Note: This post includes segments that were excluded from the podcast episode.

After many long months of anticipation, the Art Institute of Chicago recently unveiled the new Mary and Michael Jaharis Galleries of Greek, Roman, and Byzantine Art (on November 11, 2012).

The new installation has quadrupled in size and, with its fresh redesign, encompasses the entire circuit overlooking the Art Institute’s open-air McKinlock Court (galleries 150-154). The long corridors of the new Jaharis Galleries lined with Classical treasures amidst bustling visitors almost give me the feeling of hobnobbing among the philosophers of an ancient Athenian stoa.

Ironically, with the increased space dedicated to Greek, Roman, and Byzantine art, the Art Institute’s collection is not substantial enough to fill it. Over a quarter of the approximately 550 works of art on display are on loan from various private collections and other museums, including the Oriental Institute and Smart Museum of Art at the University of Chicago, the Field Museum of Natural History, and the Getty. [1]

The Jaharis Galleries are designed in part by Kulapat Yantrasast of wHY Architecture, although I’m not exactly sure which part, as this design is a radical departure from Yantrasast’s earlier commission in the Art Institute, the Roger and Pamela Weston Wing of Japanese Art, featured in episode 34 of the Ancient Art Podcast, Haniwa Horse and Hokusai’s Ghosts. The refined simplicity and pedestrian-friendly layout of the Weston Wing seems to have gotten lost in translation from Japanese to Greek and Latin. The congested atmosphere of display cases in the Jaharis Galleries proves a little troublesome for groups larger than what I can count on my hands (I presently have all my fingers). You might find yourself careening into fellow visitors like a sailor dashed upon the Peloponnesian crags, lured by the sirenic call of some Athenian vase or Antonine portrait bust.

The galleries begin with two works that form a bridge to other collections in the museum, which broadly express inspirations for or from the art of Classical antiquity. The c. 3000 BC Mesopotamian Statuette of a Striding Figure on loan to the Art Institute reminds us that Classical Civilization had one foot firmly placed in the cultural heritage of the Ancient Near East and Egypt (aka “Oriental”), which we have explored repeatedly in the Ancient Art Podcast. [2]

The Art Institute’s refreshingly modern Cycladic Female Figurine from c. 2500 BC tantalizes visitors emerging from the museum’s Modern Wing with a simplified elegance and abstraction tantamount to Pablo Picasso. This reminds us of Classical art’s far-reaching fingers in European Modernism and in other areas of the collection, like 19th century American sculpture found in the adjacent Classically-inspired sculpture court [3], and in the Hellenized art of ancient Gandhara seen in the adjacent galleries of Asian art. [4]

Beyond these initial sentinels, the ancient collection is arranged chronologically and culturally. For example, Greek art begins with ceramics of the Mycenaean Bronze Age, takes us through the Geometric, Archaic, and Classical Periods, and concludes with Hellenistic art of the age following Alexander the Great before pleasantly segueing into Etruscan and Roman art.

One benefit of the aforementioned sea of display cases (as in Greek islands dotting the Aegean) is that the works have been relieved of their punitive “time-out” in corners and along the walls. I am especially delighted now to see most objects fully in the round, which had previously teased me for years with only glimpses of their back sides. As a friend and colleague put it: “There are some pretty good derrieres in the ancient galleries!”

Truly spectacular is the brilliance of radiant daylight streaming into the galleries—most notably the Greek gallery. The powerfully raking light beautifully highlights the subtle engravings on the surface of the Greek vessels, used by ancient painters to outline shapes and figures to be filled in with slip and pigment. It may cause something of an initial fright to see powerful sunlight bearing down on vividly colored 2,500 year-old treasures, but take comfort in knowing that the clay-based, fired colors of Ancient Greek ceramics are not particularly sensitive to light. Furthermore, a UV-light filtering film applied to the windows eliminates the more dangerous part of the light spectrum. [5]

Included among the ceramics, sculptures, and jewelry of the Hellenistic Period is a somewhat less than impressive fragmentary stone head of a Ptolemaic Egyptian pharaoh (Anonymous loan, 20.2012). Placed with its back against a large south-facing window, the details of this head can be difficult to discern on a sunny afternoon, but it at least serves as a vehicle for a discussion of Ptolemaic Egypt and an excuse to include one Egyptian piece in the newly expanded galleries.

Conspicuously absent from the Jaharis Galleries, though, is the Art Institute’s beloved collection of Ancient Egyptian art. Gone is the world’s most beautiful Mummy of Paankhenamun. The Statue of Ra-Horakhty has flown the coop. Osiris must have fallen in his own trap door. And that Middle Kingdom ship has sailed. With the ancient art galleries quadrupling in size, one can only wonder how there apparently wasn’t enough room for the Egyptian art. As the Egyptian collection gathers dust in storage, its future location within the Art Institute remains a mystery. Perhaps they could take the initiative and place it among the art of Africa? In the mean time, I’ll derive pleasure in pointing out that the coin display cases throughout the Jaharis Galleries are unabashedly pyramidal in shape.

As you make your way around the corner from Greek to Roman art, it’s tempting to establish a connection between ancient and modern. You waltz among the graceful curves of Hellenistic sculpture and vibrant primitivism of two bronze Sardinian figurines and Etruscan pieces set against the backdrop of the Art Institute’s gallery of public modern art in Chicago. This include maquettes for Alexander Calder’s Flamingo in Federal Plaza, Joan Miro’s variously titled piece [6] at the Cook County Administration Building, Pablo Picasso’s untitled sculpture in Daley Plaza, and the famed America Windows by Marc Chagall. Many of these and other Modern artists looked to antiquity as inspiration for their groundbreaking artistic styles.

Happily, no longer is the collection of ancient glass sequestered in its previous isolation ward, but is now fully integrated and dispersed throughout the Jaharis Galleries, serving to help contextualize the art of glass in the broader narrative of ancient civilization.

A delightful new promised gift to the Art Institute is a collection of eight Roman mosaics related to feasting and merriment. One of my favorites is this charming fish on a platter. The gentle smirk gracing its lips makes me wonder if the fish was not entirely displeased at being served for dinner. Or perhaps this helped a particularly over-empathetic Roman patron overcome his or her vegetarian inclinations. And while mosaic tesserae are generally not considered the most subtle of media, I am nonetheless struck by the level of detail in some of the designs. For example, the thoughtful placement of differently colored tesserae grants a simple sack the contrasting light and shadow of folds and creases.

And a visit to the new galleries is also a multi-sensory experience, for better or for worse. In addition to the tantalizing visual treats and pleasant touch of sunshine on one’s skin, the cacophonous ringing of overambitious alarms when one so much as graces some works of art with too discerning a glance can be a bit distracting. Thankfully, in the weeks since the galleries’ debut, it seems that many sensors have been re-tuned to be a little more forgiving.

For a far more rewarding audial experience, however, head to the back corner of the Roman collection, where you’ll find a little conservation nook with pieces that recently underwent restoration and an interesting video surveying the history of the collection and conservation techniques.

Another multimedia feature you’ll find dispersed throughout the new galleries is an interactive educational resource called LaunchPad installed on 16 Apple iPads. LaunchPad goes beyond the gallery labels, offering up a wealth of information for selected objects including historical context, form and function, method of manufacture, and connections with other works in the museum’s collection. You could easily spend an hour or two absorbed in LaunchPad alone.

Also on loan for an initial nine-month period are 51 stunning works from the British Museum organized in a special exhibition called Late Roman and Early Byzantine Treasures from the British Museum. As far as things go in the museum world, that’s a pretty lengthy period for a temporary exhibition. We can be thankful that the British Museum is remodeling their Byzantine galleries, which permits American audiences to become enriched by these treasures across the pond over in “The Colonies.” One of the highlights of the British Museum loan is the Lycurgus Cup, a fascinating 4th century Roman luxury object. Made of dichroic glass, meaning “two colors,” the cup changes from red, when light shines through the glass, to green, when reflecting off the surface. A clever lighting rig in the ceiling permits you to see this magical transformation before your very eyes.

Late Roman and Early Byzantine Treasures from the British Museum is on display at the Art Institute through August 2013. Be sure to catch it while it’s there, as it’ll likely be a long time before these exquisite treasury objects leave London again. But after the British Museum loan leaves, that space in the Art Institute will serve as a venue for rotating special exhibitions of Greek, Roman, and Byzantine art. So, with over 550 works in the new permanent Jaharis Galleries of Greek, Roman, and Byzantine Art, and the special exhibitions, we can look forward to plenty of new fodder for this epic adventure of the Ancient Art Podcast.

Thanks for tuning in. Don’t forget to “like” us on Facebook and follow me on Twitter. Subscribe to the podcast on iTunes, YouTube, and Vimeo, and be sure to give us a rating and leave you comments. You can also reach me at info@ancientartpodcast.org or use the online form at http://feedback.ancientartpodcast.org. Happy hunting and we’ll see you next time on the Ancient Art Podcast.

©2013 Lucas Livingston, ancientartpodcast.org

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Footnotes:

[1] Press Release: Art Institute to Open the Mary and Michael Jaharis Galleries of Greek, Roman, and Byzantine Art, Art Institute of Chicago, 25 October 2012.

[2] See especially episode 5 on A Corinthian Pyxis, our three-part series on the Parthenon Frieze, and episodes 15 and 16 on the Origin of Greek Sculpture and the Metropolitan Kouros.

[3] See episode 13: Ellsworth Kelly’s “Chicago Panels”.

[4] See episode 7: Gandharan Bodhisattva.

[5] Personal correspondence with Art Institute conservator Emily Heye, 20 November 2012.

[6] You’ll find Joan Miro’s statue referred to as Moon, Sun, and One Star (Miss Chicago), and Miro’s Chicago.

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See the Photo Gallery for detailed photo credits.

