Category Archives: Art & Art History

Second Call for Papers – Perspectives on Progress

02 Thursday May 2013

Posted by in 18th century history, 19th century history, 20th century history, 21st century history, Academia, Ancient Religion, Anthropology, Art & Art History, Classical history, Economics, History, Humanties, Linguistics, Literature, Personal, Post-classical history, Renaissance history, Social Sciences

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Along with a small cadre of my fellow research postgraduates at the School of History, Philosophy, Religion and Classics at The University of Queensland, I’m involved in organising a conference, Perspectives on Progress, which will be held in November 2013.

This is our second call for papers. The abstracts are due 31 May 2013. If you can, please consider submitting an abstract. More information about the conference can be seen at our website – http://perspectives2013.org/, but the basic information is reproduced below.

Perspectives on Progress – An interdisciplinary postgraduate and early career researcher conference, at The University of Queensland, Brisbane, Australia. November 27-29, 2013.

The organising committee is pleased announce that Dr. Alastair Blanshard and Dr. Sarah Pinto have each agreed to deliver Key Note Addresses at Perspectives on Progress, 2013.

Dr. Blanshard is a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Classics and Ancient History at the University of Sydney. His most recent monograph is Sex, Vice, and Love from Antiquity to Modernity (Wiley Blackwell, 2010). In addition to his work on ancient sexuality, Dr. Blanshard is also concerned with examining the role that the classical past plays in the history of ideas.

Dr. Mills’s Futures of Reproduction: Bioethics and Biopolitics (Springer, 2011) is a compelling interrogation of the myriad bioethical issues associated with liberal eugenics and selective reproduction. As the recipient of a prestigious Australian Research Council Future Fellowship, Dr. Mills is currently working on a project concerned with exploring the concept of responsibility as it pertains to issues in reproductive and maternal-foetal medicine.

Call for Papers

In 1968, historian Sidney Pollard defined the Victorian ideal of ‘progress’ as, “the assumption that a pattern of change exists in the history of mankind… that it consists of irreversible changes in one direction only, and that this direction is towards improvement.” Despite the increasingly problematic nature of this ideal, the ‘progress myth’ still remains pervasive in the Western cultural tradition.

This postgraduate and early career researcher conference seeks to promote innovative interdisciplinary dialogues interrogating the concept of progress by bringing together scholars from across the humanities and social sciences.

Contributions are invited from disciplines ranging from history, classics, religion and philosophy through literary, media and cultural studies to anthropology, psychology and political science. Conference delegates will be invited to consider how the idea of progress influences their own work, while being given the opportunity to explore how this intersects with scholarship in other disciplines.

The conference committee invites proposals for papers in the form of an abstract of between 250 and 300 words to perspectivesonprogress2013@gmail.com by 31 May 2013. Paper format is a 20 minute paper with a 10 minute period for questions and answers.

Getty Villa (review)

29 Saturday Sep 2012

Posted by in Archaeology, Art & Art History, Classical history, Classics resources, Greek Classics, Greek history, Latin Classics, Roman history

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I reviewed the Getty Villa on Yelp. Although I have given it 4 out of 5 stars it I have two critiques of its collection from a professional standpoint, namely:

I think the Villa itself could be put to better use than as a merely beautiful container for the objects. The villa, being a replica Roman villa, could be better used to explained Roman social customs. The first thing to point out is the owner of the original villa was the Roman equivalent of J. Paul Getty: a very rich man. The structure of the Roman familia could be discussed; the roles of the paterfamilias, his wife and children, and the household slaves. It could go into the daily routine of the Roman household, etc. It could also be used to explain how Greek models of cultured life penetrated Roman life, for example, in the form of the peristyle garden. It also could at least have one interior room with the actual interior decoration of a Roman villa; rather than the heavily Georgian-period block colour models that it follows.

Last, I am not sure of the layout of the collection. Museum studies isn’t my area of expertise, on reflection I am sure that the thematic grouping of the objects could be improved. For example, in amongst the portraits (divided into men and women) there are a jumble of portrait heads and funerary monuments, Greek and Roman, with no explanation of the difference between burial practices and their evolution over time, and the social role of the portrait busts and monumental statues. I also had minor issues with some inscription translations put onto the cards.

