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The Matter of Classical Art History The Matter of Classical Art History Verity Platt Abstract: Though foundational to the study of art history, Greco-Roman visual culture is often sidelined by the modern, and overshadowed by its own cultural and intellectual reception. Recent scholarship, how- ever, has meticulously unpacked the discipline’s formative narratives, while building on archaeological Downloaded from http://direct.mit.edu/daed/article-pdf/145/2/69/1830906/daed_a_00377.pdf by guest on 02 October 2021 and literary studies in order to locate its objects of analysis more precisely within the dynamic cultural frameworks that produced them, and that were in turn shaped by them. Focusing on a passage from Pliny the Elder’s Natural History (arguably the urtext of classical art history), this paper explores the perennial question of how the material stuff of antiquity can be most effectively yoked to the thinking and sensing bodies that inhabited it, arguing that closer attention to ancient engagements with materialism can alert us to models of image-making and viewing that are both conceptually and physically grounded in Greco- Roman practices of production, sense perception, and interpretation. One day in the 1940s, the classicist Eric Dodds was viewing the Parthenon sculptures in the British Mu- seum when a young man admitted to him, “I know it’s an awful thing to confess, but this Greek stuff doesn’t move me one bit! It’s all so terribly ratio- nal!” For Dodds, it was unsurprising to find this at- titude among young people “trained on African and Aztec art, and on the work of such men as Modigli- VERITY PLATT is Associate Pro- ani and Henry Moore.” The encounter prompted his fessor in the Departments of Clas- disciplinary intervention The Greeks and the Irrational, sics and History of Art at Cornell which opened shadowy byways–such as divine pos- University. She is the author of Fac- ing the Gods: Epiphany and Represen- session, dream-visions, and magic–to a generation tation in Graeco-Roman Art, Literature seeking a less “rational” antiquity than that illumi- and Religion (2011) and the forth- nated by the cold light of Hellas.1 For all their ram- coming Beyond Ekphrasis: Making paging centaurs, swirling drapery, and heaving di- Objects Matter in Classical Antiquity. vinities, the Parthenon sculptures themselves would She also edited The Frame in Greek not feature in this rediscovery of Greek primitivism, and Roman Art: A Cultural History but remained suspended in the “noble simplicity (with Michael Squire, forthcom- and quiet grandeur” that Johann Joachim Winckel- ing with Cambridge University 2 Press) and has published articles mann first identified in the art of antiquity in 1755. It in Arethusa, RES: Anthropology and would take several decades before the Parthenon, too, Aesthetics, and Art History. found its narrative of irrationality, in Joan Connel- © 2016 by the American Academy of Arts & Sciences doi:10.1162/DAED_a_00377 69 The Matter ly’s controversial suggestion that the cen- is an enduring theme of Greco-Roman lit- of Classical tral scene of its famed frieze depicts not a erature, and is fundamental to the visual Art History joyful civic ritual in honor of the goddess rhetoric of Greek naturalism. As the myths Athena, but a dark origin myth of human of Pygmalion and Narcissus remind us, it sacrifice.3 is at its most recognizably human that the Greek miracle? Tragic drama? Imperial classical provokes its most irrational re- loot? (Inter)national treasure? The Par- sponses. The urge to animate Greco-Roman thenon sculptures continue to provoke an- art also infuses those moments when its xious, conflicting responses, none more so beholders are most keen to reject its influ- than in their current role as poster child for ence; for instance, Constantine’s biogra- the ongoing debate over repatriation and pher Eusebius, when describing the emper- Downloaded from http://direct.mit.edu/daed/article-pdf/145/2/69/1830906/daed_a_00377.pdf by guest on 02 October 2021 the role of the “world museum.” As aes- or’s rejection of pagan idols in the early thetic, political, and ethical touchstones fourth century, recounted how the statues (in all their marble monumentality), they of the gods were marched through the are invested with a status and identity that streets of Constantinople, like prisoners in tell us far more about contemporary con- a Roman triumph. At Cornell, where I teach cerns over artistic value and cultural own- classics and history of art, much of the ership than the original significance of university’s extensive assemblage of plas- the building they adorned. Classicists of- ter casts was–like many such collections ten point out, in amused frustration, that across Europe and North America–uncer- Pausanias–the travel writer from the sec- emoniously dumped and destroyed in the ond-century ad and our most trusty an- 1970s and 1980s. Amidst the dismembered cient source on the Athenian