Section Three

17 OLYMPIC GAMES

Lewis Wickes Hine (American, 1874–1940)
The Greek Wrestling Club at Hull House, Chicago
1910. Gelatin silver print
Miriam and Ira D. Wallach Division of Art, Prints and Photographs, Photography Collection

Founded in Chicago in 1889 by social reformer Jane Addams, Hull House was among the first settlement houses in the United States dedicated to serving the needs of immigrants and their families. In addition to providing educational functions from kindergarten to college-level extension classes, Hull House included craft workshops, playgrounds, and, as seen in this photograph by Lewis Wickes Hine, a gymnasium as the home for its Greek Wrestling Club.

Wrestling was one of the main competitive sports in the original Olympic Games, as well as in the revived Olympiad of 1896. In contrast to the modern-day ideal notion that the winner of a match should be decided by a demonstration of superior, play-by-the-rules skill and strength, in some forms of wrestling in the ancient games the victorious contestant often ended up with the olive wreath by exercising a vicious, bloody, no-holds-barred attack upon his opponent.

18 OLYMPIC GAMES

"Discus Thrower," plate 307 from:
Eadweard Muybridge (English, 1830–1904)
Animal Locomotion. An Electro-Photographic Investigation of Consecutive Phases of Animal Movements. 1872–1885
Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania, 1887
11 volumes with 781 photographic plates
Plates printed by the Photogravure company, Philadelphia
Miriam and Ira D. Wallach Division of Art, Prints and Photographs, Photography Collection

The discus throw, mentioned by Homer in both the Iliad and the Odyssey, was one of five events (also including the footrace, long jump, javelin throw, and wrestling match) taking place on the same day in the pentathlon in the ancient Olympic Games. The discus throw was reintroduced in the modern-era revival of the Olympics as a Track and Field event. The bronze sculpture of the Diskobolos, caught in fleeting action by the fifth-century sculptor Myron, remains one of the most ubiquitous images in all of Greek art.

Eadweard Muybridge, who immigrated to the United States around 1852, worked as a bookseller early in his career. After studying photography, Muybridge, describing himself as an artist-photographer and adopting “Helios” as his artist’s name, made a reputation with his spectacular views of Yosemite and other scenic western sites. Later, he made many systematic analyses of moving figures (humans and animals) by taking sequences of photographs with banks of cameras fitted with high-speed shutters.

While encouraging the aura of scientific investigation to surround his work, Muybridge also sought to convey the serious overtones of history by adapting the movements of athletic competitions from the ancient Olympic Games as references for his contemporary stop-action experiments, as may be seen here in the twenty-four shots of an athlete photographed in the act of throwing a discus.

19 THE ACROPOLIS

William James Stillman (American, 1828–1901)
The Acropolis of Athens, illustrated picturesquely and architecturally in photography
London: F. S. Ellis, 1870
Album of 25 mounted photographic plates, with descriptive letterpress text
Miriam and Ira D. Wallach Division of Art, Prints and Photographs, Photography Collection

The Parthenon, the temple dedicated to the virgin warrior goddess Athena Parthenos situated atop the Acropolis in Athens, is the most renowned building to survive from the ancient world. By the fifth century B.C.E., the Acropolis had evolved over the centuries from a citadel fortress to the site of sanctuaries and memorials, the locus of enlightened civic government, and the experimental birthplace of democracy. Pericles (ca. 495–429 B.C.E.), the virtuous Athenian statesman largely credited with instituting a form of popular vote and with forging the cultural and political supremacy of Athens over other city-states, instigated construction of the Parthenon in 447 B.C.E. The Parthenon and its setting included Pheidias’s gold and ivory cult statue of Athena, a temple devoted to Victory, the Erectheum, and the Propylaea, the monumental gateway leading to the sacred precinct. It is impossible to overestimate the architectural legacy of the Parthenon throughout the Western world – its innovative plan, harmonious use of the Doric order, the lavishness of its mouldings, and the awesome scale of its sculptural program.

Following early careers as a painter associated with the Hudson River School and as founding editor of the art journal the Crayon, William James Stillman took up photography in 1859. Continuing as a journalist and travel writer abroad, Stillman put his skills as a photographer to use while serving as consul in Rome and Crete. His major achievement in the art of photography was the series of twenty-five technically and formally beautiful photographs that appeared in The Acropolis of Athens. Ten are shown here, identified by Stillman’s corresponding captions.

a. The Acropolis, with the theatre of Bacchus. View taken from the proscenium of the theatre. The architrave of the Parthenon is seen above the fortification wall.

b. Western façade of the Parthenon. At the right is Hymettus, at the left the summit of Lycabetus is seen, and at the extreme left is the Erectheum. The débris in the foreground are architectural and sculptural fragments.

c. The eastern façade of the Propylaea. The island and bay of Salamis are seen through the central intercolumniations, and through those at the left of the port of Peiraeus.

d. Interior of the Parthenon, taken from the western gate. The circular grooves are those in which the bronze valves swing.

e. Western portion of the Parthenon. The names scratched on the columns are of the Philhellenes, who fought here in the war of Greek independence.

f. Eastern portico of the Parthenon, view looking northward, and showing Mount Parnes in the extreme distance.

g. Eastern façade, or front, of the Parthenon.

h. Interior of the Parthenon, from the eastern end; at the left, in the distance, is seen the island of Aegina.

i. View … looking eastward over the ruin of the Parthenon. Modern Athens is seen at the left, and above it, in the centre, Lycabetus; at the right Hymettus, and in the extreme distance, Pentelicus.

j. View of the Acropolis, from the Musaem Hill. A portion of modern Athens, is visible at the left; at the right is seen the course of the Ilissus, and the remaining columns of the Temple of Jupiter, beyond which rises Mount Hymettus. The view is eastward.

