe school is useful after all…
I don't mind the colors, they just seem too flat and one dimensional for the breathtaking skill and detail of the carvings. They look like a child painting their father's art. I am certain the experts know what they're talking about, but my brain really hates the way the cartoonish flat colors clash with the exquisite and meticulous detail on the stone. The way every vein and fold of fabric was carefully carved, then they slapped a flat wash of blue and peach over it?
For me the pure marble looks more pleasing is because the coloring looks like it is of much lower quality. The bare statue looks like i could see every pore if i would just get near enough. The coloring looks like someone took 2mm thick wall color to kill the details.
This is interesting. Personally, the painted sculptures dip too much into the uncanny valley my tastes. The forms are so impressive in themselves-the color distract me from the beauty of the sculptures.
Honestly painted sculpture looks like bad wax figures with 1920’s eyebrows. Doesn’t make sense. With no color you cant truly appreciate that it was sculpted (not badly painted) by human hands; I mean witnessing delicate veins carved out of pure rock is profound; color destroys that journey of detail.
Not just to modern eyes… Not even an ancient Greek or Roman citizen would think these look good I mean, when you look at surviving Greek and Roman mosaics, its obvious they were masters of color, shadow, and realism, the polar opposite of the "reconstructed" statues
I think the colours would have been far more realistic. If you look at the "Fayum mummy portraits" they are lifelike depictions and I am certain the statues would have been the same. The Fayum mummy portraits come from the Greco-Roman artistic tradition and date from 2000 years ago and so they seem like a good guide. Are there any surviving statues that suggest such bright colours?
Is not conspiracy, the pigment didn't preserve. It was proved that the way the saints in Catholicism are painted, is actually a heritage of the way the roman gods were painted, vivid colour everywhere. Check Orthodox vs Catholic representations.
The thing is when they attempt to recolor these statues they don't look right. Roman and greek paintings at best can be really fine, so surely it is unlikely they would have used such broad strokes of color without tone or texture. Yes, these may give you a sense of color but the actual artistic look is easily lost.
Agreed! In my opinion, if you can't recreate the color 100% exactly, then you should leave the originals untouched I'm not against making a duplicate statue to color, but I do think they should hire actual artists to paint it
The thing that gets me is that these artists could sculpt these incredibly realistic and detailed sculptures, but that they think they painted them in flat coloured clown makeup. Yes those are the pigments but they would have used blending, light and share, artistry! You can tell it's a material scientist who did this colouring. I mean yes they were painted but not that badly, my god.
Very neat, and I'm glad to see people doing this. What's striking to me is how flat the colors they use are - vibrant, but flat. My eye prefers polished marble, which (for me) emphasizes dimensionality, shapes, shadows, and highlighting. The matte finishes I see on most of these pieces emphasize color as THE story teller and shape definer, and undermine lighting's ability to define the perception of shape and dimensionality. Maybe it's a lifetime of acculturation and familiarity, but most of what's shown looks cartoonish to me. Valid, important, and as accurate as can be hoped, but cartoonish. For my time and money, I'd rather have polished marble statues in three dimensions, and colorful portrayals in two.
I agree with you about the flat colors. I wonder if they were this flat though? I mean they captured every muscle and nuance of the body, why would they have missed the nuances of skin tones? I bet they painted the faces more realistically.
The surviving classical frescos from ancient Greece and Rome show a much more nuanced use of colour. One theory is that the statues did have further layers of paint, in order to create contrast and emphasize volume, but those were lost forever and only the base coat, the paint that was directly in contact with the stone, has left traces that can be discovered today.
This is amazing to me. Is there anything in the modern world that we do without color? So why do we insist that the past should be seen artificially? What is it about our attitude to history that insists on whitewashing it? How can an artificial (and modern) representation be "better" than the actual reality experienced by those who lived it?
They look ugly beaches they were painted without shadow or highlights. If you look at how modern sculptures were painted, you can really see that a fake looking statue coming to life when artist added shadows and highlights
Its painfully clear that the people who "reconstructed" these sculptures were scientists, NOT artists Any competant artists would immediately see the problem with the flat, plastic, makeup ""asthetic"" Clearly the scientists were only concerned with "filling out the data", puting the exect color, and only the exact color, that the computer told them to at each specific point. Heres the thing, these computer systems work by counting the number of specific pigment particles and averaging them to get the color for each patch However, the averaging, although technicly the most "probable" outcome for that specific number of particles, inevitably creates a blury, statistically uniform mess Theres no passion, creativity, or even any imperfections in this process, just plain statisticsl averages Somehow, I don't think the ancient sculptures would approve of a process like that
That sh1t looks wack tho', there no way they could carve marble that good and painted that bad. There is no color grading, shading or highlighting, all of those look super flat and childish, for sure they were doing way better than that, it even harms the beauty the way they painted those up, it's sad.
Not just sad, its downright harmful Imagine you're an ancient Greek sculpture who spent thoudsands of hours and tons of money onto creating the perfect sculpture. Then imagine you, using a meriad of bushes and pigments, painstakingly coloring the marble such that it exactly resembles the human skin tone, with all its subtle variations and shading. Now imagine how you'd feel seeing your magnum opus "" reconstructed""" by a group of artistically illiterate researchers vandalize it and then claim its how you "originally" wanted it to look I'd be dissapinted, angry, and downright embarassed
People don’t know that ancient art was painted/colored? I thought that was widely known. Whether widely known or not, it certainly isn’t some hidden conspiracy.
What is both mind-blowing and hilarious to me are how they have found a few simple hues through microscopic particles, assumed that those hues were all they had in those areas (ignoring the incredibly sophisticated sculpting techniques) and repainted them in the most rudimentary, Kindergarten coloring book way. I know it's hard to wrap your head around it... but people were just as smart, creative and clever 60,000 years ago as they are today. The people from these comparatively very recent ancient societies understood depth, dimension, and perspective... from their mosaics we know they also understood and utilized the very basic concepts of color gradients and light and shadows. So how is it that modern experts are unable to imagine that they would be capable of also applying that knowledge to painting their statues?
Because those snobs/experts really DON'T have intelligence and got their jobs or fame through glad handing, and pats-on-backs old boys club support. It's tradition. Those experts don't even think it's possible that some old, random old civilization could possibly be smarter than they. I am not joking. Try to overhear some of their conversations at a restaurant one day, and you will see what I mean.
I know ancient statue were colorful. Even the sphinx was colorful. Inside the pyramid, I've seen the colorful version of their walls. Movies and tv show have normalized the colorless ancient arts and indirectly brainwashed us to think it originally look like that. But, yeah, in modern time we all do prefer the no color statue. Even modern churches like to use monochrome color statues of angels and Jesus in their compounds nowadays. It look fancier in my eyes. Have to admit, ancient coloring looks childish or cartoonish with their solid color. It doesn't feel fancy. Understandable that ancient people don't discover blending technique or gradients yet. Their art could had look more awesome if it is colored in a hyper realistic technique.
This is utterly fascinating! As an artist and illustrator who loves bright colors, I love seeing these sculptures in full color. Our society often shuns bright colors, whichbare considered childish and unsophisticated. But to the ancients, there were no such color taboos or biases. I love the archer figure!
Possible, though it bears to keep in mind that these may only have been the base layers, which is all our technology allows us to detect. There may have been further details and shading added on top.
You do know that skin isn't all one uniform color, right? Variations in sun exposure, skin thickness, blood vessal density, subsurface scattering, and especially hair length all contribute to the subtle shade and hue shifts real human skin contains. If people were all one color, then the flatly repainted scuptures should all look photo realistic, but, clearly, they don't
I have to say, every attempt to paint these statues only makes them look uglier. Where ancient artists painted their statues, they apparently were doing them a massive disservice. They go from looking dignified, to looking like dollar store tchotchke.
I’m 51 and I was taught ancient sculptures were brightly painted since my childhood. Why is this aspect of history always presented in an admonishing sensationalist way?
@@ninsuhnrey yeah I don’t accept that. There’s been no debate during my lifetime. Yet it keeps cropping up like a bad penny in journalistic outlets like there has been. Media acting like an amnesiac protagonist in some bad fiction. More knowledge accumulated over the decades, and I’m sure there was pushback at some point, but I imagine you’d have to go pretty far back to find when that was. Notice they don’t speak to anyone who argues the opposite. It’s long been settled.
@@BlookbugIV I'm wondering if some manipulative editing is at play here, I could belive that the substance of the chromaphobia debate is about beauty of the white statues vs the colored statues as opposed to the "truth" of the colored statues. Meanwhile I am wondering if upper class English tastes are being projected onto the breath of European history....Tatian, the impressionists, all of Byzantium, stained glass, the sistine, the Dutch still life's of fruit, etc are all reveared and filled with color.
I prefer to see History accurately represented. But, aesthetically I like the look of the unpainted Marble. Perhaps something could be done with colored lights to illustrate the difference on the same sculpture, or maybe use paints that are invisible under normal lighting but show their true colors under special lighting.
Probably easier to use a virtual representation, visible through use of goggles, or on a smart phone/tablet. Some artists are already working in this medium, setting up works that are invisible unless viewed with the proper device.
A monochrome statue shows more if the quality of the statue itself. It is therefore understandable that Artists like the monochrome appearance of a statue. However, ther are a lot of antique statues or figurines in the Museum that show residues of their coloration and all Archeologists (also in the past) knew about the coloration of antique buildings and statues/figurines.
