Thompson: Images of Ritual Mockery on Greek Vases (Dissertation) (2025)

Review of David Walsh, Distorted Ideals in Greek Vase-Painting: The World of Mythological Burlesque

Hermathena 188, 2010

Distorted Ideals in Greek Vase-Painting: the World of Mythological Burlesque, D. Walsh (2008), American Journal of Archaeology 114 (January 2010.)

Greek Vase-Painting and the Origins of Visual Humour

2009

This book is a comprehensive study of visual humour in ancient Greece, with special emphasis on works created in Athens and Boeotia. Alexandre G. Mitchell brings an interdisciplinary approach to this topic, combining theories and methods of art history, archaeology, and classics with the anthropology of humour, and thereby establishing new ways of looking at art and visual humour in particular. Understanding what visual humour was to the ancients and how it functioned as a tool of social cohesion is only one facet of this study. Mitchell also focuses on the social truths that his study of humour unveils: democracy and freedom of expression; politics and religion; Greek vases and trends in fashion; market-driven production; proper and improper behaviour; popular versus elite culture; carnival in situ; and the place of women, foreigners, workers, and labourers within the Greek city. Richly illustrated with more than 140 drawings and photographs, as well as with analytical tables of comic representations according to different themes, painters, and techniques, this study amply documents the comic representations that formed an important part of ancient Greek visual language from the sixth through the fourth centuries BC.

Thompson Righteous Freaks Grotesque Figures on Greek Ritual Vases

I would like to begin by proposing that there are two types of ancient freaks. The first type of freak is that which appeared freakish to the ancients themselves -something, like a seal or a crocodile, as we shall soon hear, that broke boundaries or otherwise sat uncomfortably in the ancient conception of the world. The second type of ancient freak is a pseudo-freak -something that was completely normal in the ancient world but which appears freakish to us moderns, thanks to some fundamental change in our beliefs. This paper deals with some examples of this second type of freak, since I will talk about grotesque, distorted, obscene parodies of mythology -but parodies which, freakishly for us, served a "serious" religious function.

Visual Humour on Greek Vases (550–350 BC): Three Approaches to the Ambivalence of Ugliness in Popular Culture

The Palgrave Handbook of Humour, History, and Methodology, 2020

Ugliness, in a society obsessed with beauty was often feared and mocked, but it could also be used to criticise mainstream values. This was the choice made by Athenian vase-painters of the sixth to the fourth centuries BC. Mass-produced at the height of Athenian democracy, painted vases were an inexpensive and popular artform that offer us an amazing insight into the daily life of the great city. In contrast to other artforms often commissioned or too expensive to fool around with, vase-painters made a liberal use of parody, visual puns, situation comedy and caricature. The study of the visibility of ugliness on Greek vases opens a number of unexpected theoretical and methodological issues which help us better define visual humour in ancient Greece. At least three forms of ugliness were displayed on vases: (1) caricature, an intentional form of ugliness; (2) the inherent ugliness of physical deformity, foreigners, the elderly and the ‘other’; (3) finally, the construction of ugliness both physical and moral through the intrusion of a ubiquitous humorous mythological creature called the satyr in a ‘civilised’ society presents a third pathway to ugliness.

Manliness, violation, and laughter: rereading the space and context of the Eurymedon vase

Journal of Greek Archaeology

The focus of this short study is a well-known and much discussed object: a red-figured type VII oinochoe, dated to the mid-460s BC and attributed (perhaps) to the Triptolemos Painter, or certainly to his circle. Since Konrad Schauenburg’s 1975 publication of the artefact, it has been known as the ‘Eurymedon Vase.’ It has rightly been classified as ‘unique’ by Amy Smith and although it is beyond the scope of this study to spend too much space re-rehearsing the scholarship on the vase in any detail, a general overview might prove profitable for what follows below.

Pappa, E. 2022. Herakles and the Gorgon in Athenian Black-Figure Vase-Painting: Burlesque or Civic Theology? Acta Classica 65: 157-194.

2022

https://muse.jhu.edu/pub/323/article/860964#info_wrap The article revisits some Athenian Black-Figure vases that depict Herakles and a monster. While it is indebted to previous iconographic analyses, it adopts a broader, contextual methodology, firmly situating them within the socio-religious setting of Archaic Athens. Adducing relevant data, it opens new lines of investigation. The implications of visual humour for civic theology are explored in light of recent studies, rejecting a postulated derivation of these scenes from theatrical plays. Rather, it is proposed that the vases had a cultic function, with their imagery deployed as an allusion to the rites of the Panathenaia, referencing the aetiological myth of the festival.

