1. THE PSYCHOLOGY OF GREEK ART

2. OVERVIEW Alternative views to Plato in Rep. 10
Poets, philosophers, sophists, et al. on art
Greek art in context
Art and the viewer
Art and text in combination to produce effect
Emotions, politics, erotics of Greek art
Psychological power
Art as rhetoric
Plato’s bugbears…?

3. PLATONIC AESTHETICS I Inseparable from
Education
Ontology
Epistemology
Psychology
Ethics & Justice
Politics
Issues addressed elsewhere in Republic
Plato addresses legacy of poets: Homer, Hesiod, et al.
His intellectual precursors
Poets seen as teachers of religion, ethics, law

4. REPUBLIC 10: Critique of Mimetic Painting & Poetry
Mimesis now rejected
Psychology, epistemology, education
Theory of Forms
Outlined in books 4-9 of Rep.
Painting used as extensive analogy for mimetic poetry
Both media subject to Plato’s
Ontology
Epistemology
Psychology
Ethics & Justice

5. REPUBLIC 10 (595-603): On Painting & Poetry
Ontology
Painting = mimesis phantasmatos
Imitation of an appearance
Couch example and invocation of Forms
Epistemology
Painters and poets = ignorant, so, too, their public
3 removes from truth
User/maker/imitator argument
Psychology
Painting plays havoc with our senses
Seductive, erotic, magical language used
Epithumetikon vs Logistikon

6. REPUBLIC 10 (603-607): On Epic Poetry & Tragedy
Epistemology
Homer is no general
No victories recorded
How reliable a source for war???
Psychology
Meter, harmony, music beguiles us
Seductive, erotic, magical language used (cf. painting)
Grief: tragedy, etc. panders to ‘irrational’, emotive elements in us

7. REPUBLIC 10 (605c-607): ‘The Greatest Charge’
It corrupts the best of us (cf. painting)
NB its emotive power
pleasure in sympathising with sufferings of others
People assimilate Homeric tragic characters’ behaviour to own lives
the more you indulge these emotions, the more you encourage them
Poets destabilise our psychological ‘order’
Justice = Psychological order
Mimetic poets to be banned (!)

8. SOME RESPONSES Plato assumes depiction = endorsement
does not allow for critical distance of poet and audience
Achilles presented as problematic figure in first 2 lines of Iliad
Plato does not allow for psychological complexity
demands simple didactic message
how reasonable is this?
Plato ignores moments in Homer of heroic restraint of emotion:
Achilles and Priam again
Plato very selective in critique

9. SOME OTHER ANCIENT VIEWS
Poetry a source of pleasure in and of itself: Homer, Hesiod
Gorgias the orator and Sophist (c BC)
intense emotional power of poetry and artworks not necessarily bad (Encomium of Helen)
on cleverness of audience (B23)
recognition of artistic fiction
tragedy involves deceit, cleverness and justice!
Platonic objections turned on their head!
Cf. Dissoi Logoi on painting and tragedy

10. SOME OTHER ANCIENT VIEWS
Aeschines and Isocrates (orators, active c BC) provide opposite evidence to Plato
people do not assimilate tragic emotions in their own lives
recognise artistic fictions and emotions
Democritus of Abdera (c BC)
other people’s sufferings can make us count our blessings and help
poet composes very beautifully under inspiration: enthousiasmos
Homer has a divine nature & designs a ‘cosmos’ of all kinds of words

11. SOME OTHER PLATONIC VIEWS
Plato expresses different views on art & poetry elsewhere
Phaedrus: Plato admires mania of poet
Apology: invokes Achilles as his model!
Plato is himself a supreme literary artist (and knows it!)
Ion: poetry beautiful and true
But poets/rhapsodes irrational
Operate under inspiration = ENTHOUSIASMOS
Republic 10: poet = imitator only
No inspiration
Plato on poetry: Curb Your Enthousiasmos

12. Poetics defends art and poetry
ARISTOTLE
Aristotle: Plato’s greatest student and greatest critic:
Poetics defends art and poetry
Aristotle Contemplating Homer (Rembrandt, c. 1650)

