THE PSYCHOLOGY OF GREEK ART

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THE PSYCHOLOGY OF GREEK ART

• REPUBLIC 10 IN ITS CULTURAL CONTEXT II

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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
• Platos bugbears?

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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

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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 Platos
• Ontology
• Epistemology
• Psychology
• Ethics Justice

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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

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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

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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 (!)

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SOME RESPONSES

• Plato 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

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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

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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 peoples 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

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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

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ARISTOTLE

• Aristotle Platos greatest student and greatest
  critic
• Poetics defends art and poetry
• Aristotle Contemplating Homer (Rembrandt, c.
  1650)

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Jacques-Louis David, Oath of the Horatii (1784)
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Pablo Picasso, Guernica (1937)
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Norman Lindsay (1879-1969)
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Francesco de Goya, 3rd of May 1808
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Goya, Disasters of War
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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

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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

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New York Kouros Cleobis Biton
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Anavysos Kouros, c. 530 BC
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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.

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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

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Berlin Kore, c. 580
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Hegeso Monument, c. 400 BC
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Ilissos Monument, c. 360 BC
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White-ground lekythos, c. 440
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Exekias, Suicide of Ajax, c. 530
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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

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Zeus Ganymede, c. 480
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Nike of Paionios, c. 420 BC
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Temple of Athena Nike, c. 410
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Classical Athens Art, Eros Power

• Theatre of Dionysos

Acropolis, Athens Cf. Pericles Look
on her power and become a lover of the city.
(Thucydides)
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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
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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
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Artemision god, Zeus (?), c. 460
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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. Platos reaction in Republic 10!
• Culture of artistic fiction and emotional
  engagement with art objects
• Anticipates much in Aristotles Poetics

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ARISTOTLE

• Aristotle Platos greatest student and greatest
  critic
• Poetics defends art and poetry
• Aristotle Contemplating Homer (Rembrandt, c.
  1650)