PUBLIC LECTURE: UWA Albany Public Lecture

Being psychologically or spiritually unable to accept the kind of distortions found in Egypt, the Greek figures retained a correct size regardless of the status of that figure Different masters had their individual ideas about what this canon was and even though flexible, it was still codified in a dogmatic way. The Greeks understood the expressive value of the human canon, not just as a means to reflect the truth but to create illusion. Their sculptures progressed from the static kouros to the Kritios Boy and the development of contrapposto, clearly seen in the Doryphoros, the wildly animated Laocoon or the carefully distorted Riace Bronze Warriors. The true impact of Greek architecture was to externally validate the rules that dictate form and proportion through the philosophical structures within the physical structures. This was the key to a deeper understanding of the cosmos, with the focus on the column as the moduli. What we now regard as classicism was at this time the precept for universally harmonic order – the refinement of area and volume into proportion which became manifest in the Doric, Ionic and Corinthian orders of architecture. Skilled geometry meant sublime proportions and correspondence between the parts with the whole, thus achieving balance between the horizontal and vertical elements of their trabeated construction. The legitimacy of this symmetry spread into cultures that inherited the classical tradition – Islam, Gothic and the Renaissance.