Michael Squire

"The classical human body is perhaps the single most important and wide-ranging legacy bequeathed to the modern world by antiquity. Not only has it directed the evolutionary trajectory of western art; it has also saturated almost every aspect of the contemporary subconscious, as ideal, anti-type and point of departure. This short book represents the first concerted attempt to grapple with the complex nature of that legacy. Writing in an attractive and accessible style, and supplementing his text with a rich array of illustrations, Michael Squire guides his readers through a multifaceted range of modern interactions with ancient visual representations of the body. From Byzantine diptych to Hollywood cinema screen, and from Aphrodite to the Venus de Milo, The Art of the Body demonstrates the wide range of cultural ideas and anxieties that were explored by the figure of the body both in antiquity and in the various cultural landscapes that came afterwards. In exploring the fascinating connections between ancient and modern in the broadest sense, the book offers an ideal starting point and a stimulating textbook for undergraduate students of ancient history, classical archaeology and classical civilization"--

Antiquity and Its Legacy

The Art of the Body

Nikolaus Dietrich

How does ‘decoration’ work? What are the relations between ‘figurative’ and ‘ornamental’ modes? And how do such modern western distinctions relate to other critical traditions? While these questions have been much debated among art historians, our book offers an ancient visual cultural perspective. On the one hand, we argue, Greek and Roman materials have proved instrumental in shaping modern assumptions. On the other hand, those ideologies are fundamentally removed from ancient ideas: an ancient perspective can therefore shed light on larger aesthetic debates about what images are – or indeed what they should be. This anthology of specially commissioned essays explores a variety of case studies (both literary and art historical alike): it discusses materials from across the ancient Mediterranean, and from Geometric art all the way through to late antiquity; the book also tackles questions of ‘figure’ and ‘ornament’ in relation to different media – including painting, free-standing statues, relief sculpture, mosaics and architecture. A particular feature of the volume lies in bringing together different national academic traditions, building a bridge between formalist approaches and broader cultural historical perspectives.

Rethinking Visual Ontologies in Classical Antiquity

Ornament and Figure in Graeco-Roman Art

Avi Lifschitz

Gotthold Ephraim Lessing first published Laokoon, oder uber die Grenzen der Mahlerey und Poesie (Laocoon, or on the Limits of Painting and Poetry) in 1766. Over the last 250 years, Lessing's essay has exerted an incalculable influence on western critical thinking. Not only has it directed the history of post-Enlightenment aesthetics, it has also shaped the very practices of 'poetry' and 'painting' in a myriad of different ways. In this anthology of specially commissioned chapters - comprising the first ever edited book on the Laocoon in English - a range of leading critical voices has been brought together to reassess Lessing's essay on its 250th anniversary. Combining perspectives from multiple disciplines (including classics, intellectual history, philosophy, aesthetics, media studies, comparative literature, and art history), the book explores the Laocoon from a plethora of critical angles. Chapters discuss Lessing's interpretation of ancient art and poetry, the cultural backdrops of the eighteenth century, and the validity of the Laocoon's observations in the fields of aesthetics, semiotics, and philosophy. The volume shows how the Laocoon exploits Greek and Roman models to sketch the proper spatial and temporal 'limits' (Grenzen) of what Lessing called 'poetry' and 'painting'; at the same time it demonstrates how Lessing's essay is embedded within Enlightenment theories of art, perception, and historical interpretation, as well as within nascent eighteenth-century ideas about the 'scientific' study of Classical antiquity (Altertumswissenschaft). To engage critically with the Laocoon, and to make sense of its legacy over the last 250 years, consequently involves excavating various 'classical presences': by looking back to the Graeco-Roman past, the volume demonstrates, Lessing forged a whole new tradition of modern aesthetics.

Antiquity, Enlightenment, and the 'Limits' of Painting and Poetry

Rethinking Lessing's Laocoon

Nigel Spivey

This imaginative approach to the era in which Western civilization was born is a thorough—and thoroughly accessible—synthesis of the Greek, Roman, and Etruscan worlds, spanning the period from Late Geometric Greece in around 700 b.c., to the rule of Constantine in the early 4th century a.d. The authors incorporate important developments in recent scholarship, including ideas of gender, war and pacifism, imperialism and dissent, political propaganda, economy, cultural identity, racism, hygiene and diet, and public and private uses of space. The book highlights the modern relevance of classical antiquity, from its influence on contemporary politics to the representation of the female body in Western art, and concludes by charting the history of classical civilization. The extensive reference section includes biographies, an introduction to classical mythology, a glossary of technical terms and vase shapes, as well as a timeline, map, bibliography, and index.

Panorama of the Classical World

Johannes Wienand

This volume explores one of the most complex, multifaceted and momentous of all western cultural transformations: the refashioning of the Roman principate under Constantine in the early fourth century AD. It does so through the kaleidoscopic lens of one of antiquity's most fascinating (and maligned) artists: Publilius Optatianus Porfyrius. Optatian's works are little known among classicists and historians. Nevertheless, his picture-poems uniquely reflect, figure, and shape the cultural dynamics of the period. By bringing together different disciplinary perspectives the volume demonstrates how the poems give unique form to the various political, intellectual and cultural currents of the age. Contributors champion Optatian as a uniquely creative artist - and one who anticipated some of our most pressing literary critical, art historical and philosophical concerns today.

Morphogrammata

A new, illustrated study of the Iliac tablets, a group of objects inscribed in miniature with epic episodes. Like the tablets themselves, Michael Squire tackles major themes through small ones, by relating their production to macroscopic problems of signification in Graeco-Roman antiquity.

Visualizing Epic on the Tabulae Iliacae

The Iliad in a Nutshell

It is to Greek critical thinking about seeing that we owe our conceptual framework for theorizing the senses, and it is also to such thinking that we owe the lasting legacy of Greco-Roman imagery. Sight and the Ancient Senses is the first thorough introduction to the conceptualization of sight in the history, visual culture, literature and philosophy of classical antiquity. Examining how the Greeks and Romans interpreted what they saw, the collection also considers sight in relation to the other senses. This volume brings together a number of interdisciplinary perspectives to deliver a broad and balanced coverage of this subject. Contributors explore the cultural, social and intellectual backdrops that gave rise to ancient theories of seeing, from Archaic Greece through to the advent of Christianity in late antiquity. This series of specially commissioned thematic chapters demonstrate how theories about sight informed Graeco-Roman philosophy, science, poetry rhetoric and art. The collection also reaches beyond its Graeco-Roman visual framework, showcasing how ancient ideas have influenced the longue durée of western sensory thinking. Richly illustrated throughout, including a section of color plates, Sight and the Ancient Senses is a wide-ranging introduction to ancient theories of seeing which will be an invaluable resource for students and scholars of classical antiquity.

Sight and the Ancient Senses

Verity Platt

The frames of classical art are often seen as marginal to the images that they surround. Traditional art history has tended to view framing devices as supplementary 'ornaments'. Likewise, classical archaeologists have often treated them as tools for taxonomic analysis. This book not only argues for the integral role of framing within Graeco-Roman art, but also explores the relationship between the frames of classical antiquity and those of more modern art and aesthetics. Contributors combine close formal analysis with more theoretical approaches: chapters examine framing devices across multiple media (including vase and fresco painting, relief and free-standing sculpture, mosaics, manuscripts and inscriptions), structuring analysis around the themes of 'framing pictorial space', 'framing bodies', 'framing the sacred' and 'framing texts'. The result is a new cultural history of framing - one that probes the sophisticated and playful ways in which frames could support, delimit, shape and even interrogate the images contained within.

Michael Squire

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