Photos!

OK, I think -- if I move fast -- I can get some photos up. Internet from the Athens hotel is in one hour blocks you have to use all at once and, stupidly, I didn't edit the photos before I signed up. So, here's me, wasting internet time not actually using the internet. Argh.
Yeah, OK, this is one of my favorite things from the British Museum. It's a face from the Temple of Artemis at Ephesus. The British Museum used to have it on a wall right next to a post, so it was impossible to get a decent shot of it. Now, it's behind glass and way lower than eye-level. Sigh. My Art History professor had always talked about how early Greek art was superficial, but the later work understood the human form. He once said of this piece, "If you cut it, it would bleed." And I finally understood what the hell he was talking about.

Next: This is a pediment group from the Parthenon. Everyone was taking pictures of it.



Pretty cool, right?

Here's a tip -- when the museum displays the stuff so you can walk around the back, go ahead and walk around the back. I was the only one doing this.


That's, obviously, the back of the pediment group. Nobody would possibly have seen this while the group was actually sitting in the pediment on the top of the Parthenon. But the sculptor put in all that detail (wings! drapery!) because, y'know, you just don't skimp on this stuff when you're carving the gods to put on top of the Parthenon. I admire that attention to detail.

Similarly, we have:

-- one of the Parthenon metopes. Which I photographed not so much because the centaur is kicking the guy in the nuts, although it appears that he is. I photographed it because of the detail on the centaur's arm. Look, detail:
Veins and shit. Now these were up high on the Parthenon; it's doubtful anyone would have actually gotten to look at them close enough to see this, but the artist thought it important anyway. Cool.

And finally:

That's the view from my hotel window. The freakin' Acropolis. How cool is that?