An Introduction to Ancient Greek Pottery

Even today, Greek art continues to influence the modern world. Greek political thought, mythology, and visual culture are still embedded in the images and ideas we see all around us. During its height, beginning in the 7th century BCE, Greek culture made a major impact on the ancient Mediterranean. One key way Greek art spread was through its pottery. Greek ceramic vessels served many utilitarian functions, shipping, storage, domestic use, and dozens of other practical purposes. But beyond its functions, they were often ornately decorated, and Greek potters and painters became known for their innovative techniques. Pottery from certain cities, especially Athens, what we call Attic pottery, had an outsized influence on art across the ancient Greek and Mediterranean worlds. Following the earlier geometric and orientalizing periods, the archaic period is when Greek culture really begins to assert itself as something unique in the ancient Mediterranean. With the rise of Greek humanism, a worldview that prioritized human individuality, societal obligations, and personal achievements, depictions of the human figure became more realistic and led to major innovations in Greek art. Innovations whose impact can still be felt today. We're going to start with looking at a crater from the archaic period. A crater is just one of the common kinds of Greek vases that were prevalent. The archaic is a period that begins somewhere around the 7th century BCE. Okay, so now let's take a look at this very beautiful example of an archaic crater known as the Francois vase. This is a technique that is known as the black figure technique. It is a technique that involves painting an image on the side of the vessel using a kind of a watered-down clay called slip, S-L-I-P. The slip and the vessel are then put into a kiln. Basically, kilns are super hot ovens. At this time, kilns were wood-fired kilns. The Greeks became really, really good at firing the away with just enough smoke that the smoke would adhere and attach to the image painted in slip. There were various configurations of these vases, but there's four I want you to be familiar with. The most common, or one of the most common, is called the amphora. There's variations on the amphora, but the amphora is basically a kind of a teardrop shaped, or you can almost think of it as a part of a bowling pin shaped, kind of vessel with two handles at the neck. This was mainly used for shipping. These were very common. These are sort of like the milk crates of their day. A crater is a vessel that was used for mixing wine. Greeks generally drank wine that was diluted with water. It was often more of a kind of a household sort of vase. Alekathos was used for oils. It was used for things like perfumes and other kind of household things, but it was also associated with oils used in religious practices and in funerals. Then we have the kylix, which is a drinking vessel. These vessels were used at parties and events, especially those called symposia, which were a major part of Greek social life. Okay, and now we're going to look at one of the great Greek vase painters of the archaic period, a guy named Execius. So the Greeks were the first culture, at least in the Mediterranean area, whose the names of the artists of various art objects were used consistently because the Greeks valued the contribution of the artist. Why did the Greeks value the contribution of the artist? Because the Greeks were humanist and they cared about human achievement and the recognition of human achievement and human individuality. So with these Greek pots, they were typically signed by both the potter and the artist. In fact, the potter was actually held in higher esteem in ancient Greece than the painter was, but the painter of this is a guy named Execius. And Execius is one of, well, he is the most important early Greek artist. He's the most important early Greek vase painter. He was a master of this black figure technique, and if you look in the details, for example, of the cloaks of these figures, you can really see his skill come to life. You'll notice that the figures themselves are blown up on a scale that earlier Greek pottery just didn't do. Instead of having a bunch of little registers, we've gone widescreen, right? And the artist is zoomed in on the action because the artist wants to show us the human interaction of these two figures. And for me, if you really want to understand Greek art and how it differs from the art of other places in the ancient world, this is a great place to start. Because what we are looking at here is not just an image of activities. This isn't just, you know, images of a battle or a funeral. But this is actually a moment from literature. This is a moment from the story of the Iliad. And, of course, that story by the poet Homer tells the story of the Trojan War. And one of the great heroes on the Greek side is, of course, the mythical hero Achilles. A little lesser known, but still very important, is another Greek hero named Ajax. And what the artist is showing us here is a moment from the story of the Iliad, where these two friends and also rivals are taking a break. And Achilles and Ajax, who have been fighting this decades-long war at this point, for them, almost this war is like a job. It is this really hard, horrible job, but a job. A job that they wake up and they go to days and days and days