Archaic Greek sculpture represents the first stage of the formation of the Greek sculptural tradition that became one of the most significant sculpture style in the entire history of the Western art period. The Archaic period of ancient Greece is poorly delimited with a great controversy among scholars. It is generally considered to begin between 700 and 650 BC and end between 500 and 480 BC, but some evidence has indicated a much earlier date for its beginning, 776 BC, the date of the first Olympiad. In this period, the foundations were laid for the emergence of large-scale autonomous sculpture and monumental sculpture serving the purpose of decoration on architectures. This evolution depended on the oriental and Egyptian influence, but soon acquired a peculiar and original character.
For a long time considered a mere prelude to Classical Greece, today the Archaic period is seen as a moment of intense intellectual, political and artistic activity, during which decisive achievements were made for the consolidation of Greek culture as a whole, and the sculpture of that time has great merits of its own, being a vehicle of specific and fundamental meanings for the society from which it was born through the development of unique forms.
From inauspicious beginnings, the sculpture of the Archaic period in its final stages attained high levels of aesthetic quality and formal complexity, signaling the passage from a practically aniconic culture to one in which visuality and figuration had become predominant, leaving a wide and seminal repertoire of representative types and modes, with particular emphasis on the human figure.
Background
There is evidence of human presence in the region now known as Greece – including the continental portion and the islands – since the Paleolithic period, and in those early times, their artifacts amounted to simple stone and bone tools and weapons, and pottery. By the Bronze Age, there were already flourishing culture and considerable artists, so-called Aegean civilizations, composing of the Minoan, Cycladic and Mycenaean cultures. Statuettes in marble and alabaster survive from Cycladic art, some reaching large dimensions, mostly representing female deities with their arms folded across their chests, but there are also male specimens and others in various positions, pieces that became famous and eagerly collected for their highly stylized forms that remind us a little of modern sculpture. But precisely this great interest has caused serious problems for archaeological research. Only about 10% of the Cycladic sculptures known today have a proven provenance, and it is suspected that the rest may be recent forgeries, an uncertainty that complicates the description and study of the functions and meanings of this production. Some pieces show traces of pigment, indicating that in remote times the practice of painting the surface of sculptures had already been established, which would be continued throughout the history of sculpture in Ancient Greece.
More or less contemporary to the Cycladic culture was the Minoan civilization, which flourished in Crete. What has come down to us of its sculpture are small statues, of which the Minoan snake goddess figurines, mostly in faience, found in the royal palace of Knossos, and the Palaikastro Kouros, in ivory, gold, stone and rock crystal, are famous, but it is possible that larger works in wood were also produced. The forms of the sculptures are much more elaborate and naturalistic than the Cycladic ones, but they have the same tendency toward frontality. In bronze sculpture, the Minoans showed great skill, having developed the lost-wax technique, and the period is particularly important because it consolidated a whole mythical process around the creative process, personified in the figures of the god Hephaestus, the masterful craftsman, and Daedalus, a legendary character who is credited with inventing the art of sculpture and magical powers of animating statues, and whose origin seems to have been oriental. The location of Daedalus at this time, however, seems to be a much later elaboration of the tradition, and it is more plausible that he was a sculptor from the 7th century BC, if indeed he existed at all. Recent studies have also pointed to the possibility that there may have been two Daedaluses: one a Minoan architect-builder, and the other a sculptor of the early Archaic or Orientalizing period, also sometimes called Dedalic in his honor.
Later, the Mycenaean culture dominated mainland Greece, which left imposing stone buildings and sophisticated gold grave goods, found especially in Tiryns, Argos, Troy and Mycenae. The palatial architecture remaining at these archaeological sites demonstrates an advanced degree of skill in the handling of stone, and its constructive scheme later gave rise to the Greek temple design. At Mycenae there are some of the earliest examples of Greek architectural sculpture, particularly well achieved in the Lion Gate, where two stylized lions, with clean, vigorous lines, stand symmetrically over the lintel of the palace entrance. The Lion Gate, however, because of its large dimensions, is an exception, as is a polychrome terracotta woman's head that may be part of one of the earliest examples of life-size cult statuary found from Greece. The other Mycenaean finds are generally tiny terracotta pieces. Given the scarcity of more complete evidence, it is difficult to make generalizations about sculptural practice among them, and despite their skill with metals, especially precious metals, praised by Homer in vivid descriptions, no bronze sculptural relics from this period survive.
By the end of the 2nd millennium BC, however, all these cultures had collapsed, beginning what has been called the Greek Dark Ages. For reasons not yet fully elucidated, the local population declined drastically, the economy collapsed, writing ceased to be practised, the arts regressed, and the repertoire of figurative representation disappeared almost completely. It was only after the mid–eighth century BC that a progressive social rearrangement took place, incorporating invaders from the Balkans and the remnants of the indigenous peoples, which would make possible a cultural resurgence that would be uninterrupted until the conquest of Greece by the Romans in the second century BC.
