Defining Beauty – The British Museum, London

We are familiar with Greek art.  In fact, as a rule, the audience will also be familiar with a number of the sculptures on display in this exhibition at the British Museum.  Even the fact that Greek sculptures were originally decorated in what could be described as garish colours will not be new to many.  In short, the ideas this exhibition sets out to explain are not new or groundbreaking, but are done well.  Whether that is worth a £16.50 entry price, particularly when the majority of the works are pulled from the museum’s own collections, could be argued either way.

The display is thematic rather than chronological.  The viewer first encounters a ‘greatest hits’ gallery which pulls together exemplary sculptures of the male and female form, in marble and in bronze, both originals and Roman copies, with works by the apparent three greatest students of sculpture in Ancient Greece: Myron, Polykleites and Pheidias.  The effect is certainly impressive.  The next room attempts to contextualise this beginning by presenting those aforementioned garish colours in various reconstructed works.  Mayan and medieval Christian polychrome works are also shown (“Check”, says the BM, “intercultural dialogue achieved”), before the exhibition moves on through historical developments in the Greek ideal, depictions of women and key life stages, depictions of love, mythical creatures, real people, and the spread of Greek art thanks to Greek territorial expansion.

And then we come to the final theme, titled ‘Shock of the New’.  I felt a bit betrayed at this point.  I had somehow failed to pick up on it earlier, but this exhibition doubles as an embodiment of the British Museum’s position on the Parthenon/Elgin Marbles: that their exposure to the widest possible audience, and display in conjunction with other Greek and non-Greek masterpieces, is more valuable than displaying them as closely as possible to their original context.  Dionysos from the Parthenon frieze is shown in dialogue with the Belvedere Torso from the Vatican collection (to my mind the only really major loan), with artists’ sketches displayed nearby, and a panel on the influence of seeing the Belvedere Torso on the work of Michaelangelo.  I mean fine, by all means propagandise if you feel that strongly about deaccessioning or repatriating works of art to countries of origin (I’m not 100% set either way on where the sculptures would be best housed), but don’t wait until the visitor has carefully paid attention to nine other themes to make tis the key message of the exhibition overall.  No wonder there were no Greek loans on display.

So a mixed result overall for the British Museum.  It’s a well-displayed, well-explained and even well-lit exhibition with well-chosen works, both familiar and novel for most of the audience.  I left that I learned more about Greek art than I knew going in, and that is always a welcome sensation.  At the same time, it’s pricy for something which is mainly sourced from the museum itself with the exception of a couple of high profile loans, and could be more up front in its furthering of the museum’s message of intercultural dialogue and maximum exposure to masterpieces as the legacy and duty of large historic museum collections.