Acropolis– bodies now strewn through Cornell’s stor- fails to mention the Parthenon’s frieze at age warehouse, the cast of a metope from all. How could a monument that has caused the Olympian Temple of Zeus, depicting such controversy during its Nachleben have Heracles wrestling the Cretan Bull, looms occupied such a blind spot in antiquity? out of the darkness, daubed with the graf- It is an enduring source of frustration that fitoI’M ART (see Figure 1). In such encoun- material objects, with all their physical im- ters, the constraints of classicism–pushed mediacy, hold out the tantalizing prospect to the breaking point by the ersatz replica- of direct contact with our predecessors, tion of its best-known incarnations–are yet do so in silence. Each new generation violently rejected at the very moment that might attempt to give these artifacts voice, its invitation to imaginative projection is but determining how they should speak, most enthusiastically embraced. Mean- and what they should say, entails a per- while, Heracles labors under the weight of petual process of imaginative projection a concept (ART) that one might argue he and creative reinvention. Amidst the ca- was never meant to bear.4 cophony that clamors around the classical, Winckelmann’s sirenic voice has led many Classical art history is thus faced with a a viewer astray on the alluring fragments dilemma. Sidelined by a discipline that has of the antique. Meanwhile, the stones focused its attentions on the modern, the themselves remain stubbornly silent. contemporary, and, increasingly, the non- Nevertheless, it is difficult to suppress Western, it still staggers under the weight of the voice telling us that classical artists de- its subject’s complex reception over time, veloped a powerful set of strategies for rep- haunted by that “dread white army of Greek resenting bodies as if they might speak: the and Roman statuary, risen from the ground idea of the breathing, talking, living object in the sixteenth century and then endless- 70 Dædalus, the Journal of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences Figure 1 Verity Cast of a Metope Depicting Heracles and the Cretan Bull, from the Temple of Zeus, Olympia Platt Downloaded from http://direct.mit.edu/daed/article-pdf/145/2/69/1830906/daed_a_00377.pdf by guest on 02 October 2021 Dates from late nineteenth century, with graffito dating to the 1960s or 1970s (original dates circa 460bce ). Source: Cornell University Cast Collection; photo by Lindsay France, Cornell University Photography. ly cloned and imitated.”5 This reception embraced the challenge of a profound en- history has shaped the very origins of the gagement with historiography, exploring discipline in which the classical now strug- the cultural and intellectual climates that gles to find its footing: in the history of art, shaped the discipline’s founding narra- antiquity is at once the grande dame and tives.6 At the same time, they have devel- the awkward guest. oped sophisticated approaches to the dy- In recent years, scholars have handled namic and shifting ways in which Greco- antiquity’s cumbersome role with mount- Roman art has been–and continues to be ing confidence. On the one hand, they have –desired and destroyed, restored and ma- 145 (2) Spring 2016 71 The Matter nipulated, collected and displayed.7 This ative adaptation.10 In the new millennium, of Classical means, for example, acknowledging the this attitude is even being extended to Art History Parthenon’s palimpsestic role not only as nineteenth-century plaster casts, which Athenian temple, ideological symbol, and are slowly limping out of the warehouse as Greek national monument, but also as Byz- genuine “antiques” to be rediscovered by antine church, Ottoman mosque, and Ve- a digital generation entranced by analog netian weapons depot.8 forms of reproduction and less troubled by On the other hand, this enhanced aware- the notion of the “original.” ness of the diverse voices that have shaped our reception of the antique makes it more If we are to historicize notions of the An- possible to listen to the silence of the ob- tique, understanding them as inherited and Downloaded from http://direct.mit.edu/daed/article-pdf/145/2/69/1830906/daed_a_00377.pdf by guest on 02 October 2021 jects themselves: to push to one side the continually shifting receptions of the ma- anachronisms of Renaissance, Enlighten- terial past, what about the ancients, who, ment, or modernist concepts of the clas- by means of the written word, still speak to sical, and to estrange ourselves from our us across the centuries? Classical art his- old friends as we attempt to relocate them tory has always struggled to define its rela- more precisely within the cultures they tionship to the discipline of classics, the originally inhabited. In particular, this latter traditionally dominated by the tex- means letting go of familiar narratives, tual preoccupations of classical philology.
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