Μarthari, Μ. 2018. "The attraction of the pictorial" reconsidered: pottery and wall-paintings, and the artistic environment on Late Cycladic I Thera in the light of the most recent research (original) (raw)

in A.G. Vlachopoulos (ed.), ΧΡΩΣΤΗΡΕΣ / PAINTBRUSHES. Wall-painting and Vase-painting of the Second Millennium BC in Dialogue. University of Ioannina / Hellenic Ministry of Culture and Sports - Archaeological Receipts Fund: Athens 2018, pp. 205-221

I had examined the relationship between pottery and wall-painting for the first time in 1997, at the conference organized on the Thera wall-paintings, in my paper entitled “The Attraction of the Pictorial: Observations on the Relationship of Theran Pottery and Theran Fresco Iconography”, which was published in the conference proceedings. In that paper I had argued that local Theran pattern-painted pottery (both Cycladic and Minoanizing shapes) comprises the richest corpus of pictorial motifs in the Aegean at the beginning of the Late Bronze Age. I also suggested that the representations on certain Late Cycladic I ceramic vessels were influenced by those of wall-paintings and, conversely, that the swallow motif crossed over from pottery to Theran frescoes at the beginning of the LC I period. Over the years since that paper, there has been no essential change in the general picture regarding pictorial pottery and mural painting from the last habitation phase on Thera. Nonetheless, certain new evidence from excavations conducted at both Akrotiri and the recently discovered site at Raos, is the stimulus for a reconsideration of the topic, or at least some of its aspects. In addition, I would like to put the two arts under discussion in a broader context, emphasizing that in prosperous Thera just prior to its volcanic destruction, conditions were ideal for the flourishing of all the Aegean visual arts…

Appliquéd Pottery Decoration and Stucco Relief Wall-paintings in Crete and Thera in the Second Millennium B.C.

Chrostires (Χρωστήρες), 2018

This study focuses on a special type of pottery and frescoes in Crete and Thera, both dated to a chronological span that starts at the end of the Middle Bronze Age and ends in the Late Bronze Age [Late Minoan (LM) II period]. The former is made of clay and the latter of plaster, and both of them bear plastic decoration, an element which makes them different from other objects in their respective classes. The appliquéd decoration on pottery from Crete and Thera on the one hand, and the stucco relief frescoes from both islands on the other, are not broadly discussed subjects. Moreover, the shared features of the two different forms of artistic expression have yet to be studied in detail.

Winter, I. J. (2000). Thera Paintings and the Ancient Near East: The Private and Public Domains of Wall Decoration. The Wall Paintings of Thera: Proceedings of the First International Colloquium. S. Sherratt (ed.). Athens, Thera Foundation. 2: 745-762.

Fundamental to any informed assessment of the possible linkages between the wall paintings of Thera and those of the contemporary Near East is the establishment of appropriate grounds for comparison. Despite several shared motifs and elements in common between the Near Eastern palaces of AJalakh and Mari on the one hand and the houses of Thera on the other, the central themes decorating the palaces can be shown to have had public functions of articulating issues of royal and state ideology, while those found in the houses of Akrotiri on Thera seem to have had more private goals, one of which may be reflected in the distinctive use of space to create the impression of a total environment. Thus it is argued that even those motifs held in common cannot be said to document direct contact between the two painting traditions, as opposed to the possibility of transmission via other movable media, such as pottery. It is logical, and would seem to have been the case, that sites on or closer to the coast, such as Alalakh and Tel Kabri, manifest greater interaction with Aegean painting traditions in general , and with Thera in particular, than more inland sites, such as Mari. For the present, there is no evidence to privilege direct contact between Thera and the Levant on the basis of the painting repertoire. What seems necessary for the immediate future is progress in methodology: specifically, the development of measurement criteria that will enable an inquiry into not only the mechanisms but also the intensity of cross-eultural interaction in the early to mid-second millennium Be. Crucial in this regard is the need to incorporate aspects of production , function and overall surround, not merely the presence/absence of individual design elements, such that degrees of intensity may be effectively evaluated.

A. Højen Sørensen, W. L. Friedrich, K. M. Søholm: Metamorphoses and hybridity in the wall-paintings at Akrotiri, Thera, in Popular Religion and Ritual in Prehistoric and Ancient Greece and the Eastern Mediterranean, eds. G. Vavouranakis, K. Kopanias, C. Kanellopoulos, Archeopress, 2018, 47-54.

2018

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