Ancient Greek Ceramics - Essay Example

The decorations in the so-called marine style, has the dynamic vitality typical of Minoan art. The popularity of the octopus as a decorative motif on Minoan ware can hardly be divorced from the role of the octopus in the Minoan diet and economy. But did it have another purpose Octopus are traditionally caught by lowering a ceramic vessel into the water which the octopus is likely to enter and remain in as a safe lair (Bush and Brewer). Although this jar has too narrow a neck for that purpose, one wonders if the motif did not originate on jars made for just such fishing, the image perhaps as a sort of magic charm.

In the Mycenaean period between about 1450 and 1100 BC, the Minoan world came to be dominated by Greek speaking invaders who, however, did not make major changes in the society of Greece as reflected in its physical remains. The pottery of mainland Greece in this period is generally called by archaeologists late Helladic III. Many Mycenaean ceramic pieces imitate the style of Minoan pottery, though usually with an inferior and derivative execution. Others, such as the chariot krater (vessel for mixing wine and water) now in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York (), have much more in common with later geometric vases and show the beginning of that tradition.

This piece, though manufactured in the Argolid (i.e. near Tiryns, Mycenae, Argos, or Corinth) was discovered in a tomb in Cyrus. It uses a light color of clay marked with a dark brown slip. The rendering in relatively crude but shows a definite figurative scene of two chariots being driven (the context, such as a race, or in combat, or just a pairing for symmetry, cannot be determined). But elements like spots used to decorate the figures' clothing, as well as the ox skin that covers the body of the chariot, and the crosshatching on the horses' harness, is becoming abstract.

Moreover, a great deal of the otherwise empty surface of the case is taken up with geometric designs completely unrelated to the realistic depiction of space and beginning to serve as abstract geometric representation. In the Geometric period between about 1100 and 800 BC, Greek culture was disrupted by further waves of invaders and every urban center in Greece was destroyed by warfare. Greek culture became illiterate and isolated both from the larger Mediterranean world and within itself as trade and contact between isolated settlements declined.

The period is called Geometric because of the abstract, regular character of its decorative arts. No exception among thework of this era is the terracotta centaur from Lekfandi on Euboea (Thomas 1999, 99-100). It shares the geometric decorations of contemporary ceramic vessels. At 36 centimeters high, this is the largest surviving Geometric sculpture. From the point of view of sculpture, the execution is somewhat cartoonish, which features that suggest rather than copy the proportions of the human face and equine body.

The painted decoration departs from that of both earlier and later Greek polychroming of sculpture as well as pottery decoration in not relating in any discernable way to features like the musculature or hair of the centaur (certainly not any form of clothing), but in showing abstract patterning that is meant to add to the decorative value of the piece rather than realistically