24. Kalpis with Toilette Scene with Two Women and Ero s Cassel Painter 440 BCE Walters 48.78 Hydria with the Fight of Achilles and Memnon c. 575-550 BCE Walters 48.2230
Ruins, fossils, antiques, and time capsules--items from our distant, and sometimes not-so-distant, past have captured the imagination of people as long as history itself. The importance of museums in preserving and presenting elements from bygone cultures and times can not be overstated. The Walters Museum, in particular, through Peer One, and other interpretative initiatives, seeks to reinvigorate its expansive collection in a thoroughly modern way. The purpose of this presentation is to highlight certain elements from the Walters' ancient Greek collection that have been appropriated, or borrowed, by contemporary artists, reminding us that history is an inexhaustible resource of information that can, and should, be used and re-used in academic and creative ways.
The contemporary artistic impulse towards quoting earlier forms was dubbed "postmodernism" in the latter years of the 20th century. Though not exactly copies, these works by younger artists such as Allyson Vieira, Ruby Sky Stiler, Oliver Laric or Joy Curtis pay visual homage to some of the aesthetic conventions found in the earlier examples, such as the Walters' Klio, the Muse of History, the Decree Relief of Athena, or the Fragment of a Grave Relief, which date as far back as the 3rd century BCE.
References to ancient Greece have continued to endure in modern visual culture. From Neoclassicism in the 18th and 19th centuries to the columns outside any given building today, the Greeks have proven a popular resource of classic style.
Statues and reliefs carved in stone and marble, though often found in pieces, have managed to survive to be discovered later.
Other examples, such as the sculpture of Stacy Fisher and Jedidiah Caesar are more abstract in channelling their influences. Caesar in particular references the process of excavation with his work, which resembles stratified materials that have been recently unearthed and preserved, much like the objects in the care of many museums the world over.
This presentation is interested in objects that visually index the activity of excavation and archaeology in their appearance. Often fractured, these objects either seem to have parts missing or they've been recovered, then reassembled, emphasizing that, while manners of production and approach may change, classic forms have a tendency to repeat.
The painted pottery of the ancient Greeks was considered a "minor art", in that they exist and have been recovered in abundance, whereas larger paintings from the same time, spanning from 11th through 5th centuries BCE, are much harder to come by. The painted vases, in many different styles, were used primarily for religious, funereal and celebratory rites. They were also used for the purpose of story-telling, portraying mythical iconography or war scenes.They went out of vogue around the 4th century BCE.
These objects from the Walters collection are two of the most common types of vessels, which we'll see later in the contemporary examples. On the left is the Amphora with Chariot and Driver; an amphora is a large lidded jar used for wine or oil storage. Amphorae are tall, slender vases, with two handles and a narrow neck; the body of the vase resembles a heart in shape, with the sides converging sharply into the base. They were sometimes given as prizes in athletic or racing contests. Although the slide here is black and white, the vase was done in the red-figure style by the Berlin Painter around 500-460 BCE. The scene depicted is of a chariot driver and his horses. At right is the Column Krater Depicting Symposiasts and Satyr Dancing With Youths. A krater is a bowl used for mixing wine and water. A symposium in ancient Greece was a gathering where drinking figured heavily. There are a few subtypes of kraters: the volute, the calyx, and the bell shape. Here is a column krater. Typically, these were in black figure, but this later edition is done in red figure. This was completed sometime between 460 and 450 BCE by the Florence Painter.
Other forms that we will encounter in the contemporary examples include the kylix, which was a wide and shallow drinking cup with handles and a footed base.
The Kalpis, a water carrying jar and the Hydria, a three handled jar also for carrying water.
And the chous and oinochoe. The chous, at left, is a smaller version of the oinochoe, pictured at right. Both were used for serving wine.
In the past few years, a number of young artists have been looking back on forms prevalent in Greek arts, much like we've seen in the Walters' collection, to create new works with motifs from antiquity.
Ruby Sky Stiler is a New York based artist who has worked with figurative imagery as seen earlier, but is perhaps best known for her take on ancient Greek amphorae and kraters.
This work, entitled An Earlier Vessel, mimics the reconstituted state of vases found in fragments, then reassembled for museological display. Stiler's version is not ceramic, but made from lightweight archival foamcore, and acrylic gouache paint, which gives a flat finish to the surface.
An Earlier Vessel, and An Old Friend from the Future, seen here borrow their imagery from a number of sources--primarily ancient friezes and reliefs, rendered in black on variously coloured sheets in a simple fashion.
This sculpture combines an over-sized kylix form with other forms, repeating the collaging technique as seen earlier.
This print shows in greater detail the graphic elements applied to Stiler's foam pottery.
Timothy Hull is another New York based artist, who works primarily in two dimensions.
His gel pen drawings are fairly complex exercises in pattern and line, incorporating silohouettes of busts, and the more recognizable amphora and kylix forms.
This drawing is almost entirely comprised of the repeated amphorae shape, done in a geometric style.
Whereas this drawing offers more diverse forms culled from the lexicon of ancient Greek pottery.
Hull's drawings pull from both ancient Greek and Egyptian sources, though at different moments.
His drawings that feature Egyptian motifs focus mainly on two elements that are quintessentially Egyptian, or thought of as such by Western audiences--pyramids and sphinxes. The series of drawings featuring painted vases are a little less obvious in their reference, but a viewer, especially someone familiar with an ancient Greek collection, such as the Walters, will come to recognize the repeated forms in Hull's drawings.
Nicole Cherubini is an artist, who like Ruby Sky Stiler, has chosen to present her ceramic work with as close a visual connotation to the ancient greek painted vases as possible.
Her vases incorporate other decorative elements, such as ruffles, gold chains, and ornate pedestals.
Her objects are cast or handbuilt in ceramic, much like the Amphora with Chariot or Column Krater here at the Walters.
A departure from the work of the vase painters of yore, as seen in Cherubini's work is the lack of figures or shapes. Her vessels are just material that's been manipulated to lend texture to the basic bulbous amphora shape.
Also, the way the vessels are done in layers suggests a fusing together of separate, fragmented pieces to make a whole, as seen here, which relates back to how conservators at museums are sometimes tasked to reassemble works of art found in ruins.
Finally, the work of Portland's Jessica Jackson Hutchins combines a more reductive attitude towards materials and shapes with a skewed, decorative impulse.
Both this piece, called Wicker Chair to Table II
and this untitled work, directly recall the Oinochoe and Chous from earlier, seen again here
Jackson Hutchins' style has been referred to as "California Funk", by virtue of the roughness of the materials used, and also the treatment of color and texture. Her ceramics have a home-made, casual feel to them
...and the worn out, antiqued furniture she often pairs her ceramics with reiterate this relaxed attitude and aesthetic.
In seeing an array of work from living artists today, relating to earlier models from ancient Greece on view at the Walters, it should provide a current frame of reference for the works you’ll encounter at the museum. As art referencing archaeology and excavation is currently trending—a possible response and counterpoint to the fluidity of authorship/ownership and content mining on the Internet— it is important to remember the continued significance of certain forms and ideas from antiquity forward.
I hope that you have enjoyed this audiovisual tour through selections from the Walters collection and this short survey of contemporary artists recasting these objects into new artworks, that may, one day, inspire someone else to do much of the same. END
