Archaeology Magazine - May/June 1982 - 70

ARCHAEOLOGY

FILMS

Greek Vases. A series of 200 color
slides in five sets compiled by William
Reid, Jr.y1979.Purchase $200from Logos
Signum Publications, 19122 Lindsay
Land, Huntington Beach, CA 92646

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ArchaeologicalMuseums - where they are and
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What You Should Know About
Museum Display.
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Only with color reproductions can the
full beauty of Greek vases be captured.
Black and white views are difficult to
interpret, especially in the case of Attic
vases whose reds and other light colors
appear to be white; yet frequently only
black and white illustrations are available. This modestly priced collection of
200 color slides is intended to alleviate
this problem.
There are five sets of slides with views
of 192 vases from 17 museums in the
United States and Europe, ranging in
date from the Early Bronze Age (ca.
3000-2000b.c. ) to the third century b.c.
Most of them are Athenian, with products from other regions of Greece, Asia
Minor and southern Italy also represented. In addition to vases, the collection includes slides depicting aspects of
pottery manufacture. Unfortunately, it
is impossible to recommend the use of
this package because of the generally
poor quality of the slides and the many
omissions and errors in the commentary
of the accompanying guide booklet.
Five types of technical problems are
present: 1) cropping of parts of the vase
being depicted; 2) off-center perspectives, which have the advantage of
showing the shapes of handles and other
ornamentation, but which obscure portions of the vases' important painted
panels; 3) reflections on the vases' surfaces caused by lighting and glare from
the glass of the display cases ; 4 ) many of
the slides have a greenish-yellow tinge
which bleaches out the colors and defeats the purpose of having color slides;
and 5 ) a few slides are completely out of
focus and many others have a limited
depth of field that renders only a portion
of the subject in focus.
Aside from problems relating to the
quality of the slides, the format of the
booklet that goes with them provides
inadequate information for the schools
and colleges which appear to be the most
likely audience for this package. The
publisher justifies this by contending
that "the material was written by an art
historian whose primary concern was not
in overloadingthe material with technical
Frances Van Keuren receivedher Ph.D. in
ClassicalArchaeologyfromBrown University, and currently is Assistant Professor
ofAncientArt at the Universityof Georgia.

Figure detail of the Warrior'sDeparture
on an Attic white ground lekythos by the
AchillesPainter.

data, but in showing vase development."
This is perfectly valid, but minimal
"technical" data, such as size and inventory numbers, should have been provided
somewhere, perhaps at the end, and
certainly all the known find spots of
vases should have been included; bibliographic citations also would have been
helpful.
Another general weakness in the
booklet is the sparse description of figurative scenes on the vases. For 28 of the
71 vases decorated with gods and heroes
from Greek mythology, the mythological
content is only briefly cited in the captions of the slides, and there is no
thematic identification at all for five
vases. Only rarely are attributes of
mythological characters described, and
there are omissions of scenes depicting
some of the most popular Greek myths.
While ten myths of Herakles are illustrated, only one of the 12 labors is
represented. The contests of Theseus and
the Marathonian Bull, Bellerephon and
the Chimaera, and Peleus and Thetis are
also conspicuously absent. No scenes
from the Oresteia are included, nor do
any of the vases from the fourth century
depict the fascinating "Hadesscapes"
popular then.
A major deficiency in the first set, devoted to pottery techniques, is the absence of any depiction of ancient potters

Archaeology Magazine - May/June 1982

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Archaeology Magazine - May/June 1982