From Colour to Colour-less A transformation of imageability through built-form in Greek Civilization Shikha Mehta Faculty of Design, CEPT University
ABSTRACT Contrary to popular belief Ancient Greek Civilization has a rich history of polychromy. Polychromy is the use of coloured metals and pigments in statues, interior and exterior of built-forms. The truth of polychromy on Greco-Roman sculptures and wall-paintings was realised in the 20th century. This fact has still not been largely promoted thereby creating and maintaining the aesthetic notion of the mythical and legendary ‘white’ Greek Identity. Greece in today’s time brings in images of pure minimal white spaces with certain traces and materials of their regionalist style. The colour – or lack of it has become the symbol of ‘Modern’ Architecture. It now stands for purity, spirituality and utopia. The paper studies the relevance of colour in the ancient Civilization and its evolution in time. It investigates into the factors that contributed to the transformation of Greek identity from the vividly coloured polychromy to the stark white prided look today. An enquiry into the shift of imageability – the sensory mental image of Greece from the Ancient Civilization to the 21st century has been explored with: the influence of the tourism industry, government, forced notion of patriotism, western influence and notions of racism and superiority associated with the colour white. Keywords: Polychromy, Built-form, White, Greek Civilization
INTRODUCTION Ancient Greek Civilization The Ancient Greek Civilization formed after the fall of the Minoans on the Island of Crete and of the Mycenaeans on Mainland Greece. It was a Civilization formed of multiple city-states, later called ‘polis’. These independent states were formed in 500 BC due to the hilly terrain of Greece, wherein the people settled within different valleys and hence were distributed. Further contributing to it was the dependency of the people to the sea for livelihood as the farmable land was low and lacking. Hence the ‘polis’ developed in number facing the seas with a port for trading, farmlands around the walled cities, built-forms built within the hills, temples or ‘tholos’ within and a central ‘agora’ or a market. As the ‘Greek School of Thought’ and importance of drama and philosophy grew, each citystate had a theatre and an acropolis built within the folds of the mountains as a natural structural base.
While the Civilization was at its epitome in 320 BC with Alexander The Great conquering land, by 146 BC Greece was invaded by the Romans leading to the end of the Ancient Greek Civilization. Climate and Built With no adverse climatic conditions built-forms like theatres and stadiums for play were open, facing the sea or the sky. The houses were around a courtyard, where the hills provided a natural exterior connection to the upper floor. The paths between houses were narrow with steps to climb the terrain. The Ancient Greek Civilization pioneered the Architectural orders that set the course for western architecture. Ionic, Doric and Corinthian Columns were used primarily in temples and civil buildings. The construction materials evolved from wood to stone (marble) in temples. The houses were primarily constructed from the limestone from the hills they were made in. Polychromy in Ancient Greek Civilization Built-forms in their interiors and exteriors made use of polychromy on wall surfaces and sculptures. The column decorations, friezes and pediments of built forms, interior wall-paintings, murals and floor mosaics made use of polychromy thereby setting the vividly coloured tone as their identity. The Romans continued many aspects of Greek Architecture and polychromy was carried on. In 2006, when an Amazonian head was discovered at Herculaneum with its eyes, eye-lashes and hair having traces of colour on them, it bought with it an amount of shock to the art history world. It shook the belief and visual of ‘white’ on Greco-Roman sculptures. Since then, colour re-construction has revealed thick layers of bright colours on the white marble sculptures.
POLYCHROMY AND BUILT-FORM Polychromy, translated to mean ‘many colours’ can be described as the art of painting in several colours, especially on ancient pottery, sculpture and architecture. Applications: Polychrome paints had adorned walls in the form of murals and sculptures placed within built-forms. The paintings developed to be more aesthetic during the Hellenistic Period where the interior decorations grew as important as the functional aspects of the space. They developed the interior characteristic of Greek Interior spaces. On the exterior, friezes and pediment decorations were coated in colours. Techniques Various methods of Polychromy included gilding, hammering, surface treatments, tinning , artificial patination using the metals gold, silver, arsenic copper, mercury, bronze, tin and various alloys. These sculptures were placed as free-standing elements in interior spaces of houses as well as civil buildings. The polychromy techniques then started being used on wall-paintings, flooring, murals and panels. The white and grey marble statues were cladded with thick polychrome paint layers, traces of which have been completely erased today. Through colour reconstruction using various softwares, historians are now re-creating the actual vivid colours of the Ancient Greek Civilization.
