THE PSYCHOLOGY OF GREEK ART

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THE PSYCHOLOGY OF GREEK ART
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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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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.

Gorgias of Leontini, c. 480-375 BC
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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
  cant talk about it
• Defence of Palamedes
• Innocent man defending self
• Rational attempt at persuasion
• Ostensibly convincing but fails

Peitho as Erotic Personification
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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 of Leontini, c. 480-375 BC
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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 peoples actions and bodies,
  the soul, through the agency of words, suffers
  its own private suffering.

Gorgias of Leontini, c. 480-375 BC
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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 of Leontini, c. 480-375 BC
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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 of Leontini, c. 480-375 BC
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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
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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
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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 Nausikaas response

Odysseus before his makeover
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Homeric Erotic Statues

• Penelope embellished by Athena (Od. 18.191ff)
• Compared to carved ivory
• Effect on suitors
• Thelxis
• Thauma
• Desire

Mycenaean ivory female figures
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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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Anavysos Kouros, c. 530 BC
Kritian Boy, c. 490-80
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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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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
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Pandora as Erotic Statue
Creation of Pandora Attic Rf calyx krater, c.
460 BC
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(No Transcript)
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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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Classical Athens Art, Eros Power
Cf. Pericles Look on her power and
become a lover of the city. (Thucydides)
Acropolis, Athens
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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)