Media courtesy of:

Apple Garageband
Art Institute of Chicago

In the epic journey of home brewing, episode 56 of the Ancient Art Podcast takes you behind the scenes in “Build a Beer: Krampuslauf, Ein Holiday Ale mit Horns.” From high in the snow-capped Alpine peaks comes a powerfully spiced beer brewed in the tradition of German & Austrian Glühwein. Watch the beer take shape before your very eyes as the curtain is pulled on the home brewing process. Krampuslauf rewards good little boys and girls with treats of citrus, anise, cinnamon, and clove, while naughty children get flogged with a switch of birch and stuffed into Krampus’s scratchy sack. The rich crimson hue and herby, earthy notes will surely bring you back for another toast to Krampus the Christmas Devil!

©2013 Lucas Livingston, ancientartpodcast.org

Hello bold adventurers and welcome back to the Ancient Art Podcast. I’m your host Lucas Livingston. Back in episode 53, we explored the mythology and artistry of that demonness of Greek legend, the serpentine Gorgon Medusa. As foretold, we now delve deeper into her primal lair and confront her petrifying gaze as we closely examine a few salient works of ancient art exploring Medusa’s roots, influences, and evolutions.

A point I made in the previous discussion of Medusa was that she may not have been solely the creation of the Ancient Greeks, but that she was part of a vast inheritance of myths, religion, and imagery from the Ancient Near East and from the earlier Bronze Age Minoan and Mycenaean civilizations. [1] It’s been suggested that the primordial Medusa could have derived from a snake goddess, a mistress of beasts, or perhaps a solar deity. [2] We previously compared Medusa to the Egyptian Eye of Horus and the Egyptian snake goddess, Wadjet. As part of Archaic Greece’s inheritance from its earlier Bronze Age civilization, could the famous Minoan Snake Goddess be the prototype for the figure of Medusa?

These faience figurines of the so-called Snake Goddess were excavated from the ruins of Knossos on the island of Crete by Sir Arthur Evans in 1903. There’s scant evidence about their true nature, but they’re certainly visually striking. They’re both a little over a foot tall and are dated to c. 1,600 BC. One seems almost enveloped by coiled serpents about her arms and torso, even slithering up her tall crown, perched like the cobra of the Egyptian uraeus (although, we should note that that part is a modern reconstruction by Evans). [3]

The other figurine grasps writhing serpents in her outstretched arms as if in some sort of ritual dance or chant. While neither figurine has writhing snakes for hair, it’s important to note that this feature of Medusa was a much later addition. As we already read last time in Hesiod’s Theogony, perhaps the earliest written account of Medusa, there’s no mention of snakes for hair.

Just a mere thousand years later than the Minoan figurines, but at least on the same island — Crete — we have a couple fragments from a 6th century BC temple showing the typical Archaic Greek example of the grimacing Medusa. We see recoiling snakes flanking her head, and on the surviving torso of one of fragments she grasps snakes in her clenched fists with a symmetry remarkably similar to the Minoan figurines. [2] That said, there’s no hard and fast evidence to support a connection between the Minoan figurines and Medusa beyond just visual similarities and geographic proximity. If you want to learn more about the Minoan Snake Goddess, there’s a great essay by Christopher Witcombe at arthistoryresources.net. And also, while it’s a little dated, check out the 1911 article “Medusa, Apollo, and the Great Mother” in the American Journal of Archaeology, volume 15, number 3. There’s a link to it ancientartpodcast.org/bibliography.

The grimacing Medusa makes her appearance throughout the Archaic Greek world. Way back in episode 5 of the Ancient Art Podcast on A Corinthian Pyxis in the Art Institute of Chicago, we were introduced to the sculptures from the pediment of the Temple to Artemis at Corfu just off the western coast of Greece. Built around 580 BC, this is the earliest known example of pedimental sculpture in Greece. The pediment is that large triangle above the entrance. Here we see Medusa with big bulging eyes and gaping mouth with lolling tongue. Tight curls of hair roll across her head ending with spitting vipers, and two thick serpents jut from behind her ears, swarming about her long braided locks cascading over her shoulders. Two more snakes are tied around her waist like a belt, facing each other similar to the grasped snakes from the contemporary temple fragment on Crete. In early examples it’s not uncommon to see Medusa in her entirety; not just as the disembodied head known as the aegis. And this Medusa is on the go, arms swinging and legs striding in the act of running. Flanking her are her two offspring, winged Pegasus and Chrysaor, who interestingly came into the world only upon Medusa’s beheading, but Greek art has a penchant for taking liberties with narrative chronology. If Medusa is thought to represent the wild mistress of beasts and feminine fury, as some have labeled her, it stands to reason here that she’d find herself decorating a temple to Artemis, the maiden goddess of the hunt, wilderness, animals, children, and childbirth. [4]

Jumping back about 70 years, one of the earliest representations of the Medusa and Perseus myth can be found on a tall painted vase from about 650 BC. Remember from last time that Perseus was the Greek hero, who beheaded Medusa. This is one of the more famous works of early Greek art known as the Polyphemus Amphora painted by … wait for it … the Polyphemus Painter. You also see it called the Eleusis Amphora, because that’s where it’s from. Most of the attention is showered on the grisly scene on the vase’s neck, the blinding of Polyphemus (from the Odyssey; totally unrelated here), but along the body we see a very early image of the ghastly Medusa, or more specifically her sisters, the other gorgons, Sthenno and Euryale, chasing after Perseus. We can sort of make out the legs of Perseus as he runs off through the reconstructed section. The goddess Athena stands strong between him and the gorgons. Swiveling it around, though, we see the crumpled, headless body of Medusa. It almost looks like she has a serpentine body instead of legs, but the dark section is actually a wrap tied around her waist, and she’s wearing a long skirt. You can just make out her little feet peaking out from the bottom of her skirt. The faces of Sthenno and Euryale are more mask-like than realistic faces—truly monstrous with huge, gaping, fanged mouths, protruding tongues, piercing eyes, and vicious draconian serpents writhing about their heads.

The geometric patterns on their chins almost seem to suggest beards. The bearded gorgon is not uncommon. The Nessos Amphora painted by, you guessed it, the Nessos Painter in c. 620-610 BC shows a similar scene of the gorgons giving chase to avenge the murder of their sister. But here we see bearded winged gorgons. The easy way to explain this is that the gorgon, as it evolved in Greek culture, became a pastiche of many ancient and foreign influences. The emerging Greek art, religion, and mythology adopted many Near Eastern and Egyptian concepts, including the already hodgepodge Egyptian god Bes, protector of the household, children, childbirth, and mothers, complete with grimace, beard, and sometimes tongue, wings, snakes, and all kinds of other attributes. He’s just a mess.

Perhaps my favorite examples of gorgons in Greek art are found decorating wide drinking cups, which look more like bowls to us. The kylix was a favorite type of cup in Greek drinking parties, which we already covered way way back in episode 3 of the podcast on the Donkey-headed Rhyton in the Art Institute of Chicago. We can imagine the surprise and chuckle shared by tipsy guests at an Ancient Greek symposium as you would tilt back your kylix to quaff your wine only to reveal the glaring gaze of a gorgon staring out at you from the bottom of your cup. If perhaps only for a brief second, you might worry if the gorgon’s piercing gaze will turn you to stone—perhaps a commentary on the dangers of drink. And on the underside of drinking cups we sometimes find two large glaring eyes, so-called “eye cups.” And this decoration is similarly connected with the gorgon Medusa. As the drinker lifts the kylix to his mouth, finishing his drink, he dons the monstrous mask of the gorgon. His friendly companions then witness his transformation from the good-natured symposiast to the glassy-eyed beast of alcohol’s domain.

Thanks for sharing the fun with me in our discovery of the creepy creature of chaos, the Gorgon Medusa.

Don’t forget you can “like” us on Facebook at facebook.com/ancientartpodcast and follow me on Twitter @lucaslivingston. You can subscribe to the podcast on YouTube, iTunes, and Vimeo, and be sure to give us a rating and leave you comments. You can also reach me at info@ancientartpodcast.org or use the online form at http://feedback.ancientartpodcast.org. As always, thanks for tuning in and see you next time on the Ancient Art Podcast.

©2013 Lucas Livingston, ancientartpodcast.org

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Footnotes:

[1] Gisela M. A. Richter, “A Bronze Relief of Medusa,” The Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin, Vol. 14, No. 3 (Mar., 1919), pp. 59-60.

[2] A. L. Frothingham, “Medusa Apollo and the Great Mother,” American Journal of Archaeology, Vol. 15, No. 3 (Jul. – Sep., 1911), pp. 349-377.

[3] Witcombe notes: “Large portions of the figurine seen today are reconstructions. Of the original figurine, only her torso, right arm, head, and her hat (except for a portion at the top) were found. It not at all clear, for example, that it is one single snake that has its head in her right hand and its tail in her left.” Christopher L. C. E. Witcombe, Women in the Aegean: Minoan Snake Goddess, 4. Evans’s “Snake Goddess.”

[4] Regarding Artemis’s role in childbirth

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See the Photo Gallery for detailed photo credits.

Music:

Antonín Leopold Dvorák (1841-1904)
String Quartet No. 10 In E Flat, Op. 51
musopen.org

Richard Wagner (1813-1883)
Fantasie, Funeral March and Finale
(From Siegfried, The Ring of the Nibelung)
musopen.org

Nightshift
Brian Boyko
freepd.com

Additional media courtesy of:

American Journal of Archaeology (1911)
Apple Garageband

Wikimedia Commons:
Rama, George Groutas, Wolfgang Sauber, sailko, Dr.K., Marcus Cyron, Angela Monika Arnold

flickr:
Panegyrics of Granovetter (Sarah Murray), mari27454 (Marialba Italia)

This is the complete transcript for this episode, which includes additional highlighted information not found in the free version of the episode available on YouTube, iTunes, and Vimeo. Get the full story at ancientartpodcast.org/curious.

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(40 Photos)

Hello friends. Welcome back to the Ancient Art Podcast. I’m Lucas Livingston, your tour guide on our journey through the art and culture of the ancient world.

