How We Whitewashed The Classical Era

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Photos of statues with paint residue: Çukurbağ Archaeological Project [TÜBİTAK 115K242], Kocaeli Archaeology Museum/multispectral or microscopic details : M. Abbe.

[@AdamSomething]

Play War Thunder now for free, using my link, and get a large bonus pack including vehicles, boosters, and more: playwt.link/adamsomething

[@prodrom]

Salt the snail

[@skeletonbuyingpealts7134]

Put the lotion on the skin

[@remytwoshoes1769]

No

[@neres5795]

Just don't play June.

[@gesundheitlicht2054]

Warning: this game will make you leak classified info

[@azazel166]

This is common knowledge here in Greece, don't know why foreigners are unaware of this.

[@USSAnimeNCC-]

Well racism was normalize bach then so back then maybe people choose to have a perception that it's always white and that pass on and everyone forgot and thought it always white and they been depicted as white every since

[@unclejoeoakland]

They're racists. They aren't scholars.

[@LegendaryRQA]

Same in Italy. We always have before and after images.

[@WolfTheTrueKing]

I'm kinda sad that this hasn't spread farther. I would've loved to see this discussion in school

[@firstletterofthealphabet7308]

@@USSAnimeNCC- not everyone, clearly. southern europeans definitely remember and have always known about the coloring of these statues, you can see 2 people attest to that on this comment alone.

[@hotfishdev]

Imagine in a few thousand years, a museum proudly displaying their collection of unpainted 40k minis as though it were the epitome of high art.

[@TheAtomkilla]

To be fair, I've seen some models painted to such an level that I would definitely consider high quality art worthy of display.

[@HeronSight]

So, apparently if you donate toys to the V & A museum in the UK they have to accept it (albeit it goes to storage) in theory these collections of miniature armies will be put on display as a part of exhibitions in the distant future.

[@mulletalchemist]

The problem is that they're going to find WAY more gray, unpainted ones without a hint of pigment from all those minis bought but never painted lmao.

[@TheRandomAustralian]

@@mulletalchemist stop looking inside my garage

[@ietsbram]

But they aaarrreeee, especially the once not updated since 1890

[@JeanLucPicard85]

If you skin is the color of white marble call an ambulance immediately assuming you're not dead already.

[@hynekss8618]

People often confuse aesthetics with familiarity. Fun facts: the ancient Greeks built their famous temples in a way they were familiar with, so they basically copied the shape of the older wooden shrines. A lot of what we consider today to be the highest form is based on replicating carpentry details (e.g., beam joints) that actually make no sense on a stone building.

[@qus.9617]

Hmmm that is interesting. That reminds me. Chinese door entrances or stelae or gates that were constructed in stone were often carved with an interlocking wooden bracket (dougong) design. Which you know... makes no sense.

[@brindlebucker4741]

Reminds me of Howard Roarke from The Fountainhead.

[@seraphina985]

This reminds me of the Iron Bridge in Coalbrookdale back where I used to live in the UK. Being the first entirely Iron Bridge ever built it looks really overbuilt and it is to the point that prior to it's last restoration several pieces had failed and it was more than fine structurally still. It's design is very reminiscent of earlier wood bridges with Iron elements in fact the tying the multiple arch beams together are styled as faux chains. It looks very much like it is trying to look more like it is an Iron reinforced wooden structure, at least from a distance, when it in fact is no such thing and is entirely built out of Iron.

[@modelmajorpita]

The reason painted statues look "cheap" today is because of changing technology and resources. In ancient Greece stone and marble was plentiful but paint was expensive and a way of showing wealth. Today stone and marble is more expensive compared to how cheap colorful plastic statues could be made.

[@MisakaMikotoDesu]

Not all paints were expensive, just certain ones like blues and violets. They had the capacity for realism using painting, as Greek portraits made in Egypt have shown. Many historical accounts of statues talk about how they look as if they could walk right off their stand because of how realistic they were. If people could paint their faces with makeup, they could use those same pigments to paint the faces and bodies of statues.

[@Demopans5990]

@@desiqti Or because scientists suck at painting, or mistaking primer and undercoat for paint

[@suddenllybah]

I think it might be familiarity as well, as well as it being read hard to convince yourself of the color choice authenticity. We can never be 100%, sure that we got the colors right. because the paint done got obliterated.

[@bluester7177]

@@Demopans5990 It's probably because they don't actually know what they looked like and can only infer the base colours of the statues with no shading.

[@dustybeijing]

@@bluester7177 Exactly. Which is why they should leave them alone. A bad paint job on a statue that is otherwise elegant and intricately detailed is far worse than no paint job.

[@mrtrollnator123]

The classical era didnt look cold and disturbing, it was vibrant and full of colour

[@shiny_teddiursa]

and full of slaves

[@animatechap5176]

​@@basedchad6035 huh

[@aureliodeprimus8018]

@@basedchad6035 Source? As far as i know, being gay/bi was considered the normal trait for every heroic figure in greek literature.....

[@marcanton5357]

@@aureliodeprimus8018 Out of thousands of art depictions of sexual intercourse, only 3 are of gay intercourse. In all of Greek literature, there are 2 instances of gay intercourse(many more of straight intercourse) and in both cases, it's r@p3. Most Greek city states had severe legal penalties for gay intercourse(except for $l@v3$), such as death or exile, including Sparta and Athens. You clearly have no idea of the subject.

[@kingflynxi9420]

​@@basedchad6035 the Greeks invented sex, the Romans introduced women.

[@KorKhan89]

As someone who studied history and archaeology in a past life, I absolutely agree that we should be teaching the public about what ancient statues really would have looked like, i.e. that they were painted in bright colours rather than being plain and white. I think it can be very helpful for museums to show painted replicas alongside the originals, to give an impression of what they might have looked like when they were new. However, I don’t agree with simply repainting the ancient statues themselves, since (a.) no matter how well informed we think we are today, it’s just another layer of modern re-interpretation, and (b.) it might make it more difficult for future generations of scholars to study the works with technology and knowledge available to them (for example using scanning techniques that don’t exist yet). It’s the equivalent of the Victorians rebuilding ancient ruins like Knossos according to their own idealised image of them, and in the process destroying a lot of archaeological evidence that would have been very valuable to scholars today.

[@ramirosotto]

I agree 100%. Personally I wouldn't like the actual physical statues to be painted for those reasons, but everyone is free to make their own digital version of what originally would have looked like, and we should teach what would be considered the most historically accurate digital artistic representation.

[@mfaizsyahmi]

You thought they're putting paint on actual historic pieces instead of replicas? Why, they would have only one shot at it then! No practice!

[@brag0001]

In many cases replicas are used to "repaint" the statues ... I agree that we shouldn't destroy things by trying to fix them...

[@JustSpectre]

The example of Knossos is a very good one. It was terrible to find out it's interpretation made up by Evans and constructed using concrete. When I visited the palace in Malia, I was much more satisfied with what I saw.

[@sasha01198]

Well said! Totally agree

[@imacat687]

The really fun thing is: We have known this for round about 130 years. The architect who built the Austrian parliament (his brother was an archaeologist and he himself spent a lot of time in Greece) even tried to make his classicist style parliament colourful. Remains of that attempt are still there.

[@aimeeinkling]

Yeah, I feel like I learned about this in an anthropology class at university...and that was in the early 90's.

[@tobib6885]

I think a big part is representation in media. Most people who didn't happen to hear about this will likely just assume that most of them were white since that's how much of modern pop culture depicts antiquity.

[@veritasetcaritas]

Yes, this is just bad pop history. The debate over classical statue polychromy was settled in the nineteenth century, and has been standard teaching in classical studies ever since. I'm a double classics major, and I learned this as soon as we started studying classical art.

[@toadwine7654]

@@veritasetcaritas this right here is kinda the problem . alot of well educated people sort of seem to think all this is their own closed off world. and when idiots and grifters find stuff like this online they make conspiracy bullshit out of it. of course the main offender there would be the neo nazi prick. but academia needs to stop being arrogant, and make things more accessible and simple be better at educating and informing the general public.

[@Voiciunebattledogesse]

And the painting in the upper right corner shown at 9:10 was made by Lawrence Alma-Tadema in 1868. Which just goes to show how much the guy tried to be historically accurate for the time he lived in, his art is beautiful. (Phidias showing the Frieze of the Parthenon to his Friends

[@adamevans1989]

As mid as Assassin's Creed Odyssey was, the colouring on the buildings and statues was absolutely fantastic

[@azazel166]

Greek here, it was pretty accurate.

