Book Review STEINER Reading Greek Vases 2007

7/27/2019 Book Review STEINER Reading Greek Vases 2007

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Bryn Mawr Classical Review 2007.11.19

Ann Steiner,Reading Greek Vases. Cambridge: Cambridge

University Press, 2007. Pp. 346. ISBN 978-0-521-82522-1. $85.00.

Reviewed by Michael Squire, Christ's College, Cambridge ([email protected])Word count: 2472 words

As its title indicates, the essential argument of this book is that Greek vases, like the

inscriptions sometimes scribbled on them, functioned as texts to be read. Steiner

(henceforth S.) posits that the 'overall message of the unified text of the vase' (p.39)

inhered in a system of pictorial conventions analogous to those of a language. More

specifically, she suggests that this conventional system was predicated upon the

hermeneutics of repetition and symmetry. If we only learn the specific interpretative

values of repeating shapes, formulae and scenes on the different visual fields of an

individual 'vase-text', modern viewers can 'decode' the overarching 'meanings' that

they originally communicated.

S. readily admits that she is by no means the first to draw attention to the use of

repetition on Attic vases, more specifically on Archaic vases produced between 600-

480 BC (p.5). She begins with the habitual nod to Sir John Beazley, and proceeds to

reference the work of numerous other scholars working in the late twentieth century

(most notably Heide Froning).1 But S. maintains that her book offers something new.

No previous critic, as S. puts it, 'has tapped into the theoretical material available to

guide a study of repetition, to understand the development and parameters of its

exploitation by Athenian vase-painters' (p.15). If this professed objective does not

quite live up to that emblazoned on its dust-jacket -- that the book 'provides an

entirely new way to read ancient Athenian vases' -- S. does attempt to relate her'readings' to much larger theoretical frameworks, drawn from the interconnected fields

of information theory, social anthropology, semiotics, structural linguistics and

narratology.

These interdisciplinary connections are the subject of S.'s first chapter, in which she

attributes to repetition on Greek vases an 'interpretative' rather than purely 'aesthetic'

function. Opening with the famous red-figure pelike by Euthymides and Euphronios

in Boston, S. shows how the similarities and differences between the two sides of the

vase spark a visual exercise in 'spot the difference'. Although visually mediated, S.

argues that this game had, as it were, extra-visual significance. After looking to earlier

studies of form and variation in Bronze Age iconography and the uses of the formulain Homeric epic, S. presents the theoretical basis of her own analysis. The book
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derives from information theory a means of evaluating the efficiency (or 'entropy') of

different 'systems' of communicating 'messages'.2For S., 'redundancy' (equated with

'repetition' on p.11) is an obvious way of eliminating visual ambiguity. Social

anthropology and structural linguistics are likewise introduced here, to show that weare dealing with a 'cultural phenomenon' embedded in the larger communicative

conventions of a given society. Finally S. looks to semiotics and narratology to argue

that repetition functions as both part of a unified language for conveying meaning, and

a means of logically connecting the different visual fields of a vase. She ends with a

set of technical definitions -- concerning 'repetition', 'verbatim repetition',

'duplication', 'reduplication' and 'redundancy' -- although these terms have little direct

relevance for the thematic discussions that follow.

The second chapter offers a practical 'primer' to the theoretical framework laid out in

the first. Exekias provides the primary set of case studies: nine examples from his

oeuvre, five of them illustrated here, are used in support of S.'s argument that skilledartists used repeated inscriptions and imagery alike to convey chronological, causal or

exemplary connections between the different sides of their wares. The chapter

concludes by suggesting that Exekias' direct followers (specifically the

Andokides/Lysippides Painters) inherited and developed his various uses of repetition,

making them a standard part of their own visual language, and thereby the visual

conventions of the late sixth century.

Chapter Three proceeds to tackle the question of repetition on a grander scale.

Because both sides of 'horse head amphoras', 'komast-dancer cups', 'Glaux-skyphoi'and 'Eye-cups' are 'identical or nearly so' (p.40), S. suggests, 'repetition is at the core

of their identity' (p.51). These vases are important, it seems, because they point to the

popularity of vases that conformed to a set 'type'. But there is a reverse argument too:

'the vase with only some repetitive features shared between scenes calls attention to

itself precisely because it is not a member of a Type and its repetitions are not known

through other examples' (p. 51).