A period still precedes the Archaic proper, the Geometric, in which figurative representation is gradually re-established, in an almost entirely new foundation of visual language. Its sculpture was probably influenced by the art of the invading peoples, who brought with them an analytical tendency to design the works in distinct sections and in essential forms, being almost only silhouettes – a triangle for the torso, a circle for the head, and so on. The older geometric bronzes are very flat, and seem to have been created as cut-outs of metal plates, and show rustic features. Terracotta pieces show a more complete volumetry. Later bronzes are similar in this respect, following the development of the casting technique, and space begins to be explored more through pieces depicting chariots and group compositions. In the case of the human figures, gender distinctions are sketchy: the men are naked and the women clothed; when in the rare cases where they are naked, they show breasts but not genitals.
The Archaic period
The Greece of the Archaic period was experiencing a rapid recovery after the hiatus of the Dark Ages and the first cultural renaissance of the 8th century BC. A new form of government was developed, structured in the city-state, the polis, the economy was strengthened and a movement of wide colonial expansion began, increasing trade with peoples of a vast region bordering the Mediterranean and the Black Sea, creating a feeling of unity and cultural strength that disseminated the Hellenic culture throughout that territory, a culture that fraternized in and was consecrated in the Panhellenic Games, held in the metropolis. Literature experienced a resurgence and found its first great exponents in Hesiod and Homer, and philosophy researched new ways to understand the world and man under a rationalist viewpoint, in which supernatural explanations for the phenomena of nature were abandoned in search of more scientific causes.
The process of formation of the city-state required a more consistent social organization than that maintained in the ancient villages, hamlets and scattered demes, which functioned under the direction of a leader, king or chief magistrate, the basileus, and to consolidate this new political union it was necessary that the centralized power be divided among a group of aristocrats, aided by bureaucrats, in a sharing of responsibilities that laid the first foundations of the future democracy. The polis model was not adopted uniformly throughout Greece: variations are found, and certain regions continued to be governed in the ancient way until a late period, but the polis ultimately represents the most advanced and efficient system of the time, better managing rapid population growth, commercial and colonial expansion, productive resources, and political and military relations among the various states. It was also where the most important artistic progress took place. The transfer of power to the assembly of hereditary aristocrats, who held most of the wealth and owned most of the land, naturally made the principles of this class dominant, while they were concerned with maintaining the status quo through despotic methods of exploiting the lower classes. In the 6th century BC, the power of this oligarchy began to be dissolved with the rise of the tyrants, with the assimilation to the government of smallholder families alien to the circle of the landowning aristocrats, and with the emergence of a self-sufficient middle class that survived and began to grow rich through trade, social strata that were morally justified by defending the value of work, considered a valid way to obtain the prizes that Homer thought reserved for heroes: wealth, glory and the favor of the gods.
The social context was thus restructured, and conducive to a full restoration of cultural activity, fostered by a rich and cultured ruling class, which debated philosophy and literature in the symposium, took great interest in art, practised patronage and allowed artists freedom for formal research, adapting the influence of Eastern art to the different context of the polis, a freedom that was essential for a socially significant filling of the artistic vacuum of the Dark Ages. Then, from the end of the 8th century BC, when the Archaic period begins, a true figurative explosion takes place, after its virtual extinction in the previous phase. It is assumed that the resurgence of writing was driven by a desire to fix in the collective memory the heroic deeds of the past and the religious traditions, in a phase in which the relations between past and present became central to the culture, reading the myths as sources of instruction for the solution of new problems of everyday life. The theme of the Archaic poets revolved around this, just as it was an inspiring motif for vase painting and sculpture. It must also be remembered that if several generic traits are evident in Archaic culture – and this summary works in this direction – none of the various regions of Greece in this period can be considered typical and fully representative, and it must be pointed out that the artistic and cultural evolution of the so-called "Greece" of that time took place mostly in the center-south, where the model of the polis flourished, while the north remained comparatively underdeveloped and living in the regime of the ancient tribes and clans, the ethnos.
Kouros and kore
Stylistically the Archaic period begins with a phase called Dedalic or Orientalizing which, as this name suggests, betrays the influx of elements from the East. From there, Greek craftsmen learned to produce terracotta reliefs in series from molds, a practice that defined stereotyped formal solutions for the representation of the human figure that would become the basis for the organization of full-figure statuary as well. The scheme of these works was strictly standardized, homogenizing the entire production of figurative sculpture and eliminating all traces of creative freedom and naturalism found in the statues of the times of the Egyptian cultures. The bodies assume a hieratic posture, in a frontal position, arms hanging down at their sides or one folded at the chest, one leg in advance suggesting movement, with long curly hair and facial expression fixed in a smile outline. Following the example of the geometric bronzes, the men are naked, and the women are dressed in elaborate costumes. This typology, known as kouros in the male case, and kore in the female, was the most important during the Archaic period. It seems to have derived from Cycladic statues, and would be definitely consolidated from c. 650 BC, acquiring a monumental dimension possibly inspired by the example of Egyptian statuary, known by the Greeks who established some colonies there and by travelers.