Michael Squire
Michael Squire is Laurence Professor of Classical Archaeology at the University of Cambridge and a Fellow of Trinity College. His research interests include Greek and Roman material and visual culture, the history of aesthetics, the interrelations between words and images and the reception of classical forms.
Address: https://www.classics.cam.ac.uk/staff/professor-michael-squire
Faculty of Classics, Sidgwick Avenue, Cambridge, CB3 9DA, United Kingdom
Trinity College, Cambridge, CB2 1TQ, United Kingdom
Address: https://www.classics.cam.ac.uk/staff/professor-michael-squire
Faculty of Classics, Sidgwick Avenue, Cambridge, CB3 9DA, United Kingdom
Trinity College, Cambridge, CB2 1TQ, United Kingdom
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FOR THE FULL ISSUE, PLEASE VISIT:
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/toc/14678365/2018/41/3
While such 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 been instrumental in shaping modern assumptions. On the other hand, modern western ideologies about 'fi gure' and 'ornament' are fundamentally removed from ancient Greek and Roman ideas: classical perspectives can therefore shed light on larger aesthetic debates about what images are – and indeed what they should be.
This anthology of specially commissioned essays explores a variety of case studies, both literary and art historical: it discusses materials from across the ancient Mediterranean, and from Geometric art all the way through to late antiquity; it also tackles questions of 'fi gure' and 'ornament' in a range of media, including painting, free-standing statues, relief sculpture, mosaics and architecture. As well as bringing together different national academic traditions, the book seeks to build a bridge between formalist approaches and broader cultural historical perspectives. Combining theoretical discussion and close analytical interpretations, contributors interrogate shifting ideas of the image in both antiquity and the ensuing western critical tradition.
In bringing together a range of internationally acclaimed critical voices, the volume establishes an important disciplinary bridge between aesthetics and art history. Given the recent resurgence of interest in ‘global’ art history, and calls for more comparative approaches to ‘visual culture’, contributors ask what role Hegel has played within the field – and what role he could play in the future. What can a historical treatment of art ac- complish? How should we explain the ‘need’ for certain artistic forms at different historical junctures? Has art history been ‘Hegelian’ without fully acknowledging it? Indeed, have art historians shirked some of the funda- mental questions that Hegel raised?
Full text downloadable at:
https://arthistoryjournal.org.uk/virtual-issues/classical-art-history/
This anthology—the first-ever edited book on the Laocoon in English —brings together a range of leading critical voices to reassess Lessing’s essay on its 250th anniversary. The volume combines perspectives from multiple disciplines, including classics, intellectual history, aesthetics, comparative literature, and art history. Chapters discuss Lessing’s inter- pretation of ancient art and poetry, the cultural backdrops of the eigh- teenth century, and the validity of his observations in the fields of aesthetics, semiotics, and philosophy. The Laocoon’s attempt to delineate the spatial and temporal `limits’ of `poetry’ and `painting’, the volume demonstrates, is rooted in the critique of Graeco-Roman materials, while also drawing on Enlightenment theories of art, perception, and historical interpretation: by looking back to classical antiquity, Lessing forged a whole new tradition of modern aesthetics.
This is the first edited book dedicated to Optatian’s picture-poems and their various historical contexts. By bringing together different disciplinary perspectives (including ancient history, classical philology, art history, theology, philosophy and media studies), the volume demonstrates how Optatian gave form to the various political, intellectual and cultural currents of his age. At the same time, 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.
Why do classical Greek and Roman objects still stir the modern imagination? How can contemporary art-works shed light on ancient visual traditions? And what might such responses, set against the backdrop of others over the last two millennia, tell us about our own cultural outlooks?
The Classical Now juxtaposes objects from past and present to address these and other questions: it explores how classical motifs, styles and ideas pervade the modern and contemporary art-worlds, focusing on the period from the 1930s to the present. Featuring over 100 colour images, the book combines thematic essays with interviews by leading contemporary artists (Edward Allington, Leo Caillard, Damien Hirst, Alex Israel, Marc Quinn, Mary Reid Kelley and Rachel Whiteread). The Classical Now accompanies a major exhibition at King’s College London (2 March
–28April2018), and is presented in partnership with MACM (Muséed’ArtClassiquedeMougins).
Modern Classicisms (www.modernclassicisms.com) is a research project that sets out to explore these and other questions by bringing together classicists, art historians, critics and artists. The project commenced in August 2017, and runs until July 2018 in its first phase. Activities include a workshop on 10 November 2017, and a major London exhibition in spring 2018 (set across two spaces in central London: Somerset House and Bush House Arcade). A book also accompanies the exhibition.
the sensory bodies of the living. The essay begins by exploring Greek attitudes towards the dead, before attempting a brief survey of the history and scholarly historiography of Attic funerary memorials. It then homes in on some Classical examples, teasing out a number of recurring tropes. Fundamental to grave- stelai, the essay argues, is the ‘interdimensional’ space of relief, existing between three-dimensional plasticity and two-dimensional surface. As present monuments to the absence of the deceased, Classical stelai frame the dead in an inherently ambiguous realm: the very medium of relief situates the figural subjects in a representational field related to but removed from the bodily dimensions of the living.
