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The Warren Moon Series in Art and Archaeology
Phenomenology and the Painted Vase

Phenomenology and the Painted Vase

Name: Phenomenology and the Painted Vase
Author: Danielle Smotherman Bennett
ISBN: 9780299355708

Edited by Danielle Smotherman Bennett, Guy Hedreen, SeungJung Kim and Carolyn Laferrière

Published by: University of Wisconsin Press

Series: The Warren Moon Series in Art and Archaeology

Imprint: University of Wisconsin Press

338 Pages, 203.00 × 254.00 mm, 93 color illus.

Hardcover
9780299355708
Published: August 2026

£96.00

Pre-Order

Description
Contents
Authors
Praise

Most people today encounter ancient Greek vases as static, untouchable artifacts safely out of reach behind glass, in the quiet of a museum gallery. Once, however, these vessels were also useful objects, made to be held, filled, and generally used in a variety of settings, from the ritual to the quotidian. This volume considers these ancient vases together with the theoretical frameworks developed by pioneers of phenomenology such as Maurice Merleau-Ponty and Edmund Husserl, helping us experience Greek vases as they once were. The principles of phenomenology require that we understand objects as active participants in shaping the manner in which humans experience the world. A phenomenological perspective allows us to see how the function and use of Greek vases shaped both their visual appearance and the perceptual experience of them—as well as our continued understanding of them today—while taking into account multisensory perspectives. With this alternative approach to the study of classical pottery, the authors offer new and illuminating insights not just into the objects in question but also into ancient Greek culture and life more broadly.

List of Illustrations
List of Abbreviations

Introduction: Experiencing Vases
Carolyn LaferriÈre

Part One
Chapter 1. Ornament, Kant, and the Dependent Beauty of Greek Vases
William Austin
Chapter 2. The Satyr, the Krater, and Hegel: Mediated Subjectivity in a Peucetian Tomb
Savannah Sather Marquardt
Chapter 3. Swallowed by the Vase: Clementina Anstruther-Thomson’s Phenomenology of Greek Pottery
Seth Estrin
Chapter 4. The Phenomenology of Pictorial Representation: Gombrich, Wollheim, and Husserl
Guy Hedreen
Chapter 5. Pandora’s Pseudea and the Truth in Art: A Phenomenological Interpretation of the Niobid Painter’s Krater (BM 1856,1213.1)
Clifford Robinson
Chapter 6. Merleau-Ponty and the Greek Vase
SeungJung Kim
Chapter 7. The Unmanly Behind: Queer Phenomenology and the Male Body in Athenian Vase Painting
Anthony F. Mangieri

Part Two
Chapter 8. Phenomenological Approaches to Archaic Boeotian Zoomorphic Rhyta in Their Ancient Use Context
Trevor Van Damme
Chapter 9. Reading (into) the Writing on Vases on Vases: Self-Referentiality in Late Archaic Athenian Red-Figure Vase Painting
Seth Pevnick
Chapter 10. Colors and the Gloss Effect in Attic Black- and Red-Figure Pottery
Arne Reinhardt
Chapter 11. An Embodied View of the Figured Greek Kylix
D. Buck Roberson
Chapter 12. On Douris’s Cup with Amazons
David Saunders and Sanchita Balachandran
Chapter 13. The Ecology of Festival Ware
Amy C. Smith and Katerina Volioti

Conclusion
Acknowledgments
References
Contributors
Index

Danielle Smotherman Bennett is an assistant research curator at the Museum of Fine Arts Houston, with a focus on provenance research.

Guy Hedreen is the J. Kirk T. Varnedoe '67 Professor of Art at Williams College. He is the author of The Image of the Artist in Archaic and Classical Greece: Art, Poetry, and Subjectivity; Capturing Troy: The Narrative Function of Landscape in Archaic and Early Classical Greek Art; and Silens in Attic Black-Figure Vase-Painting: Myth and Performance.

SeungJung Kim is an associate professor in the Department of Art History at the University of Toronto. She is the author of The Temporal Revolution in GreekArt.

Carolyn Laferrière is the curator of ancient Mediterranean art at the Princeton University Art Museum. She is the author of Divine Music in Archaic and Classical Greek Art: Seeing the Songs of the Gods.

“A timely volume with an impressive range, introducing the many possibilities of engaging with phenomenology in ancient Greek art. The new methodology and innovative approach to material culture make this an exciting addition to the field.” - Sheramy Bundrick, author of Athens, Etruria, and the Many Lives of Greek Figured Pottery