Work and the Image

Valerie Mainz, Griselda Pollock

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2019
• ISBN:
  9781351746113
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Art
• Subtopic: History of Art

This title was first published in 2000. "Work and the Image", published in two volumes, addresses a critical theme in contemporary social and cultural debates whose place in visual representation has been neglected. Ranging from Greek pottery to contemporary performance, and exploring a breadth of geo-national perspectives including those of France, Britain, Hungary, Soviet Russia, the Ukraine, Siberia and Germany, the essays provide a challenging reconsideration of the image of work, the meaning of the work process, and the complex issues around artistic activity as itself a form of work even as it offers a representation of labour. Volume I includes interdisciplinary case studies which plot the changing definitions of work as labour, craft, social relations and a source of historical identity, while analyzing the role of visual representation in their formation and transformation. The diverse essays cover such topics as anti-slavery movements and enunciation of workers' rights, revolutionary politics, relations of class and gender, industrial masculinities and women's rural sociality, unemployment and subjectivity, Stalinist aesthetics and nationalist identities.

1
A Greek vase-painting: comments on the nature of craftsmanship?^*

Michael Duigan

Contemporary studies on the nature of creative work have attempted to understand this human activity in terms of its relationship to politics and power, commercial structures, urban and rural contexts, constructions of identity, conceptualizations of the body and notions of gender. It is therefore of considerable interest to discover a set of images placed on a crafted pot -made in a culture very different from and more than 2000 years older than ours - which ‘appears’ to comment on the work of making in terms of these same issues. The image on this pot, now in Oxford, shows an artisan making sandals (Figure 1.1). Sitting on the left he cuts the leather using his young customer’s foot as a template. Above the craftsman’s head is a rack of specialist knives one of which resembles the one he is using. Under the table is a bowl containing water for softening the leather. An adult, who may be the boy’s father, observes the process.¹

The detail of this picture promises much but the imagery is more enigmatic than it appears at first sight and this makes its interpretation problematical. The interpretative difficulties become acute when we consider the relationship of the craftsmanship scene to the paired image on the other side of the pot. This shows a figure observing a seated satyr holding a casket and accompanied by a goat. A second satyr dances. A number of scholars have referred to the difficulty of understanding this scene. Both Robertson and Vickers describe it as ‘unexplained’.² The presence of satyrs, however, shows it to be from the world of myth and increases the likelihood that the standing figure wearing a hat and winged boots is Hermes.³ In most cases where the craftsmanship scene is discussed no references are made to this paired mythological image. But while there may not be a relationship between scenes on the two sides of a pot, the presence of Hermes⁴ here makes it possible to infer a link in this particular case. This is because some of the god’s behaviour and functions (as we shall see) relate to sandals.

There is, furthermore, a close compositional similarity between the two images. In both pictures the viewer is shown three figures with one placed centrally and one on either side. The figure on the right is almost identical in both scenes; they are wreathed, and adopt the same pose and lean on a stick to observe what is occurring in front of them. In both pictures the central figure is raised above the other two, standing on a table and seated on a rock respectively. Finally, the third figure in each picture is engaged in a skill or techne. The craftsman is sandal-making and the satyr is dancing. The closeness of the symmetry between the two images suggests that this can only be intentional and that a link is being established between them.⁵ Consequently to ‘read’ the craft scene without reference to its pendant mythological image may well be to omit half of the visual communication or to misunderstand it altogether.

The likelihood that the scene of craftsmanship is semantically linked to a world of myth brings home to us that it is not to be understood simply as an illustration of a craft. If we are to understand this imagery, to ‘read’ it as the original makers and viewers did, we have to enter into a ‘mind frame’ quite unfamiliar to us. As Harrison has noted, such an enterprise is, in principle, difficult⁶ and is compounded by the acknowledged interpretative problems in the case of this particular pot.

In this chapter no attempt will be made to reconstruct particular historical ‘readings’ - indeed, the evidence no longer exists in the case of the Oxford pot. Rather the task will be to ‘map out’ the interpretative field in which viewings of the iconography took place describing the range of interpretative choices open to a viewer in fifth-century Athens. The criterion becomes ‘is the proposed interpretation probable given the concepts, forms of logic and interpretative styles prevalent in the intellectual landscape of the time’? It follows that the craftsmanship scene on the Oxford pot must be perceived in a range of contexts which are specific to the culture in which it was made.⁷

The god Hermes and sandal-making

The prominence of the god Hermes in the mythological scene reminds us that a key viewing context for pottery in ancient Greece was the sanctuary. Seen as a ritual object the imagery on this pot can be interpreted in terms of the cult of Hermes. Dohan Morrow reminds us that ‘divinities are sometimes represented with footwear intended to accent their divine role or iconography’ and this could be happening here.⁸ Hermes, who is depicted wearing winged sandals, was the messenger of the gods and in both the Iliad and the Odyssey he puts on sandals which carry him over land and sea with the wind.⁹ The Homeric Hymn to Hermes refers to the making of footwear for a journey and this is the subject represented in our paired scene of sandal-making.¹⁰ The depiction of a portable folding stool introduces another allusion to travel. Moreover, because the stool folded, it itself moved. This characteristic was enhanced by the addition of animal legs.

