N. Goldschmidt and B. Graziosi (eds.), Tombs of the Poets: Between Text and Material Culture, Oxford, 2018, 21–49. , 2018
This chapter investigates the relationship between materiality and textuality in the Hellenistic ... more This chapter investigates the relationship between materiality and textuality in the Hellenistic period, by focusing on real and imagined tombs of poets. At a time not only of feverish activity when literary texts were being collected, copied, catalogued, canonized, and archived, but also when contemporary poetry was carefully situating itself in relation to an emerging library culture, and, what is more, when texts were being reframed and circulated in the context of anthologies, the tomb as inscribed marker of the poet's literal corpus o ered a rich analogy to the physical objects that sustained his or her surviving corpus of work.
HUMANITIES AND SOCIAL SCIENCES COMMUNICATIONS, 2022
Interdisciplinary scholarship and education remains elusive at modern universities, despite effor... more Interdisciplinary scholarship and education remains elusive at modern universities, despite efforts at both the individual and institutional levels. The objective of this paper is to identify the main motivations that bring different disciplines together in joint research and identify some of the obstacles to that coming together. Here we propose that shared purpose (why do I participate?), practice (how do we interact?), and place (where do we interact?) are, in descending order, the most important drivers for what we call "undisciplinary" research in an interaction of different disciplines. Through unstructured workshops we found the choice of participants (who participates?), aspects of time (when do we interact?), and especially the research topics and focus (what are we working on?), to be less important for individual faculty engagement. Metaphor analysis obtained during a charrette-style workshop with 13 faculty from multiple disciplines suggested "inter-epistemological ways of knowing" rather than fields of study to move us from disciplinary to interdisciplinary to undisciplinary scholarship and education. Specifically, the broad intent (why do we participate?) was found to increase the impact of undisciplinary approaches that served as drivers for engagement. These lessons learned from a series of workshops were put to the test at an experimental center that clarified the importance of both synchronous and asynchronous interactions in a common space large enough to allow these and located outside the university. Despite the valuable insights gained in what undisciplinary interaction may look like in a center, it remained clear that space design must start by mapping out why and how individuals in different disciplines may want to interact at a given institution to generate buy-in and build the foundation for continuous refinement of an institutional strategy.
A Cultural History of Color in Antiquity, ed. D. Wharton, 2020
What color are the gods? How does color shape religious experience? Historians of ancient religio... more What color are the gods? How does color shape religious experience? Historians of ancient religion have not traditionally paid much attention to these questions; nevertheless, I was compelled to address them when choosing cover designs for a book on divine epiphany (Platt 2011). 1 The image I had chosenof the dramatic arrival of the goddess Selene on a Roman sarcophagus-was predictably monochrome, any traces of pigment having long since vanished from the marble. As so often, antiquity was destined to appear in shades of black and white (Manfrini 2009; Stager 2016: 97-8). When the press's first design arrived on my desktop, however, the cover's accent color was the deep orangey-red so familiar to us from Greek vases. For me, this earthbound tone was not the color of epiphany! After consideration, I requested an ethereal lilac-a shade that evoked the shimmering violet of the rainbow (Bradley 2011: 48-50); the divine porphyreos "purple" that featured in so many sacred garments (Grand-Clément 2011: 116-21; 2016); or the rich drapery that frames the body of Persephone in one of antiquity's most striking scenes of epiphany, from a painted Macedonian tomb (Brecoulaki 2006b; see Figure 4.1). My more allusive approach to imagining ancient color conflicted with one that drew more directly upon antiquity's material relics (in the press's case, vases of Attic clay). Conveying my idea to the designers, moreover, required its reduction to a Pantone number-a branded, standardized system of hues based on specific combinations of pigments designed for modern-day printing (Eiseman and Recker 2011). The challenges I encountered in accessing and reproducing the chromatic qualities of ancient visionary experiences illustrate how difficult it is for 9781474273275_txt_print.indd 63 2/9/2021 8:19:11 AM
P. Michelakis (ed.), Media and Classics. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2020: 53–76. , 2020