The most elaborate examples and findings of interior decorations in private house in aspects of murals, movable panel paintings, statues, and floor mosaics have been seen at the houses of Pella and Delos. In case of civil and religious buildings, the city hired painters and sculptors to paint the buildings with artworks contemporary to the period. APPLICATIONS OF POLYCHROMY IN BUILT-FORMS: SCULPTURE (7th Century BC – 2nd Century BC) ‘Indeed, color must have played a prominent role in catching the viewer’s eye and directing it to the space adorned by the sculpture’, states Mark Bradley. Domestic free-standing marble sculptures as interior elements in the built-form emerged in fourth to first century BC as a means for depiction of wealth and status. However Terracotta figurines, also painted had been used in private interior spaces since a longer time. The sculptures in Ancient Greek Civilization were largely human-based with an in-depth detail of the human anatomy. They were made out of different types of marble, like Carrara and Dokimeion and coated with paint. Years of cleaning and scrubbing the sculptures have erased the remains of the original colours. The folds of clothing- togas and tunicas often hold some paint traces. Existence or remains of Egyptian blue paint have been found in many statues through VIL (Visible-Induced Infrared Luminescence Imaging.)
Image 1: Image of Classical Greek sculpture
Image 2: Re-construction off Riace warriors (2015-2016)
Sculptures in interior spaces served more of a functional religious purpose of worship, also becoming a decorative element in the built-form.
WALL PAINTINGS (6th Century BC – 2nd Century AD) Pigments: As noted by Brecoulaki, “The most frequently applied pigments in ancient Greek mural decorations include iron‐based ochre of various hues (yellow, brown, and red), calcium carbonate white, carbon black, and Egyptian blue. Other less commonly identified pigments, which may also come from regional mineral sources, include copper‐based greens (malachite, conichalcite, atacamite),
serpentinite, cinnabar, orpiment, jarosite, madder lake, murex purple, and lead white.” Delian wall paintings saw the use of several pigments to produce many colours.
Image 3, Image 4 – Painted model of archer from the west pediment of temple of Aphaia – Colour Reconstruction
FLOOR (5th Century BC – 1st Century BC) Floor mosaics had an integral connection to the purpose of maintainable water-resistant flooring and to the architecture of the built-form they decorated. Complex mosaics on private house floors in 4th Century BC are found to have used coloured tesserae and pigments of Egyptian blue, carbon black and hematite on lime bedding for their guided placement. The earliest mosaics in Greece were made of smooth natural black and white pebbles which were set in a bed of lime‐based plaster. Basic ornamental motifs on the floors were floral, vegetal element and concentric circles. As Kanetaki, Elena states, “More complex figural compositions decorate mosaic central panels, the finest examples of which are from the house of the Mosaics at Eretria (370 BC) and the Villa of Good Fortune at Olynthus.”
Image 5: Floor Mosaics at a house in Eretria
Image 6: House at Delos-Cubic Mosaic
IMPORTANCE OF COLOURS IN BUILT-FORMS In order for the divine/ heroic sculptures to be read from a distance, bright colours in contrast with background were used. The sculpture of the archer Paris on the pediment of the Temple of Aphaia at Aegina has been painted intricately in a colour contrasting to the blue of the pediment, can be seen from a distance inspite of it not being at an eye-level, can distinguish overlapping figures in the carvings and produce three-dimensional effects (Image 3). The colours on the Greek built-form play an integral role for the sensory and architectural experience and its symbolic meanings.
GREECE (146 BC to 1821 AD) Roman invasion of Greece in the 2nd century BC brought an end to the Ancient Greek Civilization. The Greek architecture, however flourished due to the Roman’s appreciation for it. Elements like arches, vaults and domes nourished and added to the traditional Greek architecture. The Byzantine Empire in the 3rd and 4th Century AD bought with it a new form of architecture with its strong religious base of Christianity. Typical Byzantine churches with a square plan topped with a dome, usage of bricks, with mosaics on the floor and the churchyard and coloured frescoes were constructed in Thessaloniki, Mystras, Meteora and Mount Athos. The 12th Century AD saw a Venetian invasion in Greece wherein they reconstructed the town with stone houses and paved streets, constructing many public buildings and castles for defence. From 1453 to 1821 AD, Greece was under the rule of Ottoman Turks. The Greeks, in this rule were staunch in their own culture and the regionalist architecture, yet influences like the Islamic style Ottoman buildings of Hamams, Ottoman baths, and vakfs, privately owned institutions were added to the mix of cultures now brewed with Greek regionalism.
