The Image of the Artist in Archaic and Classical Greece
Art, Poetry, and Subjectivity
Published on 4. November 2015
978-1-316-45573-9 (ISBN)
Description
This book explores the persona of the artist in Archaic and Classical Greek art and literature. Guy Hedreen argues that artistic subjectivity, first expressed in Athenian vase-painting of the sixth century BCE and intensively explored by Euphronios, developed alongside a self-consciously constructed persona of the poet. He explains how poets like Archilochos and Hipponax identified with the wily Homeric character of Odysseus as a prototype of the successful narrator, and how the lame yet resourceful artist-god Hephaistos is emulated by Archaic vase-painters such as Kleitias. In lyric poetry and pictorial art, Hedreen traces a widespread conception of the artist or poet as socially marginal, and sometimes physically imperfect, but rhetorically clever, technically peerless, and a master of fiction. Bringing together in a sustained analysis the roots of subjectivity across media, this book offers a new way of studying the relationship between poetry and art in ancient Greece.
More details
Language
English
Place of publication
Cambridge
United Kingdom
Publishing group
Cambridge University Press
Target group
Professional and scholarly
Illustrations
25 Plates, color; 64 Halftones, unspecified; 64 Halftones, black and white; 1 Line drawings, black and white
File size
16863,85 MB
ISBN-13
978-1-316-45573-9 (9781316455739)
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Schweitzer Classification
Other editions
Additional editions
Book
11/2015
Cambridge University Press
€174.10
Shipment within 15-20 days
Person
Guy Hedreen is Professor of Art at Williams College, Massachusetts. He is author of Silens in Attic Black-Figure Vase-Painting: Myth and Performance (1992) and Capturing Troy: The Narrative Functions of Landscape in Archaic and Early Classical Greek Art (2001). He has also published essays on Dionysiac myth and ritual, choral poetry, drama, the Trojan War, primitive life, the worship of Achilles, and the nature of visual narration. His awards include the Rome Prize, a Guggenheim Fellowship, and the Arlt Award for his first book.
Content
Introduction: 'I am Odysseus'; 1. Smikros and Euphronios: pictorial alter ego; 2. Archilochos, the fictional creator-protagonist, and Odysseus; 3. Hipponax and his make-believe artists; 4. Hephaistos in epic: analog of Odysseus and antithesis to Thersites; 5. Pictorial subjectivity and the Shield of Achilles on the Francois vase; 6. Frontality, self-reference, and social hierarchy: three Archaic vase-paintings; 7. Writing and invention in the vase-painting of Euphronios and his circle; Epilogue: persuasion, deception, and artistry on a red-figure cup.
