Are these the greatest works of art in the world? From an attacking centaur to a broken river god, Jonathan Jones finds the Elgin Marbles are the highlight of the British Museum’s astonishing new exhibition of Greek sculptureThis is like entering a dream or a Terry Gilliam animation. It does not seem quite real. Some of the greatest classical sculptures in the world have been brought together in the opening section of the British Museum’s epic and captivating survey of Greek sculpture. It’s like looking at a collage cut from a giant encyclopedia. I half-expect Gilliam’s scissors to appear from above and snip off the discus-thrower’s head.What a collection. A bronze youth wipes himself after a sweaty athletics tournament, his lithe powerful body recently rediscovered in the sea off Croatia. A faintly fascist German 1920 reconstruction of the lost Canon by Polykleites displays a mathematically perfect human body, while Aphrodite teasingly shows her bottom. The Discobolus of Myron strikes his eternal throwing pose. A young river god, headless and with shattered limbs, reclines – for all his injuries – in exquisite flowing grace, carved so fluently he seems a living, breathing creature. Continue reading...
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