[@memecliparchives2254]

Well, the actual world building and the game overall however. Its just an insulting SNL sketch parody of Assassins Creed itself. Much like how Syndicate was. Imagine my surprise that it was the same team that made both games.

[@raulponce9012]

Literally the only real value that game offers is a nearby perfect historical reconstruction of Greece cities and architecture. Ubisoft should dedicate themselves to making 3D models of ancient lost cities in high detail because they aren't that great at making games

[@munanchoinc]

​@@raulponce9012 they honestly should drop the entire endless templar/assassin war stuff and just make a straight to the point historical epic story. Make it an anthology where the Assassin's are merely a small part of the story.

[@Dragosus]

It was certainly good enough for one of my university archaeology lecturers to use it as a example of a decent recreation.

[@lourencovieira5424]

Important to note that a lot of statues also had gold elements and other metals, but unlike the paint that just naturally faded away, they were often stolen to be sold.

[@theoneonly259]

That doesnt seem important at all. This leftist jusyt made a video claiming that Italians and Greeks are black not white.... What are you even talking about?

[@WolfHagenSdW]

Some good old patient pillager with a chisel can make a good dime like that.

[@KasumiRINA]

Buildings got that treatment too, notably pyramid rocks, the top limestone was deliberately removed to make a settlement in what's now Cairo, but thousands of years of tourists, grave robbers and researchers also took a lot.

[@lourencovieira5424]

@@KasumiRINA I've heard that the Giza Pyramids originally had a gold peak on top of it, I'm not sure if it's true. I would also like to give a similiar example of what happened in Porto, Portugal. Most of Old City Wall is visible today because, as a relative time of peace came in Portugal, having a walled city became unecessary, so a lot of buildings around and outside the original city wall, used that stone for construction. You can notice it on a lot of the remnants of the city wall that still exist today.

[@HelenLannister]

Quod non fecerunt barbari, fecerunt Barberini.

[@QT5656]

One of my geology lecturers specialised in pigments and spent a lot of time researching Roman buildings. She said many Romans seem to love horrendous colour combinations: the gaudy the better. If they were around now their cars would've been bright green or orange with gold trim. If they were alive during the 90s they would have loved bright shell suits.

[@quatricise]

People seem to complain about the flat colors on the repainted statues. Do you think the statues would've used "shading" as people are calling it here in the comments? I wonder what somebody actually informed would say about this.

[@Posiman]

​@@quatriciseOh, they would be extremely vivid. Many vivid colours were very expensive at that time, so using them would showcase wealth. However it's also likely that similar level of craftsmanship went into the coloring as went to sculpting.

[@quatricise]

@@Posiman i meant shading more in the sense of grading the colors to achieve further realism, like on a painting, darker tones in occluded areas and lighter tones to more exposed and protruding areas. Shading to accentuate the forms.

[@ChasmChaos]

TIL I have the aesthetic taste of ancient Romans.

[@QT5656]

@@Posiman yes, she said that too. A big part of it was showing off wealth or giving the impression of wealth not aesthetics per se.

[@arthas4870]

Renaissance sculptors like Michelangelo, Cellini and Donatello made beautiful sculptures with plain marble far after the classical era. It's true that this was based upon a misunderstanding of classical art, but they belong to their own period of history and are beautiful in their own right.

[@mojmirbezak1422]

I mean, sometimes not only was it a misunderstanding, but also a huge lack of information. The little traces of colour could be mistaken for dirt residue since red was the most preserved, and archaeology was basically not even a thing until the 18th century. So I'd say they didn't misunderstand most of it, but instead you could say that they worked best with what little knowledge of antiquity they were given (And also the slave trade and church control over science really pushed the narrative of white antiquity)

[@MemoirsofaBasketcase]

The classical vandalism I’m saddest about is the neutering of the statues. We lost so much historical detail!

[@emlmm88]

I agree, the scrotums of the gods and kings is of utmost historical import.

[@snowdrop9810]

​@@emlmm88and the schlongs. Those were pieces of honor among society

[@TheRedRobin96]

That's fine they were usually inaccurately sized anyway. In that time period having a large phallus was considered a bad thing so they would downsize them in order to impress everybody.

[@TheGrinningViking]

The puritan popes demanded a secret throne made of dongs smaller than their own.

[@ano_nym]

@@TheRedRobin96 the opposite of angle frauding your dickpics XD

[@michka841]

"how many times do you want to re-make the same video Adam?" "YES"

[@alannatherson7721]

I'm not complaining.

[@chronictimewasterdisease]

at least this time he has actual argument instead of just strawmanning people and people and calling them racists because of his simplistic generalizations

[@Jo_876]

He made a video on this before?

[@MagnusMoerkoereJohannesen]

@@Jo_876 This is, what, the third one?

[@aureliodeprimus8018]

@@MagnusMoerkoereJohannesen The third? I only remember one video.

[@EveningSoother]

My credential: I'm Italian, and after studying art and art techniques for a decade, in my youth I've worked as an art conservationist. I specified my nationality because there is a never-ending battle between the Italian and the Anglo-Saxon approach to art restoration, and you can guess from which trench I'm shooting. Curiously, said skirmish happens to be extremely relevant to the matter discussed in this video. To avoid the TED Talk effect, suffice to say that whilst Anglo-Saxons strives to restore any art piece to its "original state" (as close as possible to the way it looked when created), Italians conservationists follows the "Brandi's Rules": Reversibility, Recognisability, and Historic Mindfulness. In other words, every "touch up" must be easily undone if needed, distinguishable from the original parts, and respectful of the history of the piece. Whilst the first two rules are pretty straightforward (You don't want to get stuck with something you can't undo in case newer and better technologies pops out, nor you want to create a forgery), the third rule is worth explaining. How Historic Mindfulness even looks like in a piece? Well, this part is the one that truly differ from the Anglo-Saxon approach, because it goes against the idea of "bringing back" a piece. Whilst from a purely technical standpoint trying to wind back a piece to the day it left the workshop could be problematic (for instance, it's well documented that most artists, especially during the Renaissance and the Baroque eras, used to mix their materials in such a way that only after decades the pigments would stabilise as the artist intended. It's called "patina", a very effective way to increase durability), the prickliest implications are historical. Every piece has its history, every alteration, every retouch, every sign of time, is part of that history, and is not the job of a conservationist to erase it (like those bunch of whitewashers did with the classical statues) but to preserve the mere matter of the piece in order to keep it standing as long as possible, in the best possible conditions. There really isn't an instance where glossing over something like Time is a good idea, and Art is not an exception. It isn't a mystery that ancient Greeks and Romans painted their sculptures and low reliefs, but what happened to many of those works is now part of them. Adam said in the video: "Those statues for most part are not contemporary art pieces, they are historical art pieces, and the primary reason we look at historical art pieces is not to look at beautiful things but to look at history". And you are looking at it, Adam. Should we try to restore the pieces who hasn't been scrubbed within an inch of their life? Absolutely. Should we create painted copy of the scrubbed statues for context? Absolutely. Should we gather as much information as possible about the nature and hues of the tiny specks of pigments left before embarking in a wild renderization of primal screaming colours that could be just as misleading as the whitewash? Abso-forking-lutely. As an Italian lucky enough to grow up under the same roof with grandparents who seriously struggled during WW2, I have quite the massive bone to pick with any sort of fascist. Especially with those who wobble in my area of expertise and try to plaster their stinky rhetoric over the products of a culture that has nothing to do with them. So, I'm seriously pissed that I have to take this stance in this discussion, but it's about Art. It's supposed to be above all this, it's suppose to be immortal, and record every milestone of our time on this Earth. Even the one we don't like. Shit, I did the TED-talk thing, didn't I?

[@calmeilles]

Is anyone actually pigmenting historic statuary? Every example I've seen has been on reproductions.

[@EveningSoother]

@@calmeilles Of course not, even the most enthusiastic among art conservationists wouldn't dare to alter such iconic pieces with so little documentation. And I mean, even if they could: I most certainly doubt governments and private collectors will ever agree to any of that until the science and the documentation are rock solid. But they're painting copies with the same level of "intelligence" (or better, lack of thereof), and then they publish the result. Which is a questionable thing to do, imho, even with all the disclaimers this kind of projects usually bring along.

[@orkhepaj]

the newest fascism is what this vid represents the anti-white woke culture, which tries to ridicule and destroy our history, very disgusting

[@calmeilles]

@@EveningSoother I didn't think so. But given what the French have done with the recent "restoration" of Chatres I thought it necessary to ask. The search for spurious authenticity leads to some strange places at time.

