April 2002 - Nr. 4
Berlin Reconsiders the Classics
Greek Art and Ideas at the Martin-Gropius-Bau
TWIG - A sweeping new exhibit at Berlin’s Martin Gropius Building is reviving the splendour of classical Greece this spring. More than 700 works of art from the golden era of Greek culture are on display in the museum, offering the German capital its most extensive survey ever of a time and place at the roots of European civilization.
Greek art is said to have reached its zenith in the fifth century BC. The Berlin exhibit "Greek Classicism - Idea or Reality" presents sculpture, coins, jewellery, ceramic vessels and architectural fragments from the period that have long served as models of proportion, grandeur and precision. More recent works in the exhibit demonstrate how the ideals they came to represent were reinterpreted again and again in later periods.
The wide-ranging show also explores the often violent political and economic forces at work in the Athenian republic. A section on Athens and its place in the world investigates Greek attitudes toward Iberians, Phoenicians and Egyptians. Another group of displays traces shipping, agriculture and mining - the basic industries of Greece - and the subjugation and slavery that underpinned them.
The museum courtyard has been transformed into an Athenian agora flanked by Amazons, its centerpiece a statue commemorating the murderers of the despotic ruler Hipparchus. Other highlights of the show include a statue of the poet of wine and love Anacreon, on loan from Amsterdam; a sculpture portraying the writer Sophocles, from the Vatican; and a bust of the statesman Pericles from the Berliner Antikensammlung.
Organized under the auspices of Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder and Greek prime minister Konstantinos Simitis, the show will form the thematic backdrop for a series of concerts, lectures, theatre performances and film screenings in Berlin from March 1 to June 2, making a second appearance in Bonn this summer.
