THE PSYCHOLOGY OF GREEK ART. OVERVIEW Alternative views to Plato in Rep. 10 Poets, philosophers,...

THE PSYCHOLOGY OF GREEK ART

OVERVIEW

• Alternative views to Plato in Rep. 10• Poets, philosophers, sophists, et al. on art• Greek art in context

– Art and the viewer

• Art and text in combination to produce effect• Emotions, politics, erotics of Greek art

– Psychological power– Art as rhetoric– Plato’s bugbears…?

PLATONIC AESTHETICS I• Inseparable from

– Education– Ontology– Epistemology– Psychology – Ethics & Justice– Politics

• Issues addressed elsewhere in Republic– Plato addresses legacy of poets: Homer, Hesiod, et al. – His intellectual precursors– Poets seen as teachers of religion, ethics, law

REPUBLIC 10: Critique of Mimetic Painting & Poetry

• Mimesis now rejected– Psychology, epistemology, education– Theory of Forms– Outlined in books 4-9 of Rep.

• Painting used as extensive analogy for mimetic poetry• Both media subject to Plato’s

– Ontology– Epistemology– Psychology– Ethics & Justice

REPUBLIC 10 (595-603): On Painting & Poetry

• Ontology– Painting = mimesis phantasmatos– Imitation of an appearance– Couch example and invocation of Forms

• Epistemology– Painters and poets = ignorant, so, too, their public– 3 removes from truth– User/maker/imitator argument

• Psychology– Painting plays havoc with our senses– Seductive, erotic, magical language used– Epithumetikon vs Logistikon

REPUBLIC 10 (603-607): On Epic Poetry & Tragedy

• Epistemology– Homer is no general

– No victories recorded

– How reliable a source for war???

• Psychology – Meter, harmony, music beguiles us

– Seductive, erotic, magical language used (cf. painting)

– Grief: tragedy, etc. panders to ‘irrational’, emotive elements in us

REPUBLIC 10 (605c-607): ‘The Greatest Charge’

• It corrupts the best of us (cf. painting) • NB its emotive power

• pleasure in sympathising with sufferings of others• People assimilate Homeric tragic characters’ behaviour to own lives • the more you indulge these emotions, the more you encourage them

Poets destabilise our psychological ‘order’ Justice = Psychological order Mimetic poets to be banned (!)

SOME RESPONSESPlato assumes depiction = endorsement

• does not allow for critical distance of poet and audience• Achilles presented as problematic figure in first 2 lines of Iliad

Plato does not allow for psychological complexity• demands simple didactic message• how reasonable is this?

Plato ignores moments in Homer of heroic restraint of emotion:

• Achilles and Priam again• Plato very selective in critique

SOME OTHER ANCIENT VIEWS

Poetry a source of pleasure in and of itself: Homer, Hesiod

Gorgias the orator and Sophist (c. 480-375 BC)• intense emotional power of poetry and artworks not necessarily bad (Encomium of Helen) • on cleverness of audience (B23) recognition of artistic fiction• tragedy involves deceit, cleverness and justice!• Platonic objections turned on their head!

• Cf. Dissoi Logoi on painting and tragedy

SOME OTHER ANCIENT VIEWS

Aeschines and Isocrates (orators, active c. 410-350 BC) provide opposite evidence to Plato• people do not assimilate tragic emotions in their own lives• recognise artistic fictions and emotions

Democritus of Abdera (c. 465-380 BC)• other people’s sufferings can make us count our blessings and help• poet composes very beautifully under inspiration: enthousiasmos• Homer has a divine nature & designs a ‘cosmos’ of all kinds of words

SOME OTHER PLATONIC VIEWS

• Plato expresses different views on art & poetry elsewhere– Phaedrus: Plato admires mania of poet– Apology: invokes Achilles as his model!– Plato is himself a supreme literary artist (and knows it!)

– Ion: poetry beautiful and true• But poets/rhapsodes irrational• Operate under inspiration = ENTHOUSIASMOS

– Republic 10: poet = imitator only• No inspiration• Plato on poetry: Curb Your Enthousiasmos

ARISTOTLEAristotle: Plato’s greatest student and greatest critic:

Poetics defends art and poetry

Aristotle Contemplating Homer (Rembrandt, c. 1650)

Jacques-Louis David, Oath of the Horatii (1784)

Pablo Picasso, Guernica (1937)

Norman Lindsay (1879-1969)

Francesco de Goya, 3rd of May 1808

Goya, Disasters of War

Some Greek writers on art• Polyclitus

– Sculptor active c. 450-410 BC– Author of ‘Canon’– A technical treatise– Philosophical overtones?

