By the book

The party line about Classical Greek art has never been very convincing. Sometimes called “the Greek Miracle,” it concerns the emergence of naturalistic representations of the human figure by the early 5th century BC.

At the J. Paul Getty Museum, the curators of the recently opened exhibition, “Coming of Age in Ancient Greece: Images of Childhood From the Classical Past,” define the phenomenon simply. The miracle is “an ability [among artists] to depict what they saw as opposed to what they knew.” Something entirely novel in ancient art, this unprecedented “ability” meant that children were portrayed correctly anatomically rather than resembling miniature adults.

What’s unconvincing is not that Classical Greek artists and those who came after made naturalistic human representations. They certainly did. All one need do is look at the large marble carving of a 4-year-old boy that greets visitors to the Getty show.

Made about 2,000 years ago, this lovely sculpture shows a child in a pensive, modest mood. He’s wrapped in the adult cloak of a philosopher, perhaps as a sign of parental anticipation for a privileged future, since only the well-born would have such an opportunity. From his chubby cheeks to the soft belly gently swelling beneath the cloak, which pulls across his slightly bent right knee, the boy has been rendered by an unidentified stone carver with a decided gift for naturalistic observation.

Nor is it unconvincing that naturalism is unprecedented in ancient art, prior to the evolutionary, centuries-long emergence of the Classical Age. The Geometric and Archaic periods that came before saw the production of dazzling objects, but artists in those periods did not create a credible illusion that their carved or painted children, women and men were alive.

What doesn’t fly is this: the assumption that the emergence of naturalism is a matter of ability, newly obtained and supposedly unavailable to earlier societies. (That’s the “miracle” part, a marvel full-blown from the head of Zeus.) Naturalism in depiction is really just a manual skill, possessed by thousands of pedestrian artists over the last several millenniums.

The fact is that for art, ability is the handmaiden of desire. Classical and Hellenistic artists had it -- the desire, that is, to make images that looked like human beings with air in their lungs, blood in their veins and wind in their hair. Geometric and Archaic artists didn’t. They had other desires. The brilliantly conceived and executed representations by the best of them can take your breath away.

Next time you’re in Athens, stop by the National Archeological Museum and check out a large clay amphora from the late Geometric period attributed to the so-called Hirschfeld Painter. Its stylized representation of the ineffable grief surrounding death exhibits not a shred of naturalistic illusionism. But this staggering vase painting fairly blows away most of the Classical works assembled for the Getty show, where miracles are presumed to prevail.

That’s one drawback of this mildly engaging presentation -- the sacrifice of art on the altar of a secondary social focus. “Coming of Age in Ancient Greece” is my least favorite kind of show, in which works of art are assembled as illustrations to a text. Here the topic is “childhood studies,” an academic discipline that has evolved since 1960 but has deeper roots in anthropology. (If the exhibition title recalls Margaret Mead’s 1928 “Coming of Age in Samoa,” it’s meant to.) The show is a social study of childhood in Classical Greece, with works of art principally deployed as descriptive objects of historical interest.

Organized by the Hood Museum of Art at Dartmouth College, the presentation is divided into eight areas. They include children in Greek mythology, such as baby Hercules gaily strangling snakes; kids at home, where they were under the almost exclusive sway of women for the first seven years of life; kids at play, with an array of toys actually used; children and their roles in religious rituals, and more. Along the way one encounters recognizable events from daily life, including some that are frankly horrific from a modern standpoint.

It’s one thing to see little Xerxes depicted learning to write his alphabet with a stylus and tablet, in scenes of schooling on a red-figure drinking cup, or playing a form of dice with a group of pals, as shown on a painted wine pitcher. References to beatings, teen suicide, pederasty, infanticide and slavery are quite another.

Perhaps the most moving object in the exhibition is a little covered box topped by a highly polished, dark brown soapstone carving of a young African slave. Seated, the boy pulls his shackled legs to his body, rests his chin on his knees and holds his arms close to his torso so that clenched fists frame his face. The coiled sense of compression conveyed by this blocky pose gives an excruciating twist to his facial expression of blank resignation. Unshackled, the boy might explode in space.

Empathy is not what one immediately expects from an artist working in a society whose system depends on the brutal indignities of slaveholding. The show does not disclose the use to which this grim little box was put more than 2,200 years ago, although the sculpture does confirm the known historical record about African children being abused as slaves. But is that really what makes this little object so powerful?

Disappointingly, the sculpture is difficult to see. The exhibition display cases are unusually short -- below waist level -- which means a lot of bending and stooping, given the modest size of many of the objects.

Presumably the low height is geared toward accommodating children who might visit the exhibition, although, during my tour, a crying baby in a stroller was the only museum-goer beneath voting age in the galleries. A large “family zone” with educational toys and books has also been set up along the length of several galleries at the front end of the show. There I witnessed the pre-Halloween spectacle of a grown woman trying on a phony Greek costume. (She pulled the tunic on over her street clothes.) What fun.

“Coming of Age in Ancient Greece” mostly deals with works of art as documentary evidence of social behavior. Given this criterion, and despite some notable exceptions, the majority of objects chosen are banal visual data.

I suppose there is some use in being reminded that most art is middling, even in the glorious age of Pericles. But artistically the show’s satisfactions are few.

The catalog does contain informative entries on the more than 125 objects on display. Frequently, the essays are more problematic. Does it truly follow that a convincing stylistic realism -- the Greek miracle -- means that the scenes painted on a vase or carved on a tombstone describe actual social relations at the time in any but a generalized way?

The curators seem to think so, despite plenty of historical evidence to the contrary. Renaissance patrons were not present at the birth and crucifixion of Jesus, even though 15th century paintings routinely place them there, and giant robots are not really attacking Gwyneth Paltrow in her new movie, however convincing the animation. One reason for the enduring popularity of naturalism in art is that it makes imaginative fabrications seem authentic. Notwithstanding Dan Rather’s troubles with those questionable Texas Air National Guard memos, it’s a lie that tells a different kind of truth.

Because children are themselves important sources of information about their own lives, a claim is made that “the ancient Greeks left us a treasure in their realistic depiction of children and their families.” Yes, the Greek artists who made these objects were once children, and it’s likely their own youthful experiences informed their adult labors. But it’s also true that Greek painting and sculpture are loaded with the realistic depiction of fantasy figures. When’s the last time you ran into a winged lion with a human head?

That means the treasure the ancients left us is principally artistic, not sociological, and you’d hope the Getty would approach it that way. Instead, while you’re over in the Family Zone playing dress-up and having your photo taken in front of a mural of the Acropolis, you’d do well to take this show’s claims with a big grain of Aegean Sea salt.

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‘Coming of Age in Ancient Greece’

Where: J. Paul Getty Museum, 1200 Getty Center Drive, Los Angeles

When: Closed Mondays

Ends: Dec. 5

Price: Free, parking $5

Contact: (310) 440-7300