3 - Knowledge and the Production of Meaning: Greek Vase Imagery Reconsidered

Summary

Looking at ancient Attic Greek vase imagery, scholarly debate has long addressed the problem of distinguishing between mythological and nonmythological scenes (Lebenswelt, Mythos). The subject is not purely of academic interest because of its many implications for the interpretation of images, for example mythological narratives, paradigmatic relationships among images on vases, or the role of generic visual formulae to create meaning. This chapter contributes to this discussion by revising some strategies in the production of meaning proposed by previous scholarship. The special focus is structural analysis, taking into consideration the semantic and episodic knowledge necessary to both create and understand Athenian Greek vases. The evidence discussed dates c. 600–420 BC.

INTRODUCTION

In cultural sciences, scholarly debate on image studies primarily focuses on interdisciplinary research. The mediation of analytical skills and methods needed to interpret images disseminated by various visual media in the age of mass communication is one of the major challenges in the field of visual skepticism. In this context, image analysis is one important instrument used to explore general questions about attitudes and values in socio-political, cultural, or intellectual history. With regard to this ongoing debate in cultural sciences, the contribution of Classical Archaeology within the field of image studies should not be ignored. My chapter addresses the archaeological perspective of image studies, and we begin with a brief history of research.

TURNS AND CONCEPTS

Concepts and methodological instruments for analyzing and interpreting images derive from past studies in archaeology and art history. Archaeological hermeneutics, as well as iconology, established the fundamental basis of image studies at the beginning of the twentieth century. Carl Robert's archaeological hermeneutics interpreted images with the help of texts – that is, by interpreting images as frozen pictures of visual narratives and ‘reading’ them in correspondence with a linguistic system. The art-historical approach of iconology concentrates on the interpretation by using Erwin Panofsky's well-known three-step method. In the course of time, scholarly debate produced methodological changes in iconology, and it is important to realize that neither Carl Robert's archaeological-philological work nor Erwin Panofsky's iconology intended to present a theory of images or visual cultures in the sense that we discuss them nowadays.

In the 1960s and 1970s, with the so-called linguistic turn, epistemology and the linguistic method developed as a state of art in humanities.