The fourth and fifth chapters are a more motley pair. S. promises in the introduction

that these chapters will 'deal directly with the title of this monograph, laying out how

writing on vases is essential to decoding the semantic value of repetition' (p.16). In

practice, though, the fourth chapter opens with a self-confessed 'digression' (p.52) --

into how first spectators, and only then inscriptions, function 'metadiscursively' as asort of commentary on the mechanics of interpretation. ('Metadiscourse' is a term

introduced here for the first time, and S. does not explain its particular resonance for

her argument.) The fifth chapter, by contrast, offers a useful survey of the various

functions of inscriptions on black- and early red-figure vases, especially the ways in

which written messages might be split over different visual fields, leading viewers to

search for other associations between them.

Chapters Six through Nine provide the real meat and bones of the book. S. applies to

the interpretation of repeated figural scenes the sorts of meanings attributed to the

repetition of inscriptions in the fourth and fifth chapters. Each of the individual

chapters deals with one of the four potential interpretative effects of repetition:narratological connection (Chapter Six), paradigmatic relation (Chapter Seven),
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character development (Chapter Eight), and parodic deflation (Chapter Nine). S.'s

interest is essentially thematic in nature, although she does discuss her case studies in

approximate chronological order. Here, as throughout the book, S. also gives her

qualitative analysis a quantitative spin: she brings to her respective thematic analysesa wealth of exempla, the vast majority of them illustrated with good-sized pictures,

neatly integrated within the text (157 in total).

Two final chapters round off the book. Chapter Ten introduces six new case studies to

show how 'a single vase can exhibit multiple ways for repetition to create meaning'

(p.212): in effect, it summarises by way of demonstration the arguments of the

preceding nine chapters. The eleventh chapter finally turns to a theme much

anticipated in those that precede it -- namely, the ways in which visual repetition

functioned within its original viewing contexts. S. begins by re-evaluating the

evidence for the 'intended use venue' of the vessels surveyed: although 'recognizing

that Athenian figural pottery may have had diverse use-contexts', she focuses on thesymposium as the principal sphere 'in which the vases reverberate' (p.236). Interesting

here is S.'s insistence on the elite market of Attic wares, especially at the turn of the

sixth and fifth centuries (pp.258-262): while the work of the Pioneers must be

understood as part and parcel of a larger climate of political and social upheaval, their

products nonetheless appealed to a predominantly elite market. Euphronios,

Euthymides, Smikros, Hypsias, Phintias...: these artists all worked within a world of

growing intra-elite competition, but the various self-referential games that they played

only served to distance the banausic world in which their vases were produced from

the elite symposium in which they were consumed.

This is certainly a wide-ranging and varied book. In some ways, it serves as a useful

introductory guide not only to the world of Athenian vase painting, but to the Greek

world at large. There are parts of the book that read like textbook accompaniments to

a core curriculum course on 'Classical Greek Culture and Civilisation': the

introductions to Homeric epic (pp.8-10), Old Comedy (pp.195-196) and Pindar

(pp.248-250), for example, not to mention the analysis of the symposium in the final

chapter (apparently intended as a basic introduction to its defining characteristics and

function: cf. p.304, n.34). The strongest parts of the book are undoubtedly those that

deal with written texts, most notably the fifth chapter -- one of the most discursive

Anglophone surveys of the range and register of Athenian vase inscriptions, and a

useful summary of previous debates. S. is at her most sensitive and insightful herewhen exploring the various performative functions of inscriptions (which she is surely

right to think were frequently intended for reading aloud at the symposium).

