Παρουσίαση/Προβολή

Course Syllabus

Spring 2025

Module: Greek Art: Images and Meanings

Instructor: Adjunct lecturer Nicholas Harokopos (nickchar@arch.uoa.gr)

Addressed

This course is addressed to 2nd year students with some basic background in archaeology, Greek history, and classics.

Course aims

This course offers a survey of the principal methods used to approach, analyze, and contextualize pictorial representation in Greek art, with particular emphasis on the Archaic and Classical periods (7th–4th centuries BCE). Through carefully selected examples and case studies, students will have the opportunity to approach and interpret themes and narratives in Greek visual culture, as well as to reconstruct the social, religious, and political contexts in which pictorial media were produced, disseminated, displayed, used/reused, and ultimately discarded or destroyed.

A wide range of media, from large-scale sculpture and architectural decoration to smaller-scale objects such as painted pottery, terracottas, and metalwork will be examined. In addition, the course provides essential background on Greek myth as conveyed through visual imagery and literary traditions, particularly epic and tragedy. By placing visual and textual evidence in dialogue, the course highlights the dynamic interplay between image and narrative.

Finally, the course addresses broader cultural and theoretical questions, including issues of identity, gender, and cross-cultural interaction, situating Greek pictorial production within its wider Mediterranean context.

Course Description

The introductory lectures outline fundamental and distinctive features of Greek pictorial representation. They also introduce key methodological tools and offer a concise, critical overview of influential interpretative approaches. Subsequent lectures explore the construction and communication of narrative, adopting an interdisciplinary perspective informed by contemporary theoretical frameworks, while also examining the emergence of narrative in the Early Iron Age. Particular attention is given to viewer engagement and the dynamics of visual experience through case studies of complex pictorial programs, such as the Treasury of the Siphnians at Delphi and the Parthenon. Additional lectures investigate major cultural themes and artistic trends, including the development of naturalism, representations of dance and theatre, religious imagery, and selected cases that challenge or depart from the classical ideal.  

Course Syllabus

1. Introduction; the pictorial word of Greek art; basic features and idiosyncrasies; narratives of display and     presentation.

2. Description and visual analysis; terminology and methodological tools.

3.  Iconography, iconology and influential interpretative modes of visual imagery.

4. Narrative techniques in iconography; issues of space and time; the narrative micro-structure and the     constituent elements of pictorial narrative.

5. The art of Early Greece and the birth of narrative.

6. Midterm exam

7. The viewing context and the narrative macro-structure; the treasury of Siphnos as a case study.

8. Parthenon as a case study for macro-structure and composition; narrative extension and the question of  linkage in extensive figural compositions.

9. Living and dying as a Greek. Images of the major stages and transitions in life.

10. Visualizing religious ritual; images of piety and devotion.

11. Images of Greek theater (5th-4th c. BCE); direct and indirect visual references in art.

12. Beyond the Classical ideal; images of Otherness in Archaic and Classical Greek art: non-Greeks, physical difference and disability.

13. Oral presentation of topics.

Requirements and assessment

Students are expected to attend all classes; attendance is taken at each class. Active participation in class discussions is strongly encouraged.

Assessment for this course is based on a midterm test covering material taught in classes 1–5, a brief oral presentation on a topic related to visual art and a written final exam at the end of the semester. A successful midterm test and oral presentation each account for 10% of the final grade for this module.

Course textbooks

M. Stansbury-O' Donell. Pictorial Narrative in Ancient Greek Art. Cambridge; New York: Cambridge University Press, 1999. 

— Looking at Greek Art. Cambridge; New York: Cambridge University Press, 2010.