Jokes on Him: Caricature and Male Clients of Prostitutes on Greek-Vase Painting

Alexandre Mitchell, in his study of iconography on Greek vase-painting, identifies four "comedic mechanisms" (Mitchell 4: 2004). These devices in the metaphorical tool box of vasepainters include visual puns, situation comedy, parody, and caricature. It is the last of these four tools that I will focus on in this paper. I shall begin with a brief explanation and history of caricature, before moving into an examination of a several interesting scenes where I believe the complexity of caricature should be addressed. Although caricature is primarily seen as a tool of comedy, which directly targets a specific character or characters, I argue throughout this paper that caricature in these scenes is more complex and multifaceted than was viewed initially by Mitchell. Since scenes containing caricature are vast and contain diverse iconography, I have chosen to focus the subject of this paper on three instances of prostitution and symposia, where I believe this phenomenon of multifaceted caricature can be well visualized.

The Function and Significance of Late Attic Black-figure Vases

Johns Hopkins University, 2017

Scholarship on ancient Greek art has largely ignored the importance of Attic black-figure vases of the fifth century BCE based on the subjective quality of their painting, assuming its hasty application and non-naturalistic style indicate the vases were a cheap substitute for more finely painted red-figure vases. Our understanding of late black-figure vases has been shaped by a view of the history of Greek vase-painting (and art in general) as a continuous and seamless evolutionary process in which imagery becomes more and more mimetic as time goes on. Non-mimetic imagery is often considered inferior and low quality. Fifth-century black-figure, which was produced in significant quantities and widely exported, has long been judged a cheap product by this standard. Abandoning this assumption, this study seeks a new understanding and appreciation of late black-figure vase-painting in its own right. I argue for late blackfigure as an object of legitimate and significant scholarly examination and show that the black-figure technique in itself carried an important meaning in fifth-century Athens. Assuming that producers and consumers made conscious choices in their selection of vases with regard to technique as much as to shape and decoration, it is clear that blackfigure was favored over red-figure in certain instances. This dissertation is organized as a series of case studies focusing on individual shapes favored by black-figure vase-painters in the fifth century: the Panathenaic prize amphora, the lekythos, the skyphos, and the krateriskos. Each case study considers the use-contexts the particular shape is associated with in the fifth century. By considering iii their contexts, we see that there is a clear connection between vessels with ritual uses and the continued use of the black-figure technique on these shapes. The archaeological evidence shows that the production and use of Attic blackfigure vases continue for longer and in a more significant scale than is often assumed. For the specialized uses of these vases, there is no hierarchy of quality and there are no higher-end equivalents made in red-figure. The choice of the technique was connected to the vessels' ritual use. Black-figure vases were chosen by fifth-century Athenians because the connotations of the technique and the traditions it embodied were more important than experimentation, individuality, and innovation-qualities often associated with Athenian art of the fifth century.

Cult in Context - The Ritual Significance of Miniature Pottery in Ancient Greek Sanctuaries from the Archaic to the Hellenistic period

Several previously overlooked questions related to ancient Greek dedicatory practices are investigated in this thesis. The main questions addressed are: how do the contexts of Archaic, Classical and Hellenistic votive miniature vessels inform us about the Greek cults in which they are used, and the transmission of such cults? What role did miniaturisation play in the sanctuaries and the rituals in ancient Greek society, and why miniaturisation? A number of supplementary questions accompany the main questions, for example, what did miniaturisation mean in the context of votive dedications in sanctuaries? This thesis aims to demonstrate that earlier explanations arguing that miniatures are simply and profoundly cheap substitutes for more expensive objects do not work well, since many of these small objects are carefully made and some are elaborately decorated, and would thus not have been cheaper, or less time consuming to produce compared to full sized objects. The chronological time frame of the thesis is limited to the Archaic to the Hellenistic period, and its core is three case studies with different themes and different geographical locations in focus (Kalydon, Olympia, Kombothekra, various sites in South Italy, and other sites for comparison). The thesis addresses also issues relating to, for instance, miniaturisation, imitation and models, the functionality, and non-functionality of small votive objects, agency, trade, and colonization. The study of ancient Greek dedicatory practices within the scholarship of Classical Studies tends to concentrate on votive statues, religious architecture, inscribed metal dedications, and stelai. Little attention has been paid to less extravagant dedications even though these groups of material have been found in abundant amounts in sanctuaries throughout Greece. Moreover, in those cases where this material has been published interpretation and thoroughly analyses are often lacking. As a result, this study makes important contributions to two large questions within Classical studies: how did the Greeks view their gods and how did the Greeks interact with the gods. Miniature pottery contributes to our understanding of ancient Greek ritual practice as well of specific rituals. The work presented in this thesis accentuates that miniature pottery’s material meaning and symbolic importance can no longer be dismissed.