These guys are so full of themselves they are really blaming criticism on critics being limited. Never did it occure to them that these "recreations" they "painstakingly" made look straight up kitche and ugly. That's just not good art, and I believe the *real* real ones were colored better. Ain't no way taste changed so much that anyone in ancient times would allow 10/10 sculptures to be 3/10 painted.
100% agree Also the fact that they can claim there is a "prejudice" against color in western art and then immediatly give Michelangelo as an example. Zero self awareness…
I like the color added to the statues, we can see how they REALLY appeared. But, I also think the all white marble has a style and aesthetic to it. I don't think people have "tried to white wash history," the colored paint just faded in time, and later generations only knew the white marble versions. People like what is familiar, so all white statues is what they knew.
With many of the Egyptian pieces in the MET they were specifically scrubbed clean. Some of this was out of ignorance, but it was an ignorance that suited a narrative. And the idea of the superiority of "classicism" was definitely a powerful narrative in Europe and the US in those periods.
Your opinion of people not actively trying to “whitewash history” is wrong. They have. The marbles did fade out in colour but they had become very faded color, not white as you indicated. Colonists thought they didn’t have color so they had them scrubbed cleaner before putting it in the British museum. If you don’t think history can be whitewashed, you clearly don’t know anything about history.
@@beadmecreative9485 if A - they did not hypothetically whitewashed those statues, then B - it does not mean whitewashing of history does not exist. Your "logic" is pretty weird.
I think they painted them with more skill that the recreations they have. The recreations look like they were painted by just anyone, they look flat and cartoon like. I believe if they took the time to carve out skin folds so realistically they'd do the same with color.
We know ancient civilizations like the Greeks and Romans were masters at painting (just look at the surviving mosaics), so it is 100% logical to assume that they would paint their sculptures with equal skill and attention Ironically, these people who claim to be "unwhitewashing" the sculptures are presenting an image of acient art that is made up, kinda sad actually
Cities could certainly do with some colour added to buildings. In fact, I was taught in the 1980’s that the emergence of graffiti, first known as knochenmaenner in Germany was caused by the ugliness of modern dwellings. Children love colour. It is part of our humanity.
5:04 absolute bollocks. Leonardo and Michelangelo were both _iconographers._ As in their entire artistic expression was in reverence to the transcendent power and majesty of a Christian god. Whether or not they used colour is completely irrelevant, their art was entirely in service to God and the Church of St Peter in Rome and saying anything else makes you ignorant, or in this case, malicious. This is the most white, liberal, university educated, cooks with an aga, has a house in France and loves the smell of their own farts BBC story I’ve seen in a while.
I've known this for some years and always loved to see reproductions in color. I think it's grand. White pure marble can also be stunningly beautiful. Both are great things to have.
100% agree! A lot of ppl are acting like appricating the non-colored sculptures is wrong or non-historically accurate, when, truthfully, they look good too
@@namef some people dislike it cuz they are used to the old colorless ones, some others make valid points. something that bugs me for example, why would they take the time to fetch white marble, specially Romans that went thousands of miles to get Carrara marble, to just paint them and make them look like any regular painted sculpture? since when do rich people hide the fact that they have enough money to buy unusual stuff that others can't afford? I wonder if these archeologist aren't letting themselves be blinded by their desire to prove their point. (I do believe that at least *some* sculptures were painted ofc)
Color yes, but these examples looks like they were painted by 5 year olds. Just smeard on, no nuances or any delacacy on marble pieces that took months to carve out. Don't think so. Paint them properly if you're going to!
the minoan civilization which was OLDER than Greek and Roman civilization is full of colors and you can still see it now on Crete...so its ludicrous to think that Roman and Greek did not used any color in their sculpture.
I honestly wonder if the collours you are showing isnt just the artist ground layer, the one that seeped into the stone. And that here may have been way more detail on top of that. I find it awfully hard te believe the creator would have taken so much time to create a life like statue, only to paint the face pink with fake eyes drawn on it, like a 10 year old did it.... That seems very inconsistent.
i understand how many colors would have been developed in ancient cultures, i just question on the practicality of painting these since they were outside mostly - they would have eroded quite quickly
They can’t paint these statues correctly, they can get what they think is 1:1 but what I see here for the most part looks like terrible almost mocking representation of ancient art…….
Conspiracy? Nah, I’ve seen things from the 18th century where they’re talking about scrubbing off the remnants of paint because they thought the marble looked cool. Similarly there’s a statue of St Christopher near me, where the abbey was abandoned for a while, then no-one dared touch up the paint when it was re occupied. The Victorians didn’t mention a lot of things because they were trying to make the Roman Empire seem more like the early Roman republic , so I suppose you might be able to claim hat was a conspiracy… reproductions were probably not painted because marble simply looks amazing though
@@reinapiratayquepaha english has a looot more than that. let's talk about green. dried bay leef green tempest sea green green lemon deep forest green kale juice green mint milk green, etc. the same goes to french (my language). you have 1 word to tell the kind of color you spot (rouge, orange, jaune, vert, bleu violet, indigo, blanc, noir, gris, brun, rose), and then a looot of words to explain what kind of green, red or pink you are talking about. because kale juice green and mint milk green have nothing to do with each other apart being green. this person is assuming that people don't care, that's where I don't agree. most of the time people have communication issues, and they lack the experience to find in their memory the same kind of green most people have already seen so they can both relate to it. that's why I said, it depends on who's speaking. someone with experience will find the words to express his colors.
A part of me wonders a little about the way the statues are painted. I feel like the paint recreations fee a bit too flat compared to the statues they’re based off.
Yeah In regards to Greek and Roman sculptures, we actually have surviving mosaics. The thing is, the people in these mosaics don't look anything like the reconstructed statues. They have so much life and virbrancy (and not overly saturated vibrancy) to them: they genuinly look real, or as real as possible But, these "reconstructed" painted statues look… flat, fake, like plastic. Clearly, they need to hire actual artists who can recreate the look of the mosaics but hey, thats just my opinion
I agree with you here! The paint looks like makeup almost. Plastic definately. I'm not against showing how these statues actualky looked like, but the paint job is terrible, much worse than that of the ancient people who actually colored them
There’s no chromophobia in the world of paintings. Only sculpture- because the unpainted sculpture is far more beautiful. The painted sculptures just look cheesy.
Not just cheesy but actively harmful Like these people are trying to claim that their s*ity paint job is how it "actually looked" when we all know that whoever sculpted the statue clearly wouldv'e put more effort into painting it. And then they claim those who think it looks bad are "colourphobic" I can't even… This could all have been avoided if they simply hired an actual, competent artists to re-color the statues
Nowadays, living in a world overflowing with light, colors and stimuli, the bare white marble might look more "elegant" and "sober" for many. But if people lived in a world as devoid of rich colors as they imagine Ancient Greece to be, they would so miss the colors!
Part of it comes from the Romanticism of early historians and classicists who first coined the concept of "Classic" civilization. Europeans in the 19th Century, following Renaissance (which they also coined as a "rebirth" of their vaunted "Classical" era) attitudes which they admired, created an unrealistic view of the Greco-Roman world. They saw it as almost the Platonic form of human civilization. It was austere, pure, timeless. This picture went hand and glove with their aesthetic appreciation, which they also echoed the Renaissance in, of seemingly stark, austere, pure, timeless art. As stated, the Renaissance artists did it purposefully, purhaps not realizing their "Classic" forebears loved colors. However, garish color is not austere, pure, and timeless, and it does not match modern expectations of high art. I am not immune. I prefer the aesthetics of the white marble to the colorful style, regardless of expectations. The paint removes the texture and masks the delicate manipulations of the surface of the stone and leaves it looking flat. I think a lot of the issue concerning Classical statuary is that it was generally monumental (esp the Greek material). The most famous Renaissance sculpture, the museum context of Greek sculpture, and much Roman statuary involves a closer perpective for the audience. Yet, Classic Greek sculptute in situ was generally more architectural and meant for public display in open venues. So having Venus depicted on the pinacle of a building 30ft up in the air makes more sense being painted than Venus standing in the courtyard of your villa or the Virgin Mary in a Renaissance chapel. As to color being seen as not indicative of high art, that's because color is easy. As in written artforms saying more with fewer words shows more skill, so highlighting the formal design of a piece by an elegantly restrained use of color, form, light, etc. is appreciated. Saying color is bad is obviously wrong. But doing more with less is a basic method of proving skill in any area, and elegance and subtlety require more skill than boldness of color. It is important also that you pointed out that the Medieval period, and especially the churches, were riotously colorful. I get so tired of popular depictions of the time as the Grey and Brown Ages. If going for historical accuracy in Classical art, use color. For aesthetic appeal, however, I still say keep it to a minimum on sculpture.
I usually don't read "comment essays" but, credit to you, this was really interesting Nice to see that history like this is still being taught in schools, and people are still interested in it
The irony of the MET hosting a show about color in ancient scupture should be highlighted. The MET's Egyptian pieces are almost all completely scrubbed clean of color, whitewashing the entire hall. Meanwhile the Brooklyn Museum has a fantastic (although much smaller) Egyptian collection that is superior to the MET for still showing the coloration of the pieces.
I doubt the great artists of ancient Greece and Rome wore so bad at painting. Ehy would they make extremely realistic statues and paint it like a 5 y.o. child would?