In his lectures on Optical Media, Friedrich Kittler sought to trace the history of image producti... more In his lectures on Optical Media, Friedrich Kittler sought to trace the history of image production, storage, and transmission through the lens of media technologies, from linear perspective to computer graphics. One of his opening observations is that 'we knew nothing about our own senses until media provided models and metaphors'.¹ To illustrate, he points to Plato's deployment of a wax tablet as a metaphor for 'the immortal and self-storing soul', alluding to the model of memory that Socrates presents in the Theaetetus, whereby sense perceptions are impressed into an ekmageion, or 'imprint receiving device' in the mind (191c-d). The Greek concept of mind (psychê) as a storage device for indexically recorded impressions becomes conceivable, Kittler implies, only through the medium of written philosophy itself. Platonic ontology is made possible by means of the very technology about which he expresses so much ambivalence; in Kittler's words: 'Under the guise of a metaphor that was not just a metaphor [. .. ] the new media technology that gave rise to the soul was eventually seen as the vanishing point of this newly invented soul.' But what was this 'new media technology'? Kittler refers to writing as 'the new medium of Attic democracy', and to 'the new Ionic vowel alphabet', 'the wax slate', and the tabula rasa as the media that brought...
What is the relationship between art history and its objects? Responding to Jaś Elsner’s claim th... more What is the relationship between art history and its objects? Responding to Jaś Elsner’s claim that art-historical writing is inevitably ekphrastic, this essay revisits a site of intense disciplinary anxiety—Johann Joachim Winckelmann’s 1759 description of the Belvedere Torso and its revised version in his 1764 History of Ancient Art. Description has been cast as the “scapegoat” (or pharmakos) of Winckelmann’s art history—that which must be excised yet is fundamental to the operations of the whole. But although it often serves as a site of perceived excess and sublimation in his work, the ekphrastic elements of Winckelmann’s prose are nevertheless some of the most historicist aspects of his scholarship, shaped by a deep engagement with Greco-Roman ekphrastic literature. Description, in this sense, serves as a Platonic pharmakon—both affliction and cure for classical art history’s medial and ontological separation from its ruined and fragmented objects. In Winckelmann’s description of the torso, ekphrasis holds out the potential for the statue’s “completion” (Ergänzung). But understood according to eighteenth-century practices of visual restoration, this raises the question of whether such “whole-making” should be understood as proper or supplemental to the original image. What does it mean to “re-member” the Belvedere Torso through ekphrastic strategies drawn from antiquity itself? And what does this imply for our own textual (and pharmacological) mediations of the visual?
This essay explores recent approaches to the “Roman copy” in both scholarship and the museum. Cha... more This essay explores recent approaches to the “Roman copy” in both scholarship and the museum. Charting a shift from practices of Kopienkritik (which privileged the lost Greek original) to the postmodernist embrace of Roman practices of emulation (which celebrates the creativity of replication), it then looks to the twenty-first century. New archaeological discoveries (many from shipwrecks) as well as more advanced scientific analysis have enhanced our understanding of ancient bronze sculpture, in particular. Recent work not only destabilizes the notion of the singular masterpiece but also examines the production of Greek, as well as Roman, multiples, looking to theoretical concepts such as standardization and remediation. An embrace of the copy has also rehabilitated plaster-casts, now creatively employed in both museum displays and by contemporary artists engaging with the antique. The multiple, it turns out, marks a welcome site where antiquity and modernity can meet.
This essay introduces the theme of the ‘embodied object’. The concept describes artefacts which a... more This essay introduces the theme of the ‘embodied object’. The concept describes artefacts which assume, interact with, substitute for and/or become parts or extensions of human bodies. In doing so, it puts recent work in cognitive archaeology, material culture studies and Actor-Network-Theory into conversation with a longer tradition of phenomenological approaches to art history. To demonstrate how Graeco-Roman artefacts might be understood as ‘embodied’, the authors focus on a fifth-century BCE bronze water-jar with a handle shaped as a female figure. When considered in its original religious context and as a handled container, the vessel’s vitality, agency, and close relationship to the bodies of its users and beholders are made more manifest. Drawing on the essays in this special issue of Art History, the introduction explains how the concept of the ‘embodied object’ applies to classical antiquity in particular, where one can trace the philosophical roots for conceiving of inert things as possessing or interacting with bodies. At the same time, it argues that a concern with questions of embodiment pertains to art- historical research across all cultures and periods.
