From Skyros to Paris : the dialectic between the individual and the collective in art influenced by the Graeco-Roman world

Abstract

This essay will investigate the movement of artistic motifs out of the Classical era into Renaissance and Modern art with the intention of examining the possibility of a Platonic root at the source and wellspring of the artistic act. My contention is that artists function towards an absolute located outside historical contingency and rational knowability which is most productively interpreted in a Platonic register. The curvature of this invisible guiding principle becomes apparent when one acquires a synoptic view of the manner in which artistic motifs move through time and are drawn upon in different historical moments. [excerpt]