"The enormous public interest generated by garish reconstructions is surely because of and not in spite of their ugliness."

"It is hard to believe that this is entirely accidental. One possibility is that the reconstructors are engaged in a kind of trolling. In this interpretation, they know perfectly well that ancient sculptures did not look like the reconstructions, and probably included the subtle variation of color tones that ancient paintings did. But they fail to correct the belief that people naturally form given what is placed before them: that the proffered reconstruction of ancient sculpture is roughly what ancient sculpture actually looked like. It is a further question whether such trolling would be deeply objectionable.... There is genuine intellectual value in the project and what could be seen as mean-spirited iconoclasm could equally be embraced as harmless fun. On the other hand, at a time when trust in the honest intentions of experts is at a low, it may be unwise for experts to troll the public."

Writes Ralph S. Weir, in "Were classical statues painted horribly? It is often suggested that modern viewers dislike painted reconstructions of Greek and Roman statues because our taste differs from that of the ancients. This essay proposes an alternative explanation" (Works in Progress).

Is that a joke about how the ancient Greeks painted their statues?