Nationalism and Classicism

This is a comparative study of the national significance of the classical revival which marked English and French art during the second half of the nineteenth century. It argues that the main focus of artists' interest in classical Greece, was the body of the Greek athlete. It explains this interest, first, by artists' contact with the art of Pheidias and Polycletus which portrayed it; and second, by the claim, made by physical anthropologists, that the classical body typified the race of the European nations.

List of contents

List of Tables and Graphs - List of Illustrations - Preface - Introduction - PART 1: PHYSICAL ANTHROPOLOGY AND ETHNOGRAPHIC ART - Physical Anthropology and the Greek Ideal - Positivism and Realist Aesthetics - The Making of the Artist-Anthropologist - Hellenism and Ethnographic Art - PART 2: PHYSICAL ANTHROPOLOGY, RELIGION AND NATIONALISM - The Greek Body and Christian Thought - The National Significance of Physical Anthropology - PART 3: THE CLASSICAL REVIVAL IN ENGLISH AND FRENCH ART - Images of Greeks as Images of God - Images of Greece as Images of England - Images of Greece as Images of France - Conclusion - Notes - Bibliography - Illustrations - Index

About the author

Dr Athena Leoussi

Product details

• Authors: A Leoussi, A. Leoussi, Athena S. Leoussi
• Publisher: Springer Palgrave Macmillan
• Languages: English
• Product format: Hardback
• Released: 01.01.1998
• EAN: 9780333691496
• ISBN: 978-0-333-69149-6
• No. of pages: 281
• Weight: 617 g
• Illustrations: XXIII, 281 p.
• Series: University of Reading European and International Studies; Classical Body as National Sym; University of Reading European and International Studies; University of Reading European; Classical Body as National Sym
• Subject: Humanities, art, music > History > Antiquity