Research On Character Sculpture Of Athens In Classical Era

The art of ancient Greece, especially character sculpture art, developed at a quite high level, and many works of this art has been "unreachable templates". As for this, description can be found in all kinds of art history books, so there is no need to explain much. However, because of different angles, it is the art value of the ancient Greek character sculpture that people always pay attention to while the political implications are often neglected. As a highly politicized society, character sculpture art is of deep political implications in Ancient Greek, and it also play an important part in political function.This thesis tries to explain how the sculptures, as a kind of art, make the use of their aesthetic value to express the concept of democracy to the citizens of Athens at the background of the full development on democracy in ancient Greek. The sculptures that sculptors selected cover mythical hero of political implications, meritorious military generals, prominent political leaders and so on. And in face, the existence of these character sculptures is a kind of political propaganda. Political meaning of the characters themselves have showed the aesthetic behavior of the citizens, which not only improved the aesthetic interest of citizens, but also shaped their political ideas, enhanced their cognitive ability in politics.Thus a highly political identity has been formed in Athens between citizens.As a result,it shaped the democratic politics itself in this process.There has been a benign interactive relationship between sculpturesand politics. They promoted each other. It is beneficial to the stabledevelopment of the Athenian democracy.This article is composed of two parts, the preface and the body.The first part is the preface introducing the purposes and significanceof topic, overview of research, and research contents, methods andinnovations of this paper. The second part introduces an overview ofcharacter sculptures in Athens during a classical era. For one thing,this part makes a brief introduction of the development of charactersculptures in ancient Athens in chronological order. Then it dividesthe character sculptures into building sculpture, religious sculpture,functional sculpture and honorary sculpture according to the functionof the sculptures.The third part mainlydiscusses the creationconditions about character sculpture in ancient Athens. And threemain aspects are mentioned,that is, geography and climateconditions, cultural and social conditions and the superior materialconditions. The fourth part mainly discusses the creative motivationof the character sculpture in ancient Athens. The prosperity ofdemocracy depends on the improvement on quality of the citizens.And the lack of civic education put the development of charactersculpture forward. In addition to political leaders, the need of citybeauty, religious belief and other aspects makes the charactersculpture prosperous.The fifth part is the focus of this thesis. Itanalyzes the function of the character sculpture in details in classicalera. The function of character sculpture can be descried from four aspects. And aesthetic function, education function are the basicfunctions. In the special period during classical age and specialbackground in ancient Athens, character sculptures and democracyin Athens are closely linked, giving the character sculpture morepolitical implications, discussing its political functions. Thepropaganda and transmission of the political behavior, politicaleducation and the value orientation are discussed in this thesis.