How is it possible today to gain insight into the culture that flourished in ancient Greece over 2,500 years ago? Works of art are eloquent intermediaries. This generously illustrated volume provides an introduction to the painted pottery that served specific utilitarian functions and that afforded outstanding artists a medium for depicting their gods and heroes and the details of daily existence. The key to understanding the rich language of the Greek vase is tuning into the interrelation of its function, shape, technique, and subject matter. Notable examples from the Metropolitan Museum's exceptional collection reveal the variety and vitality of the refined forms and masterfully rendered scenes that characterize these engaging works of ancient Greek art.
In this book, Professor Martin Robertson, author of A History of Greek Art (CUP 1975) and A Shorter History of Greek Art (CUP 1981), draws together the results of a lifetime's study of Greek vase-painting, tracing the history of figure-drawing on Athenian pottery from the invention of the "red-figure" technique in the later archaic period to the abandonment of figured vase-decoration two hundred years later. The book covers red-figure and also work produced over the same period in the same workshops in black-figure and other techniques, especially that of drawing in outline on a white ground. This book is a major contribution to the history of Greek vase-painting and anyone seriously interested in the subject--whether scholar, student, curator, collector or amateur--will find it essential reading.
This volume completes a series of four titles which comprehensively cover the development of Greek vases. One of the most intriguing things about Greek vase painting from the 11th to the 6th centuries BC is that it shows all the components of Greek art which were to culminate in the Classical styles of the 5th century BC. Geometric vases gave way by about 700 BC to the influence of the Near East and in this new Orientalizing period the Greeks learned how to tell a story in pictures. Early Greek vases display the Greek painter's craft at its most mathematical, its most colourful and most narrative, and are here set against the background of the history and culture of their day.
This interdisciplinary study opens up a fascinating interaction between art and theater. It shows how the mythological vase-paintings of fourth-century B.C. Greeks, especially those settled in southern Italy, are more meaningful for those who had seen the myths enacted in the popular new medium of tragedy. Of some 300 relevant vases, 109 are reproduced and accompanied by a picture-by-picture discussion. This book supplies a rich and unprecedented resource from a neglected treasury of painting.
This book examines Greek vase-paintings that depict humorous, burlesque, and irreverent images of Greek mythology and the gods. Many of the images present the gods and heroes as ridiculous and ugly. While the narrative content of some images may appear to be trivial, others address issues that are deeply serious. When placed against the background of the religious beliefs and social frameworks from which they spring, these images allow us to explore questions relating to their meaning in particular communities. Throughout, we see indications that Greek vase-painters developed their own comedic narratives and visual jokes. The images enhance our understanding of Greek society in just the same way as their more sober siblings in "serious" art. David Walsh is a Visiting Research Scholar in the School of Arts, Histories and Cultures at The University of Manchester.
xiv + 160 pp. with 25 figs. & 102 plates, 1 map, 8vo.
This study explores the phenomenon of spectators in the Classical world through a database built from a census of the Corpus Vasorum Antiquorum, which reveals that spectator figures flourished in Athenian vase painting during the last two-thirds of the sixth century BCE. Using models developed from psychoanalysis and the theory of the gaze, ritual studies, and gender studies, Mark Stansbury-O'Donnell demonstrates how these "spectators" emerge as models for social and gender identification in the archaic city, encoding in their gestures and behavior archaic attitudes about gender and status.
The papers in this volume derive from the proceedings of an international symposium held at the J. Paul Getty Museum at the Getty Villa in June 2006 in connection with the exhibition The Colors of Clay: Special Techniques in Athenian Vases. The themes of the exhibition—vases executed in bilingual, coral-red gloss, outline, Kerch-style, white ground, and Six’s techniques, as well as examples with added clay and gilding, and sculpted vases and additions—are the touchstones for the essays. More than twenty papers by renowned scholars are grouped under such general rubrics as Social Contexts for Athenian Vases in Special Techniques; Conservation, Analysis, and Experimentation; Artists, Workshops, and Production; and Markets and Exchange.
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