A major significance of the journeying of Hermes for mortals was that he guided their souls to Hades. In addition Hoffman tells us that the pelike was characteristically used to contain the ashes of the dead.¹¹ This creates a second - funerary - viewing context where Hermes functioned as psychopomp or guide to souls on their journey. Allusion to this could also be made by the rocky landscape. Vermeule claims that the idea of equipping the dead with footwear for protection on their journey had Mycenaean precedents and that this notion reappeared in the Geometric period.¹²

In the Homeric Hymn to Hermes we are reminded that travellers needed sandals ‘to lighten the toil of walking … on an urgent long journey’.¹³ Consequently the craftsmanship scene includes a customer in the workshop who is awaiting completion of the footwear when he will purchase it. This suggests a third viewing context, namely the market where the pot could be perceived as a commercial object. The comic playwright Aristophanes claims in his comedy Plutus that what motivates the artisan is the desire for wealth rather than love for his craft.¹⁴ Viewed in the competitive commercial context of the shop, the iconography of the sandal-making pot can be read as a commentary on these transactions. Pottery-makers certainly used their iconography to reflect on the sale of their products¹⁵ and it is probable that this is also happening here. Significantly Hermes, like the sandal-maker, exchanged an object which he had made for material reward giving his lyre to Apollo for reciprocal gifts. Zeus made him responsible for overseeing deeds of trade among men.¹⁶ The ‘trickiness’ of such activities was appropriately the concern of the devious Hermes and gives a context for his presence in the Oxford pot imagery. The sandal-maker could also be seen as a devious trader of his products. The ‘tricky’ nature of this trading is exemplified by Aristophanes. In his comedy the Knights he describes the deceptive sale of shoes which looked to be of good craftsmanship but were not.¹⁷

The status of the artisan

Political and social developments at the time the pot was made also created a new social context for viewing this imagery. The artisan was no longer commissioned by aristocratic patrons as in the Archaic period and as represented by Homer. He was now the maker of artefacts to sell in the marketplace. Consequently the artisan was now conceptualized as the producer of artefacts to meet the needs of a user. This new form of patronage was seen as creating a relationship of dependence or service by the artisan to his client which could approach that of slavery This altered his perceived status. Later when Aristotle is speaking of the making activity he characterizes craftsmen and tools in the same way - they both satisfy the user’s needs.¹⁸

This development made the status of the artisan as a citizen in the new democratic city state or Polis both problematic and contentious. Only a few years before the making of this pot, the tyranny of Hippias had been replaced by a democracy under Cleisthenes. The aristocratic view was that the activities of the artisan and the citizen ruler were incompatible. Zeus as ruler is in a different category from the lower deities who were patrons of the crafts. Plato, too, wanted to restrict political power to the specialists.¹⁹ The democratic view, on the other hand, claimed parity for all male citizens. Protagoras argued that Athenians engaged in trade had a right to take part in the government of the state saying ‘your fellow citizens are right to welcome the opinions of smiths and cobblers on public affairs’. Protagoras articulated his claim that artisans should have a share in government using the myth of Prometheus. The latter gave fire, the basis of technology, to mortals but man remained ignorant of the arts of politics and war. These characteristics, which were essential to lead the life of a citizen in a Polis, could only be given by Zeus. Therefore, according to this myth, Zeus sent Hermes to bring these ‘citizen enabling’ gifts to man and he was instructed to share them equally.²⁰

It is, therefore, interesting that the iconography of the ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of contributors
• List of figures
• Introduction
• 1 A Greek vase-painting: comments on the nature of craftsmanship?
• 2 Aux armes et aux arts! Blacksmiths at the National Convention
• 3 ‘The cook, the thief, his wife and her lover’: LaVille-Leroulx’s Portrait de Négresse and the signs of misrecognition
• 4 Death and the worker: Rethel in 1849
• 5 Gender and the ideology of capitalism: William Bell Scott’s Iron and Coal
• 6 Time and work-discipline in Pissarro
• 7 Mihály Biró’s Népszava poster and the emergence of Tendenzkunst
• 8 A re-vision of Ukrainian identity: images of labouring peasant women in Tatiana Yablonskaia’s Corn, 1949
• 9 Life and work in Silesia according to Kazimierz Kutz
• 10 This time next year we’ll be farting through silk: aspiration and experience
• Index