Structure, Image, Ornament

Architectural Sculpture in the Greek World

Ralf Von den Hoff, Peter Schultz

• Publisher: Oxbow Books
• Year: 2014
• ISBN:
  9781782973072
• Topic: Storia
• Subtopic: Storia dell'antica Grecia

This volume presents the proceedings of a conference hosted by the American School of Classical Studies, Athens and the Deutsches Archäologisches Institut, Athens in 2004. There are additional contributions from Patricia Butz, Robin Osborne, Katherine Schwab, Justin St. P. Walsh, Hilda Westervelt and Lorenz Winkler-Horacek. The contents are divided into four sections I. Structure and Ornament; II. Technique and Agency; III. Myth and Narrative and IV. Diffusion and Influence. Highlights include Robin Osbornes discussion of What you can do with a chariot but cant do with a satyr on a Greek temple; Ralf von den Hoffs consideration of the Athenian treasury at Delphi; and Katherine Schwabs presentation of New evidence for Parthenon east metope 14. The papers not only cover a great variety of issues in architectural sculpture but also present a range of case studies from all over the Greek world. The result is an important collection of current research.

I. STRUCTURE AND ORNAMENT

1

The Narratology and Theology of Architectural Sculpture, or What you can do with a Chariot but can’t do with a Satyr on a Greek Temple

Robin Osborne

Introduction

One of the legacies of the Roman world is the idea that the context in which the work of art is viewed is relatively unimportant. Removing sculptures from the sanctuaries or civic spaces in which they had originally been erected and redisplaying them in quite different contexts was a Roman sport from at least the second century B.C. onwards. Grand tourists emulated the Roman élite by the way in which they removed both Roman antiquities from their original sites and Greek antiquities from their secondary Roman homes. With the growth of the universal museum in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries the depredations of private individuals were made the very premise of civilizing knowledge of the world.

Academic practices have reinforced rather than undermined this belief that the work of art can and does perform its ‘work’ quite independently of the context in which it is viewed. The art historian’s projection of dual images of works of art so that comparison can be made with works by the same or related artists, with works of the same or similar subjects, and so on, implies a fundamental dismissal of original viewing contexts. Unique works or art have their own history spun for them following methods essentially parallel to the study the endlessly reproducable text. Yet those who study works of art have an obsession with saying something about the ‘original’ and regard with some curiosity those few whose interest focuses on reproductions of images.

The investment of the academy in the notion that works of art can be understood without understanding the context in which those works were first displayed is such that the bizarre nature of that assumption is rarely registered. We all of us daily determine our reactions to images by the contexts in which we view them. Images that we take for granted on billboards would cause some surprise were we to find them framed upon walls of a friend’s living room. Images which on the walls of art galleries serve only as markers of a particular era in the history or art become indicators of conservatism or trendiness when transplanted to wall of public or private buildings which are primarily devoted to other pursuits. Altarpieces invite quite different viewing when transferred from sacred to secular space.

Architectural sculpture is one of the few classes of works of art surviving from Greek antiquity for which we can reconstruct a more or less rich context. For many other objects we know nothing of their original situation, and when we know anything what we know is insufficient to offer more than minimal indication of the context of viewing: knowing that a pot was used at a symposion gets us only so far when we know nothing of the other pots in use on that occasion, of the floor and wall decoration of the room, or of the topic of conversation. In the case of sculpture from a Greek temple we may have, or hope to have, some knowledge not only of more or less the full range of sculptural imagery attached to the building, but also of the basic moves in the rituals associated with the building in the course of which the sculpture was viewed. That does not mean that much that is important is not lost – any idea of the range or disposition of votive offerings, sculptural and otherwise, for instance. But when for so much else we have no idea at all of the circumstances of viewing, architectural sculpture offers a very special resource.

In this paper I want to build on my earlier discussion of the ways in which Greek temple sculpture were viewed to look more particularly at the theology of sculptural display. In particular I want to focus attention on one peculiarly popular pedimental composition, the frontal chariot, and on one curiously absent subject, the satyr, and to attempt to explain how viewing conditions made demands that were narratological – and hence theological – and led to making, and avoiding, certain particular iconographic choices.¹

Fig. 1.1 Reconstruction of the west pediment of the temple of Zeus at Olympia. Courtesy of Sir John Boardman.

