Art History 302: Greek Sculpture

Spring 2008

Nick Cahill

This course will examine the sculpture of the Greeks in the Archaic, Classical and Hellenistic periods (ca. 1000 - 150 BC), and the contexts in which they were created and viewed. We will consider both originals and copies; architectural sculpture and freestanding monuments; dedications, cult statues, victory monuments, grave monuments and other types of sculptures. We will study the relationships between the sculpture and the society that produced it -- artists, patrons, viewers, the architectural and civic contexts of these works; and about the lasting effect that Greek sculpture has had on the history of western art. The course will meet MWF, 8:50-9:40, in room L150, Chazen Museum of Art.

Textbooks:

Required:

• Andrew Stewart, Greek Sculpture: An Exploration (Yale University Press, 1990). This is a good overview of many different aspects of Greek sculpture. Be sure to look also at the section on ancient testimonia, which lists almost all the ancient sources for specific Greek sculptors, and the bibliographic sections for each chapter, which will provide further readings (through 1990 or a bit before).
• This book is currently out of print. Limited numbers of copies are available at University Bookstore and Underground Textbooks, and it is on reserve in Kohler Library, and is available through used booksellers online: try www.abebooks.com, www.alibris.com, or www.amazon.com. If you are interested in collaborating on scanning the book and distributing digital copies for classroom use, let me know; a few students could get this done and benefit everyone.
• Additional readings will be available as pdf downloads, available from the course web site (below), in place of the usual course pack. These will not be general introductions like Stewart, but will offer more in-depth analyses of particular issues and problems. You may have trouble following some of the readings; we will discuss them in class, and please do not hesitate to ask questions!

Recommended (on reserve in Kohler)

• Nigel Spivey, Understanding Greek Sculpture (Thames and Hudson, 1996). Somewhat trendy, but interesting. (Available at the University Bookstore)
• Jeffrey Hurwit, The Art and Culture of Early Greece (Cornell University Press, 1985). An excellent introduction to more general historical and cultural issues.
• J.J. Pollitt, Art and Experience in Classical Greece (Cambridge University Press, 1972). Likewise.
• John Boardman, Greek Sculpture: The Archaic Period (1978), Greek Sculpture: The Classical Period (1985), and Greek Sculpture: The Late Classical Period (1995). Well-illustrated and documented, and affordable. On reserve, too.

Electronic resources:

Images, articles, and other information on the course will be on the art history web site: http://www.wisc.edu/arth/ah302/.

Perseus, a multimedia database of Greek art, literature and culture, will be an essential resource, containing information about sculptures and other works of art, images, ancient texts, and tools for searching and browsing: http://www.perseus.tufts.edu. Unfortunately, however, it can be slow and unreliable.

ArtStor, available on the UW Library web site (http://www.artstor.org.ezproxy.library.wisc.edu/info/) has more good images, but don’t trust the captions!

DYABOLA: see below.

Projects:

Much of the focus of this class will be on three projects. These will progress from very straightforward (a map) to longer, more open-ended and more complex investigations of some aspect of Greek sculpture. See below.

There will be one midterm on Mar. 3, in class. The final will be on May 12 from 12:25 - 2:25 PM. The exams will include slide identifications, unknowns and essays, and the final will be cumulative. I will give occasional quizzes in class to give you practice in taking this kind of exam.

Graduate Students

Graduate students should write up their final project in more depth, using both primary sources and secondary literature. The emphasis will be both on your use of original Greek sources and critical interpretation of the modern literature. This paper should be 15-20 pages in length, and takes the place of the final. Other requirements will be graded with your advanced standing in mind.

Grading will be based on the projects (50% all told), the midterm (20%) and the final exam (30%). Participation in classes and project meetings will be taken into account.

Office Hours

Mon. 2-4 PM, room 220 Elvehjem, or by appointment. Phone 263-8980; email ndcahill@facstaff.wisc.edu.

Project 1: Map

Locate the sites listed on the map at the end of this handout. Then choose five sites and write one paragraph (100-150 words) on each: where it is, what sculptures it is famous for, why we will look at it in a course on Greek sculpture. You can use the index to Stewart’s Greek Sculpture; Perseus, the Princeton Encyclopedia of Classical Sites, or any number of on-line atlases. If you have trouble, let me know. Due Feb. 1.

