Greek Time line painted on Vase

1. Art 3
Ancient Art: Greek Art

2. Ancient Greek Art
• Greek art began in the Cycladic and Minoan pre-
historical civilization, and gave birth to Western
classical art in the ancient period (further
developing this during the Hellenistic Period).
• Greek art is mainly five forms: architecture,
sculpture, painting, pottery and jewellery making.

3. Focus on Ancient Greek
Pottery Art
As the result of its relative durability, pottery is a large part
of the archaeological record of Ancient Greece, and
because there is so much of it (some 100,000 vases are
recorded in the Corpus Vasorum Antiquorum) it has
exerted a disproportionately large influence on our
understanding of Greek society.
Little survives, for example, of ancient Greek painting
except for what is found on the earthenware in everyday
use, so we must trace the development of Greek art
through its vestiges on a derivative art form.
Nevertheless the shards of pots discarded or buried in the
first millennium BC are still the best guide we have to the
customary life and mind of the ancient Greeks

4. Development of Greek
Vase Painting
Protogeometric styles
Vases of protogeometrical period (c. 1050-900 BC.) The style is confined to the
rendering of circles, triangles, wavy lines and arcs, but placed with evident
consideration and notable dexterity, probably aided by compass' and multiple
brush.

5. Development of Greek
Vase Painting
Geometric style
Geometrical art flourished in the 9th and 8th centuries BC. It was
characterized by new motifs, breaking with the iconography of the
Minoan and Mycenaean periods: meanders, triangles and other
geometrical decoration (from whence the name of the style) as distinct
from the predominantly circular figures of the previous style.

6. Development of Greek
Vase Painting
Orientalizing style
The orientalizing style was the product of cultural ferment in the Aegean
and Eastern Mediterranean of the 8th and 7th centuries BC. Fostered by
trade links with the city-states of Asian Minor the artifacts
It was characterized by an expanded vocabulary of motifs: sphinx,
griffin, lions, etc., as well as a repertory of non-mythological animals
arranged in friezes across the belly of the vase. In these friezes, painters
also began to apply lotuses or palmettes.

7. Development of Greek
Vase Painting
Black figure
The black-figure period coincides approximately with
the era middle to late Archaic, from c. 620 to 480 BC.
The technique of incising silhouetted figures with
enlivening detail which called the black-figure.

8. Development of Greek
Vase Painting
Red Figure
The innovation of the red-figure technique was an Athenian invention of
the late 6th century. The ability to render detail by direct painting rather
than incision offered new expressive possibilities to artists such as three-
quarter profiles, greater anatomical detail and the representation of
perspective.

9. Project: Black or Red
• Portrait; 6 x 9 in painting
• Theme: Paint a Greek Inspired Vase with a two
tone background depicting a Greek God/Goddess
or Mythological Creature.
• The character should be painted either with black
or red.
• Don’t forget to decorate the vase with geometric
or flowery designs.

10. Inspiration
• Red Figure• Black Figure