Greek Sculpture and the Parthenon

In his book On Creativity (1998) the theoretical physicist David Bohm argues that the purpose of a ‘world view’ is ‘to help organize man’s ever-changing knowledge and experience in a coherent way.’ Since these are constantly changing, however, ‘different world and novel world views have continually to be created to keep up with man’s ever-changing knowledge and experience.’

The same is true of great works of art and architecture. In this lecture we examine a transition between Egyptian and Greek world views in the Athenian Parthenon, which, built to house the icon of a human-like God, narrated myths that gave naturalistic movement to abstract representations of former Egyptian deities.

Richard Read is Emeritus Professor and Senior Honorary Research Fellow at the University of Western Australia, Perth. He wrote the first book on the British psychoanalytic art critic Adrian Stokes and has published extensively on the relationship between literature and the…