Exhibition: Defining Beauty: The Body in Ancient Greek Art


Exhibition
Out of Hours

gOds and HErOEs
Defining Beauty: 
The Body in Ancient Greek Art
The British Museum, London,  
26 March 2015—5 July 2015

Another title for this review could have been 
‘The body in the Attic’. The exhibition sets 
out to do just what it says on the tin which, 
in the words of Neil MacGregor, Director of 
the British Museum, is to demonstrate the 
ancient Greeks’ attempts to ‘make sense of 
the world in human terms’. This remarkable 
show is sumptuously staged, dramatically lit 
and, at least on the day that I went, seems 
to generate quiet contemplation, if not awe, 
among the visitors. There are over 100 
objects here, almost all beautiful. Most are 
sculptures, of the mystical, divine, athletic 
and handsome — Aphrodite, Hermaphrodite, 
Iris, and Eros — but there are also gorgeous 
vases and bowls and other artefacts from 
the ancient Greek period.

It is difficult to pick out the star pieces 
because there are so many of them. 
Aphrodite and the Discobolus in the first 
room are fantastic, and the full-size bronze 
of a young man recently hauled out of the 
sea off the Croatian coast is little short 
of a miracle. This is the Apoxyomenos; a 
Greek athlete cleaning the sand and sweat 
off his naked body after some sporting 
event. The rendering of the head and face is 

unbelievable:  you 
can almost hear 
him breathing. 
The great 
frieze from the 
Parthenon — the 
Elgin Marbles — 
casts its timeless 
spell. The 
marbles caused 
a sensation when 
they were brought 
to London over 
200 years ago, 
and remain 
s p e c t a c u l a r . 
The archer in 
the next room, 
fully painted, is 
a reminder that 
many of these 
pieces which we 
only know as 
pale and coolly 
marmoreal were, 
at the time they 
were produced, 
brightly painted. 
Some of the 
fragments, the 
most damaged 
pieces, are the most magical. The Grecian 
vases, of course, tell their own wonderful 

stories: one shows an older man, possibly 
Socrates himself, watching two young men, 
one already aroused, about to become 
more intimate.

The show ends with a room of such 
power and splendour that, in someone 
else’s words, it makes you go weak at the 
knees. Here is the bust of Alexander the 
Great, the Gandhara Buddha, the strangely 
uncomfortable, yet hypnotic, Dionysus, and 
the amazing Belvedere Torso.

I was more taken with the objects 
themselves than with the curatorial 
concept, but whichever way you look 
at it this exhibition is, as well as being 
a concentrated tutorial in Greek art and 
world history, an unforgettable chance to 
see some of the most astonishing works of 
man and, perhaps, an ironic counterpoint to 
contemporary world events.

roger Jones,
Editor, BJGP.
E-mail: roger.jones@kcl.ac.uk

DOI: 10.3399/bjgp15X685405

British Journal of General Practice, June 2015  311

detail of head of apoxyomenos. Bronze, Hellenistic or roman replica after a bronze original from the second 
quarter or the end of the 4th century BC. ©Tourism Board of Mali Losinj.

Pottery: black-figured amphora: the death of Priam. greek, 550BC-540BC (circa). 
Vulci, Lazio, Italy. ©The Trustees of the British Museum.