Before Mimesis. Reflections on the Early Greek Technologies of Looking

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DOI:

https://doi.org/10.26247/aura3.3

Abstract

Material agency has been puzzling archaeologists for almost three decades now. The idea that artifacts, a priori perceived as passive and inert ‘creations’ subject to human volition, have the capacity to interact with their makers, users, or viewers may be seen as a challenge to archaeologists and their inherently humanist discipline. Classical archaeology, and the study of Greek and Roman art in particular, seem to have been avoiding the issue, choosing instead to privilege artistic agency or – in more recent years – a cultural-historical discourse primarily informed through linguistics and sociology. This paper explores the concepts of materiality, agency, and personhood as cultural mediators in order to investigate the ways Greeks interacted with the images they created. Through a number of case studies borrowed from the wider repertoire of early Greek ‘art’ it is argued that artifacts are invariably conceived as animate entities, at least in early Greece; moreover, that technologies of representation in early Greek art (what art historians understand as ‘styles’) are devised and promoted as cultural agents within Greek society.

Author Biography

Dimitris Plantzos, National and Kapodistrian University of Athens

Dimitris Plantzos is a classical archaeologist, educated at Athens and Oxford. He is the author of various papers and books on Greek art and archaeology, archaeological theory and classical reception. His Greek-language textbook on Greek Art and Archaeology, first published in 2011 by Kapon Editions, was published in 2016 in English and is now available by American publishers Lockwood Press in Atlanta, Georgia. He was co-editor of the volume A Singular Antiquity. Archaeology and Hellenic Identity in 20th century Greece (published in Athens in 2008) and the Wiley-Blackwell Companion to Greek Art (published in 2012; paperback edition 2018). His more recent books are: Archaeologies of the Classical, an overview of archaeological method in the post-positivist era, published in Athens by Eikostos Protos (2014); The Recent Future, a study of archaeological biopolitics in contemporary Greece, published in 2016 by Athenian publisher Nefeli; and his study The Art of Painting in Ancient Greece, published by Kapon Editions and Lockwood Press in 2018. He is co-director of the Argos Orestikon Excavation Project and an associate editor for the Journal of Greek Media and Culture; he teaches classical archaeology and reception at the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens.

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Vol. 3 (2020)

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Papers

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