The Emergence of the Classical Style in Greek Sculpture

In this wide-ranging study, Richard Neer offers a new way to understand the epoch-making sculpture of classical Greece.

Working at the intersection of art history, archaeology, literature, and aesthetics, he reveals a people fascinated with the power of sculpture to provoke wonder in beholders.

Wonder, not accuracy, realism, naturalism, or truth, was the supreme objective of Greek sculptors.

Neer traces this way of thinking about art from the poems of Homer to the philosophy of Plato.

Then, through meticulous accounts of major sculpture from around the Greek world, he shows how the demand for wonder-inducing statues gave rise to some of the greatest masterpieces of Greek art.