Vout Caroline. Classical Art: A Life History from Antiquity to the Present

Princeton University Press, 2018. — 375 p.Every picture tells a story. Hang pictures
together, and the conversation between
them enriches that story. This book taps
one such conversation. It traces the
narrative that unfolds as ancient Greek
and Roman artifacts are grouped first
in sanctuaries, and then in new configurations,
as they travel across cultures
and time. As they travel— the lucky ones
at least— they change the world around
them. Symbiotically, they too are changed,
accruing values positive and negative.
These values, and the ongoing embrace
of these values, create “classical art.”
Overinvestment in value- laden categories
makes them inevitably slippery. But
that should not dissuade us from wrestling
with them. “Classical art” is sometimes
used capaciously to describe the material
cultures of the Greeks, Etruscans, and
Romans from as early as 1200 BCE to
the fall of the Roman empire.1 But this
underrates the values implied by both the
“classical” and “art” labels, values that have
evolved over centuries. This book is about
that evolution, and employs “classical art”
for a category comprising “chosen objects,”
objects that have outgrown their Greek
or Roman origins, and often also their
intended function, to become part of something
bigger— an elite club or canon that
dictates taste, and shapes culture and culture’s
questions. This book also privileges
sculpture. It would be disingenuous to
deny the part played by gems, pottery,
painting, and architecture, but sculpture
is the most eloquent advocate; indeed it is
our only advocate, if what we are wanting
to track is an available, moveable material
that has been in the public domain from its
production in Greece or Rome and its discussion
in Greek and Latin literature, continuously
through to the present— material
that offers not just a close- up but a panning
shot of classical art’s entire trajectory.
In as far as this book is concerned with
more private narratives, it is less with the
biographies of individual enthusiasts than
with how these biographies have intersected
with (inter)national narratives to dictate
classical art’s makeup and influence.