Phuong NhanDeborah DicksonWestern Art IKansas City Art Institute16 November 2013

Visual Analysis Paper

GREEKRED-FIGUREAMPHORA

The artwork being analyzed in this paper is titled Red-figure Amphora on the description label in the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art. It was made by the Syleus Painter in Athens, Greece in about 480 B.C.E. during the Ancient Greek Archaic Period. The vase is made of terracotta (baked clay), painted using red-figure technique. The amphora is about 20 inches tall and 12 inches wide. The amphora has some scratches but otherwise still in one piece. Greek vases made during this period were exported all over the Mediterranean Basin, from France to Israel, mostly used for containing wine and decoration. As stated in the Museum label, the scene painted on the vase is one of the earliest known representations of a secret ballot in Greek Mythology. After the Greek hero Achilles died at Troy, a dispute arose over who would receive his armor Odysseus or Ajax. In this scene on the vase the two Greek warriors and a priest wrote their votes on olive leaves and dropped them into a shallow cup held by the goddess Athena. According to the Greek Mythology, Odysseus won the vote and Ajax committed suicide.The scene is composed of four figures painted on the belly of the vase. The figures are enclosed in a border created using simple lines and round, triangular or water drop shapes to create different patterns on each edges. The pattern on top of the four figures water drop shapes spread around a center point with the pointed end headed inward, balanced both horizontally and vertically by the center point. This is repeated through the horizontal line around the neck of vase, each composition of the pattern separated by column-like shapes. The edges to the sides of the scene a pattern of two lines of triangular shapes offsetting each other with two parallel lines on two sides running horizontally to create the borders of the pattern. The bottom edge of the border is composed of shapes created using lines. Two lines running parallel vertically created the borders of the pattern. The line in the middle created shapes using right angles to create unenclosed rectangular shapes running repeatedly. The patterns utilized lines and shapes to create a repeated symmetric effect and but not uninteresting for each edge has a different pattern from the others.The scenes point of view is from the sides of the figures. The background is the black of the vase, the foreground is the figures themselves and there is no middle ground making it flat with barely any depth. The figures painted on the vase still have the echoes of Ancient Egypts paintings. The figures heads are only painted in profile with only half of the face. But the body is not as rigid. The stances are more realistic with hints of movement from the gestures of the hands and overlapping parts of the figures although still being limited by rendering the figures only in profile. The head of Athena clearly bends at an unnatural angle when the artist tried to make the figure look backward from the direction of the body. The offsetting position of the legs of the figures is also a thing in common with Ancient Egypts figure paintings. The proportion of the body is also more realistic than Ancient Egypts paintings but is still idealized. In red-figure technique, the vase is painted black over the red of the terracotta and the figures are scratched out from the black paint. This allowed more details to be added using brushes. Lines were painted on the cloaks of the figure of Athena and the old man standing next to her creating folds for the cloth of silk and textured using dots and shapes to create more realistic feeling for the cloaks. The helmet of the warrior to the right and the armors of both warriors are also created in details by using thin lines of the brush. The color of the painting on the vase is limited to only the red of the terracotta and the black paint without any difference in levels of saturation, but the contrast between the black and the red makes the details in black to be brought out easily.During the Archaic Period of Ancient Greek, Athens was the lead producer in red-figure pottery, in both quality and quantity, but eventually the style spread to other Greek regions, especially SouthernItaly. The subject matter of red-figure vases varied greatly, from portraits of gods and heroes to depictions of every day Athenian life. As such, these paintings provide an archaeological record of historical, social, and mythological information. Academics have been able to identify individual artists and artistic groups as painters of these red-figure vessels.Red-figure vases were created in a variety of shapes for specific uses. Daily use pottery for transporting goods or drawing water often depicted scenes of daily life. Pots designed for ritual use for pouring libations usually had scenes of religious importance. The amphora used for containing wine in banquet or decoration would have scenes of epic narrative in Greek Mythology painted on. Working Bibliography:Encyclopdia Britannica Online, s. v. "red-figurepottery," accessed November 16, 2013http://research.kcai.edu:2081/EBchecked/topic/494235/red-figure-potteryBoegehold, Alan Lindley, Studies in the History of Art, ArchaicGreece: an era of discovery, 1991, Vol. 32, p14-21Harrison, Jane Ellen, Douris and the Painters of Greek Vases (General Books, 2012)Karl, Schefolk and Griffin, Alan, Gods and Heroes in Late Archaic Greek Art (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992)McNiven, Tim, Museum Anthropology, VasePainting, Gender, and Social Identity inArchaicAthens, Mar2010, Vol. 33 Issue 1, p94-95Oakley, John H., American Journal of Archaeology, Greek Vase Painting, Oct2009, Vol. 113 Issue 4, p599-627