ABOUT THIS BOOKMost people today encounter ancient Greek vases as static, untouchable artifacts safely out of reach behind glass, in the quiet of a museum gallery. Once, however, these vessels were also useful objects, made to be held, filled, and generally used in a variety of settings, from the ritual to the quotidian. This volume considers these ancient vases together with the theoretical frameworks developed by pioneers of phenomenology such as Maurice Merleau-Ponty and Edmund Husserl, helping us experience Greek vases as they once were. The principles of phenomenology require that we understand objects as active participants in shaping the manner in which humans experience the world. A phenomenological perspective allows us to see how the function and use of Greek vases shaped both their visual appearance and the perceptual experience of them—as well as our continued understanding of them today—while taking into account multisensory perspectives. With this alternative approach to the study of classical pottery, the authors offer new and illuminating insights not just into the objects in question but also into ancient Greek culture and life more broadly.
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHYDanielle Smotherman Bennett is an assistant research curator at the Museum of Fine Arts Houston.
Guy Hedreen is the J. Kirk T. Varnedoe ’67 Professor of Art at Williams College. He is the author of The Image of the Artist in Archaic and Classical Greece: Art, Poetry, and Subjectivity; Capturing Troy: The Narrative Function of Landscape in Archaic and Early Classical Greek Art; and Silens in Attic Black-Figure Vase-Painting: Myth and Performance.
SeungJung Kim is an associate professor in the Department of Art History at the University of Toronto. She is the author of The Temporal Revolution in Greek Art.
Carolyn Laferrière is an associate curator of ancient Mediterranean art at the Princeton University Art Museum. She is the author of Divine Music in Archaic and Classical Greek Art: Seeing the Songs of the Gods.