Professor: Beaumont

11/30/12

I went to the Metropolitan Museum of Art and after seeing all the paintings, sculptures, and art works, I chose Kouros, for my final paper, because it shows Greek's first nude youth male during Archaic period on ca. 600 BCE. My piece of art is Marble statue of Kouros (male youth) which is characteristically depicted nude with the left leg striding forward and hands clenched at the side. This noble figure of a youth is one of the earliest freestanding marble statues from Archaic Greek, Attic. This statue was made with Naxian marble in ca. 590–580 b.c.

Around 600 BCE the first monumental figure sculptures appear in Greece and depict youths. Most of the sculptures are always standing in the nude, and were either votive or commemorative in nature were Kouros similar like called Kouroi, Doryphoros, Anavysos Kouros which are sculpted during Archaic period.

The body has been used as a sign or symbol in art for centuries. The body was used to symbolize perfection in ancient Greece, and in Egypt, to give a precise image for the God of the After-life. Not to mention their colossal monuments which promote power and glory, and are used to intimidate. However contemporary artists use the body as a symbol which conveys a whole range of different kinds of layered meaning, although the simple symbol of power has not been lost over the centuries. The Greek artist distributed the weight of the figure as though in the act of walking. They are nude, carved in the round, and liberated from their original stone block. The geometric were been added in the chest muscels and some of the formulus which is used in knees and wrists. Ears placed much too far back and his long curly hair have lovely strings of beads. The room was brigthen enough for people to notice the statue as along with other statues surrounded by Kouros. I think