Visual Power in Ancient Greece and Rome: Between Art and Social Reality

Sather Classical Lectures

by Tonio Hölscher

Visual culture was an essential part of ancient social, religious, and political life. Appearance and experience of beings and things was of paramount importance. In Visual Power in Ancient Greece and Rome, Tonio Hölscher explores the fundamental phenomena of Greek and Roman visual culture and their enormous impact on the ancient world, considering memory over time, personal appearance, conceptualization and representation of reality, and significant decoration as fundamental categories of art as well as of social practice. With an emphasis on public spaces such as sanctuaries, agora and forum, Hölscher investigates the ways in which these spaces were used, viewed, and experienced in religious rituals, political manifestations, and social interaction.

Genres: Archaeology

419 pages, Kindle Edition

Published June 22, 2018

Reviews

[Matt · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a wonderfully learned book from a very important scholar, who does not publish very widely in English. The books in this series, the Sather Lectures, often go on to become seminal works that define the field of Classics for decades. I suspect that Hölscher’s book will be no exception. The basic premise is that aesthetics and social dynamics cannot and should not be treated in isolation. This may seem like a pretty sensible position to most of us these days, but the history of aesthetics in general and of classical art history in particular have long maintained the artificial separation of these two fields. The book lays out the reasons against this separation in careful, thoughtful German style. As a result, we have now the groundwork for a fuller study of ancient social realities using art historical sources. Hölscher is careful to reveal this limitations of his positions when necessary, but also provides a strong argument for focusing on social implications rather than on formal characteristics in ancient art.

I am no art historian. In fact, I read this book because it came out just a year after I defended a dissertation on the social dimensions of vision in ancient Greek literary texts, so I was looking for some validation of my own research. The book definitely provides this, and I intend to cite it prominently as I revise my own book project. But in addition to its prominent argumentation with regards to ancient social worlds, the book also serves as a good general survey of ancient art history. Many major ancient art works are discussed: Trajan’s column, various ancient portrait statues, the Athenian tyrranicides Harmodius and Aristogeiton, Polycleitus’ Doryphorus, that Alexander mosaic, Augustus of Prima Porta, not to mention detailed discussions of the layouts and phenomenology of urban spaces and sanctuaries in Athens, Rome, Olympia, etc. The book’s broad coverage of so many major works of ancient art history both proves its validity and makes it a useful introduction to ancient art history in its own right. Despite his mastery of such a long bibliography on this field, the text is very accessible and the scholarly debates are largely handled in the endnotes. The images in the book are clear and helpful and often referred to more than once (so you will have to flip back to see what he is pointing out each time). The maps are less helpful, because they often include a path or itnerary that is hard to pick out form the image without the help of a color contrast. Still, this is a really great book that almost anyone (specialist or layman) can get something out of. Hölscher’s insights and mastery of this field are both entertaining and astounding.

[Jo · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was an absolutely wonderful text! The author clearly demonstrates their knowledge and skill in their field through this book, and the in-depth analysis of aesthetics as they related to the Greco-Roman world was a super enjoyable + informative read.