[@EveningSoother]

@@calmeilles Couldn't agree more. There are some serious offenders out there, sometimes not even illustrious landmarks are safe, as you have mention, Chartres is an unfortunate example of just that. In this case I think the ancient statues are relatively out of reach (for now), because adding something comes with more red tapes and controversy than _removing_ something. If you add the lack of info to the equation, more than a renovation it would end up to be a guesswork at best. That should stop even the zealous ones, or at least so I hope.

[@doctorscoot]

I’m a classical history PhD - this is not at all controversial. I don’t think that objects should be ‘restored’ without good objective information about the original though, but that’s just me being fussy about art conservation and restoration. But yeah the things glittered with colour wherever they could. There’s also evidence for statues being garlanded or dressed in materials (flowers, cloth etc) that certainly don’t survive. There’s also the issue of how the Romans of the Hellenistic period ‘received’ Greek culture - how they adapted it to their own ends, it wouldn’t surprise me if their decoration and display of imported & stolen statuary had significant differences to the Greek and near eastern cultures they adapted it from. And then how the Roman Empire in turn changed the cultures they conquered (a more well researched topic).

[@doctorscoot]

One more thing - ‘art’ is also a 17th century term in the way we understand and apply that term. Many of these statues would be out in public as or part of triumphant monuments, or be cloistered as part of the ‘sacred’ - viewing context matters.

[@midge_gender_solek3314]

I think a lot of the issues normal people have with colorful statues is that reconstructions don't have any shading which was probably there

[@dustybeijing]

Exactly. The modern painting on all of these is terrible. The original statues, whether mass produced or unique, were made by highly skilled artists and craftspeople. The statues are elegant and intricately detailed, and would surely have been painted as elegantly and intricately. But we don't know how they did that. Painting them badly is _far worse_ than leaving them blank.

[@Utrilus]

​@@dustybeijing Warhammer figurine painters know how to do it. Any figurine-selling company does. Even games back in 1990 knew how to do it, it was called texture painting.

[@JOCoStudio1]

Yeah, the claim that this is *actually* accurate is downright wrong. You can't just replicate the work of some truly magnificent artists by looking at the odd patch of paint residue. Past humans weren't more primitive. If someone said they could replicate the mona lisa from a few paintbrush scratches and spots of paint you'd rightly call them insane. I'm not sure where we go from here though- is it right to leave them ravaged by time, or should we let modern artists try their best to replicate a perceived style from the time?

[@Utrilus]

@@JOCoStudio1 I think the only real way is to hire prop makers, they make well-painted statues and other stuff for film, right? They could have the chops to do the statues justice. Hah, or maybe makeup artists.

[@kobikahn-harris1665]

The problem with this view is a lack of evidence. Of course to our modern eye being painted without shading or other modern techniques looks at best weird and a worst straight up bad, but it wouldn't necessarily have to an ancient viewer. Art is not only subjective to an individual but also to societies more generally. Colour, its use and realism are, ultimately, subjective and so these statues may well have seemed "realistic" to a classical viewer. All that being said, there probably was more at play than some reconstructions make it seem like, but with such little evidence for it, using it on a reconstruction would be nothing more than conjecture. Ultimately, we may have to accept that sculpture wouldn't have looked as attractive by our modern artificial standards, but that's ok. History and archaeology isn't about projecting onto the past what we want to be there, but rather understanding what we know was there. I would also check out the work of Vinzenz Brinkmann who has some really excellent and highly accurate (as far as we can tell) reconstructions.

[@Mereel401]

The most frustrating discussion about the colors on statues I had was back in University. A bloody art student kept arguing they could not have been painted because they looked more ugly like that. That was his whole argument. He didn't like the look so it wasn't real. And he tried to convince someone studying late antiquity to early medieval European history with that....

[@NIGHTGUYRYAN]

the recreations are badly painted. they look ugly because theyre badly done. get a makeup artist in there and we might get an accurate representation that would have pacified your friend. they werent colored like a childrens coloring book (like they are in the recrestions) any extant fresco would quickly dismiss this idea. these recreations are painted badly because nerds generally dont know how to paint or do makeups. the reality is in between the white and the clown shit they are claiming is "actually authentic". no its not. ancients painted eyelashes and details and didnt paint their extremely lifelike sculptures like they were painting a deck. youre friend had a point - they are hideous. but if they had seen the thutmose nefertiti they would have easily accepted that they were painted. they took as much care to paint the statue as they did to carve it - these examples show no care and no skill and should rightly be questioned for authenticity. these sculptures are painted like an andy warhol print - its just as much of a fallacy as saying they werent painted. its garish and clownish and has nothing to do with the aesthetic of the era.

[@TheGrinningViking]

I mean, they weren't painted like the recreations. We have surviving tile murals with very elaborate and bueatiful shading. I'd love to see copies shaded with what we have of their surviving asthetic - not this base coat only nonsense.

[@Cotif11]

yeah sounds about right for an art student

[@zephyros256]

@@TheGrinningViking Afaik the base coats is one step in recreating the way ancient statues were painted, and would make for a great first publication on the topic before further researching the more intricate details (EDIT: that is, thinking as a researcher that has to continually source funding from somewhere in an incredibly competitive field). Determining the shading techniques is a tad harder due to those details generally fading earlier, compared to mosaics, where the colour is much more intrinsic to the material and not coating the base. Another interesting consideration might be that some form of glazing was performed, or that the lighting used on the recreations/modern day painted statues is not entirely representative of how they would see them antiquity.

[@petrfedor1851]

Remember seeing similiar thing with feather dinosaurs. "But they look stupid with feathers, like chickens"

[@lyinarbaeldeth2456]

This also happened with European plate armour from the medieval and renaissance period. It was typically painted or enamelled and highly colourful, but so much of it got wirebrushed to shiny bare steel in the 1800s and 1900s by antiquarians. Either because they thought it looked better or because they didn't want to upkeep the fading paint.

[@josiah42]

In the SCA (Society for Creative Anachronism) we still paint our plate armor for practical reasons. If you show up on the battlefield and you're the shiniest person, you're much more likely to get clobbered. You'd be amazed how quickly practicality takes over what you're taught is historical when you actually start doing it. Then only later people find out that was the legitimate way all along.

[@Daviesng007]

Historically the more expensive your armour looked the LESS likely you are to get arbitrarily “cobbled” because you’d be seen as a valuable hostage. Many a fortune were made dragging an enemy Noble off the Field and ransoming them.

[@glenmurie]

Hah! Us miniatures wargamers were right all along! You can't make the details pop or look interesting unless you put some paint on them.

[@Skoopyghost]

Does DnD count as a miniature wargame?

[@boserboser6870]

untrue. with good lighting these skulptures have been invaluable to volume drawing practice for artists for years. given. fabric stonework would likely be given new life if the fabrics had embroidered patterns

[@manfredrichtoften8848]

​@@Skoopyghost wargames qre quite literally that: war games. No story, just battlefield, units and (sometimes) things that award points. D&D is an role playing game. There is nothing wrong with that, It's just a different thing. I'm pretty sue they meant everyone who paints miniatures.

[@seekingabsolution1907]

Ironically you just know full well at least a few of the nazis who sent death threats over this were big fans of Warhammer 40k. Probably have a whole think about their ultramarine colour pallettes as well.

[@nathangamble125]

@@Skoopyghost I guess you could play DnD _as_ a miniature wargame, but the game isn't inherently about war, and often doesn't use any miniatures either, so no.

[@Demonetised_]

Tbh I prefer the colored statues. They feel alot more natural. Like something a person of the Era would actually make

[@Pantsinabucket]

Eh, a person of the ROMAN era. Most Greek statues were bronzes, and most famous “Greek” statues made of marble are Roman-era copies of Greek bronzes.

[@zandaroos553]

I do prefer the bear statues but it’s purely to do with my interest in art being more based around light than color. I like seeing how light bounces off of fine details in marble, color can be a bit of an absorber which kills a bit of the vibe.

[@keiyakins]

that's because the painted copies are only given the base coat, not the ones that bring out the shading

[@Gigachad-mc5qz]

It took me some time getting used to it but now i prefer them

[@imightbebiased9311]

I just prefer seeing what the artists of the time were able to do. Like, there are some works from ancient China and Japan that show off the colors and designs they were able to get in the way, way back on their diningware. Some of it could pass as stuff you'd eat off of today. Understanding that artists in the older eras were just as keen to use color as we are is a big realization.