Back in episode 55 of the podcast about the Art Institute of Chicago’s new Greek, Roman, and Byzantine galleries, we met the Lycurgus Cup on temporary loan to the Art Institute from the British Museum. The Lycurgus Cup is an exquisitely well preserved example of luxury from the late Roman Empire. It was made in the 4th century of the Common Era, probably in Rome or maybe Alexandria, Egypt. [1]

The cup is quite exceptional in that it’s the best preserved example of a cage cup from antiquity. A cage cup is a conspicuously excessive type of luxury vessel where the outer surface is painstakingly carved away so that the thin outer framework resembles something like a cage for the inner cup. Only very slender bridges cleverly veiled behind the decoration connect the inner and outer surfaces. The meticulous process required the most delicate hands and expert eyes of master glass-cutting artists (diatretarius, diatretarii), so only Rome’s exceedingly wealthy society members could have afforded cage cups. We’re talking the emperor’s inner circle of friends and family. Even more exceptionally rare is to have narrative designs like on the Lycurgus Cup. Most surviving cage cups simply support geometric patters. While fragments of other narrative cage cups survive, the Lycurgus Cup is the only fully intact example of a narrative cage cup known today. [2]

Also spectacular about the Lycurgus Cup is its seemingly magical ability to change colors. It’s made of dichroic glass. “Dichroic” simply means “two colors.” That’s a bit misleading, though, because it wasn’t actually cast with differently colored glass. Rather, microscopic flecks of gold and silver are mixed into the glass. The minute silver particles in the glass cause light reflecting off of the surface to appear an opaque turquoise, but when light shines through the glass, the gold particles scatter the blue end of the spectrum, letting the red pass through, and suddenly the object glows with an eerie, spectral, crimson iridescence. It’s Ancient Roman nanotechnology! [3] For its exhibition in the Art Institute, a clever lighting rig in the ceiling permits you to see this magical transformation before your very eyes.

The Lycurgus Cup gets its name from the narrative depicted on its surface. Lycurgus was a mythical king of the Edoni, a Thracian tribe. In Book Six of the Illiad, we learn that King Lycurgus banned the worship of Dionysus and drove the worshipers from his land. [4] The ancient author we call Pseudo-Apollodorus shares with us in his work called The Library — sort of a compilation of Greek myths — that Lycurgus imprisoned the maenads and satyrs of Dionysus. As punishment, Dionysus drove Lycurgus mad, upon which the king killed his son with an axe, believing he was chopping down a grape vine sacred to the god. [5] Another version of the legend tells us that Lycurgus got drunk on wine and tried to violate his own mother. After sobering up a bit, he scorned Dionysus by trying to cut down the god’s sacred vines, believing that wine and Dionysian reverie were the root of all evil. [6] There are many other versions of the legend, including the specifics depicted on the cup. It’s said that Lycurgus took up an axe and attacked the nymph Ambrosia, a follower of Dionysus. [1] In self-defense, she transforms into a vine and curls her tendrils around the enraged king holding him fast. Here we see Lycurgus ensnared in the vines of Ambrosia, while the axe has dropped to his side.

If we turn the cup, we find the reclining Ambrosia recoiling from her attacker in shock and outrage. A pointy-eared satyr with a shepherd’s crook hurls rocks at Lycurgus with a perceptible fury. Dionysus, himself, makes an appearance shrouded in billowing eastern garb complete with a head wrap and thyrsos, the sacred staff of the god. [6] Dionysus was often interpreted by the Greeks and Romans as having been a god of eastern origin, who made his way to the west. So, we often find Dionysus associated with various foreign exotica.

The goat-legged Pan seems to dance through the scene perhaps rejoicing at Lycurgus’s fate, while a panther sacred to Dionysus crouches below ready to pounce the wicked king. The axe dropped by Lycurgus almost seems to cleave his foot in two. That could be a nod to the version of the story related by Hyginus, who tells us that Lycurgus, stricken mad by Dionysus, kills his wife and son and cuts off his own foot, believing he was chopping down the grape vines of the god. And it’s in this version of the myth that we learn that Dionysus threw Lycurgus to the panthers. [7]

You could interpret the dichroic play of green and red colors as relating to the story of Lycurgus. The crimson could be reminiscent of the blood of Lycurgus. The two colors, green and red, are also suggestive of the leaves of the grape vine and of red wine, or even the ripening of grapes from green to red, all of which relate to Dionysus, or Bacchus to the Romans. What we don’t know is if this was actually meant to be a cup in the first place. The gilded metal rim and foot were added in the 18th or 19th centuries. Evidence that dichroic glass was used as cups comes to us from emperor Hadrian, who is supposedly thought to have written a letter to his brother-in-law saying, “I have sent you parti-coloured cups that change colour, presented to me by the priest of a temple. They are specially dedicated to you and my sister. I would like you to use them at banquets on feast days.” [8] But the Lycurgus Cup could just as easily have been an oil lamp. The Corning Museum of Glass has in its collection a lovely cage cup suspended by a metal chain, suggesting it was used as an oil lamp. [9] Whether the Lycurgus Cup was a wine chalice or an oil lamp, it would have been equally spectacular in use. And just as it was prized in antiquity, so too is it celebrated and cherished by millions of spectators today.

Thanks for tuning in to the Ancient Art Podcast. If you enjoyed our brief discussion of the Lycurgus Cup, I hope you’ll head on over to ancientartpodcast.org/curious where you can get the full episode with far more intricate analysis. If you dig the podcast, be sure to “like” us on Facebook at facebook.com/ancientartpodcast and you can follow me on Twitter @lucaslivingston. You can subscribe to the podcast on YouTube, iTunes, and Vimeo, where you’ll hopefully give us a good rating and leave you comments. If you want to get in touch with me directly, you can email me at info@ancientartpodcast.org or use the online form at http://feedback.ancientartpodcast.org. Thanks for tuning in and see you next time on the Ancient Art Podcast.

©2013 Lucas Livingston, ancientartpodcast.org

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Footnotes:

[1] The Lycurgus Cup. The British Museum. See also Williams, Dyfri, Masterpieces of Classical Art, British Museum Press, 2009, p. 342. See also The Constable-Maxwell Cage-Cup, Bonhams 1793.

[2] “Cage Cup.” Wikipedia.

[3] Pollard, A. Mark & Carl Heron, Archaeological Chemistry, The Royal Society of Chemistry, 2008, p. 163, 186. Also Freestone, Ian; Meeks, Nigel; Sax, Margaret; Higgitt, Catherine, The Lycurgus Cup – A Roman Nanotechnology, Gold Bulletin, 4, 4, London, World Gold Council, 2007, p. 272. See also note 2.

[4] Homer, Iliad, Book VI, lines 130-140.

[5] Pseudo-Apollodorus, Library, Book 3, Chapter 5, Section 1.

[6] Despite the feminine breasts and exposed midriff, the scholarly community labels this figure on the Lycurgus Cup as the god Dionysus. I am tempted the possibility that this might not be Dionysus, however. A maenad would also make for a convincing argument. Maenads are regularly depicted holding the thyrsos. With outstretched hand, as though sicking the panther on Lycurgus, the pose of this figure resembles the winged female (fury?) figure on the Munich Antikensammlungen Loutrophoros, but is also reminiscent of the supposed Dionysus at left on the same vessel and the supposed Dionysus (top right) on the Naples Museum Lycurgus mosaic panel. For a brief discussion of the feminine appearance and characteristics of Dionysus, Apollo, Christ, and other divinities, see Thomas F. Mathews, The Clash of the Gods: A Reinterpretation of Early Christian Art, Princeton University Press, 1993, p. 135.

[7] Hyginus, Fabulae, 132.

[8] Freestone, Ian; Meeks, Nigel; Sax, Margaret; Higgitt, Catherine, The Lycurgus Cup – A Roman Nanotechnology, Gold Bulletin, 4, 4, London, World Gold Council, 2007, p. 275.

[9] “Cage Cup,” Corning Museum of Glass.

Hi World. I’m excited to make a quick announcement. The Ancient Art Podcast and Curious.com have teamed up to host episodes of the podcast at Curious.com. If you head on over to ancientartpodcast.org/curious, you’ll find a growing catalog of Ancient Art Podcast episodes. Many of the lessons include multiple choice exercises and attachments or handouts, which teachers and students might find to be a welcome feature. And listen up, teachers! If you have suggestions for some great quiz questions to add, let me know at info@ancientartpodcast.org. And you can also add comments to each lesson, which is a great way to interact with me and other viewers.

Some of the lessons are free, but some of them cost mere pocket change. For a limited time when you sign up at Curious.com, you’ll get 20 free credits to spend on the site, so don’t wait!

Since October of 2006, the Ancient Art Podcast has been coming at you for free. Over the years, I’ve gotten lots of feedback from you all wondering how you could help support the podcast. Of course, simply helping to get the word out about the podcast is a great way to lend your support. But spending a little coin also helps me offset some of the costs associated with running the show.

To that end, if you head over to ancientartpodcast.org, you’ll now find a “Donate” button. This offers the flexibility to donate however much you feel the podcast has been worth to you. From time to time you might see a campaign that I’m running for the podcast to raise enough funds for a particular expense.

So check ’em both out. Visit ancientartpodcast.org and ancientartpodcast.org/curious. Thanks for tuning in and thanks for your support.

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(31 Photos)

Greetings gashlycrumbs! Two years after its original release, I am now publishing the full & complete episode with highlighted content previously only available at ancientartpodcast.org/curious. Enjoy this spooktacular Halloween episode of the Ancient Art Podcast. Meet the wicked witches, devilish denizens, and things that go bump in the night in the Art Institute of Chicago’s painting “A Witches’ Sabbath” by Dutch artist Cornelis Saftleven. We explore the peculiar fascination Dutch and Flemish artists had with the proverbial “fire and brimstone,” including the famous pioneer of the genre Hieronymus Bosch. A detailed examination of “A Witches’ Sabbath” reveals various influences and motivations. We discuss the cultural context of Christian puritanism, the twisted history and legacy of the Witches’ Sabbath a.k.a. Walpurgisnacht, and its relationship with legend of Faust.

Greeting ghouls and goblins. Sit back for another spooktacular spectacle in this festive Halloween edition of the Ancient Art Podcast. I’m your ghost of a host, Lucas Livingston.