N. Goldschmidt and B. Graziosi (eds.), Tombs of the Poets: Between Text and Material Culture, Oxford, 2018, 21–49. , 2018
This chapter investigates the relationship between materiality and textuality in the Hellenistic ... more This chapter investigates the relationship between materiality and textuality in the Hellenistic period, by focusing on real and imagined tombs of poets. At a time not only of feverish activity when literary texts were being collected, copied, catalogued, canonized, and archived, but also when contemporary poetry was carefully situating itself in relation to an emerging library culture, and, what is more, when texts were being reframed and circulated in the context of anthologies, the tomb as inscribed marker of the poet's literal corpus o ered a rich analogy to the physical objects that sustained his or her surviving corpus of work.
HUMANITIES AND SOCIAL SCIENCES COMMUNICATIONS, 2022
Interdisciplinary scholarship and education remains elusive at modern universities, despite effor... more Interdisciplinary scholarship and education remains elusive at modern universities, despite efforts at both the individual and institutional levels. The objective of this paper is to identify the main motivations that bring different disciplines together in joint research and identify some of the obstacles to that coming together. Here we propose that shared purpose (why do I participate?), practice (how do we interact?), and place (where do we interact?) are, in descending order, the most important drivers for what we call "undisciplinary" research in an interaction of different disciplines. Through unstructured workshops we found the choice of participants (who participates?), aspects of time (when do we interact?), and especially the research topics and focus (what are we working on?), to be less important for individual faculty engagement. Metaphor analysis obtained during a charrette-style workshop with 13 faculty from multiple disciplines suggested "inter-epistemological ways of knowing" rather than fields of study to move us from disciplinary to interdisciplinary to undisciplinary scholarship and education. Specifically, the broad intent (why do we participate?) was found to increase the impact of undisciplinary approaches that served as drivers for engagement. These lessons learned from a series of workshops were put to the test at an experimental center that clarified the importance of both synchronous and asynchronous interactions in a common space large enough to allow these and located outside the university. Despite the valuable insights gained in what undisciplinary interaction may look like in a center, it remained clear that space design must start by mapping out why and how individuals in different disciplines may want to interact at a given institution to generate buy-in and build the foundation for continuous refinement of an institutional strategy.
A Cultural History of Color in Antiquity, ed. D. Wharton, 2020
What color are the gods? How does color shape religious experience? Historians of ancient religio... more What color are the gods? How does color shape religious experience? Historians of ancient religion have not traditionally paid much attention to these questions; nevertheless, I was compelled to address them when choosing cover designs for a book on divine epiphany (Platt 2011). 1 The image I had chosenof the dramatic arrival of the goddess Selene on a Roman sarcophagus-was predictably monochrome, any traces of pigment having long since vanished from the marble. As so often, antiquity was destined to appear in shades of black and white (Manfrini 2009; Stager 2016: 97-8). When the press's first design arrived on my desktop, however, the cover's accent color was the deep orangey-red so familiar to us from Greek vases. For me, this earthbound tone was not the color of epiphany! After consideration, I requested an ethereal lilac-a shade that evoked the shimmering violet of the rainbow (Bradley 2011: 48-50); the divine porphyreos "purple" that featured in so many sacred garments (Grand-Clément 2011: 116-21; 2016); or the rich drapery that frames the body of Persephone in one of antiquity's most striking scenes of epiphany, from a painted Macedonian tomb (Brecoulaki 2006b; see Figure 4.1). My more allusive approach to imagining ancient color conflicted with one that drew more directly upon antiquity's material relics (in the press's case, vases of Attic clay). Conveying my idea to the designers, moreover, required its reduction to a Pantone number-a branded, standardized system of hues based on specific combinations of pigments designed for modern-day printing (Eiseman and Recker 2011). The challenges I encountered in accessing and reproducing the chromatic qualities of ancient visionary experiences illustrate how difficult it is for 9781474273275_txt_print.indd 63 2/9/2021 8:19:11 AM
