Images at the Crossroads: Media and Meaning in Greek Art

Description

This collection includes twenty-one new essays by leading scholars in the field of Greek art and archaeology. Exploring a range of media including vase painting, sculpture, gems and coins, they each address questions that cross the boundaries of specialised fields. They outline the range of visual experiences at stake in the various media used in antiquity and shed light on the specificities of each medium. They show how meaning is produced, according to the nature of the medium: its use, context and enunciative structure. Also explored are the different methodologies used to produce meaning: how do images ‘make’, or create, sense to their ancient viewers and how can we now access those meanings? This richly illustrated volume offers new interpretations and arguments concerning fundamental questions in the field which expands our knowledge and understanding of Greek art, patrons and viewers. Dedication List of Illustrations Acknowledgments Abbreviations Introduction PART I MAKING MEANING: HOW DO IMAGES WORK? 1 Ways of Making Sense: Eagle and Snake in Archaic and Classical Greek Art 2 Images and History in Eighth- and Seventh-Century BC Athens: A Discursive Analytical Approach 3 Knowledge and the Production of Meaning: Greek Vase Imagery Reconsidered 4 Images and Storytelling PART II INTERPRETATION AND PERCEPTION 5 The Alexander Mosaic: Stories of Victory 6 Parapictoriality PART III REFLECTIONS OF THE CITY AND ITS CRAFTSMEN 7 Les Images de la Cité – The Vase Painter’s Gaze 8 Again: Working Scenes on Athenian Vases – Images between Social Values and Aesthetic Reality PART IV CONSTRUCTIONS OF MYTH THROUGH IMAGES 9 Of Gods and Giants: Myth and Images in the Making 10 The Fabric of Myth in Ancient Glyptic 11 Greek Coin Iconography in Context: Eight Specificities That Differentiate Them from Other Visual Media PART V CLAY AND STONE: MATERIAL MATTERS 12 Paragone? Xenophon, Sokrates, and Quintilian on Greek Painting and Sculpture 13 Communicating with the Divine in Marble and Clay 14 The Message is in the Medium: White-Ground Lekythoi and Stone Grave Markers in Classical Athens 15 Greek Archaic Figurative Terracottas: From Identification to Function 16 Images in Dialogue: Picturing Identities in Boiotian Stone, Clay, and Metal 17 Images of Drinking and Laughing: Vessels and Votives in the Theban Kabirion 18 Beyond Ceramics and Stone: The Iconography of the Precious PART VI HONORING THE DEAD 19 Archaic Grave Monuments: Body or Stele? 20 On Vases, Terracottas, and Bones: How to Read Funerary Assemblages from Sixth- and Fifth-Century Greece 21 Winged Figures and Mortals at a Crossroad About the Contributors Bibliography Index of Objects Subject Index