While floating through the corridors of the Art Institute of Chicago amidst Old Master paintings and illustrations, you might find yourself confronting a somewhat shocking scene of creepy crawlies and devilish denizens. This is A Witches’ Sabbath by the Dutch artist Cornelis Saftleven painted around 1650. Somewhat overshadowed by his brother Herman Saftleven II, Cornelis is nonetheless celebrated today for his paintings, etchings, and drawings. [1] And I’ll give him props for being dean of Rotterdam’s Guild of (my buddy) Saint Luke in 1667. [2] Cornelis was extremely versatile as an artist, producing some 200 paintings and far more drawings including portraits, interiors, landscapes, rural country life, including the popular Dutch genre of cattle paintings, biblical and mythological themes, and most notably images of hellfire and witchcraft. The proverbial “fire and brimstone” was celebrated in Netherlandish art (particularly Flemish art)—dare I say—maybe a little more than it should have been. Don’t get me wrong, I love a good pagan moot as much as the Wiccan next door, but this was more like a cultural obsession. The moralizing Hell and torture genre was kickstarted 150 years earlier by the acclaimed artist Hieronymus Bosch and was further popularized by Flemish artist Jan Bruegel and his father, Pieter Bruegel the Elder, who soared into public consciousness after his 1562 commission for the album cover to Black Sabbath’s Greatest Hits. (Lol!) [3]

In all scholarly seriousness, though, Easter Egg! What’s different between Bruegel’s original painting and the Black Sabbath album cover? First one to post the answer at facebook.com/ancientartpodcast wins … first place!

Dominating the scene in A Witches’ Sabbath, a creepy crone brandishes a broomstick riding atop a goat. A shadowy, robed figure gestures strongly with a bony hand marshaling our view deeper into the canvas. A strange dog-like Hell hound dashes forward as though to attack the denizens on the right. Most prominent among them is what at first seems somewhat like an ancient Greek satyr, half man, half goat. The ears and beard fit the bill, but those shaggy legs end in sharp bird feet, not cloven goat hooves. And his beautifully detailed butterfly wings seem like something out of the Seelie Court of Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream. The wicked horns of some devilish being behind our colorful friend the “butterflurkey” draw our gaze further skyward to the shrouded denizens of the hinterground. An alien standard-bearer wafts an unknown banner aloft, while a melange of cruel mongrels grasp and tear at one another, churning like the ocean waves. Trails of glowing embers sail from their bodies into the darkness as if to suggest the Devil’s brood being burned at the stake or some mystical essence being ripped from their souls.

Despite the overall fantasy of this scene, detailed observations from the natural world motivated Saftleven’s precise scientific rendering of many subjects, like the butterfly wings, amphibians, and crustacean. Saftleven was living and working in the Age of Reason, witnessing the birth of the scientific method and the invention of the microscope. Taxonomic and anatomical studies strongly motivate his work and the work of his Netherlandish contemporaries.

It’d be easy to miss the large flat object in the foreground shadows if our eyes weren’t being drawn to it by the long rope in the hands of our friend the “butterflurkey.” Is it a wrapped and bound tome of necromantic incantations? The witch’s spell book, perhaps? Why is he dragging it along the ground? Did he steal it from the witch, who’s charging to get it back? Or is it just a sofa cushion for when he runs out of steam? We might not be able to say definitively what’s happening in this scene. The title might give us some help. The witches’ sabbath has a long dark history throughout medieval Europe, when witches and necromancers were said to gather and cavort with Satan’s minions. On October 31, All Hallows’ Eve or Samhain, the veil between the living and the dead is said to be at its thinnest and the dead return to visit the living. [4] At the exact opposite end of the year on April 30, witches were said to fly on goats and broomsticks to Brocken mountain, the highest peak of Germany’s Harz Mountains, where they revel with the Devil in celebration of Walpurgisnacht. [5] One of the more famous accounts of Walpurgisnacht, translated as the Witches’ Sabbath, comes from Goethe’s Faust of 1808-1832.

“Now to the Brocken the witches ride; the stubble is gold and the corn is green; There is the carnival crew to be seen, And Squire Urianus will come to preside. So over the valleys our company floats, with witches a-farting on stinking old goats.” Goethe [6]

This passage conjures some colorful imagery, including that of witches mounted on old goats, much as our witch in Saftleven’s A Witches’ Sabbath. But what do we make of “over the valleys our company floats?” While there’s no floating or flight in our painting, an 1829 engraving after an illustration by Johann Heinrich Ramberg interprets Goethe’s words rather literally, showing witches in flight on brooksticks and on goats approaching the horned god on the mountaintop. This might also remind us of Francisco Goya’s two well-known Witches’ Sabbath paintings from 1789 and 1820-23, the latter also known as The Great He-Goat.

Writing at the same time as Goethe, the great German folklorist Jacob Grimm also associates a witches’ gathering with Walpurgisnacht.

“At the end of the Hilss, as you near the Duier (Duinger) wood, is a mountain very high and bare, … whereon it is given out that witches hold their dance on Walpurgis night, even as on Mt. Brocken in the Harz.” [7]

While Goethe’s Faust was composed over 150 years after Saftleven’s A Witches’ Sabbath, the legend of Faust far predates Goethe and was extremely popular in Saftleven’s time. The earliest mention of Faust is found in the early 1500’s, conceivably even based on an actual person. [8] The legend continues to grow and evolve throughout the 16th and early 17th century.

Early stories of Faust characterize him as a debase charlatan, sometimes even a foul necromancer in league with the Devil. The basic moral premise seems to be a condemnation of the pursuit of secular human knowledge at the expense of one’s immortal soul, the abandonment of religious Protestantism in pursuit of worldly spiritual corruption, also known at the height of the Protestant Reformation as Catholicism. In the second half of the 1500’s and early 1600’s, the legend was widely published throughout Europe, including the earliest Dutch and Flemish versions in 1592. [8]

As so many Dutch and Flemish paintings at this time are allegorical, Cornelis Saftleven’s A Witches’ Sabbath is rife for interpretation. [9] Is it a straightforward depiction of the horrors of pagan witchcraft painted at a time when witches were still being hanged and burned at the stake? Is the Walpurgisnacht narrative from the legend of Faust being exploited as an allegory preaching against the seductive pitfalls of sin and worldliness? Is it a Protestant jab at Catholic orthodoxy and corruption? Or maybe a Catholic jab at the Protestant Reformation? Or maybe even a Protestant jab at the Catholic Counter-Reformation? Could the tome dragged across the earth be meant to suggest to the learned viewer the published legend of Faust, itself, rather than a witch’s spell book, as we suggested earlier? Although I still think it looks like a sofa cushion.

Well, we’re left with many questions and only a handful of answers. Thankfully, things that go bump in the night continue to have a timeless appeal. So do be sure to seek out A Witches’ Sabbath next time you’re in the Art Institute of Chicago and enjoy the creepy crawlies all to yourself.

Thanks for tuning in to the Ancient Art Podcast. If you enjoyed our brief discussion of A Witches’ Sabbath, I hope you’ll head on over to ancientartpodcast.org/curious where you can get the full episode with a much deeper treatment of the subject. If you dig the podcast, be sure to “like” us on Facebook at facebook.com/ancientartpodcast and give us a nice 5-star rating on iTunes. You can follow me on Twitter @lucaslivingston and can subscribe to the podcast on YouTube, iTunes, and Vimeo, where you’ll hopefully give us a good rating and leave you comments. You can also email your questions and comments to me at info@ancientartpodcast.org or use the online form at http://feedback.ancientartpodcast.org. Thanks for tuning in and see you next time on the Ancient Art Podcast.

©2013 Lucas Livingston, ancientartpodcast.org

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Footnotes:

[1] “SAFTLEVEN, Cornelis.” Benezit Dictionary of Artists. Oxford Art Online. Oxford University Press, accessed October 11, 2013.

[2] Wolfgang Schulz. “Saftleven.” Grove Art Online. Oxford Art Online. Oxford University Press, accessed October 11, 2013.

[3] Also known as The Triumph of Death.

[4] “Halloween.” Encyclopædia Britannica. Encyclopædia Britannica Online Academic Edition. Encyclopædia Britannica Inc., 2013, accessed 13 October 2013.

[5] “Walpurgis, n.”. OED Online. September 2013. Oxford University Press. Accessed October 13, 2013.

[6] Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von. Faust. Part I. 1808. trans. Philip Wayne. Penguin Classics, 1949-1959.

[7] Jacob Grimm, Teutonic Mythology, Volume 4, 1835, trans. from the 4th ed. with notes and appendix by James Steven Stallybrass, London: George Bell and Sons, 1882, p. 1620.

[8] “Faust.” 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica, Volume 10, Wikisource 1911 encyclopedia project, accessed 12 October 2013. See also “Faust.” Encyclopædia Britannica. Encyclopædia Britannica Online Academic Edition. Encyclopædia Britannica Inc., 2013, accessed 13 October 2013.

[9] Ford-Wille, Clare. “Flemish art.” The Oxford Companion to Western Art. Oxford Art Online. Oxford University Press, accessed October 19, 2013.

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See the Photo Gallery for detailed photo credits.

Credits:

Modest Petrovich Mussorgsky (1839-1881), Night on Bald Mountain, musopen.org

Special thanks to:
The Art Institute of Chicago
Cornelis Saftleven, A Witches’ Sabbath
Photography © The Art Institute of Chicago
http://www.artic.edu/aic
Used with permission.

Creepy closing theme music courtesy of The Freesound Project, created by the following artists, and remixed by Lucas Livingston:
DJ Chronos, Horror Drone 001-006 (ID’s: 52134, 52135, 52136, 52137, 52138, 52139)
DJ Chronos, Suspense 001, 004-015, 017 (ID’s: 56885, 56886, 56887, 56888, 56889, 56890, 56891, 56892, 56893, 56894, 56895, 56896, 56897)
Sea Fury, Monster (ID: 48662)
Sea Fury, Monster 2 (ID: 48673)
digenisnikos, scream3 (ID: 44260)
thanvannispen, scream_group_women (ID: 30279)
rutgermuller, Haunting Music 1 (www.rutgermuller.nl) (ID: 51243)

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(67 Photos)

Hello fellow travelers and welcome back to the Ancient Art Podcast. I’m the astrolabe to your Copernicus, Lucas Livingston.

