kouros

These archaic 'Apollos' (or 'kouroi' as we now call them) put the naturalism for which Greece had been famed in its place by bodying forth a power that was of the block and that privileged the frontal plane.

560 BCE Kalos kai agathos, "beautiful and good," is a Greek phrase that might be associated with classical kouroi. One such nude youth, the so-called "Apollo" of Tenea, is housed at the Staatlichen Antikensammlungen Munchen.

The characteristic works are the male (Greek kouroi, singular kouros, meaning "young man") and female (korai, singular kore, meaning "maiden") votive figures, which also served as grave markers (6).

The development in Greek sculpture from the Archaic (800 to 500 B.C.) to the Classical (500 to 323 B.C.) period saw the stiffness of the kouroi give way to a more naturalistic freedom of movement of expression, or as Richard Neer describes it: "The result was an amplified, hyperbolic version of the Archaic style.

His symmetry echoes that of Greek kouroi, though its whole effect goes beyond harmony.

Like a consummate mime artist, Bird's polychrome character appears to embody gestures encoded in the archaic Greek Kouroi figures or Walking Man by Rodin.

Small wonder that the artists at home, in Italy, Spain, France and Germany, who had to provide illustrations for these accounts, took the travellers at their word and showed the public Amerindians who had bodies similar to classical kouroi and women like Venuses or Graces.