P. Michelakis (ed.), Media and Classics. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2020: 53–76. , 2020
In his lectures on Optical Media, Friedrich Kittler sought to trace the history of image producti... more In his lectures on Optical Media, Friedrich Kittler sought to trace the history of image production, storage, and transmission through the lens of media technologies, from linear perspective to computer graphics. One of his opening observations is that 'we knew nothing about our own senses until media provided models and metaphors'.¹ To illustrate, he points to Plato's deployment of a wax tablet as a metaphor for 'the immortal and self-storing soul', alluding to the model of memory that Socrates presents in the Theaetetus, whereby sense perceptions are impressed into an ekmageion, or 'imprint receiving device' in the mind (191c-d). The Greek concept of mind (psychê) as a storage device for indexically recorded impressions becomes conceivable, Kittler implies, only through the medium of written philosophy itself. Platonic ontology is made possible by means of the very technology about which he expresses so much ambivalence; in Kittler's words: 'Under the guise of a metaphor that was not just a metaphor [. .. ] the new media technology that gave rise to the soul was eventually seen as the vanishing point of this newly invented soul.' But what was this 'new media technology'? Kittler refers to writing as 'the new medium of Attic democracy', and to 'the new Ionic vowel alphabet', 'the wax slate', and the tabula rasa as the media that brought...
What is the relationship between art history and its objects? Responding to Jaś Elsner’s claim th... more What is the relationship between art history and its objects? Responding to Jaś Elsner’s claim that art-historical writing is inevitably ekphrastic, this essay revisits a site of intense disciplinary anxiety—Johann Joachim Winckelmann’s 1759 description of the Belvedere Torso and its revised version in his 1764 History of Ancient Art. Description has been cast as the “scapegoat” (or pharmakos) of Winckelmann’s art history—that which must be excised yet is fundamental to the operations of the whole. But although it often serves as a site of perceived excess and sublimation in his work, the ekphrastic elements of Winckelmann’s prose are nevertheless some of the most historicist aspects of his scholarship, shaped by a deep engagement with Greco-Roman ekphrastic literature. Description, in this sense, serves as a Platonic pharmakon—both affliction and cure for classical art history’s medial and ontological separation from its ruined and fragmented objects. In Winckelmann’s description of the torso, ekphrasis holds out the potential for the statue’s “completion” (Ergänzung). But understood according to eighteenth-century practices of visual restoration, this raises the question of whether such “whole-making” should be understood as proper or supplemental to the original image. What does it mean to “re-member” the Belvedere Torso through ekphrastic strategies drawn from antiquity itself? And what does this imply for our own textual (and pharmacological) mediations of the visual?
This essay explores recent approaches to the “Roman copy” in both scholarship and the museum. Cha... more This essay explores recent approaches to the “Roman copy” in both scholarship and the museum. Charting a shift from practices of Kopienkritik (which privileged the lost Greek original) to the postmodernist embrace of Roman practices of emulation (which celebrates the creativity of replication), it then looks to the twenty-first century. New archaeological discoveries (many from shipwrecks) as well as more advanced scientific analysis have enhanced our understanding of ancient bronze sculpture, in particular. Recent work not only destabilizes the notion of the singular masterpiece but also examines the production of Greek, as well as Roman, multiples, looking to theoretical concepts such as standardization and remediation. An embrace of the copy has also rehabilitated plaster-casts, now creatively employed in both museum displays and by contemporary artists engaging with the antique. The multiple, it turns out, marks a welcome site where antiquity and modernity can meet.
