Art in the Hellenistic World: An Introduction

Description

What was Hellenistic art, and what were its contexts, aims, achievements, and impact? This textbook introduces students to these questions and offers a series of answers to them. Its twelve chapters and two 'focus' sections examine Hellenistic sculpture, painting, luxury arts, and architecture. Thematically organized, spanning the three centuries from Alexander to Augustus, and ranging geographically from Italy to India and the Black Sea to Nubia, the book examines key monuments of Hellenistic art in relation to the great political, social, cultural, and intellectual issues of the time. It is illustrated with 170 photographs (mostly in color, and many never before published) and contextualized through excerpts from Hellenistic literature and inscriptions. Helpful ancillary features include maps, appendices with background on Hellenistic artists and translations of key documents, a full glossary, a timeline, brief biographies of key figures, suggestions for further reading, and bibliographical references.

Andrew Stewart is Professor of Ancient Mediterranean Art and Archaeology and Nicholas C. Petris Professor of Greek Studies at the University of California, Berkeley. He is also Curator of Mediterranean Archaeology at Berkeley's Phoebe Apperson Hearst Museum of Anthropology. He has taught at the University of Cambridge, the University of Otago (New Zealand), and Columbia University. A member of the American School of Classical Studies at Athens and the Deutsches Archaologisches Institut, and an Honorary Fellow of the Australian Academy of the Humanities, he has received fellowships and grants from the Guggenheim and Getty Foundations, and the American Council of Learned Societies. He is the author of Greek Sculpture: An Exploration (1990), which won the George Wittenborn Memorial Book Award, and of Classical Greece and the Birth of Western Art (2006), which was a finalist for the Runciman Prize for the best book of the year on a Hellenic topic.

'Arranging his material with far-reaching originality by key preoccupations in Hellenistic art - power, victory, benefaction, prowess, wisdom, piety, desire, luxury, difference and death - Stewart brilliantly contextualizes and analyzes its wealth. He offers a fascinating and reliable study for our times and beyond, wearing his magisterial learning lightly and wittily.' Graham Zanker, University of Canterbury, New Zealand 'Intelligent, erudite, even humorous, Andrew Stewart's stimulating book on Hellenistic art pays close attention to ancient sources and contexts and does much to illuminate the art of this multicultural period.' Mary Sturgeon, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill 'Andrew Stewart deftly weaves together literature, history, politics and visual culture to create a vivid and arresting account of Hellenistic art that is at once erudite and accessible. A good book makes one see the subject anew, and this is exactly what Stewart achieves - a portrait of Hellenistic art for the twenty-first century.' Susan Rotroff, Washington University, St Louis 'Arguments are presented clearly, and the layout is handled deftly. It is a joy to read.' John Griffiths Pedley, Bryn Mawr Classical Review