Description
Book SynopsisIn the popular imagination, Homer as author of the Iliad and the Odyssey, epitomises poetic genius. So, when scholars proposed that the Homeric epics were not the unique creation of an individual author, but instead reflected a traditional compositional system developed by generations of singer-poets, swathes of assumptions about the poems and their ''author'' were swept aside and called into question. Much had to be re-evaluated through a new lens.
The creative process described by scholars for the Homeric epics shares many key attributes with the modern visual art-forms of collage and its less familiar variant: sculptural assemblage. A Homeric Catalogue of Shapes describes a series of twelve sculptures that together function as an abstract portrait of Homer: not a depiction of him as an individual, but as a compositional system. The technique by which the artworks were produced reflects the poetic method that scholars termed oral-formulaic. In both of
Trade Review
The book is wide-ranging and thoroughly researched, and displays a strong grasp of the history of Homeric scholarship ... Solms has melded two disparate topics well, and interdisciplinary work like this certainly enriches the field. * The Classical Review *
This is a work which uses an original approach between essay and catalogue, and is fascinating in its transposition of Homeric art onto the language of contemporary sculpture. * Anabases *
Table of Contents
List of Illustrations Preface Acknowledgements Introduction Chapter 1: Seeing Differently Chapter 2. A Homeric Object Chapter 3: Sculptural Assemblage and the Composite Object Portrait Chapter 4: Homeric Iconographies Chapter 5: A Catalogue of Shapes 2010-13: Descriptive Catalogue of Artworks Chapter 6: A Composite Object Portrait of an Oral-Formulaic Homer Conclusion Notes Bibliography Index