[@luthfihar3211]

i've said this before, in museums and historical exhibition there should be 3 to 4 version of one exhibit that shows 1. the current and real specimen which is preserved to prevent even more wear, 2. a replica that shows how it might have looked like in it's hay day, 3. a modern replica that incorporate modern techniques to build upon the piece so we can show how far we've progressed and the optional 4. a replica of the specimen when it's first discovered so we could see how misunderstanding or mistakes could've been made from our predecessors that discovered it

[@cinaedus8781]

I always imagined that if our civilization were to "fall" and be rediscovered by a later civilization, that our skyscrapers would probably influence their architectural sensibilities. Maybe the ruined towers that survived to their time would give them the wrong impression, though. They might recreate the visual appearance of what was supposed to be a glass-covered facade but where all the glass has since been smashed and ground to dust and only empty window holes remain. Maybe they think having thin spikes jutting out from the top of a building makes it look impressive, where in reality that's just an imitation of rebar poking out of broken concrete. People imitating the architecture, (and art, and culture in general) of the ruins of their precursors and accidentally including the scars of ruination in their recreations is a whole aesthetic, honestly. It's kind of cool actually.

[@inqy8339]

I remember when a local block of flats/apartments in my city was being renovated, and they basically gutted the building down to its concrete frame then ran out of funding for several years during the last recession. We had an empty concrete grid looming over the city centre for years. Did have a strange kind of austere beauty to it actually, even if it looked weird as hell. I could absolutely imagine some future peoples with different artistic sensibilities to our own seeing the remnants of concrete structures and drawing completely the wrong conclusions about how they're "supposed" to look.

[@TheOdderlbert]

the newer assassins creed games in egypt and greece had super nice painted statues and temples etc.

[@memecliparchives2254]

You mean the new one in Egypt that is. The one in Greece was an SNL sketch cash grab parody of Assassins Creed.

[@EllaKarhu]

​@@memecliparchives2254 The statues and buildings were great in Odyssey as well. Just cause the game was mid doesn't mean it didn't do anything right.

[@pepeedge5601]

​@@memecliparchives2254 The point is that good or bad, the game did get the details about the buildings and statues right.

[@memecliparchives2254]

​@Pepe Edge Meh, it more or less didn't in certain areas. It just plastered colors and samey buildings almost everywhere. And how can anyone forget how they made with the bit of the Misthios' child going to Egypt when apparently the pyramids were being BUILT WHEN THEY WERE SUPPOSEDLY BUILT LONG AGO?! This game only does a fraction of something right.

[@azazel166]

The 2004 Alexander movie also had them.

[@TE4MTIGER]

I visited stirling castle in scotland recently, the main hall was restored to the original bright "kings gold" but then people got annoyed because they didnt like that it was bright rather than grey so historical scotland stopped the restoration. Really bugged me

[@Christiangjf]

It's very sad. Just like the Greek marbles they probably looked ugly as fuck but that's what they looked like. that's what you go to museums for 😂 not to see what you would like to see.

[@danunpronounceable8559]

​@@Christiangjf they probably didn't look ugly as fuck. They probably had beautiful shading as these classical artists worked with marble their whole lives. We are just recreating them ugly as fuck...which is likely historically inaccurate

[@Bustermachine]

@@danunpronounceable8559 I think that's a fair assessment. There's nuance to this topic. Statues being colorful should be uncontroversial. How that historical reality is conveyed to the public is a topic for healthy debate.

[@danunpronounceable8559]

@@Bustermachine would be really interesting to have the original sculpture, unmodified (exempting restoration to how it was discovered) and then a replica beside the sculpture with an artistic rendition of how it may have looked in-situ. Think this represents the best compromise.

[@hallamhal]

"They're also strangely obsessed with height, and consider tall people to be inherently superior to short people" I give it ten, twenty years and we'll be there

[@AFrickinDwarf]

My problem with the "why not do shading on these statues?" Is that many of these statues were meant to be put outside/naturally lit environments. The lighting would constantly change. It would look weird to anyone for a statue to be shaded as though it is 6:30 pm and view at any other time. I agree with the photorealism part, add texture, be ambitious, but photorealistic doesn't mean putting black in the creases.

[@neoqwerty]

If anything I'd say that photorealism on those statues mean hiring some lighting tech wizards to make the lighting moodier and given them shadows. They're sculptures, they don't NEED shading, they HAVE IT BUILT IN, take your spotlight away and upward and you'll see! It's kind of like complaining your high-quality action figure isn't shaded, when it's supposed to be posed and the lighting is supposed to cast shadows and shines.

[@Norrsky]

I like the museums that keep the original plain white statues, then have a recreation beside it showing what it actually looked like at the time

[@NIGHTGUYRYAN]

*showing what it looks like when someone with no artistic skill crudely photoshops a white statue. they looked nothing like these ronald mcdonald clowns

[@lukacsnemeth1652]

That's the problem, those are NOT THE ORIGINAL.

[@TheEntropyRising]

@@lukacsnemeth1652 I think they mean original as in the authentic artifact, not as in original style.

[@oleksandrbyelyenko435]

Well, first thing I learned at my Greek art course that all the statues were polychromatic.

[@extremosaur]

Then your instructor was excellent.

[@spiritbond8]

oh wow education is great innit

[@Jakab95]

Painted or not, those statues mainly portay white/caucasian people. So I don't understand, what difference does it make to paint them or not from a cultural standpoint. Therefore I can't understand those who think that painting them or writing about them being painted, somehow is anti-white. But I also can't understand those who think not painting them is somehow whitewashing.

[@pessimisticnihilist3691]

No. White is an American term used to lump all Europeans together, people who live in Europe call themselves Italian, French, etc. The people depicted in these paintings were white accourding to the definition that they were European, but their skin was olive or brown as they were not Northerners. This means that if they were accurate depictions, the idea that they have actual white skin like the slavers who found them would be instantly shattered: Instantly making them worthless for furthering their racist propaganda.

[@Jakab95]

@@Dimitris_Balf Then pls. tell me, how can you whitewash a caucasian culture. I mean, that those scupltures are portraying white people, not black, not asian etc. So? You can see the facial structures and all. So liking them painted or not is really just a preference.

[@AlcyonEldara]

Are you drunk, high, on drugs or just trolling?

[@QT5656]

I like the exhibitions where they project the colour on the original statues using lights. The lights can be slowly brought up and down to show the difference. I think its an effective way to bring people over who are otherwise resistant because of the perceptions they've had since childhood.

[@askii296]

Also, a lot of ancient statues were actually bronze with only their marble recreations surviving today, bronze was used for both its strength and because unpainted it looked like bronze tanned skin

[@henryfleischer404]

Well that makes me see the Statue of Liberty differently.

[@Reiver-93]

@@henryfleischer404 the statue of liberty is made out of copper, which is why it's turned turquoise over time as that's what happens to copper when it oxidises.

[@juusolatva]

​@@Reiver-93 yeah, it's called patina or to be vexatiously pedantic on copper specifically it's called verdigris. it does happen to bronze too, which is not really surprising, since the alloy is mainly composed of copper.

[@vadim6385]

Wait, isn't this a well-known fact? I heard about the classical statues being painted like 10 years ago. And it made perfect sense to me from the start.

[@science3879]

nope, it isnt that well known to most people lol

[@blockshift758]

I didn't have a clue about it. Cause i just thought "oh they like the clean white stone"

[@happydemon3038]

It's spreading quite well actually, it's just people are kicking a fit when people complain about the shoddy painting of restorers that only work with the paints that have been found trace amounts of on the statues. And people have a preferrence for people either going all the way, or leaving it be. They don't like a half-assed restoration.

[@abcdmefgh2843]

Exactly. I'm from Poland, I've been taught about it at school. I don't get what's the fuss about, it's common knowledge here.

[@whatsthatbehindyou9527]

It’s just some people who want to paint a picture of themselves as virtuous and fighting back against an outdated narrative. The number of people against the idea of painted classical statues is few and far between. Most people don’t have anything against it

[@TheAnoniemo]

"And then they started getting death threats from the far-right" I feel like anyone who proposes any change can expect those at this point.

[@KasumiRINA]

Change? You don't receive threats from alt right for simply existing? What level of privilege is this, lol.

[@rpgenious]

Tbh those "death threats" were as serious as the "rape threats" 12 yrs old CoD players pose when fucking your mum when they lose

[@Colddirector]

Honestly it's hard to consider that anything more than an adult child throwing a temper tantrum. Imagine getting so fucking triggered by a statue having paint on it at one point that you have to threaten to murder anyone who says that.