The wall art looks pretty rad all coloured up! But the faces of the statues now are hitting that uncanny valley vibe, they look a little disturbing tbh
I've heard this study of art history before and it absolutely floored me. I literally slapped my forehead and thought "of course!" It makes absolute sense that these statues were painted. We're so used to seeing white; whether we saw it ( or even more likely our grandparents saw it) in a museum, or in a book, or TV, or the internet. We were probably never in the position to realize the color. AND to realize the difference it can make on your world view! Wow! I mean, does anyone else think of World War II in black and white? Photos and film.
WW2 was mere decades ago, and we know that colour film back then was still expensive & technically complex (Kodachrome, Dufaycolour, Technicolor) to be widely used. On the other hand, hundreds of years have passed between the Late Roman Empire and the Renaissance, so most oral & written knowledge would have been lost down the generations if not obscured. The written works we have today of Plato, Seneca, and Aristotle are a fraction of what they produced, most have been lost to history. With the renewed interest in Greco-Roman art in the Renaissance, the artists at that time would only have the pale weathered statues, ruins, & columns as a visual reference... the colours on them having faded many many centuries ago.
@@dabrams84 well some paints others react with the stone and make it have a shorter life most relevent on more fragile pieces where the difference would matter
it's so weird for people to have this "prejudice" against color when our world is so naturally and vibrantly colored! the sky! the plants! the animals! the gems and minerals! earth itself has beautiful hues! and now thru space exploration we know there are colors we can't even see with our eyes! i LOVE color
prejudice… against… color? How? I mean, Western paintings aren't black and white. Look at any one of Michelangelo's pieces: they're full of color I guess I just don't understand how the BBC can claim that Westerners are scared of color when 99.999% of paintings say otherwise
Did the BBC really just try to convince me that artists didn't use color because they are prejudiced ??? AND call it a conspiracy? Like for the last two thousand years nobody on earth has used color and we are now just discovering it for the first time. Fighting against suppression and prejudice... Rediscovering the beauty of color that only the egyptians and romans used... I absolutely can not. #1 I too agree that sketching takes more work and skill than coloring. #2 preferring the monochrome look does not make one single person in the entire world prejudice. #3 isn't art about expression? Why are people who are expressing themselves in monochrome now prejudice ? #4 if monochrome marble sculptures were popular and people then copied the process we would call it a trend. Not suppression.... A trend. Say it with me.... It was trending. #5 What about charcoal sketches and artists who use only blacks and grays... are they also adding to the problem of prejudice and suppression.... Or are they allowed to do WHATEVER THE HECK THEY WANT because it's THEIR ART!!!!!?? (Asking for a friend)
Exactly! Also, the anciant sculptures looked NOTHING like the "reconstructed" ones they show in the video We have found surviving paintings from ancient Creece and Rome, we know the people in said paintings don't look flat, hyper-saturated, and, to put it bluntly, ungly, we know there is more to painting than slapping a single pigment on a statue! Could be wrong, but I find it increadibly ironic how the people claiming to be against "re-writing history" are litterally rewriting history by presenting a false narrative of what these statues adtially looked like
These reconstructed pieces with detailed designs and skillful painting are really beautiful. I wouldn't have expected that. I'm going to try to learn more about these projects.
Showing up in college level sculpture class with works that I had colored initially produced disbelief and some amount of ridicule. However, the other students learned a good lesson about the past.
...there are too many weak, forced arguments in the presentation... as I don't have enough interest in the matter for a thorough analysis, I'll just point out a couple of things... the title is cheaply sensationalistic... also, the idea of color being banished or marginalized in art schools is completely false. Drawing and design can be taught in a rigorous, methodical manner, color is much more difficult, due to its elusiveness. The Bauhaus school, with its stellar faculty of great colorists and its endless color exercises, didn't produce one major painter, colorist or otherwise...
I lost respect as soon as he said "colourphobia" Like, they're trying to push this narrative that color has been absent in Western art since ancient times, but, anybody who has seen any European painting can easily tell otherwise Its absurd
□°○ Perhaps for Many of the Marble Sculptures...it was a Matter of the Actual Color of the Various Marbles Used.◇○° Multi-Directional InfoData Sources say that Throughout Various~Different Global Histories and Customs-Cultures, Color Was Used To Display "Class and Status".◇° Certain Lower Class And Or Working Class Groups Were Not Allowed to Wear Specific Colors;°•°• Colors Indicating Royal, Upper Class...Or Different Job Worker Level Identification. □° Then Again, Currently; What Some Theorists Call "Whitewashing"; (Specifically in European Portraits) of "Pigments-Skin Color" in Paintings...May be Deliberately Pushing a "Specific" Agenda, that Hides~Conceals "True Depictions" of Indigenous European Peoples..and Also to Deny The "Fact"? that Many Parts of Europe Were Ruled by Darker Skinned Conquorers.◇•° Currently; I'm Referencing The "Alleged" Repairing of Parts of Notre Dame Cathedral,That Were (Deliberately in My Opinion) Destroyed A Few Years Ago.□°I've Read from Multiple Sources...That the So-Called "Black (Dark Skinned) Madonnas, Will Not Be ReIntro -duced into the Repairs.○°•deb out.□°
Charlie Ahearn opened a studio on 42nd Street and made sculptures that resembled neighborhood people..they might have been actual.plaster casts, not sure..I saw some of them! I did not know then about these antiquated statues being painted the way Charlie painted his sculptures! They resemble the statues in Church, don't they ?
Yuck…the color looks creepy. Looks much better with just bare sculpture. The faces being painted on just look ridiculous. I’m glad it’s all faded/worn off. The painting just doesn’t do the sculptures justice. The sculptures are such a work of art and when painted just looks horrible….especially the faces. The paint really takes away from the beauty of the sculptures. I would rather not see them painted….those faces will give me nightmares.
Look at Egyptian art everybody looks the same. always facing sideways yet they two eyes to 2 arms two legs. All the Egyptian pharaohs look the same or very similar. All the walls were colorful because of the traces of pigments left behind. Seems they had no freedom of expression, looks like other art was dictated by the Pharoahs everything looks like propaganda. it was probably illegal to draw the Pharaoh the way he really looked looked physically
4:47 Zero self awareness in the edit 😂 Pretty clear visual argument why art academies (and old boulder shoulders) placed design above colour, the bare statues are objectively brilliant (due to their design) and the coloured ones are subjectively atrocious (due to the colour palette used.) Thanks for reinforcing that people have only very recently become remedial in their thinking 👍🏻
The real "conspiracy" here is art is so undervalued that the general public had no idead of one of the most basic facts of introductory art history. They have know about this for DECADES and they openly tell you about this the second the Greeks are covered in any western art history course. Side note let's tall about the absolute nerve of British people calling GREEK statues a part of THEIR heritage as if Greek people don't exist and have not been asking for the return of their culture's art.
We may have found that colours link sculptures of their gods to the depiction of other cultures gods, like Hindu gods, with blue/purpley skin, we could have found some missing links but i know we'll just paint any humanoid with a regular skin coloured tone.. its a nice thought but it shan't be the same
The fact that european identity was built on this imagined mythologised idea of rome and greek cultures being unique amongst the rest of antiquity really harshes the buzz of a lot of people...
Ancient Edifices, Temples etc from various countries were also colourful. Perhaps, it would be better to create digital visual images and place these additions next to the sculptures / works for people to view their exact nuanced colourisation instead.
I'm curious about the vibrancy of the colors. The reconstructions they show don't have any shading or color modulation.
This came up with the Sistine Chapel restoration. Criticism that it was too bright, too one-dimensional.
As I understand it the colors are based on slight remaining paint left on the statues. I'm wondering if some shading may have been lost.
I'm sure it has. If you look at the hunting scene of Mithras from Dura Europa there is a corner of Mithras' face that retains shading and finer details, i.e. it was more protected when it fell off. Since any shading/detail, et al, was applied atop a base layer of paint, it's WAY more fugitive and will be the first to go.
Ive always wondered that too. Especially given the detail that went into these sculptures, it doesn't seem right that the artists would provide flats then consider it done
@@sebastian122 Very good point!
As time goes by, I am sure things will be modified as we learn more. Archaeology, like science, is never settled.
Agreed. Really bad coloring here. It’s hard to imagine it looked this bad at the time it was made. I have to imagine there was more shading, and overall more detailed painting.
The problem isn't the color, but the amateurish way they reconstructed it, with no gradients, color layering, nothing - just plain opaque primary colors. If the original sulptores went to so much trouble to sculpt every little detail, the original painters probably did a better job at painting them than what the current reconstructions show.
You make an assumption by pressuming they sought to make color as realistic as the sculpture. First of all because many of the more complex statues were indeed painted properly, the goldens and brass tones on the statues are proper of what you'd expect of mediterranean europenas and north africans. Second, realistic is not always the goal, even if it sometimes combines with something "realistic". Consider that many of these statues were meant to represent myths and legends, they had to have vibrancy and an air of wonder, dare I say something unrealistic. Colors, especially vibrant ones, are used to catch your eye, which in a well populated area, with many buildings, people and objects, would be easy to spot. Not every culture seeks art to be realistic. We can see that as well with a lot of chinese art, which focused more on simple lines meant to portray the feeling the object gave, more than how much it ressembled a camera picture.
@@reinapiratayquepaha Surely you can have vibrancy AND not looking hokey?
This. They remind me of those amateur 'restoration' botch jobs gotten famous by the internet a while ago. These look rushed and half-done. Yes, you can have bright colours and the end product looking good. There are the medieval sculptures for you. Heavy colour but lots of shading and detail.
Exactly. But oh well, the "recreators" will blame your criticism on you being limited, anyway.