The story of architectural sculpture

That the different architectural spaces in which sculpture is found on the Greek temple offer different compositional possibilities is obvious. Very flat triangular spaces, square spaces, and long thin strips invite, respectively, centrally focused compositions, balanced groups, and continuous sequences. Once these different compositional possibilities are spelt out, however, it becomes equally obvious that there are very different narrative expectations that go with these different compositional types. Pedimental space makes hierarchy unavoidable and requires both anticipation and climax, metopes fuse figures in collaboration or combat and put a premium on the discrete episode, continuous friezes invite progression and require that any partial view leaves the viewer unsatisfied. This does not necessarily mean that the same subject matter cannot be treated in the different spaces, but it does require that if the same subject is treated it is treated in very distinct ways.

The best illustration of the different possibilities and constraints of the different spaces comes from, precisely, the treatment of a single theme. Centaurs battling with Greeks (Lapiths) were shown on a pediment at Olympia, on metopes on the Parthenon, and on a continuous frieze in the temple of Apollo at Bassai.² In the pedimental version (Fig. 1.1) a central figure of Apollo is introduced who presides over the action and guarantees that there will be resolution. In the metopal version (Fig. 1.2) differently configured encounters between Centaur and Lapith and Centaur and woman encourage the viewer to compare and contrast – and encourage the viewer to seek resolution outside the sphere of the metopes altogether by considering these scenes in relation to the wider iconographic programme of the temple.³ In the frieze (Fig. 1.3), the continuity from one combat to another not only enables something of the frightening nature of a general brawl to be conveyed, but enables the viewer to be rolled on from battles between centaurs and lapiths to battles between Greeks and Amazons, startlingly reversing women from victims to aggressors and so making the viewer go back to the beginning of the story and address the issues behind these combats.

Fig. 1.2 Parthenon South pediment 29. Courtesy of Hirmer Fotoarchiv Munich (561.0120).

In broad terms what this comparison between the three differently placed presentations of a single theme enables us to see is that while pediments focus on the end, on closure, and friezes on how a story develops, metopes encourage the close scrutiny of the particular episode, freezing the frame as in a still from a film. Comparison with other sculpted pediments, metopes and friezes offers some qualification to this broad view. The east pediment at Olympia brings out not simply the stress on closure and looking to the end of the race between Pelops and Oinomaos, but the ways in which expectation can be created by use of the particular compositional space – it is not simply the famous figure of the seer who creates a nail-biting atmosphere here, but the keen glances offered by the river gods (Fig. 1.4) in the very extremities of the pediment. The pediments of the Parthenon use their extremities less to create expectation than to suggest a (local, on the west, or cosmological, on the east) framework, and while the east pediment’s birth of Athena is a triumphant conclusion, the central battle of Athena and Poseidon in the west pediment, with its diverging figures, seems deliberately to deny the closure that the compositional space demands. If the episodic dominates metopes it too offers itself for deconstruction as the viewer is teased by whether or not to link metopes which look towards one another (the archery of Apollo and Artemis in one Foce del Sele metope aiming at Tityos carrying off Leto in the next). If the friezes of the Athena Nike temple encouraged telling the story of the unfolding of various battles, the frieze of the Parthenon seems rather poorly described as encouraging interest in sequence (Fig. 1.5). But the position of the Parthenon frieze arguably seriously complicates the issue: the view through the external colonnade is necessarily fragmented, framed in a uniquely flexible and viewer-determined way, so that the constraints approach in some ways those of metopes and the continuous scanning possible with other friezes, or in the British Museum display and on CD reconstructions, was blocked.⁴

Fig. 1.3 Bassai, temple of Apollo, frieze slab 524. Courtesy of the British Museum.

Fig. 1.4 The so-called Kladeos from the east pediment of the temple of Zeus at Olympia. Courtesy Hirmer Fotoarchiv, Munich (561.0660).

Fig. 1.5 The west frieze of the Parthenon in situ. Courtesy of Hirmer Fotoarchiv Munich (562.0557).

It is worth looking back at these examples not taking the viewpoint of spectators, appreciating the consequences of artists’ choices, but from the viewpoint of the artist making the choice. Faced with the possibility of devising...