Marble Heroes
Lord Byron
Emanuel Comino
Gough Whitlam
Malcolm Fraser
Geoffrey Robertson
George Clooney
Amal Alamudin
Bill Murray
Right On!!!!!
Oh Really!?!?!
Mark Hudson's argument that the Marbles would be
returning to a museum and not to their original location on the Parthenon is
spurious at best. Far better, the fate Elgin had in mind for them, I suppose,
who wanted them for his cold English garden. At least the Acropolis Museum was
specifically built to house them.
His argument on aesthetic grounds, that without their
'garish' colours they are far more tasteful now, and in their original context
and setting they would look 'hideous to modern eyes'. That the 'tasteful white
and grey of unadorned marble - the way the Parthenon Marbles are seen today -
is an invention of the Italian Renaissance. It has nothing to do with Greece.'
And there's an argument for you - based on a necessary ignorance. Nobody, not
even Mark Hudson can say what they looked like in their original context
because we'll never see it. So we don't know how those colours looked at dawn,
with the early morning breeze and the sound of starlings, or at dusk, or in the
evening, or illuminated by firelight. We'll never see it. We'll never smell it.
We'll never experience it. We won't feel the excitement of the yearly
procession or a sense of awe at the first sight of the statue of Athena, or a
frisson at the grim expressions of the Caryatides.
In discounting the colours, he forgets that they
served a purpose every bit as formulated at the swelling and tapering of the
columns to give the optical illusion that they were straight. Oh, his
patronising and fundamentally ignorant, not to say arrogant argument irritates
me. A fine and subtle culture extolled the best ideas of its times, ideas that continue to resonate.
It's wonderful that he sees a connection between Henry
Moore and Phidias, but Moore could have been equally influenced by them had
they remained in Greece.
As for our post-modern, post-nationalistic world
(say that to UKIP and Britain First), interaction,
hybridisation and diversity - well what difference does it make if the Marbles
are in Athens - the same argument surely applies.
But it makes a difference to the Hellenes though. The
loss of the Marbles is a reminder of a time when they had to struggle to
maintain their cultural - not national - identity. The return of them, would
not only help vindicate that struggle - especially now - it would also be
honourable.
I recommend Jonathan Jones’ art blog on this issue.
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