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Ancient Mediterranean + Europe
Course: Ancient Mediterranean + Europe > Unit 6
Lesson 2: Pottery- Greek Vase-Painting, an introduction
- Ancient Greek vase production and the black-figure technique
- Dipylon Amphora
- Dipylon Amphora
- Terracotta Krater
- Commemorating the Dead in Greek Geometric Art
- Eleusis Amphora
- Sophilos: a new direction in Greek pottery
- The François Vase: story book of Greek mythology
- Exekias, amphora with Ajax and Achilles playing a game
- Exekias, Amphora with Ajax and Achilles Playing a Game
- Exekias, Dionysos Kylix
- From tomb to museum: the story of the Sarpedon Krater
- The many meanings of the Sarpedon Krater
- Euthymides, Three Revelers
- Niobid Painter, Niobid Krater
- Niobid Krater
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Exekias, Dionysos Kylix
Exekias, Dionysos Kylix, c. 530 B.C.E. (Antikensammlungen, Munich) Speakers: Dr. Steven Zucker & Dr. Beth Harris. Created by Beth Harris and Steven Zucker.
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- At the beginning of the video, they said that the bowl was used for drinking wine. And that if you drank the whole thing, you would be quite drunk. Are the wines that people drink today more potent than the ones in ancient Greece? Is that why they have such large drinking cups?(20 votes)
- As I understand it, ancient Greek wine was commonly mixed with water so it may well have been strong. There has been recent studies on this, perhaps even a book if I am remembering correctly.(22 votes)
- If this piece was made in Greece, how did it end up in Munich, Germany?(6 votes)
- The Kylix was found in an Etrurian tomb in the city of Vulci. The Etruscans loved Greek pots and the Greeks did a brisk export business to this part of Italy.(9 votes)
- can someone explain to me how does the flipware technique works? the shape of the bowl and the drawing are done simultaneously? or first the bowl is made and only after this, the design?(3 votes)
- The word is "slipware" As I recall, the pot is shaped, usually thrown on a wheel, first. The slip, water with small particles of clay and iron oxide, is then applied and burnished. The pot is then fired in a kiln. Additional slip might be added and the pot re-fired.(6 votes)
- isn't it dionysus, not dionysos?(4 votes)
- "Dionysos" is the original Greek name, whereas "Dionysus" is the Romanized form of the name. Similarly, "Athena" is the Romanized form of the Greek "Athene", "Hercules" is the Romanized version of "Herakles", "Apollo" is the Roman form of "Apollon", etc. People are generally more familiar with the Romanized version.(3 votes)
- I noticed that Dr. Beth pronounced the word "vase" as "vaaase." instead of "vae-ss". Is her pronunciation correct?(2 votes)
- Both ways of pronunciation are correct. 'vɑːz' is the British pronunciation and 'veɪs' is the American. If you look up words like this on wiktionary.org they play audio samples of how to pronounce them.(5 votes)
- The handles aren't on the same plane as the picture, does this mean that the picture would be tilted to an angle while you drank or that you would hold the cup at a diagonal angle?(4 votes)
- As I see it this makes as sense. This is because if the handles where vertical against the picture, you would have to hold it sideways at least at an angle. And an angle is more comfterble than vertical or horizontal of the image plane. Or it was just a mistake :p(1 vote)
- How did they drink out of it? Did they have small cups or just shove their faces in it?(3 votes)
- I would still like a demonstration... All I can see is the drink spilling all over me.(3 votes)
- What is Dionysos holding?(2 votes)
- Looks to be an animal's horn or a musical horn. It could also be a sheep's leg, as the bottom portion looks like a hoof.(1 vote)
- They didn't explain how the artist made the white sail. I understand the black and the red, but what about the white?(2 votes)
- the white was clay mixed with iron oxide the same way slip is used to make black.(1 vote)
- I just looooove this piece, it's just gorgeous. the curvature of the sail is just beautiful.(1 vote)
Video transcript
(piano music playing) Man: We're in the antique
collection in Munich, and we're looking at a small drinking cup by an artist whose name is Exekias from ancient Greece. Woman: It's funny that you called it a small drinking cup because I imagine if
you drank all the wine that you could put into this bowl, you would be quite drunk. Man: It's true. Actually, in terms of
our wine glasses now, it's pretty big. The shape is a kylix. You'll notice that it's quite shallow. It's got a little bit of a base, a little bit of a pedestal, and it's got two handles that you're meant to
hook your thumb around. Woman: It seems to me as you drank down your wine, the decoration at the bottom of the bowl would be revealed. Man: Well, that's right. It's a little bit unusual, but the bowl itself is
a canvas for this cup, and we have this marvelous scene that shows an ancient Greek boat occupied by the god Dionysus, the god of wine. When you just look at it, you can see a few unusual things. First of all, you've got all
of these playful dolphins that seem to be swimming around the boat. We can imagine the fields that would be the water and the sky. It's all red. There's no differentiation, but I've always liked to think that the dolphins on
either side of the boat are jumping out of the water. Woman: There's a sense of joyousness, and this is a cup by the
great Greek vase painter, Exekias, who we have about 35 vases from by this artist, so this is a really special object. Man: He both painted and potted, and he often signed his work, and that's the case here. If you look closely, you can see another unusual element, which is that there's a grapevine that's growing right beside the mast, and there's all these
wonderful bunches of grapes and grape leaves that almost function as a
kind of arbor over the boat. Woman: And the story was that Dionysus was fleeing pirates, and in order to hide from them, he made a grapevine grow
from the boat itself. Man: And turned the
pirates into the dolphins. Woman: That's right. I see how Exekias is trying
to fill that circular space of the kylix by making the vines grow out horizontally, and the dolphins jumping all around, so he's using that whole space. It's not an easy space
as an artist to fill. Man: No, that's right, and actually, there's a gentle curve to almost every element
in this composition that seems to be
responding to the curvature of the cup itself. There's the arc of the vine, there's the elegant and beautiful arc that's created by the wind-filled sail, and you can just see it billowing, pushing the boat forward, and, of course, the arcs of the dolphins, and of the hull of the ship. Woman: And then those
circular forms of the grapes that mirror the circular
shape of the bowl. Man: I love Dionysus. He's lying back as if
he's at a dinner party. Perhaps he's speaking, but there's a wonderful
sense of relaxation. Woman: And I like the stars on the cloak that he wears and the leaf shapes on the crown. Man: This is attic black-figure painting. It's a style of painting
from the Archaic period. The artist would paint with slipware and then would scratch into
it with a kind of needle to incise the lines and create those very delicate patterns that we can see in the
woodwork of the ship, for example. Woman: Or in the grapes above Dionysus. Man: You can see in the ship, there's quite a bit of ornamentation. Not only does the prow of the ship have a face carved into it, but you can see a sort of
swan's head by its stern. Really, my favorite part, you had mentioned before, is that if your thumb was hooked over the upper handle and this was filled with red wine, it would obscure the boat until you raised it and began to drink, and at one point, at least, the boat would seem as if it was floating on a sea of red wine. Woman: And you might feel
as relaxed as Dionysus. (piano music playing)