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organisation, proving the long life of the product of Cleisthenes
(or should I now say the demos?).
Vivienne Gray
University of Auckland
N. SPIVEY Greek Art (London, Phaidon, 1997 (Art and Id ea s
series); 448, 254 illustrations (mostly colour); ISBN 0714 833681;
£14.99.
I
approached this book with some reservations. It seemed a t
first glance another general book from a broadly-conceived series.
Will it be much of a contribution? Will beginners be able to use it?
It now pleases me greatly to report that I enjoyed the book,
and believe both that it is a significant contribution and th at,
with reservations, beginners should derive considerable benefit
from it. For a start, it didn't take very long to read (a tribute to
the engaging, succinct prose), and I was impressed by the wealth of
colour illustrations. The publishers are to be congratulated for
having produced a handbook-sized, paperback introduction to the
topic with so many quality illustrations for the price. By the
same token, I would perhaps recommend it as a supplementary text
for beginners, to be read in conjunction with general surveys by
writers such as Martin Robertson, John Boardman or Susan
Woodford.
The readability of the text is assisted by double spacing
between the lines, along with the absence of unexplained
technical terms (for further support there is a 'Glossary' at the
back [420-22], in conjunction with 'Brief Biographies' of 'M ythical
and Divine Figures' [423-27] and 'Artists and Other Historical
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69
Figures' [428-31]). The account is enriched by a nice sprinkling of
attractive anecdotes and quotations from literary works.
Furthermore, the chapters cover Greek art from its beginnings to
the present, and focus upon topics often dealt with only
tangentially, such as the relationship between art and myth
(Chaps. 2 and 5), the influence of the theatre (Chap. 6), and the
legacy of the Greeks (Chap. 8). There is much to commend in this,
especially in conjunction with the maps (434-37), key dates (43233), and other helpful aids gathered at the back of the book,
including succinct but worthy lists of 'Further Reading' (438-40).
On the other hand, the text tends to furnish magisterial
judgements where a teacher might like more detail about
conflicting opinions (e.g. S is dismissive of the idea of a 'Greek
renaissance' in the 8th Century BC [53 ff.]), and much background
information is inevitably glossed over or left for the interested
reader to follow up elsewhere. An important point to recognize is
that it is self-consciously not an art-historical book concerned
primarily with comparisons of style, features of technique,
elements of iconography, etc. It isn't a book about developments in
the style of Greek art from period to period. Instead, employing
the results of recent approaches of the 1980s and 90s, S seeks to
discuss not how , or from what origins and artistic influences, but
w hy Greek art took the forms it did through the ages. Consider
the following, taken from the opening to S's discussion of the rise
of monumental architecture and freestanding stone sculpture in the
Archaic Period (117):
'... attempts to arrive at forensic proof concerning the origins of
monumental Greek art and architecture are generally fruitless
and perhaps even pointless. What we should be asking is not
w here the first stone statues and temples come from, so much
as why they were needed.'
Accordingly, there is no detailed charting of the development of
naturalism, or the use of devices such as repetition and symmetry.
The aim, by contrast, is to write about art and society, about the
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interaction between artists and their political, social and
religious environments.
It is an exciting, though difficult
approach, and herein lies much of the value of the book.
Yet perhaps S has not drawn sufficient attention to a
fundamental issue. He characterizes Greek art (nicely) in terms of
'Strife' (Hesiod's Eris), arguing that individual artists constantly
strove to outdo one another (5 ff., esp. 10, 15), but his book tends to
concentrate upon the historical background. Greek art was the
product of individual artists (on whom S is very good—note his
'Introduction: The Artist in Ancient Greece' [5-26]), political,
social and other movements or processes (such as interstate rivalry
[Chap. 3], democracy [Chap. 4], theatre [Chap. 6], Hellenistic
ruler cult [Chap. 7]), and its own dynamism or inertia—in the sense
of uniform rectilinear motion. In my view, if it is not actually
inherent in S's characterization of art as one manifestation of
'Strife', it needs to be stressed that the mix is never readily
discernible,
always
fluid
and
unpredictable;
accurate
quantification is constantly frustrated. Greek artists apparently
made alterations to their creations in line with viewers'
comments. This might lead us to conclude that artists were more
shaped by their environment than we might have thought. On
the other hand, there are signs of great energy and innovation, e.g.
the red-figure 'Pioneers' (15-18), and Polykleitos, author of the
Canon (195-99). Then again, as Oswyn Murray for one has pointed
out (Early Greece [1980] 192), if you look at a period like the 6th
century BC, you can see a consistency of purpose and style which
was maintained in spite of upheavals of varying kinds and
degrees. S himself writes at one point (100):
'[The] drive towards naturalism [implying something
prolonged or consistent across generations] is the single most
important contribution of the Greeks within the general
history of art.'
Such opinions might support the idea that art, to a certain
extent anyway, had its own dynamic, its own propulsion. The
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71
debate seems tied ultimately to power in a society. Where does
power reside— with individuals or groups of people, with
processes, with institutions or traditional patterns of behaviour?
It seems safest to contemplate a mixture, and so a little more
emphasis upon this fact would possibly have made S's book even
better than it is.
Of course, one can only contemplate such questions because of
the novelty of S's approach, and I am conscious of personal
preference in the preceding paragraphs.
S's is the kind of
approach, and the kind of introductory book, which should in fact
be welcomed warmly.
Tom Stevenson
University of Auckland.
JAMES C. VANDERKAM and WILLIAM ADLER (eds.) T h e
Jewish Apocalyptic Heritage in Early C hristian ity (Assen, Van
Gorcum, and Philadelphia, Fortress Press, 1996 [Compendia Rerum
ludaicarum ad Novum Testamentum III.4]); 302, ISBN 9023
229134, $US49.00.
'One of the most noticeable activities of Christians,' Sherman
Johnson (whose comment on Lucian is quoted by David Frankfurter
at 136) argues, '... is the writing of books and exposition of
scriptures.' Canonical biblical literature gave scope for this
which was broad, but not so broad that ventures beyond the Old
Testament would seem unusual.
The impulse to draw on apocalyptic from the Jewish tradition
was central in the early Christian expository project—more
central, arguably, than VanderKam and Adler allow in the