Thank you 👏
Paint without shading disguises the 3d features that are so admired. It is very simple: people don't like the paint because it is much lower in quality than the sculpture itself. There is very fine detail in the sculpting, not in the painting. There are a great many scultor/painters they could have studied to see relation of detail. Look at the ladies toes.
Exactly my thoughts
Just imagine if, for example, Leonardo da Vinci had re-colored those sculptures; the differece it would make!
da Vinci's obviously not around anymore, but I'm sure we could find somebody, even if half as good, that could get the job done
Exactly, I honestly feel that the painted recreations aren't as detailed and accurate as they would've been at the time either. If you're a part of society that's creating such incredibly detailed and accurate sculptures as all these, you definitely have people who are able to paint them properly as well. Even in videos like this, modern people are constantly underestimating the intelligence and skill of our ancestors. And acting like the West is the one who is the greatest threat and detractor to this kind of art, this art that is revered as priceless to us and protected and studied in our museums as our cultural origins, when so many countries in the East would love to destroy it all without a second thought, is very telling about the maker's intent.
I don’t believe such garish colors were used, and with no shading. When you look at ancient Greek and Roman art (like tomb-portraits, wall frescos or mosaics), you don’t see gaudy colors but muted earthy colors, with shading. Why would the Greeks use tasteful colors for everything else, but suddenly switch to flat gaudy colors when it came to their statues?
Hey genius, did you know colours fade? Christ :p
@@Nobody-hc2bo Hey genius, did you know that shading doesn’t just appear by itself?
Your "gaudy" is someone else's "vibrant".
I feel like one of the main reasons people don’t like the colored versions it’s because the way is done today it has no shading. This makes the sculptures look weird and uncanny. If you see baroque sculptures for example, they are colored, but they are shaded properly to give the artistic effect the artist wanted. I doubt in ancient times it was much different.
Yea seeing the ones that are redone it looks kinda ick and weird ….🫣😰🥴
I think that at least for me, the reason I prefer the unccolored statues is because there is a perceived gap between the skillfulness of the sculpture itself and its color. The sculptures appear ornate and life-like, yet the color is flat. It's as though a great artist drew a sketch but it was colored in by a child.
I'm beyond suspicious, the hypothetical application of the colour is flawed. They have identified the right vribrant pigments but not their transparency verses opacity in application. Use of subtle modelling etc
It's like colour photography vs. black + white photography.
@@jonathantan2469 maybe you're talking about certain stylistic choices, but overall color IRL or photography has a lot of details/shades/nuances/expressiveness that we might not always perceive actively but we're thrown off when it's missing, that's kind of what happened with these statues.
Most artists would use different shades of colors to create a face or show a folding in a cloth (depending of course on the art style, but let's go with a more realistic painting fitting to realistic sculpting) while with these remakes it seems to be the 'flat color' (the base color all that was left to detect this many years later).
We of course will never know the whole original design of these statues and maybe they actually were colored this basic since they used to be up on buildings...
but considering the details that went into the sculpting process (creating single locks + every detail in the cloth and face of the statue) we assume that the same love for detail & expressiveness would've gone into the painting of the statues, which is def. not the case in these replicas and leads to a perceived 'gap in skillfulness' ^^
I think some of that can be attributed to the fact that the colors we're seeing were applied by modern restorationists with limited information, as opposed to the sculptures' shapes, which have relatively been well preserved over the centuries.
That's because it was basically painted by a child. The people who painted it aren't artists, they're archaeologists and historians. They are trying to reproduce pigments, rather than reproduce art.
I've known for a few years already that they were painted (yes even medieval church sculptures) but there's just something magical about a realistic bare marble statue. It's like a person has been enchanted and turned into stone.
Agreed 💯
So true! Great way of putting it
Thats... horryfing actually
@@mariatereza9721 I guess it adds to the fascinating aspect of it. It's like they've been turned to stone - or can turn real at any moment.
_yes even medieval church sculptures_
Christian statues are polychromed to this day. :') that's no surprise to nobody
I doubt they didn't have any concept of shading like these painted reproductions show. They made realistic statues but paonted them like garden gnomes? Yeah, I'm not buying it. I'm sure they were better at painting than these reproductions show them to have been.
By the way, there is no conspiracy. People have learnt they were painted and have been thought that they were for a while, now. I guess everyone loves a clickbait title.
If the sculptors took so much energy to recreate the ripples of muscles and the other nuances of the human form, don't you think the paint applied in that period would have been equally nuanced depicting folds of cloth, fabric detail, the shadows of the face, the gradations of hues ? As presented by these modern recreations, there is none of that in the majority of these color reproductions. They look as if they are paint-by-number or an adult coloring book owned by one's great aunt---or worse, by some Spanish grandmother attempting to restore a chapel piece like Ecco Homme. Instead of creating the sense of amazement and relatable common identity that the raw, unpainted stone statures allow, these poor attempts remove the awe and move into a discomfort similar to the uncanny valley. Instead of allowing an Andy Warhol pop art approach, consider an approach similar to a Lucien Freud type, an attempt to recreate the color in a more life-like manner. Perhaps the so-called discomfort comes from the fact that these wonderfully sculpted life-like pieces are treated as unlifelike in their colorized depictions. When painting, layers are placed, built up to create the end result. What is scanned today may be the under layers, a basis upon which to build the image through layers allowing a more life like depiction. Instead of using these scans as the end all result, they should be treated as a direction to move from and thus recreate a depiction more worthy of the talent reveled by the stone structure.
Exactly! I'd love if they put a more creative, but realistic recreation using layers, shadows, texture etc. next to the scientific one
Well said I totally agree. Where are the nuances, the shading,shadowing and details? I can even picture them using an almost water color effect. Fluid and life-like as the sculptures appear.
What a very astute observation! I wouldn’t have thought about this until you mentioned it, but this is so damn true! And the “paint by numbers” comment was freaking spot on 😂
The shocking fact that they had colors doesn't mean they were painted with such basic saturated and frankly unflattering colors. The lack of colors can feel more realistic due to your brain imagining the missing elements and details. But painting them with such disharmonious and flat colors gives them an uncanny fake appearance. I don't know if they actually liked flat colors back then but I don't.
Maybe but also keep in mind paint technology was much less advanced than what we’re accustomed to today. What would have given the paint that nuance you refer to is oil. But oil was very precious and not widely used at the time
My question with the reconstructions is not the vibrancy of colour but its application. Medieval sculptures are vibrant but they also have more modeled tonality and areas of transparency. QUESTION: are the reconstructions accurate in this sense? I am highly suspicious that they are not. Identifying a pigment is one thing. Paint application another.
Maybe it's just me but I think the "Chromo-phobia" is an Uncanny Valley Issue... with the Statuary being the Humanoid form, when you add flesh tones and the corresponding 'make-up' effects it highlights not only that certain physical features are 'off' but the 'flesh tones' aren't exactly fleshy... whereas in the Bleached/Weathered version these issues of 'not quite right' in scale, or proportion can be dismissed as 'artistic choices' or the limits of the medium...
Keep in mind most of these statues would have been higher off the ground than they are being presented here. The exaggeration of color would have been necessary to fool the eye into seeing what the artist intended. Like David's hands looking so big when viewed straight on, and not from below like intended.
@@sebastian122 Fair enough... then perhaps steps should be taken to display them in similar Context to reinforce this...
I wonder if the ancients had painting techniques to fix this problem
Yeah I think you are right. They blame “uneducated viewers” but don’t consider that there might be other factors at play that makes people like the painted ones less. Not to mention, the original statues may have been painted much more realistically with shading than what they show here.
@@CampingforCool41 this hole deal just seems to just be a politically pressured agenda by the left against white supremacy, because I guess the left can’t stand white supremacy also having good tastes in art and using that to promote their ideologies with. If you aren’t aware if the context in the past and present white supremacists have used Roman and Greek art in their propaganda to say “look what whites could accomplish if we united against the rest” kinda thing.
Anyone in a first year undergrad art history class knows these statues were polychromed. It's hardly a 'conspiracy' of artists or academics. I can't speak for conservationists or curators. (5:00) - Worth noting that Michelangelo's sculpture was influenced by the Greco-Roman pieces he saw excavated around Rome, without their color after centuries in the ground. His Sistine murals, or any other counter-Reformation masterpieces, are hardly lacking color. You're taking modernist concerns with material and plasticity (Hepworth, Moore, Brancusi) and projecting it onto earlier periods with their own interests.
Thank you. We were told from day one inn art history that they were painted. I realise that this is news to laymen, but not to anyone who has studied art. Even worse is when they try and make it some kind of weird racial thing.
Thank you for saying it outloud that It is "hardly a conspiracy theory".. I agree with you 100%
It was perhaps a conspiracy 100-300 years ago, when European historians and art dealers scrubbed the paint off and pretended it had never existed. I've heard theories that they did this to match what di Vinci and Michelangelo did during the Renaissance (to drive up prices). I've heard the theory that it was white supremacists who were using the white-washed statues to support their world view (pale=classic=superior). But I hardly think there is a current conspiracy about it. Just a few hardliners, denying what science has proven.
Not even undergrad, you learn about this in AP art history, I did so as an 11th grader and this was over a decade ago.
in my context this information is still hardly known. i'm brazilian and just in architecture graduation that was taught to me. i don't see much of a problem if we trace "chromophobia" back to classic aesthetics, seen that renaissance was the very moment western art theory started to take real form. if i'm wrong you can help me!
