The Art of the Body: Antiquity and Its Legacy (Ancients and Moderns)

256 Pages·2011·22.32 MB·English

by  Michael Squire

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ANCIENTS AND MODERNS
General Editor: Phiroze Vasunia, Reader in Classics, University of Reading
How can antiquity illuminate critical issues in the modern world? How does
the ancient world help us address contemporary problems and issues? In what
ways do modern insights and theories shed new light on the interpretation
of ancient texts, monuments, artefacts and cultures? The central aim of this
exciting new series is to show how antiquity is relevant to life today. The
series also points towards the ways in which the modern and ancient worlds
are mutually connected and interrelated. Lively, engaging, and historically
informed, Ancients and Modernsexamines key ideas and practices in context.
It shows how societies and cultures have been shaped by ideas and debates
that recur. With a strong appeal to students and teachers in a variety of disci-
plines, including classics and ancient history, each book is written for non-
specialists in a clear and accessible manner.

MICHAEL SQUIREis Junior Research Fellow in Classics and Art History
at Christ’s College in Cambridge, and Alexander von Humboldt-Stipendiat
at Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität, Munich and Humboldt-Universität zu
Berlin. His other books include Panorama of the Classical World (with Nigel
Spivey: second edition, 2008), Image and Text in Graeco-Roman Antiquity
(2009) and The Iliad in a Nutshell:Visualizing Epic on the Iliac Tablets (2011);
he has also co-edited The Art of Art History in Graeco-Roman Antiquity
(2010).
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ANCIENTS AND MODERNS SERIES
ISBN: 978–1–84885–200–6 (cid:129) www.ancientsandmoderns.com
THE ART OF THE BODY: ANTIQUITY AND ITS LEGACY (cid:129) MICHAEL SQUIRE
DEATH: ANTIQUITY AND ITS LEGACY (cid:129) MARIO ERASMO
DRAMA: ANTIQUITY AND ITS LEGACY (cid:129) DAVID ROSENBLOOM
GENDER: ANTIQUITY AND ITS LEGACY (cid:129) BROOKE HOLMES
LUCK, FATE AND FORTUNE: ANTIQUITY AND ITS LEGACY (cid:129) ESTHER EIDINOW
MAGIC AND DEMONS: ANTIQUITY AND ITS LEGACY (cid:129) TO BE ANNOUNCED
MEDICINE: ANTIQUITY AND ITS LEGACY (cid:129) CAROLINE PETIT
PHILOSOPHY: ANTIQUITY AND ITS LEGACY (cid:129) EMILY WILSON
POLITICS: ANTIQUITY AND ITS LEGACY (cid:129) KOSTAS VLASSOPOULOS
RACE: ANTIQUITY AND ITS LEGACY (cid:129) DENISE MCCOSKEY
RELIGION: ANTIQUITY AND ITS LEGACY (cid:129) JÖRG RÜPKE
SEX: ANTIQUITY AND ITS LEGACY (cid:129) DANIEL ORRELLS
SLAVERY: ANTIQUITY AND ITS LEGACY (cid:129) PAGE DUBOIS

SPORT: ANTIQUITY AND ITS LEGACY (cid:129) TO BE ANNOUNCED
WAR: ANTIQUITY AND ITS LEGACY (cid:129) ALFRED S. BRADFORD
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ANCIENTS AND MODERNS
THE ART OF
THE BODY
ANTIQvITY AND
v
ITS LEGACY
MICHAEL SQUIRE
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Frontispiece (p.v): Rip Cronk, Venice Reconstituted, 1989: a liquitex, acrylic and air-
brush mural in front of the Venice Beach Hotel, Venice Beach, Los Angeles; for
discussion, see pp.27–28.
Published in 2011 by I.B.Tauris & Co Ltd
6 Salem Road, London W2 4BU
175 Fifth Avenue, New York NY 10010
www.ibtauris.com
Copyright © Michael Squire, 2011
Foreword copyright © Phiroze Vasunia, 2011
The right of Michael Squ ire to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted
by the author in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patent Act 1988.
All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in a review, this book, or any
part thereof, may not be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system,
or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying,
recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher.
ISBN (HB): 978 1 84511 930 0
ISBN (PB): 978 1 84511 931 7
A full CIP record for this book is available from the British Library
Typeset in Garamond Pro by Ellipsis Books Limited, Glasgow
Printed and bound in Great Britain by CPI Antony Rowe, Chippenham
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To MMS
For all the Oldstead lunches,
stripy socks,
Betty’s cakes,
and everything else besides
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Contents
FOREWORD (byPhiroze Vasunia) ix
PREFACE xi
CHAPTER I: EMBODYING THE CLASSICAL 1
‘Ancients and moderns’ 4
The thinking behind the body 7
Body Fascism 16
A passé past? 24
The body of the book 27
CHAPTER II: FIGURING WHAT COMES NATURALLY? WRITING
THE ‘ART HISTORY’ OF THE BODY 32
A ‘Greek Revolution’ 33
The Story of Artand the history of art history 46

The burden of the Renaissance 53
Seeing double 62
CHAPTER III: THE ANCIENT ‘FEMALE NUDE’ (AND OTHER
MODERN FICTIONS) 69
V-ness 71
Crying, talking, sleeping, walking – livingdolls 79
Looking at Aphrodite 88
Aphrodite looks back 96
Fatal attraction 102
Slapping with slippers 109
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THE ART OF THE BODY: vantiqvity and its legacy
CHAPTER IV: STRIPPING DOWN AND UNDRESSING UP 115
Indecent exposure 117
Compromising traditions 125
The emperor’s new clothes 133
Inheriting inherited bodies 141
The body in pieces 147
CHAPTER V: ON GODS MADE MEN MADE IMAGES 154
Imaging and imagining the gods 157
God Incarnate 167
Wholly holey holy Lord – orGod of power and might? 174
Figuring [out] the empty body 181
Icons and idols 186
Beyond the body? 195
FURTHER READING 202
PICTURE CREDITS 229
INDEX 233
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FOREWORD
Ancients and Moderns comes to fruition at a propitious moment: ‘recep-
tion studies’ is flourishing, and the scholarship that has arisen around it is
lively, rigorous, and historically informed; it makes us rethink our own
understanding of the relationship between past and present. Ancients and
Modernsaims to communicate to students and general readers the depth,
energy, and excitement of the best work in the field. It seeks to engage,
provoke, and stimulate, and to show how, for large parts of the world,
Graeco-Roman antiquity continues to be relevant to debates in culture,
politics, and society.
The series does not merely accept notions such as ‘reception’ or ‘tradi-
tion’ without question; rather, it treats these concepts as contested categories
and calls into question th e illusion of an unmediated approach to the ancient
world. We have encouraged our authors to take intellectual risks in the
development of their ideas. By challenging the assumption of a direct line
of continuity between antiquity and modernity, these books explore how
discussions in such areas as gender, politics, race, sex, and slavery occur
within particular contexts and histories; they demonstrate that no culture
is monolithic, that claims to ownership of the past are never pure, and that
East and West are often connected together in ways that continue to surprise
and disturb many. Thus, Ancients and Modernsis intended to stir up debates
about and within reception studies and to complicate some of the standard
narratives about the ‘legacy’ of Greece and Rome.
ix
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THE ART OF THE BODY: vantiqvity and its legacy
All the books in Ancients and Moderns illustrate that how we think
about the past bears a necessary relation to whowe are in the present. At
the same time, the series also seeks to persuade scholars of antiquity that
their own pursuit is inextricably connected to what many generations have
thought, said, and done about the ancient world.
Phiroze Vasunia

x