Color & Space Interfaces of Ancient Architecture and Sculpture (original) (raw)
Related papers
Archaeolοgy of Colour / Introduction
Archaeology of Colour. Technical Art History Studies in Greek and Roman Painting and Polychromy, 2023
Ancient polychromy speaks a language of “the visible” and “the invisible”, through signs of pigments, brushstrokes and forms. Another reminder of our classical past, colour is an inherent component of artistic creation, inspiration and imagination. New sophisticated technologies, as well as the development of interdisciplinary studies over these past decades, have stimulated the collection and evaluation of numerous scientific data from in-situ investigation of polychrome and painted documents, and have challenged our understanding of the complexity and function of ancient painting materials and techniques. The present volume is another contribution to the ongoing exploration of the rich history of colour in the classical world; an exploration which builds on previous knowledge and opens up new horizons for a more extended understanding of the aesthetics and meaning of Greek and Roman art. It includes fifteen papers that move from Archaic and Classical Greece to the Hellenistic and Roman periods, and deal with colour on monumental architecture, marble statues and reliefs, wooden and terracotta statuettes, stone sarcophagi, paintings on stone and plaster, and pigments as raw materials.
Seeing Color in Classical Art (excerpt of Introduction)
Seeing Color in Classical Art: Theory, Practice, and Reception from Antiquity to the Present, 2022
Seeing Color in Classical Art offers a new critical account of color as material in ancient Mediterranean art and architecture. Traversing sites from Athens to Antioch, Stager traces color across a variety of media, including handheld panel paintings, painted monumental reliefs, alloyed bronzes, and mosaic floors. This book explores the materiality of color from the ground up through analysis of the pigments, dyes, stones, soils, and metals that artists crafted into polychrome forms. Artistic practices also shaped a literary and philosophical landscape encompassing Sapphic lyric, Presocratic atomism, and Theophrastan natural history and produced a discourse on color by ancient Greek writers that reverberates in the present. Despite these abundant traces of color, ancient Mediterranean art has long been reduced to the white marble of its ruins to stage an idealized, monochrome picture of the past. Stager examines the process by which this reception tradition has elevated whiteness and feminized and racialized color. In response, this book illuminates the construction of the category of the classical in modernity and challenges its claims to order and exceptionalism. Ultimately, Stager harnesses ancient ideas of materiality, care, landscape, visual exchange, and artistic atomism to theorize color in the ancient Mediterranean and its afterlives.
In the last decade or so there has been steadily growing interest in determining the original appearance of ancient polychromed sculpture and architectural decoration. As a result, there have been a number of collaborative efforts on the part of scholars of classical antiquity, scientists, and digital computer artists. Technological advances in the testing of marble surfaces to detect even the most microscopic traces of ancient pigments or gilding have advanced our knowledge of ancient polychromy considerably. The interest in ancient polychromed marble is also evident in the increased number of papers and posters presented at our ASMOSIA conferences in recent years, expanding and complementing our study of the use of colored stones for ancient sculpture and architecture. The examination of ancient polychromy has resulted in a number of traveling museum exhibitions on this subject, with ancient sculptures still bearing traces of color being displayed next to painted plaster casts of the same objects. For the general public, long used to the purity of 18th and 19th century neo-classical white marble sculpture and modern plaster replicas of ancient sculpture, the display of such painted casts in these shows has come as a shocking surprise. In my paper, I shall not only consider some of problems and questions involved in the study and recreation of ancient polychomatic sculptures but also question the wisdom of using painted plaster casts for didactic purposes, especially in public museum exhibitions. I shall discuss as well some of the recent attempts, including my own, to colorize a marble portrait of Caligula in the Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek in Copenhagen, a work that -- along with polychromed marble copies -- has been one of the more interesting objects displayed in these traveling exhibitions on colorized ancient sculpture.
When Colour tells a Story. The Polychromy of Hellenistic Sculpture and Terracottas
In: V. Brinkmann – O. Primavesi – M. Hollein (Hrsg.), Circumlitio. The Polychromy of Antique and Medieval Sculpture (München 2010) 240-257.
When we look at ancient sculpture we often find ourselves in front of a masterpiece in white, fine-crystalline marble. We prize its luminous whiteness, which draws our gaze to it, and its form, on which we are able to concentrate all the better because of the work’s monochromy. As this contribution will show, the creation of Hellenistic sculpture did not involve form alone, but included the provision of further detail by means of polychrome additions. These additions enrich the object and provide the viewer with more information. In other words, colour tells a story. To give insight into this practice, a definition of what is meant by polychromy and a description of the polychrome appearance of Hellenistic sculptures and smallscale terracottas will be provided in the following. The focus will then turn to two examples that shed light on the function of the polychrome additions.
'The importance of colour on ancient marble sculpture'
This article explores the significance of paint and pigment traces for understanding the aesthetics and artistic composition of ancient marble architectural and statuary sculpture. It complements the pioneering technical and reconstructive work that has recently been carried out into classical polychrome sculpture by approaching the subject from the perspective of the cultural history of colour and perception in the ancient world. The study concentrates in particular on the art of imperial Rome, which at the present time is under-represented in the field. By integrating visual material with literary evidence, it first reviews some of the most important pieces of sculpture on which paint traces have survived and then assesses the significance of sculptural polychromy under four headings: visibility, finish, realism and trompe-l'oeil. Finally, it considers some of the ways in which polychromy can enrich our understanding and interpretation of the Prima Porta statue of Augustus.
Separating Realities: Color-fields and Imagined Spaces in Ancient Italian Mural Painting
M.A. Paper at FSU, 2021
In this paper I wish to explore the large swatches of solid color that are exhibited in various Italic wall paintings, from the strikingly early Etruscan Tomb of the Ducks to the distinguishing feature of the Third Pompeiian Style. These fields are most often black, white, yellow, and red; four colors that Pliny the Elder labels as special in his history of painting. In many cases, these color fields act as large borders and backgrounds to small narrative scenes, which Nathaniel Jones argues to be mimicries of Greek Panel painting. I will argue that these color fields function as a tool of focalization (after Mieke Bal’s Narratology), mediating the interaction between the viewer and the narrative. This mediation serves to indicate to the viewer that the scenes they are witnessing take place in a space separate from the reality they inhabit. Functioning as tools of liminality, they lead the viewer into a fabula, or story.