ESTABLISHMENT ON THE GREEK STATE AND NEO-CLASSICISM (1820s) Greece, as we know it was established in the 1820s. The first king of the Greek state King Otto in an attempt to awaken a sense of nationalism in the citizens after a long four centuries under the Ottoman Empire wished to connect the rich Greek Classical history with the present. Also, the Austrian architect Theophil Hansen was invited in to construct monuments of Neoclassical Style- a style being practised in Europe, all over the Greek state. Greek Neo-Classicism (1823-1930) The Neo-Classicism was inspired as a means of Greek Revival, to return to the Ancient Greek Arts and Architecture. The architecture was characterised by the simplicity of geometric forms reminiscent of Ancient Greek Architecture, however with influences of European Renaissance. Athens especially, with its ancient ruins and active history was envisioned to be a city that glorifies Classism of Ancient Greece, called to be ‘Athenian Neo-classicism.’ These buildings, however due to influence of European Architecture did not continue with Ancient Greece’s rich history of polychromy.
Academy of Athens, 1926 (Image 7) , Numismatic Museum of Athens, 1834 (Image 8) – Neo-classical Architecture by Theophil Hansen
POST- WAR RE-CONSTRUCTION OF GREECE (1945 onwards) Between 1910 to 1930, the Modernist movement hit the state and the Neo-classism was affected, yet had not disappeared. However, the Second World War bought with it an immense wave of demolition of old buildings and construction of new modern buildings to replace them .The lack of housing facilities lead to quick and low cost constructions.
TRANSITION TO ‘WHITE’ IN GREEK BUILT-FORMS Government Decree- 1936 Ancient Greek houses on the outside were largely left to remain in their natural colour merging with the hills they were made in as a precaution to avoid attention from pirate invasions. In the 19th Century, with the threat of pirates long gone, the citizens of the Greek islands began to paint their houses with bold shades of colours. This incited the Greek dictator Ioannis Metaxas to issue a decree in 1936 by which all islands were to be painted white and blue to bring about aesthetic uniformity and order. The reason for the decree ranges from the colours representing the blue sky and the white wave foams of the Greek seas, to it being a patriotic act of revolt against the restriction imposed on them to not unfurl their white and blue flag during the reign of the Ottoman Empire. Cholera Plaque- 1936 The imposition of lime to white-wash the buildings was given by Ioannis Metaxas as an attempt to evade the cholera plaque. He imposed the use of lime for its anti-bacterial, disinfectant properties Lime had the advantage of also offering insulation, keeping the insides of the houses from gaining heat and temperature especially in the hot summers of Greece. Notion of Patriotism - 1967
Though the practise had died after his passing, the military dictatorship off 1967 re-imposed the white-washing of the houses as a patriotic gesture. The trend to paint houses in different colours however, still continued. 6. GREEK AND THE GREEK IDENTITY IN 21ST CENTURY With a regionalist approach, houses, till date have evolved to be units of functionality moulded according to the local climate, material and terrain, especially for the Islands wherein ‘ Cycladic Architecture’ has come into being characterised by its white walls and elements. Today, the reason why the white colour still endures and has completely overtaken the Greek built-form is a mystery that historians are still trying to solve. The core identity of Greece has come to be defined with the colour white. Eloquently stated by Wigley, Eliasson and Birnbaum, “The hegemony of white in modern architecture appears to be based on a long history of misconceptions. One of the earliest ones has to do with the misappropriation of the Parthenon and its sculptural decoration’s bright whiteness”1 Mark Wigley, a classicist at Nottingham University observes that: “[t]his ideology of the white has been much more successful than even the architects imagined. It has become the invisible norm. People really do think that white transcends time.” In Classical Greek sculptures, the myth of whiteness had remained uninterrupted since centuries and its result is the strong embedding of the Greek Identity being pure and white. With the colour reconstruction of Ancient Greek sculptures and murals recently stating the polychromy of them, it raises the question of whether the mass has exemplified the image of white in Greek Art and Architecture so staunchly because of this myth.