KEYWORDS
aesthetics
cento
Constantine
early Christian art
materialist aesthetics
Optatian (Publilius Optatianus Porfyrius/ Optatian Porfyry)
picture-poetry / visual poetry / optical poetics
“POP art”
signs (signa) spolia/spoils/spoliation technopaegnia
word and image
FOR THE FULL ISSUE, PLEASE VISIT:
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/toc/14678365/2018/41/3
While such 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 been instrumental in shaping modern assumptions. On the other hand, modern western ideologies about 'fi gure' and 'ornament' are fundamentally removed from ancient Greek and Roman ideas: classical perspectives can therefore shed light on larger aesthetic debates about what images are – and indeed what they should be.
This anthology of specially commissioned essays explores a variety of case studies, both literary and art historical: it discusses materials from across the ancient Mediterranean, and from Geometric art all the way through to late antiquity; it also tackles questions of 'fi gure' and 'ornament' in a range of media, including painting, free-standing statues, relief sculpture, mosaics and architecture. As well as bringing together different national academic traditions, the book seeks to build a bridge between formalist approaches and broader cultural historical perspectives. Combining theoretical discussion and close analytical interpretations, contributors interrogate shifting ideas of the image in both antiquity and the ensuing western critical tradition.
In bringing together a range of internationally acclaimed critical voices, the volume establishes an important disciplinary bridge between aesthetics and art history. Given the recent resurgence of interest in ‘global’ art history, and calls for more comparative approaches to ‘visual culture’, contributors ask what role Hegel has played within the field – and what role he could play in the future. What can a historical treatment of art ac- complish? How should we explain the ‘need’ for certain artistic forms at different historical junctures? Has art history been ‘Hegelian’ without fully acknowledging it? Indeed, have art historians shirked some of the funda- mental questions that Hegel raised?
Full text downloadable at:
https://arthistoryjournal.org.uk/virtual-issues/classical-art-history/
This anthology—the first-ever edited book on the Laocoon in English —brings together a range of leading critical voices to reassess Lessing’s essay on its 250th anniversary. The volume combines perspectives from multiple disciplines, including classics, intellectual history, aesthetics, comparative literature, and art history. Chapters discuss Lessing’s inter- pretation of ancient art and poetry, the cultural backdrops of the eigh- teenth century, and the validity of his observations in the fields of aesthetics, semiotics, and philosophy. The Laocoon’s attempt to delineate the spatial and temporal `limits’ of `poetry’ and `painting’, the volume demonstrates, is rooted in the critique of Graeco-Roman materials, while also drawing on Enlightenment theories of art, perception, and historical interpretation: by looking back to classical antiquity, Lessing forged a whole new tradition of modern aesthetics.
This is the first edited book dedicated to Optatian’s picture-poems and their various historical contexts. By bringing together different disciplinary perspectives (including ancient history, classical philology, art history, theology, philosophy and media studies), the volume demonstrates how Optatian gave form to the various political, intellectual and cultural currents of his age. At the same time, 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.
Why do classical Greek and Roman objects still stir the modern imagination? How can contemporary art-works shed light on ancient visual traditions? And what might such responses, set against the backdrop of others over the last two millennia, tell us about our own cultural outlooks?
The Classical Now juxtaposes objects from past and present to address these and other questions: it explores how classical motifs, styles and ideas pervade the modern and contemporary art-worlds, focusing on the period from the 1930s to the present. Featuring over 100 colour images, the book combines thematic essays with interviews by leading contemporary artists (Edward Allington, Leo Caillard, Damien Hirst, Alex Israel, Marc Quinn, Mary Reid Kelley and Rachel Whiteread). The Classical Now accompanies a major exhibition at King’s College London (2 March
–28April2018), and is presented in partnership with MACM (Muséed’ArtClassiquedeMougins).
Modern Classicisms (www.modernclassicisms.com) is a research project that sets out to explore these and other questions by bringing together classicists, art historians, critics and artists. The project commenced in August 2017, and runs until July 2018 in its first phase. Activities include a workshop on 10 November 2017, and a major London exhibition in spring 2018 (set across two spaces in central London: Somerset House and Bush House Arcade). A book also accompanies the exhibition.
the sensory bodies of the living. The essay begins by exploring Greek attitudes towards the dead, before attempting a brief survey of the history and scholarly historiography of Attic funerary memorials. It then homes in on some Classical examples, teasing out a number of recurring tropes. Fundamental to grave- stelai, the essay argues, is the ‘interdimensional’ space of relief, existing between three-dimensional plasticity and two-dimensional surface. As present monuments to the absence of the deceased, Classical stelai frame the dead in an inherently ambiguous realm: the very medium of relief situates the figural subjects in a representational field related to but removed from the bodily dimensions of the living.
KEYWORDS
aesthetics
cento
Constantine
early Christian art
materialist aesthetics
Optatian (Publilius Optatianus Porfyrius/ Optatian Porfyry)
picture-poetry / visual poetry / optical poetics
“POP art”
signs (signa) spolia/spoils/spoliation technopaegnia
word and image
http://www.arabeschi.it/readingas-seeing-a-conversation-on-ancient-and-modern-intermedialitiesfromjan/