The Image of the Artist in Archaic and Classical Greece: Art, Poetry, and Subjectivity

This book explores the persona of the artist in Archaic and Classical Greek art and literature. Guy Hedreen argues that artistic subjectivity, first expressed in Athenian vase-painting of the sixth century BCE and intensively explored by Euphronios, developed alongside a self-consciously constructed persona of the poet. He explains how poets like Archilochos and Hipponax identified with the wily Homeric character of Odysseus as a prototype of the successful narrator, and how the lame yet resourceful artist-god Hephaistos is emulated by Archaic vase-painters such as Kleitias. In lyric poetry and pictorial art, Hedreen traces a widespread conception of the artist or poet as socially marginal, sometimes physically imperfect, but rhetorically clever, technically peerless, and a master of fiction. Bringing together in a sustained analysis the roots of subjectivity across media, this book offers a new way of studying the relationship between poetry and art in ancient Greece.

• | Author: Guy Hedreen
• | Publisher: Cambridge University Press
• | Publication Date: Aug 30, 2018
• | Number of Pages: 394 pages
• | Language: English
• | Binding: Paperback/Art
• | ISBN-10: 1107543398
• | ISBN-13: 9781107543393