‘Kallos: The Ultimate Beauty’ Exhibition Opens in Athens

The President of the Hellenic Republic Katerina Sakellaropoulou celebrated the opening of the new exhibition at the Museum of Cycladic Art in Athens, “Kallos: The Ultimate Beauty,” on Monday.

The exhibition features over 300 works of art from ancient Greece and across the world, and Sakellaropoulou noted that the pieces explore the depths of the ancient Greek concept of ‘kallos’ a complex conception of beauty that intertwines physical appearance with inner life.

“It introduces us to the way in which beauty was invested in different eras of antiquity, emphasizing its symbols (the archaic), the ethos it exudes (the classical), or the passion (the Hellenistic). And it offers us the panoramic view of an ideal that found its perfect representation in art and was treated with awe and respect by the ancients in their daily lives. Maybe because they believed that any insult to beauty, internal or external, causes its loss,” said Sakellaropoulou.

She also explained that one of the crucial ways Kallos differs from traditional notions of beauty is the myriad and unexpected ways it can manifest itself throughout various subject matter, as even demonic and divine scenes can be imbued with Kallos because of the aspects of the soul they illuminate.

‘Kallos’ Exhibition takes a deeper look at beauty in the ancient world

Those who have worked to prepare the show have also stressed the ways in which the very premise of the show aims to do more than display the technical mastery of the antiquities:

“This is the first time that an exhibition is being held not for the notion of beauty, but for the concept of Kallos,” said professor Nikolaos Stambolidis, who worked on curating the show before he was appointed director of theAcropolis Museum. “Today, beauty only refers to physical beauty of the face or the body, or both, while aspects of ‘Kallos’ mentioned in the Homeric epics are seen very rarely in the modern Greek language,” he added.

The Museum’s own press release for the show expounds further of the intricacy of the work ‘Kallos’ and all of its connotations:

“The ancient Greek word Kállos essentially means beauty and is associated with both the female and the male sex. However, the concept of Kállos in its ultimate dimension is not a word signifying merely beauty. It is an ideal that was developed in ancient Greek thought, was expressed through the poems of the epic (8th century BC) and the lyric (7th – 6th century BC) poets, and from the fifth/fourth century BC onward was formulated gradually in the texts of philosophers. They describe it as a combination of the beauty of physical appearance with the virtues of the soul. The exhibition in the Museum of Cycladic Art refers to this dimension of Kállos, highlighting the contribution of ancient Greece to the definition of the meaning of “Beauty” through history.”