Over the last year, the blogosphere had been lit up with oracular prophesies of heavenly bodies, namely the supposed comet of the century, Comet ISON. Discovered on September 21, 2012, comet C/2012 S1, better known as Comet ISON, got its popular name after the place of its discovery, the International Scientific Optical Network (ISON) in Russia. Calculations of its trajectory predicted early on that ISON was destined to be one of the most spectacular comets visible by earthlings in a long while. Either that or it would be a colossal dud … or something in between. (Yeah, thanks for narrowing it down, astronomers!)

ISON received a whole heckuva lot of coverage leading up to the grand show. One interesting thing about ISON is that it had never before been witnessed by eyes from Earth. It’s a new comet, having never made the trip to the inner Solar System. And this unprecedented journey for ISON proved tragically fatal. On Thursday, November 28, 2013, as millions of Americans were indulging in their Thanksgiving Day feasts, Comet ISON took its closest approach around the Sun and blew up. So, as it turned out, those who predicted this would be the comet of the century, a dud, or something in between were spot on. If you want to learn more about the late Comet ISON from various astronomy blogs and podcasts, I’ve gathered a few references in the footnotes to the transcript for this episode at http://ancientartpodcast.org/60. [1]

While ISON was only making its first approach to the Sun, humanity has been gazing at the stars and other celestial phenomena for ages. And comets are no strangers to past civilizations. In the Classical World we find comets being interpreted as both harbingers of disaster and portents of fortune. And they sometimes found their way into the arts. In Pliny the Elder’s Natural History, we hear that a comet appeared for seven days shortly after the assassination of Julius Caesar. We know now that this was in July of 44 BC, four months after his death and coincidentally during his birth month. [2] This apparition of convenient timing was interpreted by the Roman people as a sign that their emperor had ascended to heaven to be among the gods. The cult of Julius Caesar grew and the Temple of the Divine Julius (Divus Iulius) was built in 42 BC and dedicated in 29 BC by his successor Augustus Caesar. [3] Coins minted in the years 19 and 18 BC during Augustus’s reign depict the handsome, young Augustus Caesar on one side, and on the other a shining, eight-pointed star with a distinct, fiery comet’s tail complete with the inscription “DIVVS IVLIVS” or “Divine Julius.” If you want to learn more about Caesar’s comet from the ancient authors, themselves, click on the transcript for this episode at http://ancientartpodcast.org/60. [4]

Nearly a century earlier, the sighting of a comet in the birth-year of Mithridates VI of Pontus (135 or 134 BC) and another comet in the year of his coronation (120 or 119) were said to have been heavenly portents foretelling his future greatness. This coin in the Art Institute of Chicago, minted during the king’s reign in the year 86 or 85 BC, shows a youthful portrait of the king on one side and a curtseying image of the winged horse Pegasus on the other. And nestled behind Pegasus is a depiction of one of Mithridates’s prophetic comets. There’s a fascinating paper by John Ramsey in the 1999 Harvard Studies in Classical Philology, which explores the theory that Mithridates adopted the Pegasus as something of a personal emblem, because it was within the constellation Pegasus where the prophetic birth comet had been observed. [5]

Hands down the most famous comet to modern observers is Halley’s Comet … well, at least until that unknown one out there with our name on it touches down. Halley’s Comet is so well known today because of its reliable predictability and frequent appearance, grazing past the earth and sun every 75 years or so. Its last appearance was in 1986 and it’s slated to return in 2061. Its prior appearance in 1910 was highly celebrated in the arts and the media. Astronomers at the University of Chicago Yerkes Observatory had just discovered that the earth would be passing through the comet’s debris cloud of poisonous cyanogen gas, which issued something of an end of the world, doomsday, hysteria among many. And, of course, souvenir peddlers didn’t fail to capitalize on this hysteria. [6]

Halley’s Comet gets its name from Edmond Halley, who, in 1705, using Newtonian physics, accurately predicted that the comet seen in 1682 would return in 1758. That happened to be after his death, but when it returned as predicted, the comet was henceforth dubbed Halley’s Comet.

Using computer models, the predictability of Halley’s Comet has allowed us to trace its appearances back through the Middle Ages into antiquity. While it wasn’t necessarily thought to be the same comet each time, it was recorded and variously interpreted across time and place. Perhaps its most famous rendering in art comes to us from the Bayeux Tapestry in Bayeux, France. Stretching almost 230 feet (70 meters) long, this linen cloth embroidered in wool commemorates the Norman invasion of England culminating in the Battle of Hastings in 1066. Here we see the comet soaring overhead as interested onlookers marvel at the ominous portent of disaster. Or so the Anglo-Saxons would have thought. To William the Conqueror and the Norman invaders of England, things turned out quite well. Interestingly, the fiery body with its curious geometric tail is labeled in the Latin inscription as a star. Or it could be the first ever recorded sighting of a Corellian Corvette from the planet Alderaan.

Comet Halley also makes a possible appearance as the Star of Bethlehem in Giotto’s Adoration of the Magi from circa 1305. Just four years earlier in 1301 Halley’s Comet soared across Giotto’s Italian sky.

We need to leave our comfort zone of Classical antiquity to find the most meticulous of astronomical records. Babylonian and Chinese documents record appearances of Halley’s Comet in 87 and 164 BC. Chinese records let us push back our earliest know sighting even further to 240 BC. To shake up the establishment, however, a July 2010 article in the Journal of Cosmology by Doctors Daniel Graham and Eric Hintz, makes a strong case for an Ancient Greek sighting of Halley’s Comet in 466 BC. [7]

This shouldn’t steal any thunder away from China, though. A fascinating discovery from Mawangdui, China in 1978 shows us just how meticulously ancient Chinese observers studied these celestial phenomena. The 4th century Comet Atlas meticulously catalogues a myriad of different comet formations. To the untrained eye, these sketches may seem like imaginary fantasy, but the late, great astronomer Carl Sagan, among others, confirmed the amazingly strong similarity between the ancient Chinese illustrations and modern comet photography [8].

Curiously, if you look closely at the Chinese Comet Atlas, you’ll note in this section that the first illustration on the left bears a striking resemblance to the swastika. The swastika will perhaps be forever damned in modern consciousness by its association with history’s dark chapter of the Third Reich and the Nazi Party, but we must try to step back and remind ourselves that it’s an ancient and originally positive, auspicious symbol. It’s also a global symbol, having appeared independently in visual culture across the world. To the Navajo of America it’s a sacred symbol of healing. [9] In Japan, the swastika, or manji, is a symbol of longevity and was even adopted by the famous woodblock print artist Hokusai as part of his artist name. We find the swastika across the cultures of Eurasia stretching back as far as prehistoric times in Neolithic rock art. A quick trip to the US Holocaust Museum website tells us that word swastika comes from the Sanskrit “svastika” meaning “good fortune” or “well-being.” [10]

One wonders how populations across the globe with no perceivable contact would have been independently inspired to produce the same geometric design in their art. So often visual inspiration for early peoples comes from the natural world … the earth and sea around us, plants and animals, and the sky above … the sun, the moon, planets, and stars, and most distinctly, comets, appearing spontaneously and briefly in the heavens and visible across the globe to most of the world’s inhabitants. If a comet can appear as a swastika in the sky, as evidenced by the Chinese Comet Atlas, it’s unsurprising that this peculiar phenomenon would be recorded by witnesses the world over.

The swastika is certainly a curious shape for a comet, though. The idea is that we’re looking at a comet more or less from behind moving away from earth toward the sun. As comets are heated by the sun, streams of vapor escape, which produce the signature comet tail. Comets can easily have more than one tail, as we see in the many different designs in the Comet Atlas. Imagine a four-tailed comet seen from behind with a little bit of a spin or rotation. Theoretically, this would give us a somewhat softened version of the swastika. Well, if you don’t take my word for it, I encourage you to read the interesting article “The astronomical origins of the swastika motif” by Fernando Coimbra. You’ll find a link to this article, more on the Chinese comet atlas, and other references for further study at http://ancientartpodcast.org/60. [11]

As we began with the contemporary, so do we conclude. To wrap up, another celestial body worthy of inclusion here, while not a comet, is the asteroid Apophis. Apophis caused something of a stir after its discovery in 2004 when initial calculations indicated a small chance that it could impact Earth in 2029. [12] I’m compelled to imagine that its finders chose the dubious name Apophis, heralding its ignominious parallel to the Egyptian demon serpent of chaos and destruction. But no, apparently they’re just Stargate fans. [13]

Refined calculations and observations eliminated the risk of impact in 2029. For a while, though, there remained a risk that when Apophis passes us in 2029 the gravitational nudge of the Earth would set it on a collision course with Earth in 2036. Rest assured, though, friendly listeners, that this probability is known now to be minimal. [12]

So next time you’re out on a clear night, when you spy with your eye to the starlit sky, consider the legends and tales our ancient ancestors shared gazing upon those same celestial objects and ponder the myriad of inspirations our cosmic neighbors had upon our visual culture.

Thanks for tuning in to the Ancient Art Podcast. If you dig the podcast, be sure to “like” us on Facebook at http://facebook.com/ancientartpodcast and give us a nice 5-star rating on iTunes. You can follow me on Twitter @lucaslivingston and can subscribe to the podcast on YouTube, iTunes, and Vimeo, where you’ll hopefully give us a good rating and leave you comments. You can also email your questions and comments to me at info@ancientartpodcast.org or use the online form at http://feedback.ancientartpodcast.org. Thanks for tuning in and see you next time on the Ancient Art Podcast.

©2014 Lucas Livingston, ancientartpodcast.org

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Footnotes:

[1] References on Comet ISON:

Phil Plait. “12 Cool Facts about Comet ISON.” Slate.com.

The 365 Days of Astronomy, the daily podcast of the International Year of Astronomy 2009 – Weekly Space Hangout – Comet ISON Special. November 8, 2013.

The 365 Days of Astronomy, the daily podcast of the International Year of Astronomy 2009 – Cosmic Perspective Radio – Brother Guy Consolmagno. November 28, 2013.

