The Inside Assyria Discussion Forum

=> Aphrodite - Art exhibit in New York

Aphrodite - Art exhibit in New York
Posted by Alexander (Guest) - Saturday, October 25 2003, 23:11:21 (EDT)
from 65.33.93.139 - 139.93.33.65.cfl.rr.com Commercial - Windows XP - Internet Explorer
Website:
Website title:

[ 119 x 185 - 1.02 ko ]
Aphrodite Turns Heads at NYC Exhibit
Statue of Greek Goddess Aphrodite Turns Heads at New York City Exhibit

The Associated Press



NEW YORK Oct. 23 — A nude torso of Aphrodite, the Greek goddess of love, went on public display Thursday for the first time outside her mythical birthplace, an alluring marble sculpture from the first century B.C.
With her classic figure and glowing patina, "Aphrodite Anadyomene," or Aphrodite emerging from the sea, literally came out of the Mediterranean. The 3-foot-tall torso was recovered by divers at Na Paphos in 1956 on the southwest coast of Cyprus.

Bathed in soft light and surrounded by 88 other splendid relics, the goddess is displayed at the Onassis Cultural Center in midtown Manhattan in "From Ishtar to Aphrodite: 3200 Years of Cypriot Hellenism."






Though her head, arms and lower legs were lost over time, this Aphrodite weathered by sea water is comparable to Venus de Milo, the Louvre's famed sculpture. Venus is of the same century as Aphrodite, but from the Aegean island of Milos.

"The relationship between the narrow shoulders and long broad hips reflects that mannerism of Hellenistic sculpture" in the Cypriot Aphrodite, the exhibition catalog notes.

Aphrodite's raised right arm "probably once held the end of her tresses. Small rivet holes at the back of her hips suggest that a drapery could have covered part of her hips."

The works dating to 1450 B.C. include Bronze Age swords and spearheads, bracelets and other gold jewelry, ceramic amphorae and cups, silver coins, terra-cotta figurines and limestone busts.

The relics were mostly recovered from archaeological digs in Cyprus and, though breathtaking in quality, aren't even the most renowned from the eastern Mediterranean island, the organizers said.

A cast bronze tripod stand 15 inches high and a foot in diameter with bovine feet and a bull's head adorning each leg typifies a design invented in Cyprus, where copper mining enabled a rich tradition of bronze work.

The exhibition was mounted by the Cypriot government to show how the island served as a crucible of ancient civilizations native Cypriot, Greek, Phoenician, Egyptian, Anatolian, Hittite and Syrian, among others.

Aphrodite evolved from the Mesopotamian goddess Ishtar, the symbol of sexuality and war. In Syria and Palestine she was known as Astarte. In the poems of Homer she's called "the lady of Kypros" or Cyprus.

"In Cyprus she acquires all the attributes of the goddess of love, Aphrodite, born of the sea in the same way as the island itself, which was uplifted from the ocean 90 million years ago," Sophocles Hadjisavvas, director of the Cyprus Department of Antiquities, writes in the catalog.

The exhibition contends that Hellenistic culture became predominant from the 11th century B.C. with waves of immigrants fleeing the collapsing Mycenaean world some 600 years before classical Athens reached its glory.


On the Net:

www.onassisusa.org



---------------------


The full topic:



Accept: image/gif, image/x-xbitmap, image/jpeg, image/pjpeg, application/msword, application/x-gsarcade-launch, application/vnd....
Accept-encoding: gzip, deflate
Accept-language: en-us
Cache-control: no-cache
Connection: Keep-Alive
Content-length: 3576
Content-type: application/x-www-form-urlencoded
Cookie: *hidded*
Host: www.insideassyria.com
Referer: http://www.insideassyria.com/rkvsf/rkvsf_core.php?.7Fpr.
User-agent: Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1; .NET CLR 1.0.3705)



Powered by RedKernel V.S. Forum 1.2.b9