and days, year after year of endless fighting. And what Execius is giving us is a little moment of reprieve, a very human, intimate moment between these two friends who admired each other, but also often were at odds with each other because they both wanted to be the big hero. And Achilles often stole the spotlight from Ajax. And we can see even in this game of drops that they're playing that Achilles is winning. He's calling out Tessara, which means four over three points, which Ajax has. But it's in the details that this image really comes to life. While the figures are still somewhat unrealistic with their composite figure and their eyes kind of stuck on the side of their head, there's so much that is realistic about this. And a lot of it has to do with their actions. First of all, notice how these two soldiers, even though they're basically taking a break to play a game, are still holding onto their spears. Also, you'll notice that their shields are just right behind them so they can be grabbed at a moment's notice. And while Ajax's helmet rests on his shield, you can see Achilles has just propped his up on top of his head in this very casual sort of way, with the idea that at any moment's notice they will be called back to the war and they have to go back and fight. And it's a very sort of sweet moment between friends, you know, this kind of these two bros sort of bonding and hanging out in what are otherwise really harsh and horrible conditions of sort of constant warfare. And there's an even more poignancy here in the fact that we know that later on in the story, Achilles and Ajax will both die. Achilles first, and then Ajax will commit suicide because he had claimed to Achilles' armor and it was taken by somebody else and he feels slighted. He's also despondent, sort of at the death of his friend, and he ends up killing himself. In fact, that is shown, that scene is shown on the other side of the pot, and Ajax kills himself by sticking a sword in the sand and then falling on top of it. This is rather poignant. On one side we have this rather happy image of these two dudes, these two friends, sort of bonding and communing with each other, and on the other side we're reminded of the tragedy that will befall both of these men. And there's a sadness, a poignancy here, a humanness. This is an image from war, one of the great stories about war, but it's not an image about heroism, or victory, or strength in battle. It's not about great achievements, but what this is about is a very normal, almost unimportant, boring, everyday kind of human event, two guys playing a board game with each other. And it is in this image, I think, that we really can, I think we can really understand what Greek art is about, and this real idea of human individuality, and this focus on human interaction, no matter how mundane, how boring, how seemingly pointless. The artist is focusing on this as if it is the most important thing in the world. In fact, he's gotten rid of any other distractions, any other registers, any other sort of noise that gets in the way, so we can focus on this sweet, personal moment between these two friendly rivals. During the late archaic period, a new technique was pioneered, which was called the red figure technique, which is essentially the inverse of the black figure technique. So instead of a silhouetted figure, you have a figure whose skin is made from the red pigment of the vase. This is a more difficult technique to do technically. Sometimes artists wanted to show off their ability to do both techniques, the black and the red, and so as we see here with the Anarchides painter, a kind of a vessel we call a bilingual vessel, in this case a bilingual amphora. Bilingual means you know two languages, right? So we call these bilingual because they're two different styles of vase painting. On the left we have the black figure technique, and on the right we have the red figure technique. You notice how the artist is imitating Execius's pot. This became a very popular theme in Greek pottery, in Attic pottery, and so we often see that scene being repeated over and over and over and over again. So as you can see, Greek artists in the archaic period were incredibly innovative in terms of new techniques, new technologies to create new ways of expressing themselves, new ways of making things technically impressive and beautiful. But also on a deeper level, Greek artists were pushing art into new territory as new forms of self-expression. For the first time ever, artists were getting recognition for their works in a way that they really hadn't in any other culture in the Mediterranean world up to that time. But also more importantly, we're seeing art take a sort of a serious turn to the internal. We are now looking at art that not only sort of commemorate events or can be used for liturgical or religious purposes or political purposes or whatever, but we're looking at art that is now a tool for examining our own humanity, our drives, our desires, our wishes, our fears, our stories. And the Greeks will develop this through increasing realism, through studying the human body, and through becoming even more and more sensitive to depicting sort of human interactions in their art. But it really begins here. It begins in the archaic, and it begins with artists like Execius. Okay, well that's all I have for you this time. I'll see you in the next video. Thanks for watching.