• Empedocles• Hippias• Gorgias• Democritus• Apelles• Euphranor, et al.

– Sources in Pliny– Vitruvius

Polyclitus, Doryphorus c. 445 BC

Gorgias: An important precursor to Socrates/Plato

• Sicilian teacher of rhetoric• Interest in forms of logos & art

– Interest in Homer & tragedy– Tragedy as form of ‘deceit’: apatê

• On tragedy: B23: ‘the deceiver is more just than the non-deceiver, and the deceived is cleverer than the non-deceived’

– Cf. Simonides: Thessalians too stupid to be deceived by him.

– Cf. Dissoi Logoi (3.10) ...in painting and tragedy the one who deceives the most by making things most like real things, this man is best.

QuickTime™ and aTIFF (Uncompressed) decompressorare needed to see this picture.

Gorgias of Leontini, c. 480-375 BC

Gorgias on Logos, Emotion & Reality

• Encomium of Helen– Power of rhetoric/peitho– Seductive, deceptive– Gorgias uses her story to speculate on

psychology, epistemology, rhetoric, etc.

• On Not Being– Nothing exists– Even if it did, Nothing is knowable– Even if it were, Logos conveys Nothing, so

we can’t talk about it

• Defence of Palamedes– Innocent man defending self– Rational attempt at persuasion– Ostensibly convincing but fails…

Peitho as Erotic Personification

QuickTime™ and aTIFF (Uncompressed) decompressor

are needed to see this picture.

Gorgias’ Encomium of Helen• Ostensibly tries to exculpate Helen from

blame for Trojan War• Presents her as victim

– Of the gods’ will

– Of desire (erôs) induced by sight and artworks

• erôs : also a god

– Of Paris’ violence (bia)– Of Logos: persuasive emotive power of

words in all forms• Poetry, rhetoric, law court speeches,

scientific arguments

• All forms of logos/peitho are false and deceptive– Exploit/manipulate doxa



Gorgias’ Encomium of Helen• 8-9: Logos is great ruler that, with the

smallest and least conspicuous body brings about the most divine deeds. For it can stop fear and take away grief and generate joy and increase pity. … I deem and name all poetry as logos that has meter; ultra fearful shuddering and very tearful pity and grief-loving longing come upon its hearers, and as a result of the good fortunes and bad fortunes of of other people’s actions and bodies, the soul, through the agency of words, suffers its own private suffering.



Gorgias’ Encomium of Helen• 10: … For the inspired epodes

through words are inducers of pleasure and banishers of grief. For mingling with the opinion of the soul the power of the ode enchants and persuades and changes the soul by witchcraft. And two arts of witchcraft and magic have been invented, which are the mistakes of soul and the deceptions of opinion.



Gorgias’ Encomium of Helen• 11-12: ... To remember the past, to

examine the present, or to prophesy the future is not easy; and so most people on most subjects make doxa advisor to their minds. But doxa is perilous and uncertain, and brings those who use it to perilous and uncertain good fortune... For peitho expelled her thought; peitho which has the same dunamis but not the same form as anagke.

• 14: The power of the logos has the same relation to the ordering of the soul as the ordering of drugs does to the nature of the body. … some (sc. speeches) cause grief, others fear, while others instill courage in their hearers, and some drug and bewitch the soul with some evil persuasion.



Gorgias: Encomium of Helen 8-14• Psychology of logos

– Instills emotions– Applies to poetry and prose– Fear, longing, desire, pity

• Cf. Aristotle on fear and pity of tragedy (Poetics)

• Works on soul like magic– Goêteia, Thelxis, Apatê– Witchcraft, beguilement, deceit– Cf. Plato in Rep. 10 on painting &

tragedy

• In Helen 18 powers of visual art and opsis parallel the powers of logos– Inspire the same emotional,

psychological responses



Helen with Erõs and Paris, c. 350 BC

Gorgias: Encomium of Helen 18• But indeed whenever

painters perfectly produce one body and form from many colours and bodies, they delight the sight. The making of statues and the production of sculptures provide a sweet sickness for the eyes. Thus, it is natural for the sight to grieve for some things and long for others. And many things produce in many people desire and longing for many actions and bodies.