Does anyone think these are unfair criticisms?

Getty Villa (photos)

27 Thursday Sep 2012

Posted by in Archaeology, Art & Art History, Classical history

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I’ve been on holiday recently, not anyway classical or even European, but in Los Angeles. I actually quite like L.A., I wish my already-an-academic wife could move jobs to either UCLA (but they’re cash-strapped) or USC (and they’re a highly fancy private college); I think she’d enjoy it too. Enough of that.

In the meantime we went to the Getty Villa in Pacific Palisades (on the way to Malibu, but not actually in Malibu, as its actually in the city of Los Angeles), in a magnificent setting overlooking the ocean. This has been my second visit there, I went the last time we were in L.A., but this time I managed to be able to cast a much-better-educated eye over the various artefacts. Tomorrow night, i.e Thursday, I am going to see a production of Euripides’ Helen at the Villa.

There are of course two Getty museums: one, the Getty Center, houses modern works of art (which apparently the oil tycoon J. Paul Getty, with him famously conservative tastes, would have found repulsive); the other, the Getty Villa, houses his collection of antiquities. The Villa itself seems to me to be a 20th century version of the folly; a replica Roman villa built by Getty to house his art. It’s ostensibly based on the Villa dei Papiri in Herculaneum. On his death in 1976, the museum organisation (being the summation of both locations) inherited over $600 million. Thanks to this beneficence, entry to the museum is free, but limited in quantity (parking is $15 though, and, in typical Angelino fashion, driving is the only practical way to get to the museum).

The collection housed in the museum is pretty impressive, despite previously documented problems with the provenance of some of the acquired items in it. However, except for the Pompeii exhibition that was running in part of the Villa, photography is generally allowed in the museum, as long as you don’t use a flash, or exploit the photos commercially. So here’s some of my favorite photos of objects from the museum. If you’ve got the time, you see the complete set of photos that I took in this flickr set, or they could be visible on my tumblr.

Below is a selection of the most interesting objects or photographs. Clicking on the picture below will take you to the larger version on Flickr with more information about the object. Because of the Getty Villa restrictions, I must insist that the rights on these photos are all rights reserved; in other words they are not free for you to copy or to use in any way except in strictly educational contexts such as lecture slides.

Child with Satyr Mask Child with Satyr Mask (hand through mask)

This one we found the most interesting; it’s a child playing with a theatre mask. The child has its hand stuck through the mouth of the mask, which makes it most monstrous.

Polyhmnia Clio

These are muses. [L] Polyhymnia, the muse of mime. [R] Clio, the muse of history.

By Hercules! Satyr

[L] the Landsdowne Hercules. [R] Satyr pouring wine.

Apollonia daughter of Aristandos and Thebageneia

Monuments of children are very poignant. This one is the funeral monument of Apollonia, daughter of Aristandos and Thebegeneia.

Fertile Face

A Cypriot ‘fertility goddess’ from 2500 BC

Gaius Caesar (Caligula) Not as played by Joaquim Pheonix

Two famous Roman imperial crazies: [L] Caligula. [R] Commodus.

trium virum rei publicae constituendae creavit Roman General

Images of power: [L] Augustus. [R] The torso of a first century AD Roman general in parade armour.

Anyway there are a lot more photos of artefacts in the Flickr set, including some exquisite glass work, if you care to explore it.

CFP: The Materiality of Texts. Durham, Sept 2012.

29 Wednesday Feb 2012

Posted by in Archaeology, Art & Art History, Greek Classics, Greek history, Latin Classics, Roman history

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From the CLASSICISTS mailing list:

Call for papers: The Materiality of Texts. Conference at Durham University
September 24-26, 2012

Organizers: Dr Edmund Thomas, Dr Andrej Petrovic, Dr Ivana Petrovic

In recent years, the study of ancient texts has gained from a focus on the physicality of text. Epigraphists are interested more than ever in issues of context, reading and performance. Furthermore, studies of architecture have fed on literary approaches to take account of displays of writing and their implications.