13. Jacques-Louis David, Oath of the Horatii (1784)

14. Pablo Picasso, Guernica (1937)

15. Norman Lindsay ( )

16. Francesco de Goya, 3rd of May 1808

17. Goya, Disasters of War

18. Some Greek writers on art
Polyclitus
Sculptor active c BC
Author of ‘Canon’
A technical treatise
Philosophical overtones?
Empedocles
Hippias
Gorgias
Democritus
Apelles
Euphranor, et al.
Sources in Pliny
Vitruvius
Polyclitus, Doryphorus c. 445 BC

19. Gorgias: An important precursor to Socrates/Plato
Sicilian teacher of rhetoric
Interest in forms of logos & art
Interest in Homer & tragedy
Tragedy as form of ‘deceit’: apatê
On tragedy: B23: ‘the deceiver is more just than the non-deceiver, and the deceived is cleverer than the non-deceived’
Cf. Simonides: Thessalians too stupid to be deceived by him.
Cf. Dissoi Logoi (3.10) ...in painting and tragedy the one who deceives the most by making things most like real things, this man is best.
Gorgias of Leontini,
c BC

20. Gorgias on Logos, Emotion & Reality
Encomium of Helen
Power of rhetoric/peitho
Seductive, deceptive
Gorgias uses her story to speculate on psychology, epistemology, rhetoric, etc.
On Not Being
Nothing exists
Even if it did, Nothing is knowable
Even if it were, Logos conveys Nothing, so we can’t talk about it
Defence of Palamedes
Innocent man defending self
Rational attempt at persuasion
Ostensibly convincing but fails…
Peitho as
Erotic Personification

21. Gorgias’ Encomium of Helen
Ostensibly tries to exculpate Helen from blame for Trojan War
Presents her as victim
Of the gods’ will
Of desire (erôs) induced by sight and artworks
erôs : also a god
Of Paris’ violence (bia)
Of Logos: persuasive emotive power of words in all forms
Poetry, rhetoric, law court speeches, scientific arguments
All forms of logos/peitho are false and deceptive
Exploit/manipulate doxa
Gorgias of Leontini,
c BC

22. Gorgias’ Encomium of Helen
8-9: Logos is great ruler that, with the smallest and least conspicuous body brings about the most divine deeds. For it can stop fear and take away grief and generate joy and increase pity. … I deem and name all poetry as logos that has meter; ultra fearful shuddering and very tearful pity and grief-loving longing come upon its hearers, and as a result of the good fortunes and bad fortunes of of other people’s actions and bodies, the soul, through the agency of words, suffers its own private suffering.
Gorgias of Leontini,
c BC

23. Gorgias’ Encomium of Helen
10: … For the inspired epodes through words are inducers of pleasure and banishers of grief. For mingling with the opinion of the soul the power of the ode enchants and persuades and changes the soul by witchcraft. And two arts of witchcraft and magic have been invented, which are the mistakes of soul and the deceptions of opinion.
Gorgias of Leontini,
c BC

24. Gorgias’ Encomium of Helen
11-12: ... To remember the past, to examine the present, or to prophesy the future is not easy; and so most people on most subjects make doxa advisor to their minds. But doxa is perilous and uncertain, and brings those who use it to perilous and uncertain good fortune... For peitho expelled her thought; peitho which has the same dunamis but not the same form as anagke.
14: The power of the logos has the same relation to the ordering of the soul as the ordering of drugs does to the nature of the body. … some (sc. speeches) cause grief, others fear, while others instill courage in their hearers, and some drug and bewitch the soul with some evil persuasion.
Gorgias of Leontini,
c BC

25. Gorgias: Encomium of Helen 8-14
Psychology of logos
Instills emotions
Applies to poetry and prose
Fear, longing, desire, pity
Cf. Aristotle on fear and pity of tragedy (Poetics)
Works on soul like magic
Goêteia, Thelxis, Apatê
Witchcraft, beguilement, deceit
Cf. Plato in Rep. 10 on painting & tragedy
In Helen 18 powers of visual art and opsis parallel the powers of logos
Inspire the same emotional, psychological responses
Helen with Erõs and Paris, c. 350 BC

26. Gorgias: Encomium of Helen 18
But indeed whenever painters perfectly produce one body and form from many colours and bodies, they delight the sight. The making of statues and the production of sculptures provide a sweet sickness for the eyes. Thus, it is natural for the sight to grieve for some things and long for others. And many things produce in many people desire and longing for many actions and bodies.
Helen with Erõs and Paris, c. 350 BC

