Greek Art and Archaeology

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Could an instructor instead choose a limited number of works of art and organize them into units of study, with topic headings such as ‘Gender and Identity’ and ‘Death and Commemoration’? The course is intercollegiate with options taught at King’s, UCL and Royal Holloway and you can take advantage of our close links to the Institute of Classical Studies, one of the UK’s best Classical libraries. Barringer examines a variety of media, including marble and bronze sculpture, public and domestic architecture, painted vases, coins, mosaics, terracotta figurines, reliefs, jewellery and wall paintings. New insight into the origins of civic honorific portraits that emerged at the end of the fifth century BC in ancient Greece.

Each chapter concludes with a summary of the chapter’s contents and a list of suggestions for further reading.These objects originate from a broad geographical area, falling at one time or another into the Greek sphere. The Greeks are a source of much that we esteem: democracy, philosophy, tragedy, epic and lyric poetry, history-writing, ideals of athletic competition, aesthetic sensibilities, and more. Web icon An illustration of a computer application window Wayback Machine Texts icon An illustration of an open book.

And, in view of the daunting number of works that can be covered in a semester-long course, how does an instructor select and organize the material so that the students are not overwhelmed by all the information presented to them? Although the layout is generally excellent, it might have been possible to place illustrations more closely to the text that discusses them. Beyond being popular in their day, these plays inspired an array of lively paintings and sculpture, and those works represent, in some cases, the only evidence we have of some of the plays from ancient Greece.

You can change your choices at any time by visiting Cookie preferences, as described in the Cookie notice. In choosing a text for a survey of Greek art, an instructor would be hard pressed to find one that offers students more information than is presented in Stansbury-O’Donnell’s volume, but there is a downside to this approach: there are, in fact, too many works discussed in this book and this plethora of monuments may create a distraction for the reader. If this approach had been taken, the thematic material would have been more smoothly integrated into the body of the text and textboxes and separate chapters might have been unnecessary. In just the past few years, however, three new options have appeared, authored by Judith Barringer, Richard Neer, and Mark Stansbury-O’Donnell. Much that has structured the previous treatment—for example, the sequencing of styles in art or the polis-based environment in which works were created and received—give way in the Hellenistic era to far more heterogeneous phenomena.

Our graduates are preferentially sought for appointments in universities throughout Britain and America, while their publications have generated a worldwide response.A number of examples are discussed, including the Benaki and Acropolis Museums, as well as several clusters of antiquities preserved “in situ”, mostly within the urban grid or incorporated in buildings and other structures, such as Athenian metro stations. Therefore, many criteria for organization suggest themselves, but each, whether chronology, function, style, subject matter, region, or some other factor, is at once problematic and constricting. An account of the development of Greek art in the Classical period (about 480-320 BC) which places particular emphasis on the meaning and content of Greek sculpture, architecture and painting.

To comprehend why Greek sculpture looks as it does we have to recreate the conditions of its production and consider those who commissioned, used and viewed it as much as the sculptors whom we traditionally associate with its creation. And, when it comes to the visual arts, they are fascinated by the ways in which works of art relate to lived experience.This module introduces students to the material and visual culture of the ancient world from the second millennium BC to late antiquity. This full-color book presents the astonishing discoveries from this city beneath the city -- bringing the capital of the classical world to life once again. Topics in architecture, painting, ceramics, sculpture and the minor arts examine problems of context, chronology, technology and style. Topics such as gender and sexuality, ethnicity, reception studies, and cultural patrimony, have expanded our view of ancient art and, consequently, influenced ideas about the best approach to teaching a survey course. Richard Neer offers new insights into the role of visual culture in the Greek world, and its intersection with politics, religion and ancient everyday life.