colossal was generally reserved for cult statues, but in the early years the new marble "workshops produced massive works
which served as dedications and grave markers. The standing naked male, the kouros, was the most important of the new
types to emerge. At first the figures are carefully, but rather dully, cut four-square, with a pattern of surface detail for
anatomy. Experiment, and a natural selection of the more lifelike forms, led the artist, by the end of the Archaic, to figures
which are superficially realistic, though still the slaves of pattern in faces, hair, muscles, pose. The addition of colour, now
lost, would not have made them much more real, but they were proud, imperishable statements of man's place in the world -
not kings, priests or viziers, but citizens serving a god or commemorating the dead.
Their female counterparts, the korai, were dressed, and the pattern of their dress exercised the artist as did the anatomy of
their brothers. Again, interest in pattern defied reality and dress-making. If we replace the lost colour, we see them as rather
garish compositions of line, fold, and zig-zag. The korai serve sanctuaries rather than graves.