Maybe it's because Greek and Roman paintjobs look like bad makeup. They're just better sculptors than they are painters.
Greeks were known to be great painters.
@@cangjie12 Wow... You've really made a lot of unfounded, unreasoned, and half-thought claims. Let's look at them:
1. Claim: the ancients used muted colours for frescoes.
This is a gross generalisation that ignores centuries of artistic development. There are eras of Ancient Greece that preferred bright colours, and eras that preferred muted colours. Your claim also ignores a VERY important aspect of archaeological evidence............ AGEING. The frescoes we have from Ancient Greece are thousands of years old, and they have aged under centuries of soot, smoke, dirt, grime, moisture, etc. Even paintings as relatively young as 50 years can look completely different when surface grime is accumulated, and wouldn't you know what happens to their colours? They become muted.
Your entire rant is based on the wrong assumption that the muted colours of the frescoes look today exactly as they did thousands of years ago. I do not think I have to explain why that is wrong.
You're also ignoring that within the exhibition, there are works spanning several eras of Ancient Greece and Rome, and most of what is shown in the video comes from the Archaic Era (800-480 BCE)... It's almost like art constantly evolves or something; if you actually used your eyeballs, you'd be able to see that the painted statue of the Small Herculaneum Woman, which is 700 years later (Rome 30-1 BCE) clearly displays an evolution in the technique, showcasing textile transparency, etc.
2. (Implied) Claim: The ancients must have used the same painting techniques both in frescoes, and statues.
Why? Why couldn't they have used different colours, and techniques? Correct me if I'm wrong, but I'm quite sure that plaster, and marble are two different media, and therefore require different skills, and approaches. Tell me, do we blend colours, use brushes, and pigments the same in watercolours, and oil paints? Why not? Aren't they media that have co-existed for centuries? Why do Italian renaissance water colour paintings look so different from their oil painting counterparts despite being made in the same time period, same geographical area, and the same artists? Could it be that they required different techniques?
3. Claim: The professors are wrong/ the professors are doing it for "shock value".
How do you know, cangjie12? Are you a leading authority in Ancient Greek, and Roman polychromy? Have you read through their research and found a flaw in their methodology, and their conclusions? Do you have evidence that proves them wrong? Or evidence that they're lying, and only preoccupied with "shock value"? Please share if you do have it; we archaeologists love to advance knowledge of the past, so I'd love to read your revolutionary research. Please don't keep it to yourself! Also; even if their generation "loves garish colours" "for a fact (look! another unfounded assertion)" it is irrelevant to the science they have produced. Science is objective, so your ad hominem does absolutely anything unless you can prove that they only painted the statues like that for that reason.
4. Claim: The professors have affirmed that this is how the Greeks MUST have done it.
Please. Can you link the exact moment they said this... Oh, that's right... They didn't... It's almost like archaeology so ancient makes it literally impossible to make such an affirmation.
@@Sebastian_Terrazas wow, what a passionate response. I won’t answer anything regarding authority and expertise, because that has nothing to do with the validity of an argument.
As for claim 4, what i meant to say is that we cannot assume ‘flat colours’ to be the default just because that those were the only pigments that have been detected. And if shading was applied later on top of base coats, wouldn’t that be the first to go, leaving only the base coats behind? In this I was reminded of the argument that many musicians make (especially in the past), that we should not decorate Bach or Mozart’s music, simply because the decorations have not survived and come down to us in written form. But that doesn’t actually mean the music was bare and empty. Similarly, just because only a base coat survives on a statue, it doesn’t mean that more paint wasn’t originally applied over it; so why base the reconstruction on surviving chemical evidence, instead of the stylistic example of classical art whose color has survived? That was what I was expressing in my original comment; perhaps it wasn’t worded as clearly there. I was assuming that these ‘restorationists’ were working from a purely forensic perspective, as opposed to an approach that tried to embody the artistic and cultural expectations of the time. (Which, by the way, was very realistic when it came to statues. It would have been odd indeed, a mismatch, if the form of the statue was realistic but the color scheme was not, i.e. cartoonish instead.)
As for claim 1, I have not seen a single ancient fresco (or any other classical work with surviving colour) in garish flat colours (no shading), but do share their names or links to them here if you know any, so we can see them. By the way, even if the fresco/mosaic colours themselves really did go from garish to muted, what about the shading? Weathering cannot have done that. Even if I were absolutely wrong about the tone of the colours, the fact remains that shading was definitely used.
By the way, I recently saw online two versions of a fresco in the temple of Isis in Pompeii: Io (the cow-girl) arriving in Egypt and being greeted by Isis. One was very muted indeed (presumably its condition when excavated), and another one was (I assume) a photoshopped version with much more vibrant colour and details. But even the latter version still comes nowhere near the hideously garish and flat color scheme of these modern reconstructions of statues. You’ll probably (rightly) say this isn’t an argument at all, but others might find it interesting.
As for claim 2: you are conflating technique and an artistic approach. What i (and other people) am referring to is the artistic/cultural expectation that colours should be one way or another. so yes, you asked, why couldn’t have the approach been different, and to that i would say, well yes, it is more reasonable to assume it would not have been too different from what we see in other media. By Occams razor, it would require more to explain away why mosaics/frescoes were muted while statues were gaudy, than if we just supposed that the statues were painted in the same spirit as the former, with the same cultural expectations of the final artistic result. The thing you need to ask is this: Was there something special and unique about marble statues that compelled their painters to use a flat and bright colour scheme? Was the material used in statues somehow unsuitable for muted colours with shading? Or did the audience for statues prefer gaudy colours when compared to the audience for frescoes? All in all, it’s simpler and more justified to suppose that the statues were painted like the frescoes etc (most likely in more tasteful colours, and certainly with shading), as opposed to flat intense colours. Because the latter would be not an ordinary but an extraordinary claim, which requires more proof.
By the way, what I said about ‘shock value’ is true. You can refer to these sources. In the article, the person clearly says that his colorisation of the peplos kore statue was a ‘provocation’ meant to ‘make people think’.
ua-cam.com/video/4T1LjxQ0aUs/v-deo.html
www.classics.cam.ac.uk/museum/collections/peplos-kore
So in the future you could go easy on accusing others of all sorts of things.
"Sit down everybody, the experts are here"
but, jokes asside, its really cool that so there are still people who are interested in this sort of stuff, maybe school is useful after all…
I don't mind the colors, they just seem too flat and one dimensional for the breathtaking skill and detail of the carvings. They look like a child painting their father's art. I am certain the experts know what they're talking about, but my brain really hates the way the cartoonish flat colors clash with the exquisite and meticulous detail on the stone. The way every vein and fold of fabric was carefully carved, then they slapped a flat wash of blue and peach over it?
For me the pure marble looks more pleasing is because the coloring looks like it is of much lower quality. The bare statue looks like i could see every pore if i would just get near enough. The coloring looks like someone took 2mm thick wall color to kill the details.
This is interesting. Personally, the painted sculptures dip too much into the uncanny valley my tastes. The forms are so impressive in themselves-the color distract me from the beauty of the sculptures.
I’m with you on this one - the colour does distract from the form.
Not too mention the fact that there is zero variation in the color and shade of the paint.
It just looks… amaturish
Honestly painted sculpture looks like bad wax figures with 1920’s eyebrows. Doesn’t make sense. With no color you cant truly appreciate that it was sculpted (not badly painted) by human hands; I mean witnessing delicate veins carved out of pure rock is profound; color destroys that journey of detail.
Possibly because all the 'reconstructed' examples look tacky to modern eyes?
Not just to modern eyes…
Not even an ancient Greek or Roman citizen would think these look good
I mean, when you look at surviving Greek and Roman mosaics, its obvious they were masters of color, shadow, and realism, the polar opposite of the "reconstructed" statues
I think the colours would have been far more realistic. If you look at the "Fayum mummy portraits" they are lifelike depictions and I am certain the statues would have been the same. The Fayum mummy portraits come from the Greco-Roman artistic tradition and date from 2000 years ago and so they seem like a good guide.
Are there any surviving statues that suggest such bright colours?
Is not conspiracy, the pigment didn't preserve. It was proved that the way the saints in Catholicism are painted, is actually a heritage of the way the roman gods were painted, vivid colour everywhere. Check Orthodox vs Catholic representations.
The thing is when they attempt to recolor these statues they don't look right. Roman and greek paintings at best can be really fine, so surely it is unlikely they would have used such broad strokes of color without tone or texture. Yes, these may give you a sense of color but the actual artistic look is easily lost.
Agreed!
In my opinion, if you can't recreate the color 100% exactly, then you should leave the originals untouched
I'm not against making a duplicate statue to color, but I do think they should hire actual artists to paint it
I'd like to see one painted with speculative shading, similar to what you might find on a fresco which also we're not flatly coloured
The thing that gets me is that these artists could sculpt these incredibly realistic and detailed sculptures, but that they think they painted them in flat coloured clown makeup. Yes those are the pigments but they would have used blending, light and share, artistry! You can tell it's a material scientist who did this colouring. I mean yes they were painted but not that badly, my god.
Very neat, and I'm glad to see people doing this. What's striking to me is how flat the colors they use are - vibrant, but flat. My eye prefers polished marble, which (for me) emphasizes dimensionality, shapes, shadows, and highlighting. The matte finishes I see on most of these pieces emphasize color as THE story teller and shape definer, and undermine lighting's ability to define the perception of shape and dimensionality.
