Classical art and the cultures of Greece and Rome

An inquiry into the foundations of European culture. The account ranges from the Greek Dark Ages to the Christianisation of Rome, revealing how the experience of a constantly changing physical environment influenced the inhabitants of Ancient Greece and Rome.

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Two brief chapters begin and end this engaging study of classical art: "The Culture of the Greek Workshop" establishes Onians's premise that geography and geology, the physical environment of the ancient Greeks and Romans, strongly influenced their cultures; "The Culture of the Christian Church" attributes the collapse of the classical world not only to barbarian incursions but more importantly, to the downplaying of materiality and physical presence marking the two earlier cultures. The precision and specificity with which Onians (Univ. of East Anglia and Sterling Francine Clark Art Institute) buttresses his arguments makes this an extremely useful and insightful study. Most of the book considers Greek art as developing from the "culture of conflict" and the "culture of competition," with transitional Hellenistic art discussed as the "culture of character" leading to Roman art, examined as the "culture of memory" and the "culture of imagination." He contrasts the Greeks' power of reason acceding to nature with the Romans' transformation of nature to their own ideals. Onians successfully creates the specific context in which artists worked by constant reference to contemporary writers, studies of patronage, theories of vision and psychology, and new technologies, while tracing art and culture from geometric times to the early Christian era. List of 227 black-and-white illustrations. Highly recommended for its exceptionally clear and revealing writing. Undergraduates through faculty. D. K. Haworth; Carleton College

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Traditionally, art historians have been concerned with the anthropological aspects of ancient art. Onians (director, World Art Research Programme, Univ. of East Anglia) takes a rather different approach. He theorizes that classical art was "the natural product of the nurturing influence of a limited set of environmental factors on a living organism" and uses a biological or ecological point of view to identify "the most characteristic forms [of Greek and Roman art] and the environments in which these developed." Were the Greeks successful because they settled in a harsh land that required stone and metal tools to survive? Was that the reason they represented themselves in marble and bronze statues? It is an interesting argument, and a worthwhile one. Unfortunately, Onians suffers from page-long-paragraph syndrome. Illustrations are appropriate and well placed, and this helps somewhat, but only the hardiest of scholars will actually read the book through. Recommended for large academic collections.ÄMary Morgan Smith, Northland P.L., Pittsburgh (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

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Acknowledgements	p. ix
Preface	p. xi
1 The Culture of the Greek Workshop	p. 1
Man as Raw Material	p. 1
The Body and Its Tools	p. 6
Military and Civil Crafts	p. 8
2 Greek Art and the Culture of Conflict	p. 9
The General as Craftsman and the Soldier as Artefact	p. 9
The Necessity of the Phalanx	p. 14
The Iliad: Women at Home, Men at War	p. 18
War and Art: The 'Military' Style of Pottery	p. 21
War and Art: Phalanx and Temple	p. 26
War and Philosophy: Kosmos and Harmonia	p. 30
War and Philosophy: The First 'Mathematicians'	p. 35
War, Mathematics and Art: The 'Square' Man	p. 36
Mathematical Art versus the Mathematical Army	p. 41
Plato and the Mathematical Guards	p. 47
The Power of Women and the Aesthetics of Peace	p. 51
3 Greek Art and the Culture of Competition	p. 57
Work and Competition	p. 57
Competition, Imitation and Improvement	p. 58
Competition: Its Organisation and Regulation	p. 60
Competition in Art	p. 64
Competition and the Rise of Classical Art	p. 67
Competition and Continuous Change	p. 74
The Intellectual Marketplace: Competitive Models	p. 93
The Intellectual Marketplace: Plato's Paradigm	p. 98
Isocrates and the Theory of Classical Culture	p. 100
4 Hellenistic Art and the Culture of Character	p. 105
Alexander: Paradigmatic Breaker of the Paradigm	p. 105
Alexander and Art	p. 110
Responses to the Paradigm	p. 112
The 'Modern' Artist	p. 115
'Modern' Art	p. 120
The Patron, the Artist, the Model and the Viewer	p. 126
From the Viewer as Hero to the Viewer as Victim	p. 131
Man Caught in His Own Net	p. 145
Paradigms Packaged: Education and the Copy	p. 154
Athens, the Capital of Packaging	p. 159
5 Roman Art and the Culture of Memory	p. 162
The Instruments of Success	p. 162
Augury and Mapping	p. 173
Art and Memory	p. 177
Money, Monuments and Signs	p. 181
Monuments and Memory	p. 187
Vespasian's Architectural Memory System	p. 193
Money and Monuments in the Later Empire	p. 199
Memorials of the Dead	p. 205
Christianity: A Contract for the After-life	p. 210
The Sign of the Cross	p. 213
6 Rome and the Culture of Imagination	p. 217
Beyond Reason	p. 217
Metamorphosis and the Magic of Augustus	p. 219
Metamorphosis of Nature	p. 227
Metamorphosis and the History of Art	p. 232
Metamorphosis of Culture	p. 234
Roman Style as the Style of Transformation	p. 245
The Empire of the Imagination	p. 249
Rhetoric and the Education of the Imagination	p. 256
The Educated Imagination and the Work of Art	p. 261
Imagination and the Psychology of Perception	p. 267
From Images in Clouds to Pictures in Marble	p. 268
The Rise of the Imagination and Material Decline	p. 274
Dreams and Visions; Conversion and Transubstantiation	p. 275
7 The Culture of the Christian Church	p. 279
Closing the Schools	p. 279
The Christian and the External World	p. 280
The Christian and the Internal World	p. 282
Christian Building Blocks	p. 286
Bibliographical Note	p. 291
List of Illustrations	p. 294
Index	p. 300

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