Project 2: The Getty Kouros Controversy

In 1983 the J. Paul Getty Museum in Malibu, CA purchased a virtually complete kouros, said to have come from a private collection in Switzerland. It was immediately both hailed as a masterpiece and one of the great acquisitions of recent decades, and as an obvious forgery which had cost the Getty some millions of dollars. After various doubts and counter-arguments, the Getty sent it to Greece and held a colloquium to discuss the authenticity of the kouros, inviting many of the world’s great scholars on Greek sculpture to examine and discuss. The colloquium was published in 1994.

Read and analyze the articles in the Reader from the Getty Kouros Colloquium. You are not required or expected to come to a conclusion about whether the kouros is genuine or not — 25 years of scholarship have not reached a consensus. Instead, summarize and evaluate different scholars’ approaches and conclusions. What kinds of information are available to determine authenticity, date, origin, etc.? Different people look at posture, hair style, overall appearance, depiction of different body parts, surface treatment, stonecutting techniques, geological and mineralogical structure, modern documentation, etc. How do these different avenues overlap and agree or disagree? Length: notice and appreciate that these papers are all short and to the point. Do not write an unnecessary word. Maximum 5 pages, double-spaced, a readable font (e.g. Times 12 point) with reasonable margins. I grade on quality not quantity. Due Mar. 10.

Project 3: Research Paper

The third project is a more traditional research paper, researching either one of the sculptures, buildings, or genres discussed in class, or another topic if you prefer.

Choosing a good topic of research is perhaps the single most important and difficult task of a student. A good topic will be large enough to be interesting but not so large that you only have time or space to do a shallow discussion (“The Development of Archaic Sculpture” would be too broad). Before deciding on a topic, you will want to consider a number of alternatives, and do some preliminary research and see which will pan out and which won’t. I am very willing to help, so get in touch with me at office hours or email. You must clear the topic with me by Apr. 21.

In this paper you are not required to come up with a significant, new interpretation or understanding of a work or class of Greek sculpture. You are expected to do a significant amount of reading in scholarly books and articles beyond the readings assigned for this course, investigate ancient sources where possible, understand questions, arguments and interpretations proposed by scholars, and synthesize them into an original, focused, organized, and interesting discussion. You should both describe the works and the problems associated with them, and also discuss the modern approaches to these works - how different scholars have dealt with the information.

Quality and quantity of material: you should find and read professional, scholarly books and articles, not on-line dreck. A scholarly book or article will normally appear in a peer-reviewed publisher or journal. University presses and journals like the American Journal of Archaeology have rigorous review procedures, and you can usually trust what they say more than you can trust an unreviewed source. You may use resources like Wikipedia for your own background information to bring you up to speed, but you then must go further, and read and understand scholarly presentations; they should not be part of your final paper. You should read at least three, preferably more books and/or articles. You will find book reviews very useful in judging the quality of the scholarship of what you are reading, and how it has been received. DYABOLA has useful references to book reviews.

So how do you find good books and articles? Start with the bibliographies and footnotes in Stewart and the other readings for this course, and see what they cite and consider important previous discussions. Find a good recent discussion and use its footnotes to go back to previous discussions; use footnotes of previous discussions to go further back in the argument, etc. You can also use DYABOLA. JStor is a useful source of articles, but only from a limited number of journals. Do NOT turn to old handbooks which are very general and out-of-date. Do NOT just go to MadCat and get whatever book is on the shelf: get the best books and articles, and use them correctly.

We will discuss this more in class.

Format: the paper should be 10-12 pages long, in standard academic format, i.e. double-spaced, Times 12 point or equivalent font, with 1-inch margins. You should use footnotes (or endnotes) to cite the sources you use, giving page numbers and other references where appropriate. (If you read an article on JStor, please pretend you read it in the library and give regular page citations). You need not quote or extensively paraphrase ancient authors; give a reference instead. A proper bibliography should be attached. If you are familiar with a standard format of citation (e.g. MLA, Chicago Manual of Style) you can use that; or you can use the format of the American Journal of Archaeology (online at http://www.ajaonline.org/index.php?ptype=page&pid=4; check “General Matters of Style,” “Bibliographical References and Footnotes,” “Citing Electronic Sources,” and “Abbreviations”).

Length: ca. 10 pages. You should use your allotted space wisely, and concentrate on methods and results to convey your own thoughts and interpretations, rather than simply describing monuments. The papers should be tightly written, and despite their short length should distill a great deal of research, familiarity with the sculptures and relevant literature, and thought about these topics. If you have questions about how to write proper academic prose, the Writing Center is an excellent resource (6171 White Hall; 263-1992); or I can assist you. Due May 5.