In The Absence Of Significant Examples Of The Major Art... Essay - 2,312 words

In the absence of significant examples of the major art of Greek painting, pottery has assumed an importance even beyond its own great intrinsic value. During certain periods and in certain localities the vase-painter was not content to decorate his pots with simple lines and plant motifs. He took his themes from mythology and the life around him, as did the panel and mural painters. Moreover, occasionally these vase-paintings are of the highest quality, and this is especially the case in the Attic pottery of the sixth and fifth centuries. In spite of the difference in technique and color scheme, they ca, therefore, give a realization of the extraordinary feeling for line, contour, and composition of Greek artists in general; and in adding these qualities in ones imagination to the colorful Roman murals, one can gain some perception of Greek pictorial art. Furthermore, Greek terra-cotta vases have survived in large numbers, for, once fired, they may be broken, but are otherwise practically indestructible.


Today we try to research creation and origin of Ancient Greek Wine Jar. The stamnos was made by Chicago Painter. We dont know his or her name, but its known some facts about it: Creation Date: High Classical Period, c. 450 B.C. Object Type: Decorative Arts and Utilitarian Objects Materials and Techniques: Earthenware, red-figure technique AMICO Contributor: The Art Institute of Chicago Owner Location: Chicago, Illinois, USA It was the gift of Philip D. Armour and Charles L. Hutchinson.


. The Hutchinson was passionately interested in the fine arts, and in 1882, at the age of 28, he was tapped to be president of the Art Institute, serving until his death in 1924. In the fall of 1890 Hutchinson played a pivotal role in the successful founding of the new University by offering Frederick Gates and Thomas Goodspeed his personal support during their fundraising canvas among non-Baptist Chicago civic leaders. In the months that followed, Hutchinson's good name and solid reputation opened many doors that would have otherwise remained closed. Appropriately, Charles Hutchinson was named along with his close friend Martin Ryerson as a member of the first Board of Trustees of the new University of Chicago. He proved a dedicated supporter and found a special role as the chairman of the Trustees' Committee on Buildings and Grounds, which allowed him to exercise supervisory control over many of the most important construction projects in the first thirty years of University's history. In 1901 Hutchinson gave the University $60,000 for the construction of Hutchinson Commons, a central dining hall in the neo-Gothic Tower Group, whose design and planning gave great delight to the capitalist connoisseur.


It has been found in sanctuaries and tombs, where they had been placed as offerings, and in or near private dwellings, where they had been thrown on dumps or in unused wells when discarded. They, therefore, present a continuous story from geometric to Hellenistic times. The Greeks emancipated the art of drawing from a conventional system of two-dimensional formulas and learned how to represent on flat surface three-dimensional figures as they appear to the eye. They mastered the problem of foreshortening, imparted volume to their figures, and introduced spatial relations into their compositions. Stamnos - A Greek wine jar, it characteristically has high shoulders, wide mouth, spreading lip, two horizontal handles on the shoulder, round body and a short neck. These vessels were used for both storing and serving wine as attested to in literature and on vase painting.


Mainly in red-figure, this Attic pottery was made during the last quarter of the 6th century throughout the 4th century B.C. Its shape grew taller and thinner with time ranging from twelve to fifteen inches in height. Greek vases were made to be used, but they were also prized for the refined shapes and decorations that we continue to admire today. This Athenian Wine Jar (Stamnos) is called red-figure because the decoration has been left in the natural color of the clay and surrounded by black glaze. This refined Athenian stamnos was used to hold water or wine. Valued as well for its beauty, this red-figure vessel (so-called because the figures have been left the natural color of the clay) portrays maenads, women participants in rites celebrating Dionysus, the god of wine.


But unlike the frenzied and whirling figures of other Greek painters, there is calmness, even elegance, depicted here. This tender serenity, coupled with a softer, somewhat freer form, is the stylistic hallmark of this artist and has been used to identify other works by him, principally similar stamnoi with Dionysian scenes. The clay is plastic, tough, and, when well levitated, very smooth. It contains a high percentage of iron, and so fires pink. In modern Athenian potteries white clay is mixed with the red, and this may also have been the ancient practice. The pots are thrown and turned on the wheel, except for the relatively few mounded and built ones. The smaller were thrown in one piece, the larger in sections.


The sections were mostly made at the structural points, between neck and body, or body and foot, and to conceal them thin coils of clay were added on the outsides, whereas on the insides the joins are often visible. After the marks of the turning tools had been removed probably with scrapers and moist sponges as nowadays the handles were attached. These were all separately made by hand, not molded. The nature of the black medium used in the decoration had long been a puzzle, and only recently has it been successfully analyzed and reproduced. It is not a glaze in the modern sense, for it contains insufficient alkali to render it fusible at a definite temperature. It is rather liquid clay, peptized, that is, with the heavier particles eliminated by means of a protective colloid.


Since the clay out of which it was made contained iron, the color of the glaze changed from red to black or brown according to the nature of the firing. After the decoration was completed and the vases had become bone dry, they were placed in the kiln and fired. The procedure was dictated by the nature of the glaze. It was a single fire, but had three successive stages at first oxidizing (with air admitted), then reducing (with smoke introduced), and lastly reoxidizing. In the first stage the body of the vase and the glaze turned red, in the second both became black (or gray), in the third the clay of the vase turned red again, being sufficiently porous to readmit the oxygen, whereas the denser glaze remained black. The initial wash (of diluted peptized clay) and the diluted glaze were also porous enough to reoxidize in the third stage of the firing, and so became reddish-brown; likewise the red accessory color, being red ochre plus peptized clay, reoxidized. The white accessory color, being pe ...................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................

...................You are reading a preview................... Visit our Blog and Unlock Full Access to this essay

Continue READING the FULL Essay by clicking HERE

Essay Tags: clay, vase, greek, firing, painter

This is an Essay sample / Research paper, you can use it for your research of: In The Absence Of Significant Examples Of The Major Art