Thursday, August 19, 2004

It's Greek Week at Ceramics Today- Ceramic's Today is featuring a host of Greek oriented articles.  Super stuff, as usual. Today let's take a look at "Ancient Greek Ceramics" by Victor Bryant.  Victor Bryant does a great job of running down the history, techniques, and appreciation of these ceramics.  He includes some tidbits for my research into the information included on the pots, Dietrich von Bothmer's "unique narrative style" of yesterday. I'll take the liberty of selecting a few paragraphs from the article.  Victor Byrant makes the following observations: In the 9th and 8th centuries, before written accounts, ballad singers wove the facts and legends of their early history into the Mythic Epic Stories of Gods and Heroes. Later they were written down or drawn as images on pots to become part of the foundation of Greek (or Hellenic) culture. (Because the images on the pots are based on songs, we may find the narrative style reflects a songs structure, or its strengths.  Songs tend to be more poetic, so we may see reflections of rhyme, rhythm, and metaphor.  The ballad is a story, but may still use chorus and verse, repetition. -JN) Pottery painters in Attica were the first to paint narrative scenes from popular myths about their Gods and Heroes Unlike the strange deities of the Egyptians, Mesopotamians and Persians, the Greek Gods and Heroes were believed to be human in form though larger, more powerful and physically perfect etc. Images or paintings of Gods or Heroes could therefore be based on human models. (Here, we see why the images are important enough to put on pots (they are of the gods) but that they can have more common meanings (the gods are similar to us.) -JN) 7:56:46 AM