Mantiklos Apollo

On my next trip to Boston I plan to allow myself enough time to visit the Museum of Fine Arts and pay my respects to this interesting small statue, dated to about 700 - 675 BCE. It is a votive offering with an inscription along the thigh that reads as an early example of written hexameter. In translation:

"Mantiklos donated me as a tithe to the far shooter, the bearer of the Silver Bow. You, Phoebus (Apollo) give something pleasing in return."

As I understand it, then, the craft devoted to the work, and whatever expense entailed in its creation, is all done for the sake both of the god himself, and of the donor-Mantiklos-who explicitly asks that his gift to the god be received with favor and that it provoke a kindness in return. There is something not only religious about this notion, but also aesthetic, as if the creation of beauty and its gift to the world involves, for the sake of balance or reciprocity, a call for recompense. Art is a gift that, like all good gifts, moves. This is the thesis of that wonderful book by Lewis Hyde, The Gift, Imagination and the Erotic Life of Property.

Whatever we have been given is supposed to be given away again, not kept. Or, if it is kept, something of similar value should move on in its stead, the way a billiard ball may stop when it sends another scurrying across the felt, its momentum transferred... The only essential is this: the gift must always move...

The Mantiklos figurine is an early example of what would become the kouros and, from thence, the heroic nude. He presents himself, as a kind of diminutive exaggeration; significant parts of him are boldly accentuated, almost like a male fantasy, or, fantasy-male. He is buff, with bulging thighs, prominent shoulders, and a striking chest. Geometry still predominates, but the artist has become interested in sculptural effects.

Notice that stare. The eyes would have been inlaid, so that gaze would have been even more distant and penetrating. Presumably, this is the same convention that dates back thousands of years and indicates a votive piece designed to look out to the gods. The later kouroi figures will also look out in this abstract, slightly disquieting way, as if we who are looking at it don't matter much, perhaps because whatever he is looking at matters a great deal more.

Man and Centaur

This Lakonian group-one is tempted to call it laconic-from the middle of the 8th century BCE-around when Homer might have been at work-famously summons and defies interpretation. Clearly, a centaur and a human figure face each other. Is the human figure a mortal or an immortal? Probably, he represents a hero, though which hero--the young Achilles nurtured by Chiron, perhaps, which is my favorite, or the fighting Herakles getting in Nessos' face? The latter seems to be more probable, the man would have held a sword in his right hand, but further identification is merely speculative.

If the pottery wasn't sufficient to call this art geometric--and it is--this piece is can be called geometric par excellence. It is essentially an articulation of lines, horizontal and vertical, in a pleasing pattern. They look very much like the linear and triangular figures from geometric vases expressed in three dimensions.

You get the feeling from this piece--I get the feeling from this piece, at least--that the artist's hands were used to working on horses, and were trying out human forms with something of a more tentative approach. The lower half of the group, from both waists on down, bulges with curvy energy and poised expressiveness. The upper half, where the two engage, is less dexterous.

I was surprised not to find this piece in the splendid Art and Myth in Ancient Greece by T. H. Carpenter. He says,

Geometric refers to the period from about 900 to 700 BC when Greek art began to be revitalized after the stagnation of the 'dark ages' that followed the destruction of the Mycenaean world. The art of this period, mostly painted vases and small bronzes, is characterized by the use of geometric forms of decoration (as opposed to free forms). Stylized human figures in narrative scenes appear on vases by about 750 BC, but scenes from myth do not occur before the end of the century. (p. 8)

However, I feel certain that this piece does describe a scene from a myth, and that it probably dates to before the end of the 8th century. This, then, is no doubt one of the earliest depictions of myth we have. We do not know which myth is depicted, but it must be mythical.

Aristothonos

Aristothonos was one of the first Greek potters to put his name on his work. This must be one of the earliest signed pieces of art in the world, dating to around 680 BCE.

The men are drawn in silhouettes with outlined faces. Their geometric arrangement successfully integrates with the other patterns around the bowl, introducing lively, diagonal rhythms. Their butts seems especially well developed...from all that rowing?

Does the checkerboard pattern below suggest gaming? Do the arrows and sharply pointed triangles below them suggest violence?