This essay introduces the theme of the ‘embodied object’. The concept describes artefacts which a... more This essay introduces the theme of the ‘embodied object’. The concept describes artefacts which assume, interact with, substitute for and/or become parts or extensions of human bodies. In doing so, it puts recent work in cognitive archaeology, material culture studies and Actor-Network-Theory into conversation with a longer tradition of phenomenological approaches to art history. To demonstrate how Graeco-Roman artefacts might be understood as ‘embodied’, the authors focus on a fifth-century BCE bronze water-jar with a handle shaped as a female figure. When considered in its original religious context and as a handled container, the vessel’s vitality, agency, and close relationship to the bodies of its users and beholders are made more manifest. Drawing on the essays in this special issue of Art History, the introduction explains how the concept of the ‘embodied object’ applies to classical antiquity in particular, where one can trace the philosophical roots for conceiving of inert things as possessing or interacting with bodies. At the same time, it argues that a concern with questions of embodiment pertains to art- historical research across all cultures and periods.
The frames of classical art are often seen as marginal to the images that they surround. Traditio... more 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 classi- cal 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 sup- port, delimit, shape and even interrogate the images contained within.
This introduction to 'The Frame in Greek and Roman Art: A Cultural History' forms the single cha... more This introduction to 'The Frame in Greek and Roman Art: A Cultural History' forms the single chapter within the book’s opening ‘Framing the frame’ section. The chapter explains why the topic of framing proves so germane for approaching ancient image-making on the one hand, and how it can help scholars rebuild intellectual bridges between the historical study of classical image-making and the transhistorical study of art history on the other. The first section begins by asking ‘what do frames do?’: it tackles that question thematically, exploring ‘the frames of taxonomy’, ‘delineating the visual field’, ‘categorising space’, ‘ideologies of signification’, ‘“ill-detachable detachments”’, ‘the self-aware frame’ and ‘framing contexts’. In approaching each theme, a variety of case studies are introduced – including (inter alia) Greek vase-painting, free-standing sculpture, sculptural reliefs, Pompeian and Roman wall-painting, architecture and mosaics. A particular emphasis is placed on the relationship between ancient materials and Immanuel Kant’s discussion of the ergon/ parergon (as well as Jacques Derrida’s celebrated response in La vérité en peinture). The second section of the chapter then explains the rationale of the larger book: its structure into four remaining sections (‘Framing pictorial space’; ‘Framing bodies’; ‘Framing the sacred’; ‘Framing texts’); and the interconnecting arguments of the ensuing chapters by Clemente Marconi, Guy Hedreen, Michael Squire, Nikolaus Dietrich, Jennifer Trimble, Verity Platt, Mitlette Gaifman, Robin Osborne, Jaś Elsner, Courtney Roby, Sean Leatherbury and Rebecca Zorach.
This special issue of Art History explores both the objects of classical art and the cultural com... more This special issue of Art History explores both the objects of classical art and the cultural complexities of responding to them in the ancient Greek and Roman worlds. The concept of the ’embodied object’ is used to describe artefacts which interact with, extend, substitute or incorporate human bodies. Eight specially commissioned essays explore a range of different Greek and Roman objects, in different media. At the same time, contributions bring recent work in cognitive archaeology, material culture studies and Actor-Network-Theory into conversation with phenomenological approaches to art history. Bringing together leading voices in the field, this special issue demonstrates how much a theoretically engaged and historically grounded classical art history has to offer to art historians and classicists alike. FOR THE FULL ISSUE, PLEASE VISIT: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/toc/14678365/2018/41/3
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of the ‘embodied object’ applies to classical antiquity in particular, where one can trace the philosophical roots for conceiving of inert things as possessing or interacting with bodies. At the same time, it argues that a concern with questions of embodiment pertains to art- historical research across all cultures and periods.
of the ‘embodied object’ applies to classical antiquity in particular, where one can trace the philosophical roots for conceiving of inert things as possessing or interacting with bodies. At the same time, it argues that a concern with questions of embodiment pertains to art- historical research across all cultures and periods.
FOR THE FULL ISSUE, PLEASE VISIT:
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/toc/14678365/2018/41/3