We found a match
Your institution may have access to this item. Find your institution then sign in to continue.
- Title
Amber, Oil and Fire: Greek Sculpture beyond Bodies.
- Authors
Neer, Richard
- Abstract
This essay is about works of sculpture that either exceed or fail to attain ‘embodiment’ or ‘objecthood’. Specifically, it examines Archaic Greek works that were made of, or incorporated, fire. It has three parts. The first sketches two keywords – wonder (thauma) and grace (charis) – that identify the work of art in terms of a constitutive relation to beholders. The second is about amber, which the Greeks understood to be congealed fire. Three case studies – a pendant in the form of a maiden, a frontlet for a horse and an ivory lyre – show how amber could be ‘wonderful’ by virtue of its fiery lustre. The third section connects a class of marble lamps bearing human protomes to Homer’s account of heroes with jets of flame emerging from their heads. Here fire is at once literally present and part of the depictive content of the work: a juxtaposition that was quintessentially ‘wonderful’.
- Subjects
HUMAN body &; society; GREEK sculpture; FIRE in art; ANCIENT sculpture; HOMER, fl. ca. 900 B.C.-ca. 801 B.C.; ODYSSEY of Homer; AMBER
- Publication
Art History, 2018, Vol 41, Issue 3, p466
- ISSN
0141-6790
- Publication type
Article
- DOI
10.1111/1467-8365.12384