The project ‘The Materiality of Text’ brings together these cross-disciplinary approaches to focus on material aspects of the written word. We invite scholars from a range of disciplines, including philology, epigraphy, ancient history, archaeology and art history, to join us in discussing the physical aspects of inscribed texts in the Greek and Roman world, in Greek, Latin and other scripts, and their relation to literature, art, cultural history, and aesthetics.

Papers are invited on both theoretical approaches and individual case-studies which seek to address questions such as: the visualization of text in a physical context, whether monumental or miniature; the relationship of inscriptions to their support, including steles and statue bases; the appearance of inscribed text in buildings and their impact on the perception of architectural space; the form and varieties of lettering, the aesthetics of writing, and its implications for the reading of a text; issues of visibility and legibility; the role of inscribed dedications or commemorative texts in the perception of buildings sacred or secular; the placement and arrangement of inscriptions in public, religious or private space; the aesthetics of particular genres of text such as building contracts, epigrams and sacred laws; specific techniques in the display of prose and verse texts, ritual or magical use and performative aspects of inscribed texts; re-dedication and re-use of inscribed texts; and the use and contribution of specialized media of support from monumental bronze letters to miniature gold plaques and precious metals.

Keynote speakers:

  • Professor Joseph W. Day (Wabash College),
  • Professor John Mitchell (University of East Anglia),
  • Professor Joannis Mylonopoulos (Columbia University),
  • Professor em. Peter J. Rhodes (Durham University).

Abstracts of 250 words should be sent to Ivana Petrovic
(ivana.petrovic@durham.ac.uk) by 31st May 2012.

Octadrachm confiscated

13 Friday Jan 2012

Posted by in Archaeology, Art & Art History, Greek history, News Items

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Swiss confiscation of rare Greek coin:

Greece secures Swiss confiscation of rare ancient coin that was allegedly illegally excavated – The Washington Post:

The high-denomination octadrachm — or eight-drachma — coin was struck by a little-known Thracian ruler named Mosses around 480 B.C., the time of the second failed Persian invasion of Greece.

Thessaloniki University professor of archaeology Michalis Tiverios said examples of Mosses’ currency are very rare.

“There are very few coins struck in his name,” Tiverios said. “Octadrachms were heavy coins used for transactions abroad, usually for mercenaries’ wages, which is why they are very rarely found in Greece.”

Coins of Mosses are indeed rare – see here – but … the same scholar in some ways also argues for it having been found outide Greece (my blod).

(Via Dorothy King’s PhDiva)

On Scholarship (Roger Pearse)

01 Thursday Dec 2011

Posted by in Ancient Religion, Archaeology, Art & Art History, Roman history

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Mithras: how scholarship really should be done:

Instead of starting with a mess of factoids and assembling them into a theory, Hinnells is determined to start with cold, hard, facts.  He’s not going to waste time on theories about what things might mean — too often presented as facts themselves —  but instead intends to catalogue precisely what is actuallyknown.

(Via Roger Pearse)

‘Rome,’ a Personal History by Robert Hughes – Review – NYTimes.com

22 Tuesday Nov 2011

Posted by in Art & Art History, Latin Classics, Medieval history, Renaissance history, Roman history

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A review of Bob Hughes’ new book on Rome. Looks fascinating; I thoroughly enjoyed ‘The Fatal Shore’ and who could forget ‘The Shock Of The New’ or his quite open, right-to-his-face mocking of Jeff Koons in ‘American Visions’. His writing is muscular, vigorous, and interesting, never dull. So it will be worth a read I think.

‘Rome,’ a Personal History by Robert Hughes – Review – NYTimes.com:

As readers of Mr. Hughes’s earlier books well know, he is highly opinionated, especially on all matters aesthetic, and never pulls his punches. “We cannot make the mistake with Romans of supposing that they were refined, like the Greeks they envied and imitated,” he writes near the end of this volume. “They tended to be brutes, arrivistes, nouveaux-riches. Naturally, that is why they continue to fascinate us — we imagine being like them, as we cannot imagine being like the ancient Greeks. And we know that what they liked best to do was astonish people — with spectacle, expense, violence, or a fusion of all three.”

(Via New York Times.)