Image 9: Mykonos, Greece 2016
7. ROLE OF TOURISM IN CHANGE OF GREEK IMAGE
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Wigley, Eliasson and Birnbaum, 2006, p242
Image 10: White marble imagery of ancient Greece
The Greek National Tourism Organisation (G.N.T.O),in 1968 commissioned John Christian to direct a documentary titled ‘ White City’ as an attempt to re-brand the Greek capital of Athens as the white city emphasizing the bright, white marble ‘allusions to the…..architecture and the whiteness of puritan spirituality and purist modernity.” Such a decision represents the government’s effort to generate a shift in public mentality. With the impact on Greek economy after the World War, the state wished to brand its cities as a tourist destination and several attempts were made to do so. The Greek culture, entrancement of the seas and the white-washed vision is currently the main asset for the development of tourism in the small Greek Islands. Taking the example of a traditional Greek village - Oia in Santorini, based on the aesthetic content of “picturesque” with irregular and incomplete forms, we can see how tourist development affects vigorously the genuine attributes of the settlement, cultural, environmental, societal, functional and morphological. Gradually, the social structure and the sense of authenticity of the host community were critically altered with the reconstruction of the village for reasons and needs other than those of its original creation” states the Journal of Tourism Research.
8. COMPARING PAST AND PRESENT IDENTITIES
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Image 11: Polychromy in ancient interiors
Image 12 : Greek Interiors in 21 century
Image 13: Sanctuary of Delphi re-construction
Image 14: Mykonos, 2019
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Image 15: Greek exteriors
Image 16: Exteriors in 21 century
Image 17: Elis,Olympia, 452 BC
Image 18: Bank of Greek Thessaloniki,2007
Various hotels and homes have a vision of white vaults, soft-plastered curved walls, arches and minimal white furniture. This vision has now become a vision of Greece. With the Ancient Greek Civilisation celebrating its vivid colours on all aspects of a built-form and its interiors, the shift in its identity to a contrasting white is stark and blaring. Though, the absolute truth about Polychromy existing in Ancient Greek is not known to many, the absence of the truth has been exaggerated by many agencies, right to school textbooks for a variety to reasons to produce the image of Greece that we see today. 9. CONCLUSION Though Greece has, on a larger scale, not lost its regionalist style of architecture, the absence of colour has drastically modified the viewer’s perception of it. Colour, holds a dense meaning and value to architecture. Till centuries, due to the white marble, the image of Greece held the white touch of purity, simplicity, supremacy to the masses. Readings suggest that even with the truth of the extent of Polychromy started to emerge in the 19th century, the modern notion of the colour White as a supremacy and the strong mind-set prevailed. This powerful image has now through the years become the core identity of the Greek State. It is interesting to study how the imageability of a civilization, a country, existing through centuries can be so drastically altered by government rules, for a notion of patriotism opposite to that of the ancient and for tourism purposes speculatively to influence and bring in the western masses. It can also be speculated if the aspects of the original skin colours masked though the false notion of whiteness played a role in the hidden truth of brown skinned evidences of Greek Polychromy.
What is interesting is, how important and powerful the visual aspect of colour can be to the image and perception of a place, that can brand it in a certain way and drastically change the identity of it on a global level. It remains to be seen, if the truth of Polychromy is adequately uncovered and largely advertised, what effect it will hold on the Greek Imageability.
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6. Image 9 http://erikabrechtel.com/2016/07/05/cycladic-minimalism/( Accessed 18th September 2019) 7. Image 10 https://www.ancienthistorylists.com/greek-history/top-10-magnificent-ancientgreek-architecture/ (Accessed 28th September 2019) 8. Image 11 : https://pikef.com/media/571323902716409210 ( Accessed 18th September 2019) 9. Image 12: https://perivolas.reserve-online.net/property/PERIVOLAS/PLXST (Accessed 18th September 2019) 10. Image13: https://www.flickr.com/photos/69716881@N02/8118687197/ (Accessed 18th September 2019) 11. Image 14: https://sarahemilybond.com/2017/04/30/the-argument-made-by-the-absenceon-whiteness-polychromy-and-diversity-in-classics/ [Accessed 24th September 2019] 12. Image 15: https://pixabay.com/photos/greece-santorini-house-greek-sea-2414599/ [Accessed 24th September 2019] 13. Image 17: https://elisolympiccoins.com/olympia-78th-82nd/ 14. Image 18: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Bank_of_Greece_Thessaloniki_3.jpg ( Accessed 28th September, 2019)
