Myth Into Art

Myth into Art is a comparative study of mythological narrative in Greek poetry and the visual arts. Thirty of the major myths are surveyed, focusing on Homer, lyric poetry and Attic tragedy. On the artistic side, the emphasis is on Athenian and South Italian vases. The book offers undergraduate students an introduction both to mythology and to the use of visual sources in the study of Greek myth.

Myth into Art is a comparative study of mythological narrative in Greek poetry and the visual arts. Thirty of the major myths are surveyed, focusing on Homer, lyric poetry and Attic tragedy. On the artistic side, the emphasis is on Athenian and South Italian vases. The book offers undergraduate students an introduction both to mythology and to the use of visual sources in the study of Greek myth.

This richly illustrated book examines the legacy of Greek mythology in Western art from the classical era to the present. Tracing the emergence, survival, and transformation of key mythological figures and motifs from ancient Greece through the modern era, it explores the enduring importance of such myths for artists and viewers in their own time and over the millennia that followed.

The Greek myths are so much part of our culture that we tend to forget how they entered it in the first place. Visual sources vase paintings, engraved gems and sculpture in bronze and stone often pre-date references to the myths in literature, or offer alternative, unfamiliar tellings. In some cases visual art provides our only evidence, as there is no surviving account in ancient Greek literature of such important stories as the Fall of Troy, or Theseus and the Minotaur. T. H. Carpenters book is the first comprehensive, scholarly yet succinct survey of myth as it appears in Greek art. Copiously illustrated, it is an essential reference work for everybody interested in the art, drama, poetry or religion of ancient Greece. With this handbook as a guide, readers will be able to identify scenes from myth across the full breadth of archaic and classical Greek art.

'During the Tang dynasty, the Chinese artist Wu Tao-tzu was one day standing looking at a mural he had just completed. Suddenly, he clapped his hands and the temple gate opened. He went into his work and the gates closed behind him.' Thus begins Sven Lindqvist's profound meditation on art and its relationship with life, first published in 1967, and a classic in his home country - it has never been out of print. As a young man, Sven Lindqvist was fascinated by the myth of Wu Tao-tzu, and by the possibility of entering a work of art and making it a way of life. He was drawn to artists and writers who shared this vision, especially Hermann Hesse, in his novel Glass Bead Game. Partly inspired by Hesse's work, Lindqvist lived in China for two years, learning classical calligraphy from a master teacher. There he was drawn deeper into the idea of a life of artistic perfectionism and retreat from the world. But when he left China for India and then Afghanistan, and saw the grotesque effects of poverty and extreme inequality, Lindqvist suffered a crisis of confidence and started to question his ideas about complete immersion in art at the expense of a proper engagement with life. The Myth of Wu Tao-tzu takes us on a fascinating journey through a young man's moral awakening and his grappling with profound questions of aesthetics. It contains the bracing moral anger, and poetic, intensely atmospheric travel writing Lindqvist's readers have come to love.

"This is the first English translation of a brief, scholarly, and brilliantly original work which sets out to examine the links between the legend of the artist, in all cultures, and what E.H. Gombrich, in an introductory essay, calls 'certain invariant traits of the human psyche.'"--Denis Thomas, Journal of the Royal Society of Arts "This book gathers together various legends and attitudes about artists, ancient and modern, East and West, and gives fascinating insights into attitudes toward artistic creation. It impinges on psychology, art history and history, aesthetics, biography, myth and magic, and will be of great interest to a wide audience in many fields.... A delightful and unrivalled study."--Howard Hibbard "Thought provoking and valuable.... To all those interested in psychiatry and art from the perspectives of history, criticism, or therapy and to the wide audience concerned with the psychology of aesthetics and of artistic creation."--Albert Rothenberg, American Journal of Psychiatry

Contemporary art is deeply engaged with the subject of classical myth. Yet within the literature on contemporary art, little has been said about this provocative relationship. Composed of fifteen original essays, Contemporary Art and Classical Myth addresses this scholarly gap, exploring, and in large part establishing, the multifaceted intersection of contemporary art and classical myth.

A leading scholar in the United States on Chinese archaeology challenges long-standing conceptions of the rise of political authority in ancient China. Questioning Marx's concept of an "Asiatic" mode of production, Wittfogel's "hydraulic hypothesis," and cultural-materialist theories on the importance of technology, K. C. Chang builds an impressive counterargument, one which ranges widely from recent archaeological discoveries to studies of mythology, ancient Chinese poetry, and the iconography of Shang food vessels.