Helen with Erõs and Paris, c. 350 BC

Homeric Erotic Statues• Od. 6.229-37: Odysseus

embellished by Athena for Nausikaa

• He is compared to gold and silver statue

• Athena compared to craftsman• Erotic thauma of new

appearance– NB Nausikaa’s response



Odysseus before his makeover

Homeric Erotic Statues

• Penelope embellished by Athena (Od. 18.191ff)

• Compared to carved ivory• Effect on suitors

– Thelxis– Thauma– Desire



Mycenaean ivory female figures

Anavysos Kouros, c. 530 BC

• accompanied by inscription

• in hexameter (Homeric) verse

• ‘Stay by the grave of Kroisos the dead man and pity him whom once in the forefront of battle raging Ares destroyed.’

• emotive response required

• Homeric/heroic connotations

• cf. Thersites as opposite

• erotic; cf. Tyrtaeus

New York Kouros; Cleobis & Biton


Kritian Boy, c. 490-80

Dexileos Monument, c. 390

• Inscription: ‘Dexileos, son of Lysanias from Thorikos, born under the archonship of Teisandros [=414/13 BC] , died under the archonship of Euboulides at Corinth as one of five cavalrymen.’

Pandora: as Erotic Statue

• Theogony 571-90– Pandora as model made by

Hephaistos– Wears talismanic crown– Thaumasia objects on it– Composite figure with gift from

Athena– Erotic and deceptive qualities– Irresistible guile– Thauma grips even gods when

looking at her– Kalon kakon



Pandora/Anesidora

Pandora: as Erotic Statue

Creation of Pandora;Attic Rf calyx krater, c. 460 BC



‘Phrasikleia’, c. 540 & Peplos Kore, c. 525

Inscription: ‘Grave marker of Phrasikleia. I will always be called maiden (Kore), having obtained that name instead of marriage.’

Cf. Homeric hymn to Demeter Persephone as Kore

Berlin Kore, c. 580

Hegeso Monument, c. 400 BC

Ilissos Monument, c. 360 BC

White-ground lekythos, c. 440

Exekias, Suicide of Ajax, c. 530

Sacrifice of Iphigeneia, Pompeii, c. 100 BC

•In Aeschylus’ Agamemnon, Iphigeneia is compared to a painting

‘Strikes her killers with an arrows of pity from her eyes’

Cf. Timanthes’ painting and grades of pity on characters

Zeus & Ganymede, c. 480

Nike of Paionios, c. 420 BC

Temple of Athena Nike, c. 410

Classical Athens: Art, Eros & Power

Theatre of Dionysos Acropolis, Athens

Cf. Pericles: ‘Look on her power and become a lover of the city.’ (Thucydides)

Classical Athens: Art, Eros & Power

Cf. Pericles: ‘Look on her power and become a lover of the city.’ (Thucydides)

Acropolis, Athens

Myron, Discobolos, (orig.c. 460)•Lucian (2nd century AD): Lover of Lies•

•Discussion of statue as combination of different poses

•Sequence of movements

•Not actual appearance, but conveys kinetic energy

A form of artistic ‘deceit’?

Apatê?Roman copy

Cf. Other Media

•Lucian (2nd century AD)• Lover of Lies

•Discussion of statue as combination of different poses

•Sequence of movements

•Not actual appearance, but conveys kinetic energy

A form of artistic ‘deceit’?

Apatê?Panathenaic amphora, c. 530 BC

Artemision god, Zeus (?), c. 460

Summary: Art as heightened representation

• Heroising aspects• Erotics & desire; pity & longing: pothos• ‘deceptive’ aspects (apatê); a ‘sweet sickness’• Cultivates specific modes of viewing

– A visually persuasive & powerful image– Not just an imitation of an appearance– Gorgianic aesthetics anticipates Aristotle– Cf. Plato’s reaction in Republic 10!

• Culture of artistic fiction and emotional engagement with art objects– Anticipates much in Aristotle’s Poetics

ARISTOTLEAristotle: Plato’s greatest student and greatest critic:

Poetics defends art and poetry

Aristotle Contemplating Homer (Rembrandt, c. 1650)

THE PSYCHOLOGY OF GREEK ART. OVERVIEW Alternative views to Plato in Rep. 10 Poets, philosophers,...

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