Assignment 2: Comparing Sculptures of Ancient India and Greece

Assignment 2: Comparing Sculptures of Ancient India and Greece
Andelle Gregoire
World Cultures I

Abstract
Overall, Greek and Indian art had many similarities and differences. Even though they lived far away and had different beliefs, their depicted the same topics: Gods and goddesses, animals, royalty, myths, everyday life, and sports. Jewelry wise, they both used a lot of gold, although Indians used more beads and gems. In sculpture, Greeks mostly used stone, and Indians used a variety of materials. Their paintings were also very similar. Architecture was quite different. Greek architecture used the golden ratio, and their buildings were usually made of marble. They
Painters and sculptors attempt to reveal the human body, in movement or repose, exactly as it appears to the naked eye. The emphasis will be on people of unusual beauty, or moments of high and noble drama. The technical ability to capture the familiar appearance of things in an innovation which can later be adapted to any subject.
Greek sculpture from 800 to 300 BCE took early inspiration from Egyptian and Near Eastern monumental art, and over centuries evolved into a uniquely Greek vision of the art form. Greek artists would reach a peak of artistic excellence which captured the human form in a way never before seen and which was much copied. Greek sculptors were particularly concerned with proportion, poise, and the idealized perfection of the human body, and their figures in stone and bronze have become some of the most recognizable pieces of art ever produced by any civilization.
In the period c. 600-300 BCE we find a number of ideas shared by India and Greece, for instance monism, the idea that all things are in some sense a single entity, the unitary inner self as a concept central to understanding the world. There are numerous similarities between Greek and Indian culture that are best explained by their common Indo-European heritage. As the shared ideas do not occur before our period, and then in our period only in India and Greece, there can be no questions of their having been diffused from any