Art and Efficacy

Ancient artifacts such as statues, reliefs, and paintings gave tangible form to knowledge and abstract ideas, making them vivid, convincing, and lasting. At the same time, they emphasized, concretized, and combined only certain aspects of the ideas in question, while reducing or omitting others. The book examines the emergence of artifacts as material manifestations of epistemic elements and the medial conditions of these shaping processes, as well as the effects of the resulting form. It combines case studies from Classical Archaeology with reflections on central aspects of material culture. With this approach, the book offers new perspectives on famous Greek and Roman works of art.

Dietrich Boschung is Professor of Classical Archaeology at the University of Cologne and Director of the International College Morphomata.