This book presents a detailed historiographical treatment of the study and understanding of Greek and Roman sculpture. The authors argue that certain academic traditions and perspectives have influenced, for better or for worse, scholarly approaches to ancient sculpture and our understanding of its use in ancient society. They treat sculpture not only from an art historical and archaeological perspective, but also argue that modern perceptions of art and sculpture, and the way that sculpture is displayed in museums, have affected modern understanding of ancient sculptures. Sculptural displays also iterate modern perceptions of ancient art and society.
The first two chapters do not deal explicitly with ancient sculpture. Instead, they provide historiographical overviews of classical archaeology and art history, respectively. The third chapter explores the history of the study of ancient sculpture and approaches that focus on questions of style, aesthetics, copies, artists and ‘masterworks’, while the fourth chapter summarises current trends in sculpture studies by focusing on the scholarship surrounding the Parthenon Frieze, which is one of few well-preserved relief sculptures from the fifth century b.c. Obsession with the Parthenon Frieze as a canonical art object has more to do with modern perceptions of it than ancient reality (pp. 56–61, see also pp. 157–62). In antiquity, the Parthenon was best known for its chryselephantine cult statue of the Athena Parthenos by Pheidias, while the frieze received comparatively little attention. The last half of the fourth chapter evaluates recent dissertations on sculpture in terms of how the next generation of scholars is grappling with new and traditional approaches.
S. and S. missed an opportunity in their discussions of the Parthenon in Chapter 4. Nowhere do they cite or explore the innovative interpretation of J.B. Connelly (‘Parthenon and Parthenoi: a Mythological Interpretation of the Parthenon Frieze’, AJA 100 [1996]). Connelly's mythological interpretation of the Parthenon Frieze breaks with centuries-old views of the frieze as representing the Panathenaic Procession and instead recognises the frieze as representing Erechtheus, his daughters and mythological events surrounding the foundation of Athens (Connelly's interpretation of the Parthenon is elaborated upon in The Parthenon Enigma: a New Understanding of the World's Most Iconic Building and the People Who Made It [2014]). Her reading aligns the Parthenon Frieze with other temple reliefs that depict mythological, not historical, scenes. In fact, the persistent view that the Parthenon Frieze represents an exception in Greek temple relief sculpture and represents an historical Panathenaia, and exemplifies Athenian democratic ideals, is a modernising notion influenced by the eighteenth- and nineteenth-century appropriation of classical architectural forms in Western European and North American Neo-Classicism in order to connote republican and democratic values.
The second half of the book focuses on museum displays of ancient sculptures, divided broadly into two categories. Art historical displays tend to exhibit sculptures in isolation, affirming that the object has an intrinsic meaning. In archaeological displays, the museum treats the sculpture as an artefact; the sculpture is displayed with objects discovered with it or objects that flesh out the larger historical meaning or cultural context. The two types of displays are not mutually exclusive and elements of both can be found in various displays. Chapter 5, ‘Genealogies’, traces the history of collecting and how museums came to display ancient artworks the way that they do. In so doing, the authors indicate that there is a tendency for museum displays to communicate vestiges of earlier or outdated ways of looking at ancient art, such as a taxonomic arrangement in the display or a focus on ‘masterpieces’. The sixth chapter explores the concept of masterpieces, defined by the perceived reputation of the artist to which a work is attributed, or a work's unique aesthetic qualities, in greater detail. S. and S. survey a great number of masterpieces in various museums and their method of display. They also detail the ‘consumption’ of the ‘masterpiece discourse’ beyond the museum world where reproductions, images and appropriations of certain objects are consumed by popular culture. Chapters 7 and 8 explore, respectively, art historical and archaeological displays. Art historical displays emphasise artists, styles and aesthetic qualities. The displays usually champion the Classical style and tend to present Roman copies as evidence of the importance and sophistication of Classical Greek art, as if the Romans were connoisseurs of Greek art. As stated before, archaeological displays focus on the cultural, historical or material context of a sculpture, either by reconstructing the sculpture's original setting or displaying it alongside objects with which it was found or that add to its meaning. A recent trend in archaeological displays has been the presentation of sculptures as they would have originally appeared when painted, as in the travelling exhibit Bunte Götter (Gods in Colour).
Different research traditions, archaeology vs art history, and the evolution of method and theory within those fields through the centuries, have caused sculpture to be treated differently by scholars and have influenced displays of ancient sculptures in museums. This book sheds light on the understudied realm of sculptural display in museums, and the exhibit's relationship to antiquated and prevailing academic discourses. Although there is minimal discussion of looting and cultural property issues (p. 88 et passim) and how the resulting loss of material context affects our knowledge of ancient sculpture, a running theme throughout is the decontextualisation of ancient sculptures from their original material, social or historical contexts and the consequent, and often misdirected, perceptions of ancient sculpture that arise. Indeed, the placement of an object in a museum removes it from its original context and meaning, and constructs a new meaning around it (pp. 195–6). In this way, the book is a significant contribution to the methodological and theoretical literature on ancient art that underlines the need for contextual approaches and highlights the perils of applying modernising perceptions of art to the study of ancient art.Footnote 1
The persistent use of specialised theoretical terminology throughout limits the audience, and will be impenetrable to most undergraduates and many non-specialists. On the other hand, scholars and advanced students interested in method and theory in ancient art and archaeology will find it of great interest; it would also be a useful supplement in graduate seminars on Greek and/or Roman sculpture. Another important audience will be museum curators, who formulate displays of ancient sculptures, and graduate students in museum studies programmes.