Maybe it's a lifetime of acculturation and familiarity, but most of what's shown looks cartoonish to me. Valid, important, and as accurate as can be hoped, but cartoonish. For my time and money, I'd rather have polished marble statues in three dimensions, and colorful portrayals in two.
every shape has a color, every color has a shape, how can one define the other?
I agree with you about the flat colors. I wonder if they were this flat though? I mean they captured every muscle and nuance of the body, why would they have missed the nuances of skin tones? I bet they painted the faces more realistically.
The surviving classical frescos from ancient Greece and Rome show a much more nuanced use of colour. One theory is that the statues did have further layers of paint, in order to create contrast and emphasize volume, but those were lost forever and only the base coat, the paint that was directly in contact with the stone, has left traces that can be discovered today.
This is amazing to me. Is there anything in the modern world that we do without color? So why do we insist that the past should be seen artificially? What is it about our attitude to history that insists on whitewashing it? How can an artificial (and modern) representation be "better" than the actual reality experienced by those who lived it?
I have a suspicion that they weren't painted so flatly or mattely.
They look ugly beaches they were painted without shadow or highlights. If you look at how modern sculptures were painted, you can really see that a fake looking statue coming to life when artist added shadows and highlights
Its painfully clear that the people who "reconstructed" these sculptures were scientists, NOT artists
Any competant artists would immediately see the problem with the flat, plastic, makeup ""asthetic""
Clearly the scientists were only concerned with "filling out the data", puting the exect color, and only the exact color, that the computer told them to at each specific point.
Heres the thing, these computer systems work by counting the number of specific pigment particles and averaging them to get the color for each patch
However, the averaging, although technicly the most "probable" outcome for that specific number of particles, inevitably creates a blury, statistically uniform mess
Theres no passion, creativity, or even any imperfections in this process, just plain statisticsl averages
Somehow, I don't think the ancient sculptures would approve of a process like that
That sh1t looks wack tho', there no way they could carve marble that good and painted that bad. There is no color grading, shading or highlighting, all of those look super flat and childish, for sure they were doing way better than that, it even harms the beauty the way they painted those up, it's sad.
Not just sad, its downright harmful
Imagine you're an ancient Greek sculpture who spent thoudsands of hours and tons of money onto creating the perfect sculpture. Then imagine you, using a meriad of bushes and pigments, painstakingly coloring the marble such that it exactly resembles the human skin tone, with all its subtle variations and shading.
Now imagine how you'd feel seeing your magnum opus ""
reconstructed""" by a group of artistically illiterate researchers vandalize it and then claim its how you "originally" wanted it to look
I'd be dissapinted, angry, and downright embarassed
People don’t know that ancient art was painted/colored? I thought that was widely known.
Whether widely known or not, it certainly isn’t some hidden conspiracy.
What is both mind-blowing and hilarious to me are how they have found a few simple hues through microscopic particles, assumed that those hues were all they had in those areas (ignoring the incredibly sophisticated sculpting techniques) and repainted them in the most rudimentary, Kindergarten coloring book way. I know it's hard to wrap your head around it... but people were just as smart, creative and clever 60,000 years ago as they are today. The people from these comparatively very recent ancient societies understood depth, dimension, and perspective... from their mosaics we know they also understood and utilized the very basic concepts of color gradients and light and shadows. So how is it that modern experts are unable to imagine that they would be capable of also applying that knowledge to painting their statues?
Because those snobs/experts really DON'T have intelligence and got their jobs or fame through glad handing, and pats-on-backs old boys club support. It's tradition. Those experts don't even think it's possible that some old, random old civilization could possibly be smarter than they. I am not joking. Try to overhear some of their conversations at a restaurant one day, and you will see what I mean.
is there an example painted by an actual talented painter? doesn't have to be as talented as the sculptors but still. would be nice to see
Bruh.
It's color.
Chillax, there's no 'Monochromatic Conspiracy' afoot...😐
Promise.
🤦🏻♂️
The BBC should really get into landscaping…
I mean, their experts at making mountains outa mole-hills
I know ancient statue were colorful. Even the sphinx was colorful. Inside the pyramid, I've seen the colorful version of their walls. Movies and tv show have normalized the colorless ancient arts and indirectly brainwashed us to think it originally look like that. But, yeah, in modern time we all do prefer the no color statue. Even modern churches like to use monochrome color statues of angels and Jesus in their compounds nowadays. It look fancier in my eyes. Have to admit, ancient coloring looks childish or cartoonish with their solid color. It doesn't feel fancy. Understandable that ancient people don't discover blending technique or gradients yet. Their art could had look more awesome if it is colored in a hyper realistic technique.
This is utterly fascinating! As an artist and illustrator who loves bright colors, I love seeing these sculptures in full color. Our society often shuns bright colors, whichbare considered childish and unsophisticated. But to the ancients, there were no such color taboos or biases. I love the archer figure!
Possible, though it bears to keep in mind that these may only have been the base layers, which is all our technology allows us to detect. There may have been further details and shading added on top.
@@Anthropomorphic even then it's still a hell of a whole lot more color than our colorless world nowadays
I see a comment suggesting they should be shaded and muted which is ridiculous to me as an artist to attempt shading on a three dimensional sculpture.
You do know that skin isn't all one uniform color, right?
Variations in sun exposure, skin thickness, blood vessal density, subsurface scattering, and especially hair length all contribute to the subtle shade and hue shifts real human skin contains.
If people were all one color, then the flatly repainted scuptures should all look photo realistic, but, clearly, they don't
I have to say, every attempt to paint these statues only makes them look uglier. Where ancient artists painted their statues, they apparently were doing them a massive disservice. They go from looking dignified, to looking like dollar store tchotchke.
I thought this was a well known and established fact even for the general public for at least the past decade
It is but now a critical mass of content creators have gone to a museum for the first time and have to pretend their ignorance is a conspiracy
6:00
Wrong. Number of colours in perception depends on language. Some languages have names for colours that other languages do not possess at all.
I’m 51 and I was taught ancient sculptures were brightly painted since my childhood.
Why is this aspect of history always presented in an admonishing sensationalist way?
See from 3:32
@@ninsuhnrey yeah I don’t accept that. There’s been no debate during my lifetime. Yet it keeps cropping up like a bad penny in journalistic outlets like there has been.
Media acting like an amnesiac protagonist in some bad fiction.
More knowledge accumulated over the decades, and I’m sure there was pushback at some point, but I imagine you’d have to go pretty far back to find when that was. Notice they don’t speak to anyone who argues the opposite. It’s long been settled.
@@BlookbugIV arrogant.
@@BrennenKing-d5w the hell are you talking about ?
@@BlookbugIV I'm wondering if some manipulative editing is at play here, I could belive that the substance of the chromaphobia debate is about beauty of the white statues vs the colored statues as opposed to the "truth" of the colored statues. Meanwhile I am wondering if upper class English tastes are being projected onto the breath of European history....Tatian, the impressionists, all of Byzantium, stained glass, the sistine, the Dutch still life's of fruit, etc are all reveared and filled with color.
I think the problem isn’t so much the existence of painted statues as it is that the people who painted these ones didn’t do a very good job.
Why do these look like they were painted by a 12 year old used to painting on plastic models? Did they not hire actual painters to do the colors?
I prefer to see History accurately represented. But, aesthetically I like the look of the unpainted Marble. Perhaps something could be done with colored lights to illustrate the difference on the same sculpture, or maybe use paints that are invisible under normal lighting but show their true colors under special lighting.
that's a wonderful idea, would make an amazing installation
Probably easier to use a virtual representation, visible through use of goggles, or on a smart phone/tablet. Some artists are already working in this medium, setting up works that are invisible unless viewed with the proper device.
A monochrome statue shows more if the quality of the statue itself. It is therefore understandable that Artists like the monochrome appearance of a statue. However, ther are a lot of antique statues or figurines in the Museum that show residues of their coloration and all Archeologists (also in the past) knew about the coloration of antique buildings and statues/figurines.
Seems painted by the historians themselves, not artists under historian's guidance
These guys are so full of themselves they are really blaming criticism on critics being limited. Never did it occure to them that these "recreations" they "painstakingly" made look straight up kitche and ugly. That's just not good art, and I believe the *real* real ones were colored better.
Ain't no way taste changed so much that anyone in ancient times would allow 10/10 sculptures to be 3/10 painted.
100% agree
Also the fact that they can claim there is a "prejudice" against color in western art and then immediatly give Michelangelo as an example.
Zero self awareness…
I like the color added to the statues, we can see how they REALLY appeared. But, I also think the all white marble has a style and aesthetic to it. I don't think people have "tried to white wash history," the colored paint just faded in time, and later generations only knew the white marble versions. People like what is familiar, so all white statues is what they knew.
With many of the Egyptian pieces in the MET they were specifically scrubbed clean. Some of this was out of ignorance, but it was an ignorance that suited a narrative. And the idea of the superiority of "classicism" was definitely a powerful narrative in Europe and the US in those periods.
@@patreekotime4578 Where can I read about this scrubbing?
Your opinion of people not actively trying to “whitewash history” is wrong. They have. The marbles did fade out in colour but they had become very faded color, not white as you indicated. Colonists thought they didn’t have color so they had them scrubbed cleaner before putting it in the British museum. If you don’t think history can be whitewashed, you clearly don’t know anything about history.
@@beadmecreative9485 if A - they did not hypothetically whitewashed those statues, then B - it does not mean whitewashing of history does not exist. Your "logic" is pretty weird.
that is not how they appeared these people plagiarizing history and whitewashing it with fake artifacts.