The book is less successful, though, in its analysis of figurative imagery. The scare

quotes with which S. introduces the notion of the 'vase-text' are very quickly

abandoned, as S. literalizes the metaphor of 'reading'. Fundamental to the book's text-

centred semiotics is the logocentric assumption that images are 'vehicles' that

communicate intended meanings from artist to viewer ('repetition is essential to avoid

transmission errors', p.39; 'the point the artist makes creating the links...', p.54;

'repetitions invite the viewer to read two or more fields together, reducing the

likelihood that the total meaning will be lost', p.128). Although S. frequently flirtswith an alternative rhetoric (whereby repetition on vases should be read as more


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discursive 'explorations' of certain themes), meaning is deemed a singular entity.

Nowhere is this clearer than in S.'s reduction of pairs of images to textual captions in

inverted commas: '"to depart for war is heroic"' (p.25); '"first these six hoplites battled,

and then another six followed suit"' (p.122); '"the youth is awarded the wreath as aresult of having won the race"' (p.122); '"the Athenian elite male is like Herakles"'

(p.129); '"men fight like Athena" and "she fights with you"' (p.134), etc. Unilinear

meanings are easiest to convey to undergraduates, and convenient too for scholars

who want quickly to illustrate ideas and narratological trends. But the inclination to

collapse image into verbal 'meaning' nonetheless tends to eclipse the complex

mechanics of visual response, and not least the ways in which these were developed in

the Athenian symposium.

For all S.'s valiant attempts to reinstate the importance of close formal analysis

(criticising T.B.L. Webster, for example, for approaching repetition as something

'almost purely intellectual and not at all visual', p.130), this can at times prove afrustratingly avisual book. Take the elasticity of the term 'repetition' itself. S. nicely

demonstrates that repeated verbs, kalos inscriptions and potter/painter signaturesinvited viewers to compare and contrast the different sides of a vase. When applied to

figural decoration, however, 'repetition' becomes a much looser category. S. never

quite comes clean about what visual repetition looks like, nor about how 'repetition'

differs from 'related comparisons' (pp.157-170). Sometimes she seems to rely on

rather vague similarities to establish a paradigmatic relationship between the two sides

of a vase: the repetition of a 'beard' and a conventional-looking 'hairstyle' on a black-

figure column krater by Lydos, for example (p.143), or the rather strained similarity

posited between a horse-drawn chariot and a horse-mounted rider on a red-figure

kylix by Euphronios (p.104). On other occasions, there appears very little visualsymmetry between the two sides whatsoever. How exactly does the youth on a

Epiktetos red-figure kylix 'repeat the syntax' of Theseus on the other side (p.201)?

What are the 'several significant similarities' that associate the scenes of Heracles

slaying Busiris and three reclining symposiasts on another kylix by the same painter

(p.216)? And what is the compositional repetition between the two sides of an

infamous red-figure amphora by Euphronios (p.210; cf. pp.183-186 -- note how small

a section of the vase survives here in any case)? Many will likewise be perplexed at

the suggestion that the 'spectators' on the two sides of a black-figure kylix by the

Amasis Painter formally 'repeat' each other -- never mind the specific conclusion that

these remind viewers that 'we too would do well to remember the exhortation of

Poseidon in battle' (p.60).3

Some of the most important work on Greek vase paintings in the late twentieth

century has stemmed from the assumption that images work as or within an

iconographic 'language'. One thinks primarily of the Francophone crew assembled by

Claude Brard in the early 1980s: Brard showed how the art of Athenian vase

painting (and we might say Classical visual culture at large) negotiated meaning by

both alluding to and deviating from a set of visual precedents.4 But S.'s conceptual

framework is very different. Each of her various case studies is analysed in isolation,

as part of a closed visual system: every duo or trio of images is read in independent

terms, without reference to the broader Athenian 'city of images'. But if Greek vasepaintings raised questions about the relation between single visual fields, we might
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think that they also encouraged viewers to relate these same questions to issues of

iconographic allusion at large. What should we make of the possible resemblance

between the Amazons of a red-figure krater by Euphronios and the runners of

Panathenaic amphorae (fig.10.10), for instance? Is there significance in attributingTheseus with the pose of the tyrannicidal Aristogeiton in a red-figure kylix by

Epiktetos (fig.9.3)? How do the 'repeated' scenes of Ajax and Achilles playing dice on

a bilingual amphora by the Andokides/Lysippides Painters themselves repeat (and

alter) the iconography of an earlier Exekian prototype (fig. 2.12, 2.13)?

