Main entry:

Onians, John, 1942-

Title & Author:

Classical art and the cultures of Greece and Rome / John Onians.

Publication:

New Haven : Yale University Press, ©1999.

Description:

xiii, 306 pages : illustrations ; 26 cm

Notes:
Includes bibliographical references (pages 290-293) and index.
The Culture of the Greek Workshop -- Man as Raw Material -- The Body and Its Tools -- Military and Civil Crafts -- Greek Art and the Culture of Conflict -- The General as Craftsman and the Soldier as Artefact -- The Necessity of the Phalanx -- The Iliad: Women at Home, Men at War -- War and Art: The 'Military' Style of Pottery -- War and Art: Phalanx and Temple -- War and Philosophy: Kosmos and Harmonia -- War and Philosophy: The First 'Mathematicians' -- War, Mathematics and Art: The 'Square' Man -- Mathematical Art versus the Mathematical Army -- Plato and the Mathematical Guards -- The Power of Women and the Aesthetics of Peace -- Greek Art and the Culture of Competition -- Work and Competition -- Competition, Imitation and Improvement -- Competition: Its Organisation and Regulation -- Competition in Art -- Competition and the Rise of Classical Art -- Competition and Continuous Change -- The Intellectual Marketplace: Competitive Models -- The Intellectual Marketplace: Plato's Paradigm -- Isocrates and the Theory of Classical Culture -- Hellenistic Art and the Culture of Character -- Alexander: Paradigmatic Breaker of the Paradigm -- Alexander and Art -- Responses to the Paradigm -- The 'Modern' Artist -- 'Modern' Art -- The Patron, the Artist, the Model and the Viewer -- From the Viewer as Hero to the Viewer as Victim -- Man Caught in His Own Net -- Paradigms Packaged: Education and the Copy -- Athens, the Capital of Packaging -- Roman Art and the Culture of Memory -- The Instruments of Success -- Augury and Mapping.
Art and Memory -- Money, Monuments and Signs -- Monuments and Memory -- Vespasian's Architectural Memory System -- Money and Monuments in the Later Empire -- Memorials of the Dead -- Christianity: A Contract for the After-life -- The Sign of the Cross -- Rome and the Culture of Imagination -- Beyond Reason -- Metamorphosis and the Magic of Augustus -- Metamorphosis of Nature -- Metamorphosis and the History of Art -- Metamorphosis of Culture -- Roman Style as the Style of Transformation -- The Empire of the Imagination -- Rhetoric and the Education of the Imagination -- The Educated Imagination and the Work of Art -- Imagination and the Psychology of Perception -- From Images in Clouds to Pictures in Marble -- The Rise of the Imagination and Material Decline -- Dreams and Visions; Conversion and Transubstantiation -- The Culture of the Christian Church -- Closing the Schools -- The Christian and the External World -- The Christian and the Internal World -- Christian Building Blocks.

Summary:

This text argues that the study of classical art provides a unique window into the minds of the Greeks and Romans for whom it was produced. He provides an account that ranges from the Greek dark ages to the Christianisation of Rome.
"In this highly original inquiry into the foundation of European culture, John Onians provides a sweeping account that ranges from the Greek Dark Ages to the Christianization of Rome and that reveals how the experience of a constantly changing physical environment influences the inhabitants of ancient Greece and Rome. Tracing the imaginative life of these people through their responses to and their relation with the material world, the author shows how an examination of their artistic activity yields penetrating insights into their ideas and attitudes. The book begins by explaining how the early Greeks--exposed to a rocky landscape, dependent on craft activities, and involved in warfare--saw themselves as made of stone and metal and represented themselves in statues of marble and bronze. Later, in the Hellenistic period, as the awareness of the individual's power increased, so did the sense of physical and emotional weakness, while, with the rise of Rome, art came to be seen less as representation and more as sign, to be experienced less as a lever on the feelings and more as an aid to memory. By the end of the Roman Empire, Onians contends, inhabitants acquired an unprecedented sense of unstable inner life that enable them to represent themselves not as solid sculptures but as marble thin slabs, their surfaces animated by veins suggestive of hidden spiritual vitality." -- Provided by publisher

ISBN:

0300075332 (cloth ; alk. paper)
9780300075335 (cloth ; alk. paper)

Subject:

Art, Classical.
Art and society Greece.
Art and society Rome.
Art, Ancient.
Art antique.
Art et société Grèce.
Art et société Rome.
Art and society
Kunst.
Klassieke oudheid.
Materiële cultuur.
Classical antiquities.
Civilization, Classical.
Art grec.
Art romain.
Art Aspect social Grèce.
Art Aspect social Rome.
Greece
Rome (Empire)
Arte clásico.
Arte y sociedad Roma.
Arte y sociedad Grecia.

Holdings:

Location: Library main 203390
Call No.: N5610 .O5 1999
Status: Available