The only reservation I have about this translation is that for the uninitiated reader it is impossible to discern the impact which the German original has had in the ten years since its publication. Its success rests on its combination of historical and ontological perspectives – G.'s ability to deploy his detailed observations on Greek vase-painting and epic poetry without losing sight of the real issue at stake: what does the particular case of Greek pictorial narration contribute to the broader debate on the relationship between image and text?
The historical argument is easily summarised. According to G. the proliferation of written texts from the late-fifth century b.c. marked a change not only in the familiarity with narrative detail which artists could expect their audience to muster but also in the way the artists themselves were enabled to consult and recall the specific plot sequences they wanted to depict. The gradual assimilation of images to texts – exemplified by South Italian red-figure vases with subjects from Athenian drama and the Hellenistic relief bowls featuring excerpts from the Odyssey – resulted in pictures dependent on specific textual passages, akin to modern illustrations. The history of earlier pictorial narration, by contrast, is described as a process of problem-solving contingent on the internal logic of image-making. To explore this process, G. develops an analytical framework drawing on G.E. Lessing's Laocoon (1766), arguably the foundation of the modern debate on art and text. Within this framework pictures are more suited for describing circumstances while actions related in a sequence are the natural preserve of verbal communication. Artists who wanted to transpose verbally structured content into images could either juxtapose the key episodes of a story in one ‘polychronic’ image or devise a ‘monochronic’ composition, focusing on a climactic moment. Archaic vase painters experimented with both modes of narration by combining and modifying pre-existing pictorial schemata and, sometimes, by adding inscriptions. But the polychronic mode gradually lost ground to the monochronic, probably because of the structural inconsistencies inherent in trying to show a whole story in one picture: how could one enjoy the suspense of a dramatic moment if its resolution was already visible?
The resulting survey of narration in Greek vase-painting is a pleasure every student of Greek art and archaeology should have an opportunity to enjoy. Its main attractions are its heuristic economy and its non-evolutionist premise. Geometric figure scenes are not inept attempts at depicting epic, as G. convincingly shows; their goal was to grasp descriptively the social cosmos of contemporary elite ideology. At the same time, it is clear that G. could not have argued his case as elegantly without adopting a narrow definition of narrative (synonymous with Greek epic in this book) and a narrow selection of visual sources (no post-classical material other than the ‘Homeric’ bowls). The Lessingian idea that images can only operate in either narrative or descriptive registers presupposes (as G. himself stresses) mimetic norms (i.e. that painting can depict only one moment). If we abandon mimetic doctrine we must concede not only that narrative images are never free of description but also (pace G., p. 247) that descriptive images always contain narrative potential. Since the category of descriptive action threatens to destabilise G.'s investigative framework, he had to supplement it with an Aristotelian definition of narrative in terms of unity of action and teleological tension. In this definition a representation of a whale hunt is narrative only if individual protagonists are nameable, and giving birth is never a narrative since the actions of women (unless they are tragic) do not have the potential of subverting the social norms in which the actions take place. I doubt anyone outside classical studies would entertain such a phallocentric definition of narrative. Although G. is fully aware that the criteria of Aristotelian narrative are a social construct, by relegating this insight to an endnote he wrote a book that risks reproducing rather than questioning classical norms. In other words (paraphrasing Marx) his book may change our understanding of how the Greeks narrated myth visually, but it will not change the way we narrate our myths about antiquity.
The self-imposed restrictions in historical and theoretical engagement have already generated fruitful dialogues: for example S. Muth, A. Staehli and B. Borg have explored the social background of the sixth-century changes in visual narration; G. Manuwald and A. Steiner have drawn attention to the narrative potential of ‘descriptive’ iconography; and M. Squire has extended the typological scope of post-classical material to question the alleged textual primacy in ancient visual culture. Although a bibliographical guide to such responses would have been welcome, this should not distract from the immense service the publisher has done to the discipline with this beautifully illustrated and accessible translation.