I think they painted them with more skill that the recreations they have. The recreations look like they were painted by just anyone, they look flat and cartoon like. I believe if they took the time to carve out skin folds so realistically they'd do the same with color.
We know ancient civilizations like the Greeks and Romans were masters at painting (just look at the surviving mosaics), so it is 100% logical to assume that they would paint their sculptures with equal skill and attention
Ironically, these people who claim to be "unwhitewashing" the sculptures are presenting an image of acient art that is made up, kinda sad actually
Cities could certainly do with some colour added to buildings. In fact, I was taught in the 1980’s that the emergence of graffiti, first known as knochenmaenner in Germany was caused by the ugliness of modern dwellings. Children love colour. It is part of our humanity.
5:04 absolute bollocks.
Leonardo and Michelangelo were both _iconographers._ As in their entire artistic expression was in reverence to the transcendent power and majesty of a Christian god.
Whether or not they used colour is completely irrelevant, their art was entirely in service to God and the Church of St Peter in Rome and saying anything else makes you ignorant, or in this case, malicious.
This is the most white, liberal, university educated, cooks with an aga, has a house in France and loves the smell of their own farts BBC story I’ve seen in a while.
I've known this for some years and always loved to see reproductions in color. I think it's grand. White pure marble can also be stunningly beautiful. Both are great things to have.
100% agree!
A lot of ppl are acting like appricating the non-colored sculptures is wrong or non-historically accurate, when, truthfully, they look good too
@@namef some people dislike it cuz they are used to the old colorless ones, some others make valid points.
something that bugs me for example, why would they take the time to fetch white marble, specially Romans that went thousands of miles to get Carrara marble, to just paint them and make them look like any regular painted sculpture? since when do rich people hide the fact that they have enough money to buy unusual stuff that others can't afford?
I wonder if these archeologist aren't letting themselves be blinded by their desire to prove their point.
(I do believe that at least *some* sculptures were painted ofc)
Color yes, but these examples looks like they were painted by 5 year olds. Just smeard on, no nuances or any delacacy on marble pieces that took months to carve out. Don't think so. Paint them properly if you're going to!
the minoan civilization which was OLDER than Greek and Roman civilization is full of colors and you can still see it now on Crete...so its ludicrous to think that Roman and Greek did not used any color in their sculpture.
I honestly wonder if the collours you are showing isnt just the artist ground layer, the one that seeped into the stone. And that here may have been way more detail on top of that. I find it awfully hard te believe the creator would have taken so much time to create a life like statue, only to paint the face pink with fake eyes drawn on it, like a 10 year old did it.... That seems very inconsistent.
i understand how many colors would have been developed in ancient cultures, i just question on the practicality of painting these since they were outside mostly - they would have eroded quite quickly
Framing a misconception as a conspiracy sounds like bad popsci archeology to me.
The Met must need funding.
They can’t paint these statues correctly, they can get what they think is 1:1 but what I see here for the most part looks like terrible almost mocking representation of ancient art…….
They look better unpainted.. or if you paint them, why not do a better job? Those paint jobs look cheaply-made.
It’s not about suppressing color, it’s about being in denial that something so beautiful was actually ugly and tacky looking lol
Conspiracy? Nah, I’ve seen things from the 18th century where they’re talking about scrubbing off the remnants of paint because they thought the marble looked cool. Similarly there’s a statue of St Christopher near me, where the abbey was abandoned for a while, then no-one dared touch up the paint when it was re occupied.
The Victorians didn’t mention a lot of things because they were trying to make the Roman Empire seem more like the early Roman republic , so I suppose you might be able to claim hat was a conspiracy… reproductions were probably not painted because marble simply looks amazing though
Anybody who thinks there are only 11 color names has never gone paint shopping with my wife.
0 shadows or highlights,they look flat and too tacky,I doubt they looked like this or that anyone would find it good looking.
"we have only 11 basis color terms": it depends on who's speaking.
English, for this case, has only 11 eleven basic color terms: black, white, red, green, orange, yellow, blue, brown, pink, purple and grey.
@@reinapiratayquepaha english has a looot more than that. let's talk about green.
dried bay leef green
tempest sea green
green lemon
deep forest green
kale juice green
mint milk green, etc.
the same goes to french (my language). you have 1 word to tell the kind of color you spot (rouge, orange, jaune, vert, bleu violet, indigo, blanc, noir, gris, brun, rose), and then a looot of words to explain what kind of green, red or pink you are talking about. because kale juice green and mint milk green have nothing to do with each other apart being green.
this person is assuming that people don't care, that's where I don't agree.
most of the time people have communication issues, and they lack the experience to find in their memory the same kind of green most people have already seen so they can both relate to it.
that's why I said, it depends on who's speaking. someone with experience will find the words to express his colors.
@@dianemoril7612 tell me, what did you understand by "basic terms"?
What about cyan, thats pretty popular
Also violet, its litterally in the rainbow we learn in school
Why js paris statue wearing Persian soldiers dress though? Greeks did not wear trousers or those head scarves
Historians…Are there no references to painted sculptures in writing nor artworks depicting it?
The reconstructions are a bit 'flat'. What can we know about the quality of the original painting?
I can only assume they looked at Surviving Frescoes and decided that "Bold, unshaded, limited graidient" was a dominant look.
@@llewelynshingler2173 but the frescos were not like that.
I don't get why people hate color so much. Quite boring to see just a white statue.
A part of me wonders a little about the way the statues are painted. I feel like the paint recreations fee a bit too flat compared to the statues they’re based off.
Yeah
In regards to Greek and Roman sculptures, we actually have surviving mosaics.
The thing is, the people in these mosaics don't look anything like the reconstructed statues.
They have so much life and virbrancy (and not overly saturated vibrancy) to them: they genuinly look real, or as real as possible
But, these "reconstructed" painted statues look… flat, fake, like plastic. Clearly, they need to hire actual artists who can recreate the look of the mosaics
but hey, thats just my opinion
Personally, I like the look of no paint!
Why. It so boring when they were made to be vibrant.
I agree with you here!
The paint looks like makeup almost. Plastic definately.
I'm not against showing how these statues actualky looked like, but the paint job is terrible, much worse than that of the ancient people who actually colored them
@@BrennenKing-d5w The colored recreations looms comical by comparison,every detail is masked by ugly vibrant colors
The paint and the final coloring is amateurishly ugly, no?
There’s no chromophobia in the world of paintings. Only sculpture- because the unpainted sculpture is far more beautiful. The painted sculptures just look cheesy.
Not just cheesy but actively harmful
Like these people are trying to claim that their s*ity paint job is how it "actually looked" when we all know that whoever sculpted the statue clearly wouldv'e put more effort into painting it.
And then they claim those who think it looks bad are "colourphobic" I can't even…
This could all have been avoided if they simply hired an actual, competent artists to re-color the statues
Nowadays, living in a world overflowing with light, colors and stimuli, the bare white marble might look more "elegant" and "sober" for many.
But if people lived in a world as devoid of rich colors as they imagine Ancient Greece to be, they would so miss the colors!
Yeah, this gives new meaning to the saying: "the grass is always greener on the other side"
Part of it comes from the Romanticism of early historians and classicists who first coined the concept of "Classic" civilization. Europeans in the 19th Century, following Renaissance (which they also coined as a "rebirth" of their vaunted "Classical" era) attitudes which they admired, created an unrealistic view of the Greco-Roman world. They saw it as almost the Platonic form of human civilization. It was austere, pure, timeless.
This picture went hand and glove with their aesthetic appreciation, which they also echoed the Renaissance in, of seemingly stark, austere, pure, timeless art. As stated, the Renaissance artists did it purposefully, purhaps not realizing their "Classic" forebears loved colors.
However, garish color is not austere, pure, and timeless, and it does not match modern expectations of high art.
I am not immune. I prefer the aesthetics of the white marble to the colorful style, regardless of expectations. The paint removes the texture and masks the delicate manipulations of the surface of the stone and leaves it looking flat.
I think a lot of the issue concerning Classical statuary is that it was generally monumental (esp the Greek material). The most famous Renaissance sculpture, the museum context of Greek sculpture, and much Roman statuary involves a closer perpective for the audience. Yet, Classic Greek sculptute in situ was generally more architectural and meant for public display in open venues. So having Venus depicted on the pinacle of a building 30ft up in the air makes more sense being painted than Venus standing in the courtyard of your villa or the Virgin Mary in a Renaissance chapel.
As to color being seen as not indicative of high art, that's because color is easy. As in written artforms saying more with fewer words shows more skill, so highlighting the formal design of a piece by an elegantly restrained use of color, form, light, etc. is appreciated.
Saying color is bad is obviously wrong. But doing more with less is a basic method of proving skill in any area, and elegance and subtlety require more skill than boldness of color.
It is important also that you pointed out that the Medieval period, and especially the churches, were riotously colorful. I get so tired of popular depictions of the time as the Grey and Brown Ages.
If going for historical accuracy in Classical art, use color. For aesthetic appeal, however, I still say keep it to a minimum on sculpture.
I usually don't read "comment essays" but, credit to you, this was really interesting
Nice to see that history like this is still being taught in schools, and people are still interested in it
Could the narrator have sounded any more smug? Yes BBC no one thought of anything before you gave them permission them to... 🙄
I lost it when they claimed europe is "colourphobic" and then immedietly gave Michelangelo as an example.