[371] As he spoke he reeled, and fell sprawling face upwards on the ground. His great neck hung heavily backwards and a deep sleep took hold upon him. Presently he turned sick, and threw up both wine and the gobbets of human flesh on which he had been gorging, for he was very drunk. Then I thrust the beam of wood far into the embers to heat it, and encouraged my men lest any of them should turn faint-hearted. When the wood, green though it was, was about to blaze, I drew it out of the fire glowing with heat, and my men gathered round me, for a daimôn had filled their hearts with courage. We drove the sharp end of the beam into the monster’s eye, and bearing upon it with all my weight I kept turning it round and round as though I were boring a hole in a ship’s plank with an auger, which two men with a wheel and strap can keep on turning as long as they choose. Even thus did we bore the red hot beam into his eye, till the boiling blood bubbled all over it as we worked it round and round, so that the steam from the burning eyeball scalded his eyelids and eyebrows, and the roots of the eye sputtered in the fire. As a blacksmith plunges an axe or hatchet into cold water to temper it - for it is this that gives strength to the iron - and it makes a great hiss as he does so, even thus did the Cyclops’ eye hiss round the beam of olive wood, and his hideous yells made the cave ring again. We ran away in a fright, but he plucked the beam all besmirched with gore from his eye, and hurled it from him in a frenzy of rage and pain, shouting as he did so to the other Cyclopes who lived on the bleak headlands near him; so they gathered from all quarters round his cave when they heard him crying, and asked what was the matter with him.

[403] "‘What ails you, Polyphemus,’ said they, ‘that you make such a noise, breaking the stillness of the night, and preventing us from being able to sleep? Surely no man is carrying off your sheep? Surely no man is trying to kill you either by fraud or by force [biê]?

[407] "But Polyphemus shouted to them from inside the cave, ‘Noman is killing me by fraud! Noman is killing me by force [biê]!’

[409] "‘Then,’ said they, ‘if no man is attacking you, you must be ill; when Zeus makes people ill, there is no help for it, and you had better pray to your father Poseidon.’ (Tr. Samuel Butler, rev. by Timothy Power and Gregory Nagy)

The Prothesis

These prothesis scenes decorate and animate the central panels of the huge Dipylon vases from the middle of the 8th century BCE. They portray the laying out of the hero's dead body, with suitable mourners raising their arms, and family gathered around. The sense of geometrical pattern is overwhelming, and, I think, accords nicely with the theme of death, which has an abstract and abstracting nature of its own.
These are among the first figural representations in Greek art for several hundred years. Highly geometric themselves - these figures seem to emerge naturally out of their geometric background - they are constructed of triangle shapes, a form which will continue to emerge in Greek figural art from early freestanding sculpture through the kouroi figures.

Here is Richard Brilliant:

The individual figures have been drawn flatly, with anatomical details reduced to the barest geometric and significant essentials: the heavy legs indented at the knees are shown from the hips down in profile; the torso is defined as an inverted triangle seen from the front; the gesticulating arms are sticks that extend the triangular shape of the torso; and the head becomes a round blob placed on a skinny neck and characterized by a carrot like nose. Emphasis is placed on the most salient shapes of the human body, whose repetition develops a pattern akin to the geometric bands that frame the panel on all sides. But unlike the two bands of animals drawn on the neck of the Dipylon vase, whose circular movement like the abstract motifs enhances its cylindrical shape, the prothesis panel is self-contained and static, a truly pictorial, if limited, composition, which develops a dignified, heroic atmosphere and represents human action, however categorically expressed. The subject matter of the panel is monumental, and so is the pot itself, which offers dramatic testimony to the extraordinary skill of the eighth-century Athenian potter. (Brilliant, Arts of the Ancient Greeks, 1973, 21-2).

These paintings make for an interesting task of deciphering. Presumably, the figures which appear to be seated below the bier are intended to be in front of it. Also, the checkerboard pattern above the corpse represents the shroud; the shroud needs to be shown, but so does the body, so... Especially effective, it seems to me, is the variety of visual rhythms across the panel, so different from those in the amphorae at large.

Dipylon Vase

Designers of these pots would feel them with their hands, measure them carefully at every elevation, caress their spacious curves with abstract ornamentation in meanders and keys so that the circular space acquires a kind of perpetual motion we perceive as our eyes travel up and down the keyhole shape and around and around each separate band.
The pots themselves, made about the same time Homer was making his epics, are gigantic, but their decorative elements are quite small, setting up elaborate rhythms in both horizontal and vertical dimensions over the entire surface. Patterns of light and dark express the shape of the vessel in subtle articulations, and their determined geometry of horizontals and verticals sets up a splendid contrast with the curvilinear contours of the body.
Here are the parts, which you can find for yourself:

Offset lip

Cylindrical neck

Sweeping shoulder

Broad belly

Tapering foot

You will have noticed that each of these parts is named for a part of the body. The vase is around 5 feet tall or so, and can be compared to freestanding sculpture.

