Treasures of Ancient Greece | show | 2015 | Official Trailer - video Dailymotion

Alastair Sooke explores the riches and unique legacy of Greek art. | dHNfd1RKQTY0OWo0U0U

Transcript

00:00It was the ancient Greeks who shaped our ideas of what art should look like.

00:16No other civilisation has played such an important role in creating our vision of artistic perfection,

00:27of beauty, of realism.

00:38Today we take the idea of realistic art for granted, but in fact it was the ancient Greeks

00:43who invented it.

00:45In a fundamental sense, they taught us how to see.

00:52And while we're taught that Western civilisation was born here in ancient Greece, its art emerged

00:58from a much darker, stranger place, an older world of myths, monsters and the imagination,

01:07with roots in unexpected places, a world that's still being revealed even now.

01:16Over a period of a thousand years, the idea of Greece would emerge from a handful of kingdoms

01:23scattered across the Mediterranean.

01:27And art would be instrumental in bringing the Greek people together.

01:35From a fascination with the natural world, the intricacies of geometric design, heroic

01:45tales of gods and monsters, to a passion for the human form, and the triumph of Athens

01:58and the classical style.

02:03In this programme, I'll be piecing together what we know about those earliest influences

02:10and separating history from myth, drawing on the epics of Homer and the discoveries

02:18of the 20th century, to reveal how the miracle of Greek art came into being.