Like, zero self awareness…
The irony of the MET hosting a show about color in ancient scupture should be highlighted. The MET's Egyptian pieces are almost all completely scrubbed clean of color, whitewashing the entire hall. Meanwhile the Brooklyn Museum has a fantastic (although much smaller) Egyptian collection that is superior to the MET for still showing the coloration of the pieces.
Imagine tryna get all preachy when half your collection is stollen, plundered, or brought of the black market
Insain
😆 it’s sooooo much better without the silly paint
Fascinating- color painted marble frighteningly fantastic- but strangely ugly.
I doubt the great artists of ancient Greece and Rome wore so bad at painting. Ehy would they make extremely realistic statues and paint it like a 5 y.o. child would?
The wall art looks pretty rad all coloured up! But the faces of the statues now are hitting that uncanny valley vibe, they look a little disturbing tbh
I wouldn't use the word "little" I think it undersells how much these sculptures have been butchered…
I've heard this study of art history before and it absolutely floored me. I literally slapped my forehead and thought "of course!" It makes absolute sense that these statues were painted. We're so used to seeing white; whether we saw it ( or even more likely our grandparents saw it) in a museum, or in a book, or TV, or the internet. We were probably never in the position to realize the color. AND to realize the difference it can make on your world view! Wow!
I mean, does anyone else think of World War II in black and white? Photos and film.
WW2 was mere decades ago, and we know that colour film back then was still expensive & technically complex (Kodachrome, Dufaycolour, Technicolor) to be widely used. On the other hand, hundreds of years have passed between the Late Roman Empire and the Renaissance, so most oral & written knowledge would have been lost down the generations if not obscured. The written works we have today of Plato, Seneca, and Aristotle are a fraction of what they produced, most have been lost to history. With the renewed interest in Greco-Roman art in the Renaissance, the artists at that time would only have the pale weathered statues, ruins, & columns as a visual reference... the colours on them having faded many many centuries ago.
@@dabrams84 well some paints others react with the stone and make it have a shorter life most relevent on more fragile pieces where the difference would matter
@@drunkvegangal8089 This is a great comparison damn.
@@jonathantan2469 The Byzantine keep the color...but after the Latin Frank and Germanic barbarian ransacked Constantinople they destroyed everything.
It's western culture that denies diversity.
How is it a conspiracy? ...it's called weather
Funny how there had to add the word conspiracy so people would end watching the video.
And then they actually tried to make "colourphobia" a thing
Like, realy…
it's so weird for people to have this "prejudice" against color when our world is so naturally and vibrantly colored! the sky! the plants! the animals! the gems and minerals! earth itself has beautiful hues! and now thru space exploration we know there are colors we can't even see with our eyes! i LOVE color
The lack of colour helps to emphasise form.
prejudice… against… color?
How?
I mean, Western paintings aren't black and white. Look at any one of Michelangelo's pieces: they're full of color
I guess I just don't understand how the BBC can claim that Westerners are scared of color when 99.999% of paintings say otherwise
La ilaha illAllah
6:03 We only have 11 basic terms to describe colour? Really?
In English at least, it is true.
Did the BBC really just try to convince me that artists didn't use color because they are prejudiced ??? AND call it a conspiracy?
Like for the last two thousand years nobody on earth has used color and we are now just discovering it for the first time. Fighting against suppression and prejudice... Rediscovering the beauty of color that only the egyptians and romans used... I absolutely can not.
#1 I too agree that sketching takes more work and skill than coloring.
#2 preferring the monochrome look does not make one single person in the entire world prejudice.
#3 isn't art about expression? Why are people who are expressing themselves in monochrome now prejudice ?
#4 if monochrome marble sculptures were popular and people then copied the process we would call it a trend. Not suppression.... A trend. Say it with me.... It was trending.
#5 What about charcoal sketches and artists who use only blacks and grays... are they also adding to the problem of prejudice and suppression.... Or are they allowed to do WHATEVER THE HECK THEY WANT because it's THEIR ART!!!!!??
(Asking for a friend)
Exactly!
Also, the anciant sculptures looked NOTHING like the "reconstructed" ones they show in the video
We have found surviving paintings from ancient Creece and Rome, we know the people in said paintings don't look flat, hyper-saturated, and, to put it bluntly, ungly, we know there is more to painting than slapping a single pigment on a statue!
Could be wrong, but I find it increadibly ironic how the people claiming to be against "re-writing history" are litterally rewriting history by presenting a false narrative of what these statues adtially looked like
@@namef wow I never knew that! Thanks for sharing it's really interesting.
I like adding color, give these sculptures more life.
*gasp* Der terk ur curlor!! (spoken in Ermagherd)....really guys? A conspiracy?
*conspiracy theory
These reconstructed pieces with detailed designs and skillful painting are really beautiful. I wouldn't have expected that. I'm going to try to learn more about these projects.
Showing up in college level sculpture class with works that I had colored initially produced disbelief and some amount of ridicule. However, the other students learned a good lesson about the past.
...there are too many weak, forced arguments in the presentation... as I don't have enough interest in the matter for a thorough analysis, I'll just point out a couple of things... the title is cheaply sensationalistic... also, the idea of color being banished or marginalized in art schools is completely false. Drawing and design can be taught in a rigorous, methodical manner, color is much more difficult, due to its elusiveness. The Bauhaus school, with its stellar faculty of great colorists and its endless color exercises, didn't produce one major painter, colorist or otherwise...
I lost respect as soon as he said "colourphobia"
Like, they're trying to push this narrative that color has been absent in Western art since ancient times, but, anybody who has seen any European painting can easily tell otherwise
Its absurd
Ancient Mayan, Incan, Cushite, Sudanese, Ancient Ghanian, Angkor Watts, Mirawai, Benin, Ashanti...
□°○ Perhaps for Many of the Marble Sculptures...it was a Matter of the Actual Color of the Various Marbles Used.◇○° Multi-Directional InfoData Sources say that Throughout Various~Different Global Histories and Customs-Cultures, Color Was Used To Display "Class and Status".◇° Certain Lower Class And Or Working Class Groups Were Not Allowed to Wear Specific Colors;°•°• Colors Indicating Royal, Upper Class...Or Different Job Worker Level Identification. □° Then Again, Currently; What Some Theorists Call "Whitewashing"; (Specifically in European Portraits) of "Pigments-Skin Color" in Paintings...May be Deliberately Pushing a "Specific" Agenda, that Hides~Conceals "True Depictions" of Indigenous European Peoples..and Also to Deny The "Fact"? that Many Parts of Europe Were Ruled by Darker Skinned Conquorers.◇•° Currently; I'm Referencing The "Alleged" Repairing of Parts of Notre Dame Cathedral,That Were (Deliberately in My Opinion) Destroyed A Few Years Ago.□°I've Read from Multiple Sources...That the So-Called "Black (Dark Skinned) Madonnas, Will Not Be ReIntro -duced into the Repairs.○°•deb out.□°
Charlie Ahearn opened a studio on 42nd Street and made sculptures that resembled neighborhood people..they might have been actual.plaster casts, not sure..I saw some of them! I did not know then about these antiquated statues being painted the way Charlie painted his sculptures! They resemble the statues in Church, don't they ?
Yuck…the color looks creepy. Looks much better with just bare sculpture. The faces being painted on just look ridiculous. I’m glad it’s all faded/worn off. The painting just doesn’t do the sculptures justice. The sculptures are such a work of art and when painted just looks horrible….especially the faces. The paint really takes away from the beauty of the sculptures. I would rather not see them painted….those faces will give me nightmares.
Look at Egyptian art everybody looks the same. always facing sideways yet they two eyes to 2 arms two legs. All the Egyptian pharaohs look the same or very similar. All the walls were colorful because of the traces of pigments left behind. Seems they had no freedom of expression, looks like other art was dictated by the Pharoahs everything looks like propaganda. it was probably illegal to draw the Pharaoh the way he really looked looked physically
4:47 Zero self awareness in the edit 😂
Pretty clear visual argument why art academies (and old boulder shoulders) placed design above colour, the bare statues are objectively brilliant (due to their design) and the coloured ones are subjectively atrocious (due to the colour palette used.)
Thanks for reinforcing that people have only very recently become remedial in their thinking 👍🏻
The real "conspiracy" here is art is so undervalued that the general public had no idead of one of the most basic facts of introductory art history. They have know about this for DECADES and they openly tell you about this the second the Greeks are covered in any western art history course. Side note let's tall about the absolute nerve of British people calling GREEK statues a part of THEIR heritage as if Greek people don't exist and have not been asking for the return of their culture's art.
Everyone knows history was black & white! You crazy kids, take your colour and get off my lawn. What's next, feathers on dinosaurs? 😆
I'm surprised the BBC didn't argue that all the statues skin tones were originally painted brown or black . . .
We may have found that colours link sculptures of their gods to the depiction of other cultures gods, like Hindu gods, with blue/purpley skin, we could have found some missing links but i know we'll just paint any humanoid with a regular skin coloured tone.. its a nice thought but it shan't be the same
Because it would have been like colorizing black and white films? Answer: Yes. Also, they should have shown the same sculpture naked and then colored.
The fact that european identity was built on this imagined mythologised idea of rome and greek cultures being unique amongst the rest of antiquity really harshes the buzz of a lot of people...
Ancient Edifices, Temples etc from various countries were also colourful.
Perhaps, it would be better to create digital visual images and place these additions next to the sculptures / works for people to view their exact nuanced colourisation instead.