27. Homeric Erotic Statues
Od : Odysseus embellished by Athena for Nausikaa
He is compared to gold and silver statue
Athena compared to craftsman
Erotic thauma of new appearance
NB Nausikaa’s response
Odysseus before his makeover

28. Homeric Erotic Statues
Penelope embellished by Athena (Od ff)
Compared to carved ivory
Effect on suitors
Thelxis
Thauma
Desire
Mycenaean ivory female figures

29. Anavysos Kouros, c. 530 BC accompanied by inscription
in hexameter (Homeric) verse
‘Stay by the grave of Kroisos the dead man and pity him whom once in the forefront of battle raging Ares destroyed.’
emotive response required
Homeric/heroic connotations
cf. Thersites as opposite
erotic; cf. Tyrtaeus

30. New York Kouros; Cleobis & Biton

31. Anavysos Kouros, c. 530 BC

32. Anavysos Kouros, c. 530 BC
Kritian Boy, c

33. Dexileos Monument, c. 390
Inscription: ‘Dexileos, son of Lysanias from Thorikos, born under the archonship of Teisandros [=414/13 BC] , died under the archonship of Euboulides at Corinth as one of five cavalrymen.’

34. Pandora: as Erotic Statue
Theogony
Pandora as model made by Hephaistos
Wears talismanic crown
Thaumasia objects on it
Composite figure with gift from Athena
Erotic and deceptive qualities
Irresistible guile
Thauma grips even gods when looking at her
Kalon kakon
Pandora/Anesidora

35. Pandora: as Erotic Statue
Creation of Pandora;
Attic Rf calyx krater, c. 460 BC

37. ‘Phrasikleia’, c. 540 & Peplos Kore, c. 525
Inscription: ‘Grave marker of Phrasikleia. I will always be called maiden (Kore), having obtained that name instead of marriage.’
Cf. Homeric hymn to Demeter
Persephone as Kore

38. Berlin Kore, c. 580

39. Hegeso Monument, c. 400 BC

40. Ilissos Monument, c. 360 BC

41. White-ground lekythos, c. 440

42. Exekias, Suicide of Ajax, c. 530

43. Sacrifice of Iphigeneia, Pompeii, c. 100 BC
In Aeschylus’ Agamemnon, Iphigeneia is compared to a painting
‘Strikes her killers with an arrows of pity from her eyes’
Cf. Timanthes’ painting and grades of pity on characters

44. Zeus & Ganymede, c. 480

45. Nike of Paionios, c. 420 BC

46. Temple of Athena Nike, c. 410

47. Classical Athens: Art, Eros & Power
Theatre of Dionysos
Acropolis, Athens
Cf. Pericles: ‘Look on her power and become a lover of the city.’ (Thucydides)

48. Classical Athens: Art, Eros & Power
Cf. Pericles: ‘Look on her power and become a lover of the city.’ (Thucydides)
Acropolis, Athens

49. Myron, Discobolos, (orig.c. 460)
Lucian (2nd century AD): Lover of Lies
Discussion of statue as combination of different poses
Sequence of movements
Not actual appearance, but conveys kinetic energy
A form of artistic ‘deceit’?
Apatê?
Roman copy

50. Cf. Other Media Lucian (2nd century AD)
Lover of Lies
Discussion of statue as combination of different poses
Sequence of movements
Not actual appearance, but conveys kinetic energy
A form of artistic ‘deceit’?
Apatê?
Panathenaic amphora, c. 530 BC

51. Artemision god, Zeus (?), c. 460

52. Summary: Art as heightened representation
Heroising aspects
Erotics & desire; pity & longing: pothos
‘deceptive’ aspects (apatê); a ‘sweet sickness’
Cultivates specific modes of viewing
A visually persuasive & powerful image
Not just an imitation of an appearance
Gorgianic aesthetics anticipates Aristotle
Cf. Plato’s reaction in Republic 10!
Culture of artistic fiction and emotional engagement with art objects
Anticipates much in Aristotle’s Poetics

53. Poetics defends art and poetry
ARISTOTLE
Aristotle: Plato’s greatest student and greatest critic:
Poetics defends art and poetry
Aristotle Contemplating Homer (Rembrandt, c. 1650)