Mycenaean Art happened from roughly 1550 to 1200 BC on the Greek mainland. Even though the Mycenaean and Greek cultures were 2 separate entities, they occupied the identical lands, successively. The latter learned a few things from the former, including how to construct gates and tombs.



Besides architectural explorations including Cyclopean masonry and "beehive" tombs, the Mycenaean's were breathtaking goldsmiths and potters. They raised terracotta from merely functional to beautifully decorative and segued right out of the Bronze Age into their own insatiable appetite for gold. Approximately 1200 and the Homeric fall of Troy, the Mycenaean culture declined and died, followed by an artistic period known both as Sub-Mycenaean or the "Dark Ages". This phase, lasting from c. 1100 - 1025 BC, saw a bit of permanence with the previous artistic doings, but no improvement.

From 1025 - 900 BC, the Proto-Geometric period saw earthenware beginning to be decorated with simple shapes, black bands and wavy lines

Geometric Art has been dispensed through the years of 900 - 700 BC. Its name is wholly descriptive of the art created during this period. Pottery decoration moved ahead of simple shapes to also include animals and humans. Everything, however, was provided with the use of simple geometric shapes.

Archaic Art, from (700 - 480 BC), began with an Orientalizing Phase (735 - 650 BC). In this, elements from other civilizations began to sneak into Greek art. The elements were those of the Near East. The Archaic period is best known for the beginnings of realistic portrayals of humans and monumental stone sculptures. It was during the Archaic that the limestone kouros (male) and kore (female) statues were created - always showing adolescent, nude, smiling persons.

Classical Art (480 - 323 BC) was generated during a "golden age", from the time Athens rose to eminence, to Greek extension and right up until the decease of Alexander the Great. It was during this phase that human statues became so heroically proportioned. Of course, they were insightful of Greek Humanistic belief in the aristocracy of man and, perhaps, an aspiration to look a bit like gods as well as the discovery of metal chisels capable of working marble.

Hellenistic Art (323 - 31 BC) - quite like Mannerism - went a wee bit over the top. By the time Alexander had died, and things got disorganized in Greece as his kingdom broke apart, Greek sculptors had mastered carving marble. They were so technically just right, that they began sculpt impossibly heroic humans. People simply do not look as faultlessly symmetrical or beautiful in real life, as those sculptures - which may give explanation why the sculptures remain so popular after all this existence.