Faculty of Classics - University of Cambridge

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Sounion Kouros

The so-called Sounion Kouros, dated to around 580 BCE, is the first statue that a visitor sees upon entering the Cambridge Museum of Classical Archaeology. Its colossal size is one of its most imposing features — it towers over us at 3.05 metres, or 10 feet — its rigid stance another. The Greek name for this type of sculpture is a kouros, literally a male youth, as opposed to a kore, a young female.
But this isn’t the sort of statue that normally springs to mind when we think of Greek art. In fact, its stance and execution have seemed to some viewers more Egyptian than Greek, while others think it resembles the sorts of sculptures made by Modern artists in the twentieth century. Unlike many later Greek statues, this is a highly stylised image: look, for example, at the ears, shaped almost like the capitals of Ionic columns, the large almond eyes, or the perfectly symmetrical torso.

What seems to have been more important to the artist of this statue is the attempt to convey an ideal of the human form, one that subscribes to a number of stylised and formal patterns, rather than its real-life, physical or natural appearance. That interest in pattern and symmetry is characteristic of Archaic sculpture, although it gives way to the apparent attempt to imitate the natural form of the human body during the course of the sixth century BCE.

Further reading:
R. Osborne, Archaic and Classical Greek Art, 75–85
N. Spivey, Greek Art, 103–168
S. Woodford, An Introduction to Greek Art, 38–56