Through this vessel - many believe, on account of the holes broken into their base- oils and libations would flow, eventually to the body beneath. That is, they are funeral markers, not tombs; bodies were not stored within. Instead, if this interpretation is correct, the vase acts as a kind of conduit between our world of the living and the world of the dead. Other scholars believe that the holes found in the bottom of vases like these were simply used to keep the grave markers from toppling down. I prefer the notion of mourners pouring libations through the vessel to their lost loved one, maintaining some sort of reassurance.

horses geometric

The horses from the Bloomington kylix and the Vix crater have ancestors in the geometric horses found on those huge pottery sculptures (they are vases, but they are also sculptures) found in the cemetery of Dipylon in Athens. Most of their features are purely geometric, encircling the rounded forms of the amphora at every level, but in the middle, where the artist places the scene describing the laying out (prothesis) of the hero's dead body, the associated mourners and the processions, there are some fine prancing horses proudly displaying their powerful geometries. This would date to around the middle of the 8th century, to probably around the time Homer thrived, or the epics were written down.
When we look at these pieces, we ought to keep in mind how carefully the artist had to plan out each band so that it would meet itself in the round, coming or going, at precisely the right spot.

The geometric horse

Indiana University, my alma mater, if the term may be used for graduate school, has a wonderful black-figure kylix with horses, and lots and lots of people. The horses grab your attention, though, since they are presented in groups, somewhat as they are in relief here on frieze of the vix krater. The kylix can be viewed better on site than here, so go here for the picture.

As you see from the giant krater, which is the glory of the little museum in Chatillon-sur-Seine, the horses are shown in front of and behind each other, so that the visual rhythm of their legs helps them get a move on. This is dated to around 530 BCE (the Bloomington kylix is also from around then, or a bit earlier). Just look at these horses, how admirable they are! The artist has taken special care with their manes, which look as if they have been braided, though it it doubtless the archaic vision of geometry which determines their form. Speaking of form, the lead horse is stretched out somewhat, permitting the artist to exaggerate or distort reality a bit for the sake of clarity and elegance. It is not a distortion, I hear it say: it's art.

Geometric horses

Here are some small, bronze horses from, probably, the 8^th century B.C.E. Actual horses were a Very Big Deal to the communities from which these pieces come, and it seems likely that their representation here is meant to capture or convey something about the extraordinary power and value of horses. That power is likely—I don’t know—to derive from a combination of the natural beauty and desirability of actual horses. To possess a horse was to possess status and, one assumes, power. The aesthetic sense here, however, is conveyed by means of abstraction and bare essentials.They look like horses--they are horses--yet they are hardly realistic. They are more about "horsiness" in a Platonic sense than about any particular horse. They are small--hand-size--and probably served as votive offerings

Look at them. Their thighs are immense, their withers robust, their tails elegantly yet absurdly long, their heads held in a characteristic quizzical manner conveying interest and personality, and their parts are fitted together with the most delicate articulation. They have no bodies to speak of. Yet I am sure they were the occasion of much reverent speech by their proud owners and dedicators. The gods, we can only assume, would have been grateful.

Thetis

Down in the water his mother heard him,
Sitting in the sea-depths, beside her old father,
And she began to wail. (Iliad, 18, Lombardo)

Just as Helen, at every appearance she has, finds a way to talk about herself, Thetis is always mourning the eventual death of her son. She has long since left her mortal husband, and soon will lose her mortal son. But Thetis is best known in art, probably, in representations of her wedding to Peleus, that wonderful feast disrupted by Eris with her golden apple. Since her son is destined to be stronger than his father, Zeus has taken precautions by giving her a mortal husband, the fine, upstanding Peleus. It probably wasn't much of a marriage--he wins her by holding on as she shape shifts aggressively before finally giving in. I like to speculate about their marriage, but not here...

The image above is from the so-called Francois Vase, a volute krater by Kleitias, from around 370 BCE, which depicts the wedding procession at hand. It is characteristic that the Greeks would foreground the splendid physical qualities of their horses. Both horses and chariots were beastly expensive and difficult to maintain, but they were also both useful and attractive. The deliberate and forceful equine rhythms here are most pleasing to the eye.

Students?

I should probably have a purpose to this blog, yet I am not sure I can say what it is at the moment. I was going to write about the somewhat odd notion, I think, that I don't care if anyone responds to this blog or not in the comments section. I like to hear from people about things, but that is not why I am doing this. In fact, I am doing it for myself and, I hope, for my students. This blog allows me to speculate about some of the stuff I have taught, or might teach, or am teaching at the moment, share it with students and anyone else who is interested, without getting too invested in procedure.

For example, I'm moving in most of my humanities classes into the final section, on art. I tend to leave things quite open by this point in the course, so I can switch gears if need be, but I will stick to the original plan and go for Greek and Roman art mostly, at least here in the blog.

The plate above is one of my favorites, and Thetis is one of my favorite gods. In the Iliad she is always grieving, but here she is dancing with the fishes, and what wonderful fishes they are! The combination of dance, maritime life, and geometry seems characteristically Greek.