The 365 Days of Astronomy, the daily podcast of the International Year of Astronomy 2009 – Astronomy Cast Ep. 324 – Sun Grazers. December 9, 2013.

[2] John T. Ramsey and A. Lewis Licht, The Comet of 44 BC and Caesar’s Funeral Games, Scholars Press, 1997.

[3] James Grout, “Temple of the Divine Julius,” Encyclopaedia Romana. Retrieved February 11, 2014.

[4] Quotes from primary sources on Caesar’s Comet:

“Rome is the only place in the whole world where there is a temple dedicated to a comet; it was thought by the late Emperor Augustus to be auspicious to him, from its appearing during the games which he was celebrating in honour of Venus Genetrix, not long after the death of his father Cæsar, in the College which was founded by him. He expressed his joy in these terms: ‘During the very time of these games of mine, a hairy star was seen during seven days, in the part of the heavens which is under the Great Bear. It rose about the eleventh hour of the day, was very bright, and was conspicuous in all parts of the earth. The common people supposed the star to indicate, that the soul of Cæsar was admitted among the immortal Gods; under which designation it was that the star was placed on the bust which was lately consecrated in the forum.’ This is what he proclaimed in public, but, in secret, he rejoiced at this auspicious omen, interpreting it as produced for himself; and, to confess the truth, it really proved a salutary omen for the world at large.”

Pliny the Elder, The Natural History, trans. John Bostock, M.D., F.R.S., H.T. Riley, Esq., B.A., Book 2, Chapter 23. Accessed 20 January 2014.

“LXXXVIII. He died in the fifty-sixth year of his age, and was ranked amongst the Gods, not only by a formal decree, but in the belief of the vulgar. For during the first games which Augustus, his heir, consecrated to his memory, a comet blazed for seven days together, rising always about eleven o’clock; and it was supposed to be the soul of Caesar, now received into heaven: for which reason, likewise, he is represented on his statue with a star on his brow. The senate-house in which he was slain, was ordered to be shut up, and a decree made that the ides of March should be called parricidal, and the senate should never more assemble on that day.”

C. Suetonius Tranquillus, The Lives of the Twelve Caesars, Volume 01: Julius Caesar by Suetonius, Project Gutenberg. Accessed 20 January 2014.

“‘…Meanwhile transform the soul, which shall be reft from this doomed body, to a starry light, that always god-like Julius may look down in future from his heavenly residence upon our Forum and our Capitol.’

“Jupiter hardly had pronounced these words, when kindly Venus, although seen by none, stood in the middle of the Senate-house, and caught from the dying limbs and trunk of her own Caesar his departing soul. She did not give it time so that it could dissolve in air, but bore it quickly up, toward all the stars of heaven; and on the way, she saw it gleam and blaze and set it free. Above the moon it mounted into heaven, leaving behind a long and fiery trail, and as a star it glittered in the sky.”

P. Ovidius Naso, Metamorphoses, Book 15, Card 745, trans. Brookes More, 1922. Accessed 20 January 2014.

[5] Ramsey, John T. “Mithridates, the Banner of Ch’ih-Yu, and the Comet Coin.” Harvard Studies in Classical Philology, Vol. 99 (1999), pp. 197-253.

[6] Comets in History(Does Ignorance Rule?) ©1999, University of Wisconsin, Board of Regents. Accessed 8 February 2014.

Josh Sokol. HubbleSite – ISONblog – Great Moments in Comet History: Comet Halley, 1910. 30 August 2013. Accessed 8 February 2014.

[7] Graham, Daniel W., Ph.D., and Eric Hintz, Ph.D., “An Ancient Greek Sighting of Halley’s Comet?” Journal of Cosmology, v. 9 (2010), 2130-2136. Accessed 8 February 2014.

[8] Coimbra, Fernando, Ph.D., “The Sky on the Rocks: Cometary Images in Rock Art,” Quaternary and Prehistory Group, Centre of Geosciences.

[9] Aigner, Dennis J. (2000). The Swastika Symbol in Navajo Textiles. Laguna Beach, California: DAI Press. ISBN 0-9701898-0-X.

Dottie Indyke. “The History of an Ancient Human Symbol.” April 4, 2005. Originally from The Wingspread Collector’s Guide to Santa Fe, Taos and Albuquerque, Volume 15.

[10] United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. “History of the Swastika.” Holocaust Encyclopedia. Accessed on 7 February 2014.

[11] References on the Chinese Comet Atlas:

Coimbra, Fernando, Ph.D., “The astronomical origins of the swastika motif,” Proceedings of the International Colloquium – The intellectual and  spiritual expressions of non-literate peoples, 2011, Atelier, Capo di Ponte: 78-90.

“Han Dynasty silk comet atlas,” China International Travel Service Limited. Retrieved February 11, 2014.

[12] References on Asteroid Apophis:

Neil Degrass Tyson, Alan Alda, Kristen Schaal, Scott Adsit, Eugene Mirman, StarTalk Radio – Live at the Bell House (Part 1). September 15, 2011.

“Predicting Apophis’ Earth Encounters in 2029 and 2036,” NASA Near Earth Object Program. Last updated April 13, 2014 as of date retrieved: February 9, 2014.

Bill Cooke, “Will Earth break up 2004 MN4?” Astronomy Magazine, February 10, 2005. Retrieved February 9, 2014.

Bill Cooke, “2004 MN4: swing and a miss,” Astronomy Magazine, December 27, 2004. Retrieved February 9, 2014.

Ian O’Neill, “Asteroid Apophis Just Got Supersized,” Discovery News, January 9, 2013. Retrieved February 9, 2014.

[13] Darren Sumner, “Scientists: Apophis could destroy Earth in 2036,” Gateworld: Your Complete Guide to Stargate, February 10, 2011. Retrieved February 9, 2014.

Bill Cooke, “Asteroid Apophis set for a makeover,” Astronomy Magazine, August 18, 2005. Retrieved 8 October 2009.

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See the Photo Gallery for detailed photo credits.

Credits:

Gustav Theodore Holst (1874-1934)
The Planets, op. 32 (Mars, the Bringer of War)
US Air Force Band
musopen.org

David William Lamont
Corellian CR90E – C
dlamont.deviantart.com
Used with permission

Hi friends. This is Lucas Livingston. As you may know, the Ancient Art Podcast is a labor of love with a staff of one and a budget of zero. If you enjoy the podcast and want to see it continue, I encourage you to consider offering a donation. Whatever you think the podcast has been worth to you over the years. Whether it’s $1 or more, your donations help me pay for web hosting, bandwidth, and “keepin’ it real.” Just visit ancientartpodcast.org and click on the “Donate” button. Another way to help is if you’d please consider giving the Ancient Art Podcast a juicy 5-star rating in iTunes, write some nice comments, and give it a big thumbs up in YouTube. Thanks for tuning in and thanks for your support.

Greetings friends and welcome back to the Ancient Art Podcast. I’m the kibble to your bits, Lucas Livingston. Dogs in their myriad of pedigrees are so integrated with our modern society that it’s easy to overlook how integral dogs were to ancient civilizations. The artistic, archaeological, and literary records of our ancestors can shed some light on their trusty companions and might even make the ancient world seem just a little bit more human to us. “Human,” sure. “Humane?” Well, let’s see about that.

In this episode, we’ll touch on just one example of canines in ancient art, but conceivably one of the most popular, the Colima dog of ancient West Mexico. But don’t fret, canine lovers, as I have future episodes already in the oven that sink their teeth into our canine companions from ancient China and the Greco-Roman World. Why all the culinary metaphors? Well, this leads us into our story.

This happy, pudgy pup in the Art Institute of Chicago is an exemplary specimen on one of the most frequently occurring examples of canines in ancient art, the ceramic Colima dog. Looking at this dog, with its rotund, squat body and stubby legs, you may be reasonably safe in speculating that it didn’t serve as a guard dog or a hunting dog. In fact there aren’t too many jobs a dog of this sort could have had in real life other than perhaps a friendly companion or as the main course slathered in barbecue sauce with a side of corn bread.

Insensitive and appalling as that may seem to dog enthusiasts today, dog was the daily special on the menu throughout ancient Mesoamerica. [1] Small to mid-sized hairless dog breeds are found in multiple ancient and modern cultures across the Americas. While these dogs served a variety of roles, livestock was indeed among them. And it can actually make sense, when you think about it. Unlike in the old world across the pond, where we find sheep, cattle, pig, goat, chicken, and many other domesticated sources of animal protein, in Mexico and Central and South America dogs are pretty much the only indigenous domesticated source of protein. [2] And the popularity of the animal manifests in the arts.

In the ancient west Mexican Colima culture of about 2,000 years ago, we find ceramic dog figures in 75-90% of the shaft tombs. [3] The body type reflected in the Art Institute’s example would seem ideal for maximum protein yield for minimum calorie investment. You might call it something like a “designer pig.”

Colima dog sculptures may have been popular funerary effigies as an offering of food for the deceased’s journey in the underworld. (I should note that I’m showing remarkable restraint by not including an image of a Colima sculpture of roasted dog on a serving platter. [4]) Yet the Colima dog must have been regarded as more than just a food source. Surreal images of dogs waltzing, wearing turtle and armadillo shells, and with human-faced masks indicate a symbolic and spiritual significance. [5] Myths and legends of dogs abound in Mesoamerican cultures, including the predominant belief that dogs served as guides for the soul in the afterlife. [6] Legends tell us of a spirit dog that the recently deceased would encounter. It’s said that you should take hold of the dog’s tail so it can shepherd you across a body of water into the hereafter. [7] A central Mexican legend says that if you treat your dog right in life, it will meet you in death as a guide. [8] Another legend of central west Mexican coastal culture informs us that a snarling dog will meet you in afterlife, but it’s easily pacified with a few tortillas, so tortillas are in fact a common burial good in this culture. [9]

The Peruvian and Mexican hairless breeds today come in toy, miniature, and standard sizes. [10] The Mexican hairless, or Xoloitzcuintli, has even been making a splash lately at the Westminster dog show. [11] The name Xoloitzcuintli is variously translated from the Aztec language, including “strangely formed dog.” [12] It’s also associated with the Aztec god Xolotl, god of fire and death, and “itzcuintli,” Aztec for “dog.” Xolotl is the brother of Quetzalcoatl and sometimes appears as a dog-headed man. At a time when human diversity was embraced differently, Xolotl was also the god of deformities, hence the association with the curious hairless breed.

