In grad school I measured the proportions of the Greek canon for a number of archaic and classic sculptures and compared these to actual anatomy.
My findings were used by the classical scholar Robert Scranton in illustrating some of his work. If people really prefer the Greek measurements then they prefer what can only be described as preposterous if not monstrous. Let's look at the very abstract head shapes sculpted by the classical sculptors. This was not due to their inability to imitate nature (by 5C) but to their very concerted goal of manipulating the way light struck the carved surfaces to effect the "archaic smile" or in the classical era the distanced stoic expression. To accomplish that the sculptors placed the eyes on a flat plane, brought forward the forhead to almost a peak that descended into an elongated flat nose and short upper lip. The jaw was rounded and brought up to join the head behind the ears. It was all about optics. When the work was finished, carved to slightly fracture the outermost layer of the stone (to increase light refraction), painted and waxed, the result looked like living flesh but, again, with very abstracted head form. Although the canon was based on strict measurements, the "golden proportion" this did not conform to actual anatomic reality. For instance, if you were to look at the top (superior view) a classic head you would notice how oddly shaped it is, not egg shaped as in anatomic norm, but greatly pronounced and brought almost to a blunt point in the middle of the fron (anterior view).The looking at the face, you'd notice how the flat plane of the eyes differ from the oblique planes of the eye sockets in the human skull (laterally and posterially). You will also notice how impossibly short the sculpted upper mandible is between the base of the nose and the upper lip. Looking again at the human skull, this portion of the upper mandible is long enough to hold the teeth and then the attachment (origin) of the obicular oris muscle of the lips. If the Greeks head was real, there would be no room for teeth sockets and no origin point for the rather hefty muscle surrounding the mouth. And if the sculpture was correct in showing the lower mandible from the side (lateral view) a real person with this defect would not be able to open his jaw without ripping apart his ear. (Since this was a common feature from early archaic to Hellenistic eras, it suggests that the Greeks did not observe anatomy directly as in dissection (until about 200BCE) because superficially it's easy to mistake the major neck muscle which does originate at the mastoid process, that bump just behind your ear, as the point where the jaw articulates with the skull (that is just anterior to your ear). Then there is the matter of the facial angle, that is, the backward slope of the face relative to the base line of the jaw, varied in reality from about 83+ degrees. The Greeks brought that slope forward to often exceed 90 degrees. Finally, there is the size of the head. In the Greek classic --and afterwards even to today-- the head is shown smaller than it really is in relation to the living body. This lends the heroic character to classical figures because it makes the body look larger, even when graceful. In other anatomic features, the Greeks made some big mistakes (or aesthetic adjustments) that if we had to incorporate them as living people, we be severely handicapped. The muscle that rises from the pubis to the ribs (that six-pack muscle) the abdominus rectus, inserts (ends) at the inferior (bottom) of the rib cage. For the Greeks it went up to the clavicles (collar bones). Also, the Greeks liked to show the abdominus oblique (the diagonal muscle covering the side of the belly) as divided into blocky parts. If that were the case in reality, we'd be have major trouble holding our intestines in place to say nothing of being unable to twist our bodies as we do. Nevertheless the Greek canon did rely on basic proportional divisions found in the real human body. The so called golden section is utilized as is evident in many organic structures. What people respond to in preferring the Greek proportions in real people is not the actual details of measurement but the general rule of symmetry and the redundance of commercial media images of models who are chosen for their symmetry. There's much to be examined in this topic, a fascinating glimpse of how people are so easily coerced to accept abstract human images as if they were natural and correct. WC --- On Thu, 2/12/09, David Shelby <[email protected]> wrote: > From: David Shelby <[email protected]> > Subject: Re: Definable and measurable truths > To: [email protected] > Date: Thursday, February 12, 2009, 2:39 AM > The discovery channel and pbs have run specials about > "The Science of Physical Attraction" or some such > title and if you have cable maybe you can catch it. I saw > that they reran it a few days ago on Discovery. They say > among other things that humans are attracted to certain > proportions in human figures which happen to be the same as > those of classical greek figures. Sociologists have > traveled the globe testing this idea out on people of all > cultures and they consider the evidence to be overwhelming. > This is where I first became aware that there are certain > hardwired preferences in certain formal relationships in > human beings. > Concerning taste, have you read Hume's "A Standard > of Taste"?