[@TheAnoniemo]

@@Colddirector I think it's more because people are spending their time in (online) echo chambers and it's easy to type a death threat on Twitter and not face to face with a fellow human being

[@abraham2172]

We must not tolerate this bullshit any longer. Those vicious trolls should get punished at court for threatening or stirring up people. Lock them up, until they have finally learned how to behave like a reasonable adult person.

[@tokyoarrow]

I’m sorry but that is a huge reach to say the reason classical statues and buildings are left white today is because of racism. There are so many flaws in this premise! 1) If Europeans during the renaissance period were opposed to classical art being coloured because of racism, then why did those same renaissance Europeans paint such vibrant artworks such as the Sistine Chapel and countless other works of art from the period? Why did people wear such vibrant colours at that time and not just white? British suits come from around this time, which are black. Armies were usually defined by their vibrantly coloured uniforms (British red, French blue, etc). And nobility often war all manner of colour, not to mention vibrant interiors. Why? Why was the renaissance art itself not white? The clothes not white? The interiors too? After all, those renaissance racists only respected on colour, and that’s white, right? 2) All the woke vs Red-pill stuff. While right wingers use classical statue imagery these days, and in the last few years or decades these have been hot topics, were they in Europe since that time? Since the renaissance? You provided zero evidence that the renaissance Europeans used this imagery in the same way, you merely conjectured it without evidence. And regarding race, while this was a topic in America and among some elite Europeans, and is of course a hot button topic today, do you think the average renaissance Europeans or even the likes of Leonardo and Michaelangelo really obsessed over this topic in the same way? Is there evidence of that? Finally, before anyone jumps to conclusions that for simply questioning the premise of the video that I must be a racist. Please note that I chose to live as a migrant in a non-white country, to learn the language and fully integrate, etc.

[@brainfreezeyes1910]

This also happens to more recent history! There's a common misconception of Victorian fashion being dark and dreary, but look at fashion catalogues and fabric samples from the time and you can see they loved colour.

[@NIGHTGUYRYAN]

they definitely wore it if they could produce a dye for it. much of our dyes today are a relatively recent development using chemistry to create synthetic pigments safely (much of the green used in late victorian era was processed with arsenic...people literally dying for dye) while there are some examples of victorians in some color, the vast majority was still black and brown, and white as these are the easiest colors to produced and most common of the era. (but also i think people see black and white photos and unless they look at paintings are gonna think its more goth than it was...but...it kinda was goth, lol)

[@theoneonly259]

What in Gods name are you talking about? This leftist has just made a video saying that Southern Europeans are not white but black and that their statues were whitewashed to justify black slavery....

[@senrogas387]

Yoo fun fact about that, I have a fashion book in french from the 1880's, huge ass book bigger than an a4 and leatherbound. The thing is full of colourfull outfits, like if you ignore the rib crushing corsets those outfits are gorgeous.

[@friedzombie4]

​@@senrogas387 have you scanned this? I'd love to take a look.

[@CF-bg3jd]

Hell, it’s already happening to the 1990’s!

[@KazookiMc]

It would be really nice if there was a citations list on your videos in case people (well.. me) want to learn more about the topic.

[@infiniteloopcounter9444]

Citations often go missing quickly when the appeal to Godwin's law comes out so early. Probably the author gets overwhelmed by emotion about fighting the good fight he forgot to check he wasn't as crazy as the people he imagines he is up against.

[@dimitris9006]

If you want to learn more regarding Greek and Roman polychrome statues you can check the "Gods in color" exhibition. I think they are the pioneers of the field.

[@tymiller176]

Ok, is Adam going to make video how much of this video is incorrect? Scholars already knew about the color of statues since the 19th century. And no, people weren't intentionally trying to scrub off the color in museums. No, we knew that plates weren't just in black and white. This is what happens when you don't based your information on scholarship and instead, of some article in media. Kinda disappointed in Adam here. Oh, and Renaissance happened in a different period than the Transatlantic slave trade and nothing to do with ancient sources. C'mon people.

[@dydx_]

9:45 As a German I always wondered why these medieval German architectures in movies were greyed out, always thought it was just an effect to sell the bleakness of the scene since living here you always see all those historical buildings in bright colors. The more you know.

[@MiG-21bisFishbedL]

The Minoans would be horrified at the lack of color, tbh.

[@theoneonly259]

Were they black?

[@Vynzent]

​@@theoneonly259 They were actually a tribe of sexy vampires that lived in peace prosperity until one with burning ambition crafted a stone mask that would help his people conquer the sun. They struck down his ideas and he had to destroy them.

[@tjarkschweizer]

​@@Vynzent *awaken starts playing*

[@KasumiRINA]

@@theoneonly259 You know their ancestors still live, right? Look up "Crete people". by Slavic definition, yes, they're who we call "black". By American definition, no, they're who Americans call "brown" because race is a social construct that differs depending on which country and society you look from.

[@achurst1070]

I remember being told as a boy by my father in the 1970s that classical sculptures were originally painted and colorful. This was also noted by my classics teachers and in a number of readings as I recall. Did I somehow shift to a parallel world were this wasn’t known? The world has become a pantomime of stupidity. WTF is the big deal?

[@theoneonly259]

WHat do you mean what is the big deal? This leftist goofball is trying to say that Southern Europeans are/were not 'white" so they were 'whitewashed' to justify slavery of black Africans.... Its the dumbest thing I have ever heard in my entire life. Are Southern Europeans black like this leftist is saying? They are not white? WHat are they?

[@cillyhoney1892]

OMG I feel the same way! It's like I have found myself in Bizzarro land. I need to get back to my regular timeline but I"m stuck here in Crazyville where the fascists are taking over! It's scary!

[@gooblewoobles3686]

i never knew lmao, only learnt through this video

[@charlesthebald3671]

We've known about painted statues and buildings for decades, but nobody told the far-right until recently.

[@imiy]

The author is just anti-white and tries to convince us how ridiculous their history is.

[@saffral]

The fun part is that armour from medieval periods was also frequently painted, but was scrubbed and polished by folks in later centuries when the paint was worn (for decoration in mansions of course) so we see a lot of plain metal in the maintained examples.

[@happydemon3038]

This again? There is no proof that the Ancient Greeks preferred poorly painted statues over not painted at all. I find it absurd that the Ancient Greeks would make statues with lifelike anatomy only to paint with the most basic of colours with no shading. Egyptian hieroglyphics aren't anatomically correct, they are SUPPOSED to be stylized, and the colour also adds to the readability. Meanwhile these poorly painted statues subtract from the readability due to the lack of any shading or detail.

[@zeneal]

these statues are so beautifully carved, I can't imagine that they didn't do proper shading because all the details from the stones would vanish. I always imagine these statues to be almost photorealistic.

[@krankarvolund7771]

They're described as that and they were probably shaded, it's just that we don't have those shades, we just have the plain colours. The most famous pictures of painted statues come from ane xposition taht chose to not interpret any other layer than the base one ^^

[@Vynzent]

​@@krankarvolund7771 Would be nice if they'd show some recreations with shading. Maybe just describe that no one really knows how the original shading would have looked like or something

[@janthran]

@@Vynzent they likely would've been shaded specifically for the place where they were displayed with specific lighting so it would be extra hard to do in a museum

[@lukacsnemeth1652]

If you are thinking about the detailed lace carvings and statues like David, those are 1500 years younger than for example the Venus of Milo. Classical statues don't necessarily have that detail, and they were made in quantity for the roman elite.

[@NimLeeGuy]

The Greeks saw the works of Egypt, the near and middle East, Persia After all they fought as mercenary soldiers for many of those countries They didn't invent monumental architecture or statues.

[@Meager]

"Mom, can we have classical antiquity?" "We have classical antiquity in classical antiquity." Classical antiquity in classical antiquity:

[@francoismentec4260]

Regarding the "I prefer white statues", you can add that there is plenty of white art inspired by our wrong perception of the classical era and it is okay to appreciate those pieces as white since it is their original color.

[@bobmcbobbob1815]

100%. You also don't need to change history in order to appreciate the look of the statues unpainted. The images aren't going anywhere

[@Maperator]

Dont forget netflix's blackwashing of history with their cleopatra "documentary". Both sides engage in this absurdity

[@trashrabbit69]

The far-right whenever people discover ancient civilizations had taste: "And I took that personally."

