Word: parthenon
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...decor has been lost or worn away. Were we to see it in its original state, we would find it shockingly "vulgar." All the great figures and sculpture were painted in violent reds, ochers and blues, like a seaside restaurant in Skopelos. The colossal figure of Athena inside the Parthenon was sheathed in ivory "skin." As for adornment, there were "real" metal spears fixed in the hands of marble warriors, brightly simulated eyes with colored irises set in the now empty sockets of The Kritios Boy. And far from rising above anxiety, classical Greek art pullulated with horrors: snakes, monsters...
...wasn't that Canova imagined himself rivaling the Greeks; practically no one then imagined such a feat was possible. Works like the Apollo Belvedere, let alone the Parthenon marbles (which, abducted from Athens under a veneer of legal transaction by Lord Elgin, went on view in London in 1807), were beyond the reach of living talent; one could only marvel at what Canova, on first seeing the Elgin Marbles in 1815, called "the truth of nature conjoined to the choice of beautiful form -- everything here breathes life . . . with an exquisite artifice, without the slightest affectation or pomp...
Greece took steps years ago to halt further deterioration of its antiquities. Planes are barred from flying over Athens, and tourists are no longer permitted to walk into the Parthenon, Athena's exquisite temple atop the Acropolis. Still, with as many as 6,000 visitors a day clambering up the Acropolis, some parts of its rock have become so slippery and dangerous that officials have had to cover them with concrete. Marble treasures in the museum have been blackened by tourists' greasy hands. Officialdom can also be difficult: although buses have not been allowed on the Acropolis since...
...Omaha request occurred amid a fervent international debate about the ethics of art repatriation. At the forefront of this debate is the dispute between the British Museum and the Greek government over the Athenian friezes from the Parthenon now exhibited in England...
...reassure I.O.C. members who felt the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics had gone too far in commercializing the Games, the committee liked to stress the city's appeal as a symbol of racial harmony. Now comes the tricky part: making room for both Coca-Cola and the spirit of the Parthenon...