Attic Black-Figure: Exekias, Dionysos Kylix, c. 530 B.C.E. Video Lecture - Humanities/Arts

(piano music playing)
Man: We're in the antique
collection in Munich,
and we're looking at a small drinking cup
by an artist whose name is Exekias
from ancient Greece.
Woman: It's funny that you called it
a small drinking cup
because I imagine if
you drank all the wine
that you could put into this bowl,
you would be quite drunk.
Man: It's true.
Actually, in terms of
our wine glasses now,
it's pretty big.
The shape is a kylix.
You'll notice that it's quite shallow.
It's got a little bit of a base,
a little bit of a pedestal,
and it's got two handles
that you're meant to
hook your thumb around.
Woman: It seems to me
as you drank down your wine,
the decoration at the bottom of the bowl
would be revealed.
Man: Well, that's right.
It's a little bit unusual,
but the bowl itself is
a canvas for this cup,
and we have this marvelous scene
that shows an ancient Greek boat
occupied by the god Dionysus,
the god of wine.
When you just look at it,
you can see a few unusual things.
First of all, you've got all
of these playful dolphins
that seem to be swimming around the boat.
We can imagine the fields
that would be the water and the sky.
It's all red.
There's no differentiation,
but I've always liked to think
that the dolphins on
either side of the boat
are jumping out of the water.
Woman: There's a sense of joyousness,
and this is a cup by the
great Greek vase painter,
Exekias, who we have about 35 vases from
by this artist,
so this is a really special object.
Man: He both painted and potted,
and he often signed his work,
and that's the case here.
If you look closely,
you can see another unusual element,
which is that there's a grapevine
that's growing right beside the mast,
and there's all these
wonderful bunches of grapes
and grape leaves
that almost function as a
kind of arbor over the boat.
Woman: And the story was
that Dionysus was fleeing pirates,
and in order to hide from them,
he made a grapevine grow
from the boat itself.
Man: And turned the
pirates into the dolphins.
Woman: That's right.
I see how Exekias is trying
to fill that circular space
of the kylix by making the vines grow out
horizontally,
and the dolphins jumping all around,
so he's using that whole space.
It's not an easy space
as an artist to fill.
Man: No, that's right,
and actually, there's a gentle curve
to almost every element
in this composition
that seems to be
responding to the curvature
of the cup itself.
There's the arc of the vine,
there's the elegant and beautiful arc
that's created by the wind-filled sail,
and you can just see it billowing,
pushing the boat forward,
and, of course, the arcs of the dolphins,
and of the hull of the ship.
Woman: And then those
circular forms of the grapes
that mirror the circular
shape of the bowl.
Man: I love Dionysus.
He's lying back as if
he's at a dinner party.
Perhaps he's speaking,
but there's a wonderful
sense of relaxation.
Woman: And I like the stars on the cloak
that he wears
and the leaf shapes on the crown.
Man: This is attic black-figure painting.
It's a style of painting
from the Archaic period.
The artist would paint with slipware
and then would scratch into
it with a kind of needle
to incise the lines
and create those very delicate patterns
that we can see in the
woodwork of the ship,
for example.
Woman: Or in the grapes above Dionysus.
Man: You can see in the ship,
there's quite a bit of ornamentation.
Not only does the prow of the ship
have a face carved into it,
but you can see a sort of
swan's head by its stern.
Really, my favorite part,
you had mentioned before,
is that if your thumb was hooked over
the upper handle
and this was filled with red wine,
it would obscure the boat
until you raised it and began to drink,
and at one point, at least,
the boat would seem as if it was floating
on a sea of red wine.
Woman: And you might feel
as relaxed as Dionysus.
(piano music playing)