[@azazel166]

As a Greek, I must say that the civilization of my ancestors isn't their property and it never will be.

[@jackbenny4458]

@@azazel166 Far-right Greeks have as much right to the past as you do. 🤷‍♂

[@mementomori7825]

Well, they look at the statue of David and get penis envy. Sad people.

[@snow24121]

@@jackbenny4458 What exactly does a right to the past entail?

[@azazel166]

Well, they are Greek like me, despite their brains having being burnt by that poison. Far right Americans, and other like minded foreigners on the other hand have no right to it.

[@AVKnecht]

That the statues and buildings were painted is basically basic knowledge now. Everybody remotely interested in ancient architecture and art knows that.

[@karimhammam9105]

Warthunder trying to replace us. Shameful.

[@n6rt9s]

But most people who are not interested in ancient architecture don't. Yet it's relevant even to them because white supremacists keep lying about it.

[@Ribulose15diphosphat]

Also in Germany, we know, that medieval Building were paintet in bright colours. The only myth is, that red paint was red because it was made from blood, as old blood would turn brown. The red Paint was actually made from iron ore (mixed with blood to stick it onto the surface). Also the glory days of Torture weren't the middle ages, but instead the rennaisance. And the catholic church didn't burn witches, it burned heretics. Protestant burned witches. Catholics even considered people who believe witches exist to be heretics (and burned them). Also Christians never claimed the Earth were flat, as this was already dated at the time of christ himself.

[@AVKnecht]

@@Ribulose15diphosphat Technically the catholic church burnt no one, at least in Germany. They found out that some was a heretic and then handed him over to the local jurisdiction who then burnt them (sometimes like in Bamberg or Würzburg they were the local jurisdiction themselves, but semantics...

[@adamantii]

there's also people not remotely interested in ancient architecture and art

[@JaJDoo]

for me its like people getting angry at feathers on dinosaurs like .. bruh .. that's the animal

[@drewcipher896]

I don't usually play Ubisoft games but I got AC: Odyssey for free, and walking around ancient Greek cities with painted columns and statues was magical.

[@Grenadier311]

The high medieval era is indeed in need of a makeover in its popular depiction. The people and buildings were clean and colorful.

[@theoneonly259]

HE JUST MADE A VIDEO SAYING THAT GREEKS AND ITALIANS ARE BLACK NOT WHITE AND THEIR STATUES HAVE BEEN WHITEWASHED TO JUSTIFY WHITE SUPREMACY AND BLACK SLAVERY! And that was your comment? What?

[@Ryong84]

the joke is people in the renessance era were dirty and didn't bathe while medival society used saunas

[@MrToradragon]

While they were most likely not clean by standards of modern society, they were most likely a lot cleaner than people in later eras as public baths fall out of fashion after plague. Not to mention the times church started to mess with hygiene later on.

[@Grenadier311]

Yeah, standards went severely downhill after the plague into the early-modern era.

[@altrag]

There's also the nomenclature we use - "dark ages" is intended to refer to the lack of intellectual advancement not the color palette used at the time. But even taking the intentional meaning, modern folk tend to assume that people of the day were a bunch of absolute idiots. That's just completely silly. People weren't appreciably different in medieval times - that lack of "intellectual advancement" relates to philosophy and (what we now call) science - stuff that average farmers and millwrights generally wouldn't have participated in no matter the era, but they still knew how to work a farm or run a mill just as well as their ancestors.

[@christianwhalen9263]

I had the same reaction I think many had seeing the recoloured statues and thinking it looked like a child had done it, but I thought about it for a while and realized that this is the work of people who are often times going off almost no reference material, trying to relearn artistic skills we’ve essentially lost over the course of 500-1000 years. The practice of making beautiful colorful lifelike statues isn’t a modern bastardization of classical art, it’s a movement to dig up and revive a whole school of artistic techniques that were purposely taken from us and *almost* successfully erased from our cultures

[@kordel2756]

I have read a theory that the paint work we see on recolored statues looks bad because it's based on what was left on the original statues - the base color layer. It doesn't look right because it's missing most of the outer layers of shading and details the figures had. In other words what we get is figures as they were only at the beginning on painting process. I do like that theory because it explains the discrepancy between the high detailing in the statues itself and very flat coloring put on it. I am aware it might be a complete bullshit explanation though

[@mrogface]

@@kordel2756 No, I think this seems reasonable. Watch any video of someone stripping paint from a model or what ever, the last layer left is the deepest most well protected layer. The base colours. So those layers being the most likely to survive seems reasonable to me.

[@manfredrichtoften8848]

​@@kordel2756 watch any hobbyist painter colour and you'll affirm your own hypothesis. The first layer always looks the worst and you just add more layers where it is needed.

[@Llamasomenumbers]

I think it would be much better to just paint a replica or have a 3D digital representation of what the statue might have looked like originally. If the point is historical accuracy you aren’t achieving that with a crude imitation of the original. I’m also against removing the remnants of the original paint to be clear, just let it stay the way it was found. And for the love of God stop letting amateurs touch these things. There are plenty of modern professionals who can do them justice.

[@kordel2756]

@@manfredrichtoften8848 yeah no i know this because i paint hobbystically myself. What i'm not sure about is is it possible there were zero cases where traces of upper layers survived on a statue.

[@knate44]

You aren't completely wrong but I have some concerns about the timeline. Scientific racism was a thing, and Fascism does cling to idealized ancient Rome and Greece (while also misrepresentating them like by scrubbing Roman sexuality) , but IIRC best estimates put the start of the Atlantic slave trade around 1526 which is after the deaths of Leonardo and Raphael who are partly credited with the "high rennisance" in Italy where the whole revival began, because like, Rome. Even michalenglo was more into architecture at the time and was pretty much done with statues and paintings he took inspiration from. So while the end result is the same, how we got there is kind different, Italians were obsessed with the form and body structures of the statues more than the colours which was expressed more through paintings.

[@ANDELE3025]

A entire video dedicated to batshit insane reaches that make pike formations seem like toothpicks. Impressive.

[@akoszahorsky1071]

Adam Something has two moods: 1. Showing the pointlessness and tragedy of the war in Ukraine 2. Getting that sweet sponsorship from War Thunder Great video overall :D

[@marcocappelli2236]

You forgot about his third mood: when he becomes train-o-philic.

[@viceconsulimhotepienenobed1573]

We have Twitter feminists, and KZbin socialists.

[@gravitydefeater]

booo for wt

[@einbaerchen2995]

I mean Putin could just play WT instead of actually going to war.

[@PouLS]

@@einbaerchen2995 Well boys we did it, we fixed war. Turns out that plan of capturing Kaliningrad by building a beer pipe from Prague was not necesarry.

[@JAleksandervonHackstahl]

Something similar happens with precolumbian ruins: we tend to think that Teotihuacan and Chichen Itzá, to say some, always were in stone naked and in darker colors when actually Mesoamerican people actually plastered their buildings and painted them with vivid colors, including the bigger monuments and temples.

[@jefflhama]

Like the game that's announced with a dead brown pre-Columbian town

[@fluidthought42]

That one is less controversial because contemporary accounts and colored depictions of those structures still survive.

[@arstans1777]

I think the original statues shouldn't be restored, because what we're seeing looks like just the base paint. It would probably be pretty easy tho to make replicas that you can paint in accordance to the pigment traces researchers have found, and ancient descriptions/ surviving art, but also add some shading on it, so that people get an idea of what it probably looked like. Just like they don't go around making new arms or heads on broken sculptures, because you couldn't replicate it well enough

[@alloutpotato7939]

Identity politics really do be the worst modern concept

[@RealUlrichLeland]

You can still appreciate an art style even if it wasn't the intent when the piece was made. A ruined church or a painting with a patina can become more beloved than the original. Obviously you should never intentionally damage historical artifacts, but I don't think it's wrong to also see the beauty in they way an object has been changed by the passage of time.

[@AnnaEmilka]

Agreed. I think it's really cool that the statues were originally colourfulm and would love to see them in their prime, but at the same time I'm finding *some* of the repainted ones uglier, especially as we have no way of faithfully restoring the colours, shading and overall look as we lack information, so it ends up looking silly and as if a toddler painted them. I also find the repainting distracts me from the masterwork of the sculpture's shape and marble work itself - especially on photos it flattens the surfaces and takes away the intricate shaping of the sculptures

[@jamestown8398]

True. Personally, while I like the color of bronze, I think it’s way more beautiful when it’s oxidized and green.

