The question is a large one which cannot be easily solved in a few phrases. Greek sculpture is not to be hastily identified with what we call classicism in art and contrasted with romanticism and realism. Greek art is classic, if we mean by that term academic, only for a brief period of its decadence. During the fourth century and the Hellenistic age it displays all the phenomena of romantic and realistic art. In fact Greek art as a whole comprises every form of artistic expression, and exhibits wellnigh the whole of the possibilities that lie between the caveman and the aesthete. We do not, however, confuse the work of Donatello or of Rodin or of modern impressionists with Greek sculpture, and this clarity of distinction demands some examination. How can we distinguish Greek work from that of every other civilization?
The answer is not to be found in style or in technique. It lies in the more hidden depths of psychology. If we take the history of Greek sculpture as a whole, the attitude of the artist to his work and of the public to art in general and of art itself to life is different from that prevalent in any other society. Neither under the Roman Empire nor during the Renaissance nor in the modern world is art regarded as an essential form of self-expression as natural as conversation or amusement or religion. It is fair to assume that the average modern man regards statues with indifference slightly flavoured with amusement. Nobody would notice the difference if he were living in a town full of statues or in one without any. They satisfy no need in modern existence, and they are mere excrescences on our civilization. Even pictures, which we understand better, are mainly regarded from the point of view of decorative furniture. Art is an embellishment of modern life, not an essential part of it. It is considered a means of pleasure or a means of amusement, not as part of the serious business of life. Even in the Renaissance, where art played a much more important rôle in the life of the community than it now does, it was still a by-product of man’s activity. Popes and rulers found leisure to patronize Cellini or Michael Angelo, but their main business in life was rather to poison each other or to increase their landed property. The Romans looked on art much as we do, and with the same tolerant air of showing our superiority by a correct taste.
The attitude of the Greeks was wholly different. To them art was bound up with religion, for their religion found its natural expression in art rather than in any emotional ceremonies such as Christianity introduced. The religion of the city in particular, a stronger feeling than our modern patriotism, could only be expressed by art. The disappearance of the city-state was, therefore, a great blow to the idealism of Greek art, but even after this time a man’s private feelings could better be expressed in terms of art than in terms of religion. The Cnidian goddess of Praxiteles was more than a statue; it was an idea. The Victory of Samothrace was Triumph itself, not a mere masterpiece. To a Greek the statues he loved represented what religion means to most Christians; not that his feelings were equally intense or equally pure, but they expressed the same side of his nature.
In a psychological state like this both the artist and the public are bound to regard art with very different eyes. The Greeks could have tolerated experimental frivolity or chicanery in art as little as we should tolerate the travesty of a religious service. Therefore they admitted dogma in art, as we admit dogma in religion. We lightly overthrow all established artistic principles to introduce a new temporary fad. To the Greek such an idea was equivalent to sacrilege. This accounts very largely for the slow development of Greek art and its great reluctance to admit new principles. It could never become purely experimental or adventurous. Until the end of the fifth century this driving-force of the religious connexion is paramount in all Greek art. In the fourth century and the Hellenistic age the connexion of art and religion is shaken, but if religion passes away, the passionate devotion to art takes its place, and art itself becomes almost a religion. The stories of the great painters and of the intense love of whole communities for their works of art can be parallelled perhaps in some of the states of the Renaissance, but they have assuredly no parallel in Roman or in modern times. Our whole attitude towards art as an ‘extra’ and an unessential prevents us from appreciating its vital importance to the Greek. A community, whose ideas of art are Hellenic, knows no abrupt distinctions between the useful and the beautiful, because all the objects of its daily life are beautiful of necessity; it knows nothing of good taste, because there is no bad taste to contrast, and we may even find, as in the case of Greece herself, that its words for ‘good’ and ‘evil’ are simply ‘beautiful’ and ‘ugly’ (καλός and αἰσχρός).
The whole fabric of Greek art goes to pieces when it is brought into contact with a purely utilitarian nation like Rome. It succeeded in humanizing and educating the upper classes, but it had little effect on the mob. Art, therefore, in Rome became a means of decorating palaces and not a national treasure. The contact with Christianity was even more destructive, for if the Romans had been merely indifferent, the Christians were actively hostile. The new religion was Semitic in origin, and cared nothing for beauty or ugliness. If anything, it found in ugliness a means of atonement for sin. The Greek love of beauty was the worst enemy Christianity encountered, and the Fathers direct long pamphlets and arguments against the pagan deities and their statues. Nor were they content with arguments, when they could wield a hammer or throw a stone. Early Christianity, like Mohammedanism or the Spartan system, depended on a strict subordination of the individual, and consequently attacked most bitterly the artistic spirit which must be free if it is to live at all. Of all the nations who have existed since the fall of Greece the Chinese and Japanese have come nearest to the Greek spirit in art owing to the lack of a religion of self-denial. The earlier period of the Renaissance was also Hellenic, but when artists were captured by the Church and turned to painting saints and madonnas, their Greek freedom left them. Parrhasios might have claimed kinship with Botticelli’s Birth of Venus or his Pallas; he would have seen no beauty in his Madonnas.
Another consequence of the vital importance of art in Greek life was that artistic expression was almost wholly confined to the human form. Just as we exclude animals and plants from our religion, the Greek excluded them from his art as long as its religious connexion was intact. Between the sixth century and the Hellenistic age no Greek artist paid any attention to any animal save the horse, whose human associations exempted him, and even the horse had to be content with a more or less conventional treatment. Greek art, like Greek religion, is essentially anthropomorphic.
When we ask what is the debt of modern art to Greek art, there is no reply. We cannot point to this idea or that, and say this is Hellenic and that is non-Hellenic. We can say this is Pheidian, that Scopaic, or this is Pergamene and that Rhodian, but to say art is Greek is simply to say it is good. For Greek art comprises every genuine effort of the artist; every statue which is made with sincere love of beauty and unmixed desire for its attainment is Greek in spirit; every statue, however cunning and ingenious, which is merely frivolous or hypocritical or untrue, is a crime against Hellenism and a sin against the light. The Greek bequest to later artists is nothing tangible; it is the soul and spirit of the artist. True art cannot be attained by rule; it demands a condition of receptivity of inspiration, in other words, of faith, in the artist; only thus can the elements of technique be so combined as to make something far greater than their mere sum total. Great art must reflect something intangible that strikes a chord of sympathy in the spectator, and the chord, as Abt Vogler expresses it, is something far greater than the sum of its notes:
But here is the finger of God, a flash of the will that can,
Existent beyond all laws, that made them and, lo, they are!
And I know not if, save in this, such gift be allowed to man,