Because Greek vases ask questions, they arguably refuse the sorts of text-centred

readings in which S. indulges. To respond to these images as images is thus to admit

that formal correspondence between visual fields does not necessarily make 'message-

delivery' more 'effective' (contra p.11). 'Repetition' might just as well complicate asclarify visual response, rather like the riddlesome and nonsensical inscriptions that

frequently accompanied such images (as S. admits on p.92, 'often... there is adisconnect [sic] between the meanings of the words and the imagery'). The urge toclassify pots into neat categories -- to pigeon-hole a set of repetitions as establishing

an 'antonymic' rather than 'synonymic' relationship, for example -- thus arguably tells

us more about the classificatory origins of Classical archaeology than it does about

modes of response in late Archaic contexts. As Richard Neer has demonstrated,

moreover, Archaic vase painters themselves actively explored the 'conventionality' of

visual expression within the wake of new naturalistic visual styles.5

This is not to detract from the evident merits of S.'s book. Not only does it provide in

its fourth, fifth and twelfth chapters an important new synopsis of the various

functions of inscriptions, it makes some substantial headway in associating these

functions with their original sympotic contexts. In the end, though, I suspect that the

book will fall uneasily between different academic camps: it tries to reinstate the

'viewer', but recurrently falls back on notions of the 'author-artist' (pp.66-67: Beazley's

ghost dies hard); it attempts thematic discussion, but frequently collapses into

questions of chronology; it aspires to bring to the discipline 'theory' developed from

outside its traditional confines, but references very little published after the late 1980s.

If the book provides a useful seismograph of the epistemological shifts in the late

twentieth century, then, it also testifies to some of the conspicuous challenges that

remain.

Notes:

1. H. Froning, 'Anfange der kontinuierenden Bilderzahlung in der griechischen

Kunst',JdI103 (1988): 169-199. Anne Mackay's important work on the common usesof repetition in both Archaic poetry and black-figure vase painting is arguably

underplayed here (and her name misspelled throughout).

2. In fact, S. engages with only one (now rather dated) introductory textbook: J.

Campbell (1982) Grammatical Man: Information, Entropy, Language and Life, NewYork.

3. Some will also take issue with the specific 'readings' advanced. It seems rather
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literal-minded, for example, to suggest that the two scenes of lion-wrestling on a

black-figure kylix by the Heidelberg Painter were intended to contrast the Heraclean

labour with some sort of aristocratic imitation (the absence of attributed club 'making

it unlikely that the figure depicted [on the exterior] is Heracles', p.134). And theinterpretation of bilingual vases in chapter two as primarily attempts to convey

narratological sequence seems rather skewed. In her discussion of a bilingual amphora

by the Andokides/Lysippides Painters depicting two 'repeated' scenes of a male figure

reclining on a couch [2.14, 2.15], to cite a single instance, S. fancifully argues that one

side of the vase evokes Heracles' past, the other his future: but why should we

necessarily view either figure as Heracles in the first place?

4. C. Brard et al. (1984)La cit des images: religion et socit en Grce antique,Paris. In terms of her research on vase inscriptions, Steiner likewise builds upon the

Francophone work of Franois Lissarrague: see especially F. Lissarrague (1985)

'Paroles d'images. Remarques sur le fonctionnement de l'criture dans l'imagerie

attique', in A.-M. Christin (ed.),critures II, pp. 71-95, Paris; idem (1987) Un flotd'images: une esthtique du banquet grec; idem (1992) 'Graphein: crire et dessiner',in C. Bron and E. Kassapoglou (eds.),L'image en jeu: de l'antiquit Paul Klee, pp.189-203, Paris; idem (1999) 'Publicity and performance: Kalos inscriptions in Attic

vase-painting', in S. D. Goldhill and R.G. Osborne (eds.),Performance Culture andAthenian Democracy, pp. 359-373, Cambridge.5. R. Neer (2002) Style and Politics in Athenian Vase Painting, Cambridge.

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Book Review STEINER Reading Greek Vases 2007

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