[@Tom_Cruise_Missile]

​@@jamestown8398 yeah and changing it back would take away from what makes it the statue of liberty in our minds. Plus a lot of people who don't like the statues as they are aren't doing it for the right reasons. The idea that liking them as they are now is somehow "white supremacist" is fucking stupid

[@nisha7219]

Agreed, like, I live in Chicago, we have some really nice neoclassical architecture here and I feel we made them to be without paint, the shadows are what precise the detail, And some painted statue look nice because they were made with painting in mind

[@yakubduncan9019]

In my city there's a set of artificial greek "ruins" (basically a set of pillars with a set of blocks on top), built around the 18th or 19th century. Similar aesthetic sensibility

[@alexhooijschuur5131]

My man, love your videos, but can you please source your claims? My main issue with this one is that the Renaissance started as early as the 14th century, almost two centuries before Europeans found the Americas, and even longer before colonialism really took its foothold in it’s conscious. The nexus of Renaissance occurred in the central Mediterranean, significantly east of the Iberian nations which were colonialism’s earliest participants. “Eugenics” was not a concept let alone genes, and Phrenology was not developed until 1796. While the objective of your video is just, the narrative of your video is simply wrong, at least it seems that way to me. Rather, it is more accurate to say that during the renaissance, they interpreted ancient statues to be uncolored largely due to ignorance and finding them not to be so, and then coinciding with the rise of Imperialism and Nationalism in the 18th and 19th centuries, these beliefs were co-opted into developing racist ideologies. It’s important to get these things right, or the people this content tries to disqualify will point out the errors in this narrative and claim that it disproves the whole point.

[@mememachine6022]

Na bro debateable most historians use the fall of constantinopel as the beginn of the renaissance in 1453 and america was found in 1492 so not that far away

[@Alias_Anybody]

I think this could be be better structured to make it clear that the original statues losing their colour due to weather and decay is obviously not racist (I mean, can weather be racist, lol), and neither are for example the artists of the Italian renaissance who just made an honest mistake here. The imagery was only later (like 200 years later) co-opted by racists. They didn't CREATE the false narrative, the just ran with the misconception (colourful = tribal) people already had!

[@technounion1892]

Yeah, ethnic eugenics and the renaissance did not crossover. Also, no renaissance excavations involved removing colour from statues. That's patently false. This whole video is just adding more fuel to the culture war fire, which Adam hypocritically laments about near the end of the video.

[@crackedemerald4930]

Fourth remake here we come

[@Somebodyherefornow]

SOURCE YOUR CLAIMS

[@HF-tj8db]

I think a nice compromise would be having a plaque with an image depicting what the sculpture would have looked like originally, in front of the sculpture. And perhaps when people warm up to the idea, we can paint only the ones that we ourselves removed the paint from, leaving the ones where the paint degraded over time and wasn't due to our whitewashing.

[@31webseries]

I never thought of those statues as white in that sense. That’s was just what they were made of. If they were all painted that would make their race more of a thing wouldn’t it? I don’t get it. I don’t even get why anyone would think about race here. Wtf?

[@ramirosotto]

This. Seems people are just too bored and want to complain and create drama and controversy out of anything really.

[@gxgx55]

7:20 man, Cultural Tutor is probably the only good non-farright twitter account with an antique statue profile pic, and you just put him at the forefront as a farright personality. You just did him diiiirty

[@jakem5039]

Was looking for this, feels like it was a poor categorisation. Would love either a correction or explanation!

[@CanonessEllinor]

Yeah, that account does NOT belong with the others.

[@Nerobyrne]

This also happened to dinosaurs, where we figured out that most of them had feathers. Thing is, you can still draw, imagine, and enjoy stories about naked dinosaurs, or white statues. Just know that it's not as correct as we once thought it was.

[@TheFrenchConsulate]

"Ahh you main helicopters, that's WOKE" hahahahaha

[@wouldntyouliketoknowdeli7640]

While I personally don't think that we should repaint ancient statues (I'm kind of worried that this would damage them but feel free to correct me if I'm wrong, I'm not an expert on their preservation), I do think that they should be displayed next to painted replicas, or better yet have their replicas on presentation instead.

[@Thukad]

If there is paint still on the statue that I think it needs to stay there, even if it's patchy. But if people are making educated guesses then I'd rather they leave it alone. A good compromise would be having a copy nearby with the assumed color work added and why we think that.

[@tf7602]

Pretty sure they only paint replicas

[@firstletterofthealphabet7308]

@@tf7602 looked it up, and everywhere that is the case. you always save a backup, and in the case of archaeology, always leave the original as future reference. the 4 colored statues side by side example present multiple times throughout the video is even a cast scaled replica, I believe.

[@zephyros256]

@@firstletterofthealphabet7308 That also makes easily the most sense, because you might want to reaxamine details of the statue to try to extract more information from it in case you missed something.

[@krankarvolund7771]

Historians are not idiots ^^'

[@Adriethyl]

I like both styles. However, the bleached statues look good in a vacuum, while the painted ones look good with the appropriate context (so as intended, restored properly). I do like the "misunderstood" building styles too. I like toimagine what the capitol building would look like full of color 😂.

[@ChasmChaos]

Does the bleached statue look good because we've always been exposed to that colour scheme for decades and told that "this is a relic from a great age of enlightenment"?

[@emiliosuarez2232]

@@ChasmChaos I'll say it looks good because of the craftsmanship, the structure looks good on it's own, but obviously I wouldn't have the same "superficial" opinion if I would have seen the same statues but painted through all my life ig

[@ChasmChaos]

@@emiliosuarez2232 that's true. It's so hard to guess because there are no counterfactuals. I guess white clothing is also a sign of opulence. Cricket, a British sport, was traditionally played in white clothing since it's a "gentleman's game". The gentlemen never had to bother with cleaning those clothes themselves. Football, another popular British game, was pretty much a working class sport and it never involved white clothing. I can imagine that those hidden biases came to dominate archeologists as they discovered these statues.

[@nob2243]

Let's hope the constant rewriting, upgrading and polishing of this video will become a yearly tradition on this channel.

[@Toxima]

I’m gonna go bury a bunch of unbuilt gunpla runners, without the instructions, out in the woods so that a future archeologist can find them and think that’s how they’re supposed to look

[@AtlasNovack]

"height guilt" had me rollin' 😆

[@christianhoej1562]

I gotta be honest when studying or talking about history or any other scientific field it's bloody important to cite sources otherwise that which is asserted without evidence can be dismissed without evidence. It's annoying that a very low percentage of "history" youtubers does that there is only a few good one that does it like atun shei films.

[@extremosaur]

Completely agree.

[@papadstavros]

And still nobody asked the Greeks who are the owners of the classical era artworks. Literally it is common knowledge here that the statues were in colour and there are displays of classical statues in colour in museums, nobody in Greece cares too much about it, but somehow far right Americans and Europeans need to have an opinion about our culture

[@AlcyonEldara]

Just to add, this is well known in Belgium, not controversial at all.

[@happydemon3038]

Whitewashed architecture was a thing in Medieval times as well. Where castles were whitewashed by the ones who made them, because a white castle is a striking visual that showed your wealth and influence to keep it clean as well. These are times way before the mass enslavement of Africans. So no, the origin of whitewashed architecture is not to justify slavery, it's a flex on your contemporaries. And as people continued to be wealthy into future eras, and new elites want to show that they are also among the elite, they just continued the whitewashed architecture.

[@simrock_]

The LotR skit was pure brilliance.

[@firstletterofthealphabet7308]

Wonder what _height_ rhymes with…

[@stevenb891]

“Hight supremacy” killed me 😂

[@fungo6631]

It was pure retardation.

[@tweed0929]

@@firstletterofthealphabet7308 far right.

[@robinrehlinghaus1944]

1.) Thank you for pointing out the middle ages also suffering from this. I cannot speak for the "medieval community" or however you want to call us, but I'm sure I'm not the only one appreciating a more well-known youtuber talking about this outside of the explicitly medieval historical niche of this site. 2. I think it's very good that you emphasised the last point about the "culture war". I find it very harmful how apparently anyone and anything needs to be openly politically biased to "the left" or "the right" nowadays. I continue to unintentionally get into political arguments when merely talking about history due it not fitting modern ideals, and it's very refreshing to see someone as public as you speak about this, especially considering the political nature of much of your content. I appreciate it very much.

[@Draconianoverlord55]

When anglos discover Mediterranean are not exactly like them

[@orlando-from-The-Bronx]

When it comes to purity, as represented by color, you can't possibly get any less pure than white.

