free site design templates



News about color, classical sculptures & immersive technologies

THE BLOG

Find our latest blogposts below!

  • December 13th, 2019; THE BEST KEPT SECRET - How ancient polychromy’s secrecy affects our perception of culture and beauty. By Delfina Pandiani
  • November 25th, 2019; VIRAL STATUES AND WHITE SUPREMACY - The link between the secrecy of ancient polychromy and modern white supremacy. By Delfina Pandiani

THE BEST KEPT SECRET

How ancient polychromy’s secrecy affects our perception of culture and beauty 

December 13th, 2019. By Delfina Pandiani

Even though ancient polychromy is a fact of history, for centuries archeologists and museum curators have been scrubbing away these traces of color before presenting statues and architectural reliefs to the general public. Furthermore, most museums and art history textbooks contain predominantly neon white displays of skin tone when it comes to classical statues and sarcophagi. And most exhibitions of ancient sculpture and architecture do not include any reference to rich pigments that used to cover their surfaces.

Mobirise

Artist painting a statue of Herakles. Terracotta column-krater ca. 360–350 B.C. 

Mobirise

Source: Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Marco Leona, who runs the scientific-research department at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, has called Ancient polychromy the "best kept secret that is not even a secret" of western art history, fueled by material and scholarly omission. 


In the widely read The New Yorker article The Myth of Whiteness in Classical Sculpture, professor of ancient art at the University of Georgia, Mark Abbe, shared that the idea that the ancients disdained bright color “is the most common misconception about Western aesthetics in the history of Western art.” It is “a lie we all hold dear.”


The variety of colors in Ancient sculpture and art was not only decorative. It also reflected the colorful variety of daily life in the ancient Roman empire. The Fayum Portraits, for example, are a remarkable trove of naturalistic paintings from the imperial Roman province of Egypt, which are among the few paintings on wood that survive from that period. These near-life-size portraits, which were painted on funerary objects, present their subjects with an array of skin tones, from olive green to deep brown, testifying to a complex intermingling of Greek, Roman, and local Egyptian populations.

Mobirise

Fayum Portraits of Emperor Septimius Severus and his wife Julia Domna ca. 360–350 B.C. 

Mobirise

Source: Metropolitan Museum of Art.

See above, for example, the power of color in the Fayum Portraits of Emperor Septimius Severus and his wife Julia Domna. The Fayum Portrait of the couple is a critical example of the importance of including color in historical and artistic representations of Ancient figures. In the monochrome marble statues, it is not easy to get a hint of the Emperor's North African origin (he was born in Leptis Magna, Tripolitania, now in Libya), and of his wife's Syrian origin (she was born in Emesa, now Homs, Syria, to a family of Arab descent).


This omission has had critical consequences for the perception of what should be considered within the Western canon of art. Additionally, the willful ignorance of classical polychromy has also affected the perception of who can own, or not, the cultural heritage of classical ancient sculpture.

VIRAL STATUES AND WHITE SUPREMACY

The link between the secrecy of ancient polychromy and modern white supremacy

November 25th, 2019. By Delfina Pandiani

The scrubbing away of pigments by archeologists and museum curators — and in general the omission of ancient polychromy in the mainstream public’s awareness — has had social and political consequences outside of the art world. This includes the misled idea of a ‘unique’ Greco-Roman predilection for pure whiteness. While this predilection has now been disproven, the idea of a Western difference with other civilizations around their relationship to color remains. Occasionally fueled by racist views, the idea has been that vivid colors are avoided by people and cultures “of refinement”. It is not surprising, then, that “white pureness” has (in the mainstream mind) defined classical sculptural work—and later been immortalized in Renaissance pieces emulating the classical style.

Mobirise

Some of FASHWAVE’s latest use of classical sculpture for their propaganda.

Mobirise

But the equation of white marble with beauty is not an inherent truth of the universe. And where this standard came from and how it continues to influence white supremacist ideas today are often ignored. Currently, in the global north the idea and purported aesthetics of a Greco-Roman white refinement have been used for a search of identity, including by some white supremacist and fascist groups. FASHWAVE, for example, is a fascist group that utilizes the aesthetics of classical—presumably white—sculpture to put forward their white supremacist ideology. While their version of antiquity is shallow, poorly contextualized, and un-nuanced (see How to Be a Good Classicist under a Bad Emperor), the consequences of their usage of classical visual aesthetics run deep.


Identity Evropa is another example. Based in the United States, Identity Evropa is a neo-nazi, alt-right group that is based in the United States, that has looked to antiquity as a way to legitimize their belief in white supremacy. In this way, ancient statues are currently being used as a tool to justify racism. 


This is particularly relevant today. Europe in the 21st century is undergoing an identity crisis, related to notions of belonging, loss of heritage, immigration, cultural intermixing, and economic and political instability. There is a rise in neo-fascism, which is entangled with a fear of difference, a fear of immigration and racism. This situation not only allows for, but requires a re-examination of identity as connected to cultural heritage.


Between April of 2017 and November of 2018, a sleuth of articles by professor of Classics Sarah Bond—Why We Need to Start Seeing the Classical World in Color, Whitewashing Ancient Statues: Whiteness, Racism And Color In The Ancient World, and more—appeared in major newspapers ‘revealing’ classical polychromy to the general public, both in print and electronic form. Until then, according to some, many Westerners had been engaged in an “act of collective blindness”. The re-discovery of classical polychromy in the mainstream media has opened up a conversation around questions of cultural heritage, its appropriation, and the role of artifacts in explaining the past as well as the present. In the current socio-political state of what was once a multi-ethnic Roman Empire, developing tools to attempt to answer these questions is critical.


ColorColab will be one of these critical tools. Offering visitors an opportunity to embody an interaction with the past—as well as challenge their beliefs about the present—will serve as a tool for rethinking, mending, and strengthening of the social fabric.


© Copyright 2019 ColorColab - All Rights Reserved