Full disclosure, though, I have to confess that our discussion here of the Colima dog and Xoloitzcuintli is entirely selfish, motivated by homage for my own little Xolo pup, Sputnik. So while his ancestors may have been couriers of the dearly departed or finger-licking comfort food, I think they would smile on his upgraded social status, having evolved from fork to friend.

Thanks for tuning in. If you want to do some more digging on the topic of dogs in ancient Mesoamerica, check out http://ancientartpodcast.org/61 and look in the footnotes to the transcript. There you’ll also find a gallery for images used in this episode with their sources and credits. You should also visit my Flickr site (just click on the Flickr logo at http://ancientartpodcast.org) where you’ll find photo sets dedicated to each of the podcast episodes and a plethora of other photos I’ve taken over the years, including when the Art Institute of Chicago sent me along as a study leader on trips to Egypt, Jordan, Greece, and Turkey.

If you dig the Ancient Art Podcast, be sure to “like” us on Facebook at facebook.com/ancientartpodcast and give us a nice 5-star rating on iTunes. You can follow me on Twitter @lucaslivingston and can subscribe to the podcast on YouTube, iTunes, and Vimeo, where you’ll hopefully give us a good rating and leave you comments. You can also email your questions and comments to me at info@ancientartpodcast.org or use the online form at http://feedback.ancientartpodcast.org. Thanks for tuning in and see you next time on the Ancient Art Podcast.

©2014 Lucas Livingston, ancientartpodcast.org

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Footnotes:

[1] Jarrett A. Lobell, Eric A. Powell and Paul Nicholson, “More than Man’s Best Friend,” Archaeology, Vol. 63, No. 5 (September/October 2010), p. 26-35.

[2] See note 1. Archaeology (September/October 2010), sidebar: “Dogs as Food,” p. 32.

[3] Heritage of Power: Ancient Sculpture from West Mexico: The Andrall E. Pearson Family Collection, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, p. 67.

Jacki Gallagher, Companions of the Dead: Ceramic Tomb Sculptures from Ancient West Mexico, p. 41.

[4] Ancient West Mexico: Art and Archaeology of the Unknown Past, p. 212, fig. 29.

[5] Ancient West Mexico: Art and Archaeology of the Unknown Past, p. 185, 211.

Jacki Gallagher, Companions of the Dead: Ceramic Tomb Sculptures from Ancient West Mexico, fig. 69.

[6] Ancient West Mexico: Art and Archaeology of the Unknown Past, p. 272.

[7] See note 1. Archaeology (September/October 2010), sidebar: “Guardians of Souls,” p. 35.

[8] Ancient West Mexico: Art and Archaeology of the Unknown Past, p. 186.

[9] Heritage of Power: Ancient Sculpture from West Mexico: The Andrall E. Pearson Family Collection, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, p. 66.

[10] The Westminster Kennel Club | Breed Information: Xoloitzcuintli. Accessed 13 May, 2014.

[11] Westminster Dog Show: Introducing The Xoloitzcuintli. NPR. Accessed 13 May, 2014.

[12] Ancient West Mexico: Art and Archaeology of the Unknown Past, p. 272.

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See the Photo Gallery for detailed photo credits.

Credits:

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Avast ye scurrilous scaliwags! Welcome to me piratey Ancient Art Podcast. I’m yer crotchety captain, Bottoms Up Livingston. On ship’s deck we have the bounteous booty of the finest goblet from the sea swept island of Vulci, the cup of the god of wine himself, twice born of two mothers, master of madness, Dionysus. And with this cup comes the tall tale of the time when Dionysus was besieged by an unlucky band of outlaw pirates.

For some background on Dionysus, the ancient Greek god of wine, theater, ecstasy, and madness, check out episode 84, “The Birth of Dionysus,” at ancientartpodcast.org/84. There we meet Dionysus’s parents, the god Zeus and mortal Semele. We learn of her untimely fate, and discover why among Dionysus’s many nicknames we call him the twice born god.

Legends of the great god of wine and reverie are replete with suggestions of alcohol’s potent power as a transformative potion. One of my favorite tales of alcohol-induced magical metamorphosis is Dionysus and the Tyrrhenian pirates, which is beautifully rendered on an ancient Greek kylix wine cup, the so-called Dionysus Cup from around 540-530 BC by the master painter and potter Exekias.

Although he was the son of Zeus and part of the Olympian pantheon, the Greeks often considered Dionysus to be somewhat foreign and exotic, like some rich kid sent abroad to boarding school for most of his youth and now he wears a beret and scarf indoors. The god’s taste for foreign fashion often makes him stand out in a crowd and in this case, that gets him into a bit of a pickle.

Our earliest source for this fabulous legend of the god is the Homeric Hymn number 7, the hymn to Dionysus, from the 7th or 6th century BC. [1] We catch up with the Dionysus having gone for a pleasant stroll along the salty sea shore in the form of a handsome young man with rich, dark hair, dripping with exotic fineries and princely burgundy garb. Alas, a ruthless band of Tyrrhenian pirates sailing along shore happens upon the god and kidnaps him, believing him to be a wealthy prince, whom they could hold for ransom. A humorous detail added to the story some centuries later in Ovid’s Metamorphoses shares that Dionysus happens, unsurprisingly, to be punch drunk on wine at the time. “He seemed to reel, half-dazed with wine and sleep,” Ovid writes. [2] Once the pirates nab the god and escort him onto their ship, they seek to bind him to the ship’s mast. To their surprise, with uncanny magical ease the fetters fall away from the god’s hands and feet and he sits there with a wry smile in his dark eyes. Having at that moment the realization that their guest is not as he seems, the ship’s helmsman cries out to his mates: “Madmen! What god is this whom you have taken and bind, strong that he is? Not even the well-built ship can carry him. Surely this is either Zeus or Apollo who has the silver bow, or Poseidon, for he looks not like mortal men but like the gods who dwell on Olympus. Come, then, let us set him free upon the dark shore at once: do not lay hands on him, lest he grow angry and stir up dangerous winds and heavy squalls.” [1] His mates do not heed the warning and Dionysus unleashes his wrath as strange things are seen about them. Sweet, fragrant wine runs streaming throughout the pirates’ black ship. Vines dripping with clusters of grapes spread across the tops of the sails enveloping the ship while dark ivy blooming with flowers and berries entwines the ship’s mast.

At this moment the ship’s crew finally recognizes their folly and deeply regrets not having heeded the prophetic words of their helmsman. Alas, it is entirely too late, for the god, himself, transforms into a dreadful lion and summons illusions of ferocious wild beasts: the leopard or panther, sacred to the god, and yes, quite literally lions, tigers, and bears. [3]

As the beasts lunge, the terrified pirates promptly jump overboard into the sea’s cold embrace, but the god enjoys the last laugh as the pirates transform into dolphins upon striking the waves. Only the helmsman, who enjoyed the change of heart, is spared to tell this tale of the wrath of Dionysus.

The interior of the Dionysus Cup reveals the larger-than-life, resplendent deity reclining within a ship, its unfurled sails catching full wind and mast festooned with vines and clusters of grapes raining wine on deck. Flitting about the scene, our poor brigands-turned-dolphins leap and dive within an imagined wine-dark Mediterranean backdrop.

As with the “Circe cup,” which we looked at in episode 87 of the podcast about “Circe and Witchcraft in Ancient Greece,” we enjoy another playful visual treat on the Dionysus Cup. Here the exterior of the cup humorously bears the painted image of large glaring eyes. Playful cups of this sort are not entirely uncommon in the corpus of Greek ceramics and go by the modern connoisseur’s ingeniously descriptive designation of … wait for it … “eye cups.” While the drinker of wine holds the cup aloft to his lips, quaffing the intoxicating concoction, he seems to don a bestial mask like the Gorgon Medusa, whose gaze would petrify. Or perhaps more poignantly, if the stem becomes a snout and the handles the ears, the drinker then becomes a pig like Odysseus’s men transformed by Circe’s potent potion of wine. Go back and check out episode 87 again at ancientartpodcast.org/87 for a refresher on Circe and the pig reference.

We’ve repeatedly encountered the theme in ancient Greece of alcoholic intoxication as a magical means of metamorphosis into ignoble beasts. Episode 3’s donkey-headed rhyton cup, the aforementioned eye cups, and the MFA’s “Circe cup” offer readily accessible allusions to inebriation begetting transformation, while the tale of Dionysus and the pirates decorating the interior of the Dionysus Cup features a more restrained reference to intoxication’s metamorphic magic. The first of Dionysus’s phantasms is a wave of sweet wine that washes through the ship and drenches the pirates before they jump into the sea. Personally, I like to think more than a fair share of the wave of wine found its way down their throats. Because, after all, when you’re ticket is up and you’re going to go down fighting the god of wine, it might as well be in an alcohol induced stupor. But then, I don’t know. Is it fair to regard dolphins as the asses and swine of the sea?

Thanks for tuning in to the Ancient Art Podcast. Check out ancientartpodcast.org/90 for references, footnotes, and image credits for this episode. If you have anything to add to the conversation, you can add a comments there or on YouTube. You can get in touch with me directly at info@ancientartpodcast.org or on the web at ancientartpodcast.org/feedback. If you enjoy the podcast, please consider sharing some fiscal love. Whether it’s the cost of a cup of coffee or more, your donations help keep this ship afloat on our odyssey sailing the wine-dark seas. Just click the donate button at ancientartpodcast.org. And if you can’t donate a drachma, you can help the podcast by adding an iTunes review. Maybe it’ll even get you on the air, like Janscil, who wrote: “So pleased to have discovered this series of podcasts. The host combines discussions with images and references to collections in musuems both in the States and abroad. His style is direct and approachable: altogether a delight to experience. I’ve been haunting the “additional resources” on the website as well.”

Thanks for listening. See you next time.