[@MTTT1234]

In antiquity there was the concept of the 'Horror vacuii', the fear of nothingness. And the colour white represented this absence of something. This resulted in white parts of the statue even being painted with a white paint, so that way there would be at least paint on it, even if it would not change the colour of it. The perception of the colour white as a symbol of cleanliness and purity only came to be with Christianity.

[@OctaBech]

Thank you for touching upon the horribly botched restorations. A point other content creators tend to skip when covering this topic. I personally do not want the statues lazily/incompetently painted over like that, because it hides the incredible craftsmanship and attention to detail. It is like having someone put ketchup on a Michelin dinner. We can make copies, put pain on those. EDIT: What I am saying is that surely the ancients spent a ton of energy on color grading or else there would have been zero point in the super detailed sculptures. Because without colour grading, you cannot see the effing detail and would be a waste of time.

[@Utrilus]

Yeah, like how there are super well-painted Warhammer figurines... and then very badly painted ones comparable to classic restorations.

[@sarowie]

@@Utrilus even badly painted figures can serve as literal cannon footer on the battle field. But... those are the finest of the finest pieces, not a terracotta army; yet even those where painted, but the theory that a general was more elaborately painted then a foot solder should not be controversial.

[@mfaizsyahmi]

You thought they're putting paint on actual historic pieces instead of replicas? Why, they would have only one shot at it then! No practice!

[@OctaBech]

@@mfaizsyahmi Because that is what they have done to paintings and statues from other periods, instead of making replicas. You can see examples of that in this very video, examples I actually mention in my response to the previous video. Look, the ancients were amazing artists, who did incredibly detailed sculptures and used different materials for eyes and teeth to make them look like real people. It is borderline a mockery to have amateurs(based on their craftsmanship) cover it all in flat colors, making the statues look like something from comic books.

[@KasumiRINA]

He meant the other way around. Comparing the scrubbed white statues with the botched restorations. Unless he was sarcastic?

[@tahamoukhliss8420]

Personally, colorful statues look creepy to me. They remind of mannequins and dolls from clothes' store, always looking at you.

[@petersmythe6462]

It's like finding dinosaur bones and being shocked, *shocked* that the originals were part of real animals with organs and muscles and fat and scales and feathers and such.

[@antlerbraum2881]

Haven’t you talked about this before???

[@samuelparry7877]

Yeah he did speak about this before in one of his first videos and then again in a remake of that same video

[@cfv7461]

Now he has better editing. I thin he hired someone.

[@satl3161]

Hes running out of ideas. Recent videos have not been quality

[@prabhatsourya3883]

He did talk about it twice, but the video got pulled down twice, so he’s doing it properly this time around.

[@Sfaxx]

Have you watched the full video? Adam explains it in the end (after ad)

[@etasjo]

i mean the pure white look is kinda cool

[@isakrynell8771]

This is similar to Pluto not being a planet and dinosaurs having feathers. There will be a lot of bitching and moaning but eventually everyone will except reality.

[@LapinPete]

In the same line of thinking: I hate the current gray/blackpainting of history by Hollywood. Born out of the derp thinking "dark theme needs dark colors!" which leads to Norse wearing same clothes as the customers of blue oyster bar.

[@Fuhrerjehova]

I think we shouldn't put new color on old statues, since that might fuck with them so to speak (if we find an old sword, which obviously had jewelry on it, we don't put jewelry on it). However, I think remakes, with full paint, should be pushed (as the remake of the sword, with jewelry, would be).

[@faarsight]

There is a certain simplicity and tranquility to the completely white marble statue look. That said historically accurate painted statues can look gorgeous as well. (Though sometimes they do look kind of garish)

[@diktatoralexander88]

when there's little paint detail at all, they look terrible. But when added the right detail and amount of paint, they look incredible. But yes, plain stone is it's own aeasthetic

[@NIGHTGUYRYAN]

check out the thutmose nefertiti bust! this is a beautifully painted extant example! the recreations look garish because they are. these recreations do a disservice to the reality of the era because the they are colored in crudely and with no actual artistic skill. they seem to think the ancients painted their statues like we would paint a car, when the reality the statues would be incredibly lifelike with delicate eyelashes and changes in tone across their complexions. highlights would be added into their hair and cheeks. think of how mannequins back in the day would be painted to resemble actual women. these statues look like they were painted with homer simpsons make-up shotgun.

[@captininsanoo00]

like any art, some of it is amazing and some of it isnt

[@martinfiedler4317]

@@diktatoralexander88 Exactly. And it would be rather 'inconsistent', if they were to put so much effort into creating a highly detailed and accurate statue from stone would would then not have taken - the substantial lower effort - of painting it in detail with multiple layers and shading.

[@shraka]

What you consider garish is probably culturally indoctrinated into us all - put there deliberately by people who wanted a way to deride other cultures who often wear brightly coloured things - think traditional clothing in Africa, India, South East Asia, and the Americas. It becomes more apparent when you look back at how colourful Western styles were before this cultural hierarchy needed to be established to justify Empire.

[@illsaveus]

Assassins creed odyssey has a historical mode where you can just travel Greece as it was then.

[@grandsome1]

That can't be right, colours weren't invented until the 1960s.

[@abhinavpuranik815]

this is an aside, but, at 7:17; 'The Cultural Tutor' is definitely not a white supremacist page imo

[@yessopie]

The painted statues look WAY better. And it's much more fun to imagine ancient Greece and Rome with all those colors. The only problem is, at least here in Canada, we only ever see painted statues in parks for children or McDonald's or whatever, so yes, by that association it makes them seem targeted at a less sophisticated audience, or "cheap". Most of our "statues for adults" are a monochrome green (oxidized bronze). I don't think I've seen a purely white statue outside of a museum.

[@Colddirector]

Personally I prefer the unpainted look, but there's no reason we can't have both - acknowledge the statues were origionally painted but appreciate the white statues for their albeit unintentional pristine aesthetic.

[@SenorZorros]

tbh, this one is a bit too reductive. Renaissance Italy's white statues and English scientific racism are 200 years and 750 kilometres apart. I''m all for painted statues but that does not mean white statues are nazi.

[@NickelW]

I do like the white statues better, but I definitely agree that historical accuracy is the most important aspect here. great video :)

[@theoneonly259]

He is making the claim that Southern Europeans are not white..... That they are black....

[@NickelW]

@@theoneonly259 what? He said that statues should be coloured accurately instead of left fully white, what are you talking about?

[@theoneonly259]

@@NickelW Whats the title of the video? We have been lied to apparently. Lied to about the colour of Southern Europeans being white. You dont whitewash something that is already white... What video did you watch? Why were Southern Europeans whitewashed? To justify white supremacy and black slavery. Maybe you need to watch the video again...

[@theoneonly259]

@@Dimitris_Balf You do not whitewash statues that are already white buddy.

[@theoneonly259]

@@Dimitris_Balf What colour? Black? They would not need to be whitewashed if they were white. So according to Adam Something Southern Europeans are not white. He seems to think they are brown or something. Ha. Why would a white supremacist care if a Southern European statue had a tan? So-called white people are rarely albinos right? Putting paint on the statues doesnt make Southern Europeans brown or black....

[@arskakarva7474]

It is actually kinda funny how Age of Empires 1's colorful graphics meant to easily show whose units and buildings are which ended up being more historically accurate after Mark Abbe's discovery.

[@DamnedSilly]

Funny how much of it comes down to the best stone on hand for carving happening to be white. Of course, it's also the best base color for painting other colors onto.

[@mihailazar2487]

The fact that the colored statues look straight out of Jojo's Bizarre Adventure is so funny

[@Alex-mn1fb]

Like, first of all, WE did not whitewash anything, time literally did that. No one in Renaissance-era Italy could have, would have or should have known that the white sculptures they knew and saw scattered around were once colorfully painted a millennia or so ago. They saw them as being white, so white statues became a fad, but we thankfully grew and we know better now. People who cant cope with that fact today, on the other hand, are complete assholes. As are people who use it as some sort of critique of society and make it out to be full on planed and purposeful anti-colorism and anti-queer agenda. It just happened. Its a historical misunderstanding, and its a topic Left KZbin had now done multiple times. Its been done ad nauseum. Like fine, we get it, classical statues were painted, and some demented right wing fan boys got upset over it. Its not a proof of a wide societal far right conspiracy, and the left seems to be the ones who actually crave to make it another culture war talking point. Chill out, its not that serious.