Footnotes:

[1] Anonymous. The Homeric Hymns and Homerica with an English Translation by Hugh G. Evelyn-White. Homeric Hymns. Cambridge, MA.,Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann Ltd. 1914.

[2] Ovid, Metamorphoses 3.572ff. Translated by A. D. Melville (Oxford World’s Classics): “Brought to the beach a prize (or so he thought), discovered on this lonely spot, a boy, as pretty as a girl. He seemed to reel, half-dazed with wine and sleep, and almost failed to follow along.”

[3] For the lion and bear, see Homeric Hymn 7. For tiger see Ovid Metamorphoses 3.572.

Music:

Brave Pirates
By fri.events Orchestra
Licensed under Creative Commons
freemusicarchive.org

The Precession of the Equinoxes in the Inverted Alps
By Azureflux
Licensed under Creative Commons
freemusicarchive.org

I Dunno
By grapes
Featuring J Lang, Morusque
Licensed under Creative Commons
ccmixter.org

Pirates
By Jack and the Pulpits
Licensed under Creative Commons
freemusicarchive.org

Appendix:

Homeric Hymn 7:
“First of all sweet, fragrant wine ran streaming throughout all the black ship and a heavenly smell arose, so that all the seamen were seized with amazement when they saw it. And all at once a vine spread out both ways along the top of the sail with many clusters hanging down from it, and a dark ivy-plant twined about the mast, blossoming with flowers, and with rich berries growing on it; and all the thole-pins were covered with garlands. When the pirates saw all this, then at last they bade the helmsman to put the ship to land. But the god changed into a dreadful lion there on the ship, in the bows, and roared loudly: amidships also he showed his wonders and created a shaggy bear which stood up ravening, while on the forepeak was the lion glaring fiercely with scowling brows. And so the sailors fled into the stern and crowded bemused about the right-minded helmsman, until suddenly the lion sprang upon the master and seized him; and when the sailors saw it they leapt out overboard one and all into the bright sea, escaping from a miserable fate, and were changed into dolphins. But on the helmsman Dionysos had mercy and held him back and made him altogether happy, saying to him: ‘Take courage, good […]; you have found favour with my heart. I am loud-crying (eribromos) Dionysos whom Kadmos’ daughter Semele bare of union with Zeus.'”
— Homeric Hymn 7 to Dionysus (trans. Evelyn-White) c. 7th to 4th B.C.

Another account of the pirates:

Philostratus the Elder, Imagines 1.19 in Elder Philostratus, Younger Philostratus, Callistratus. Translated by Fairbanks, Arthur. Loeb Classical Library Volume 256. London: William Heinemann, 1931.

In this excerpt from my lecture on the Art Institute’s recent special exhibition Painting the Floating World: Ukiyo-e Masterpieces from the Weston Collection, I set the stage for what was Japan’s Floating World culture during the Edo Period of the Tokugawa Shogunate, 1615-1868. We touch on the origin of the term, the cultural climate in which it rose the popularity, and how the floating world psyche was expressed in Japan’s visual arts at the time.

Image:

Hishikawa Moronobu
Flower-Viewing Party with Crest-Bearing Curtain, from the series Flower Viewing at Ueno
Japanese, 1676–1689
Art Institute of Chicago, 1925.1689

This extended episode takes us on an unexpected journey across the Art Institute of Chicago to explore the artistry and influences of rings. We go well beyond personal adornment and discuss the significance and many meanings of “ring” as it appears in visual culture.

Image:

Le Grenouillard (Frog-Man), 1892
Jean-Joseph Carriès
French, 1855–1894
Art Institute of Chicago, 2007.78

This short excerpt from my lecture on the art and history of the Egyptomania phenomenon delves into its early origins. As Europe emerged from the Middle Ages, Egyptian antiquities pillaged during the Roman Empire were excavated from their slumber under Roman soil and newly erected across the city. Even before the translation of the Rosetta Stone, before Napoleon’s epic Egyptian expedition and publication of Description de l’Égypte, artists such as Giovanni Battista Piranesi and Louis Jean Desprez were already experimenting and defining what we would come to call Egyptomania. In the subsequent generation, academic painter Jean Léon Gérôme reveals a mature appreciation for ancient Egyptomania in his meticulous renderings of the the Roman Empire.

Sheltering at home these past two-and-a-half months, I feel a small pang of sadness every time I spot a talk or tour on my calendar that I was scheduled to lead at the museum. Despite — or perhaps in recognition of — the suffering of so many worldwide amidst the global pandemic, today, May 22, myriads of shrouded souls across the globe celebrate World Goth Day. While I may not be able to guide friends and strangers through the museum galleries in an exploration of iconic Goth music paired with masterful works of visual art, I can at least share my own personal pairings in this highly abbreviated manner. I hope you enjoy.

I’m always a sucker for Classical literary references in counterculture.

Dracula is such a tragic romantic.

No, no. Warhol’s Lugosi is very much alive (undead?). This poor soul is dead, yet eternalized.

Lastly, an emblem of corrosion, corruption, and hypocrisy.

And some bonus content. Sure, they’re veering more towards Synthpop than Goth, but these are two very dear songs to me.

What songs resonate most with you in the Gothic genre?

Which songs and works of art would you pair, and why?

Take a tour of tricky treats and spooky sights in the world of art as I countdown each year to Halloween in the #ArtfulHalloweenCountdown.

I’m thrilled to debut this amazing adult coloring book! The Libations Coloring Book is written by myself, Lucas Livingston, featuring original black & white and color illustrations by my friend and art therapist Eric Dean Spruth. This bilingual publication is designed as an art therapy resource for people living with Alzheimer’s and their care partners, but it is equally enjoyable and valuable for anyone.

Download, print, and share the Libations Coloring Book co-produced by the Arts for Brain Health Coalition (me) and Sacred Transformations (Eric) today!

• English
• Spanish
• Bilingual

An excerpt from the book:

A libation is a drink poured out in honor or memory of someone or something. The Libations Coloring Book unites us with drinks, coloring, and good company. The Arts for Brain Health Coalition & Sacred Transformations are pleased to bring you this activity book to support the health benefits of art-making, encourage thoughtful conversation, and enjoy togetherness and reflection through the comfort of food and drink. Just as it is important to exercise and nourish our bodies, we must also exercise and nourish our minds. Creating art has the power to heal, transform, and build community. Coloring is a relaxing way to express our creativity and share time with others in a calm and meditative activity. Coloring also helps with concentration and fine motor coordination.

Held in conjunction with the Faded Memories exhibition, this symposium offers a series of presentations and conversations exploring art and memory.

Faded Memories exhibition with artist Eric Dean Spruth

In the first session of the symposium, Faded Memories exhibition artist and art therapist Eric Dean Spruth discusses the works and themes in the exhibition, exploring the mortality of memory through hand-sculpted combustible objects containing documented, individualized recollections. Among the thought-provoking concepts grappled in the exhibition are issues around mental health, well-being, forgetfulness, memory loss, and the artificiality of constructed memory. Spruth will discuss among other things how we continuously reconstruct our memories as we access them, traveling through neural pathways and leaving bits of toxicity or joy behind, forever altering the memory each time. (August 14, 2021)

Art Therapy, Creativity, and the Brain with Deb Del Signore

The Faded Memories Symposium Series continues in this second session with School of the Art Institute of Chicago professor of art therapy Deb Del Signore discussing the healthful benefits of creative expression on the mind and body, including a focus on people living with Alzheimer’s and dementia. (August 14, 2021)

Life-story Art in Later Life with Jon Kay

In the third and final installment of the Faded Memories Symposium Series, Jon Kay discusses the creation of narrative-driven works of art and how these objects support the artists as they age, exploring stories, memories, and self-identity in everyday life. Jon Kay is an associate professor of Folklore and Ethnomusicology at Indiana University and the director of Traditional Arts Indiana at IU’s Cook Center for Public Arts and Humanities. (August 17, 2021)

The Exhibition

FADED MEMORIES: new works by artist / art therapist Eric Dean Spruth MA, ATR (Ph.D Candidate)

VENUE:
The Bridge: A Cultural Collective, Valparaiso, Indiana
(July 23–August 23, 2021)

Artwork by Eric Dean Spruth MA, ATR (Ph.D Candidate)
Curated by Lucas Livingston
Hosted by Howie Ireland (The Bridge: A Culture Collective)

This provocative, new body of work by artist and art therapist Eric Dean Spruth explores the mortality of memory through hand-sculpted combustible bundles containing documented, individualized recollections. Among the thought-provoking concepts grappled in this exhibition are issues around mental health, forgetfulness, memory loss, and the artificiality of constructed memory. It is the artist’s hope that the exhibition leaves you with more questions than answers, considering among other things how we continuously reconstruct our memories as we access them traveling through neural pathways, leaving behind bits of toxicity or joy forever altering the memory each time and ultimately wondering where faded memories go.

All sales and proceeds will be donated to the Indiana chapter of the Alzheimer’s Association.

At this critical turning point in society — with the magnified intersections of health, psychological and physical well-being, and systemic violence, prejudice, and injustice — we are all the more committed to our communities.

This innovative, four-part, Zoom presentation series addresses the ceremonial and celebratory functions of beverages and drinking as well as the negative consequences of over consumption and addiction.

The Libations series was produced through the joint efforts of the Chicago Brewseum and the social service nonprofit Sacred Transformations and moderated by Lucas Livingston (creator and host of the Ancient Art Podcast and Chicago Brewseum Board of Directors).

The Libations Exhibition

Presented in conjunction with The Libations Exhibition (August 2020) in Michigan City, Indiana, this series of talks compliments the exhibition which features over 60 works of art produced by a diverse body of artists throughout Northwest Indiana and the greater Chicagoland area. As beer is more than just a beverage that has the power to bring people together and the ability to make change, creating art has the power to heal, transform, and build community. We invite you to join us.

Dunk in to the incredible history and diversity of fermented beverages around the world and across the ages in Uncorked. This YouTube series is co-hosted by Lucas Livingston (Ancient Art Podcast) and Stephen Batiuk (University of Toronto) and produced by Archaeology Now, the Houston chapter of the Archaeological Institute of America.

Click the image to visit the YouTube playlist for the complete Uncorked series.