20 GIORGIO DE CHIRICO

Giorgio de Chirico (Italian, born in Greece, 1888–1978)
The Return of the Prodigal Son I, from a series of six lithographs, Metamorphosis
1929. Lithograph printed in three colors
Published by Editions des Quatre Cjemins, Paris
Miriam and Ira D. Wallach Division of Art, Prints and Photographs, Print Collection, Norrie Fund

Giorgio de Chirico, most often identified as the founder of pittura metafisica and crucial to the early development of surrealist painting, was born in Vólos, Greece, the port city from which Jason and the Argonauts were said to have departed in their quest to regain the Golden Fleece. Both de Chirico and his younger brother Andrea (the painter and composer who later adopted the name Alberto Savinio) received their artistic training with some of the most prominent Greek painters and musicians of the time in Athens, where de Chirico continued to live until his father’s death in 1905. Greek art and culture remained deeply rooted in de Chirico’s art throughout his long, contentious, and richly varied career.

The Return of the Prodigal Son I (mistakenly called Socrates when acquired by the Library in 1946) is one of numerous works, including several related paintings entitled the Archaeologists, in which de Chirico creatively adapted elements from classical Greek architecture to construct his figures. In this lithograph, as the ghost-like wayward son stands by, the father sits rigidly in his armchair, his torso, upper arms, thighs, and top hat composed of Ionic columns, voluted capitals, and temple pediments. Knowing that ancient Greek architecture did not consist of a collection of purely white marble temples, de Chirico indicated traces of paint on the figure of the father that once would have blazed with colors.

21 SIR WILLIAM HAMILTON

Pierre-François Hugues d'Hancarville (French, 1719–1805)
Antiquités étrusques, grecques et romaines … gravées par F. A. David
Paris: Chez l'auteur, 1785–87
Four volumes in 24 parts, with 289 etching and aquatint plates
The George Arents Collection of Books in Parts

Sir William Hamilton (1730–1803) served George III as British ambassador to the Kingdom of Naples for over thirty years, a period when archaeological excavations, antiquities trading, and the pillaging of tombs were rife in southern Italy and throughout the Hellenic world. From the time of his arrival in Naples, Hamilton began amassing a vast collection of classical art and artifacts. In 1772, he sold to the British Museum 730 Greek vases and 175 terracottas, as well as glass, bronzes, gems, and thousands of coins, forming part of one of the richest collections of ancient art in the world today.

In 1766, Hamilton commissioned Baron d’Hancarville, an antiquary (and evidently a small-time criminal), to catalogue and publish his collection of vases, which appeared in four sumptuously illustrated, oversized volumes. New editions followed, including this French edition of 1785–87 in greatly reduced format (four of twenty-four separately issued parts are shown). Open here, vol. 1, plate 9, depicts preparations for the marriage of Helen and Paris on a vase found at Capua; vol. 3, plate 25, according to d’Hancarville, is a scene from the Feast of Dionysus.

The plates in Hamilton’s catalogues, representing only a small part of the collection, reproduced a wide range of subjects, including legendary Greek heroes, gods and goddesses, athletes, and architectural elements. The subjects of the vases, their frieze-like compositions, and the crisp linearity in which they were drawn exerted enormous influence on the emerging neoclassical style in ceramics, interiors, architecture, decorative motifs, and major works by Flaxman, David, Fuseli, Ingres, Girodet, Joshua Wedgwood, and countless other artists.

22 SOPHOCLES

Sophocles (ca. 496–406 B.C.E.) and Eduard Bargheer (German, 1901–1979)
Antigone. In der Übersetzung von Karl Reinhardt
Frankfurt am Main: Verlag Ars librorum, Gotthard de Beauclair, 1967
Artist’s book with 10 etchings and one etching and aquatint on front cover by Eduard Bargheer; printed by Arnd Maibau, Berlin. No. 40 of 200 copies
Spencer Collection

Sophocles’ tragedy Antigone (written in 442 B.C.E.) was performed by three rather than the traditional two actors, which represented the playwright’s major dramatic innovation. Prior to the beginning of the play, Antigone, daughter of Oedipus, former king of Thebes, has lived in exile for many years with her blind father. In the play, King Creon, Antigone’s uncle, decrees that the corpse of the slain traitor Polyneices, her brother, must not be buried. Antigone defies the order and is sentenced to death. Although betrothed to Creon’s son Haemon, she is buried alive in a cave. After the blind prophet Tiresias reveals that the gods have sided with Antigone against him, Creon relents, but only after Antigone has already hanged herself. Haemon attacks his father and kills himself. Creon's wife, Eurydice, then commits suicide, leaving Creon alone with his niece, Antigone’s sister. The frequent subject of contemporary reinterpretations, Antigone was recently described in a New York Times review of a five-part, fragmented production as “a Theban tear-jerker,” and the “ultimate story of a dysfunctional family.”

On the front cover of his illustrated edition, German painter and printmaker Eduard Bargheer has portrayed Antigone with the stony face, staring eyes, enigmatic expression, and hairstyle of an Archaic period korê, the female sculptural counterpart of Picasso’s kouros in Pindare. VIIIe Pythique, exhibited (#16) on the other side of the gallery.

23 ARISTOPHANES

Aristophanes (448?–385? B.C.E.) and Frantisek Kupka (Bohemian, 1871–1957)
Lysistrate … traduit du grèc par Lucien Dhuys; gravures originales de François Kupka
Paris: A. Blaizot, 1911
Illustrated with a full-page frontispiece and 19 headpieces in etching and aquatint printed in colors à la poupée; extra double suites of the etchings and 12 wood engravings.
No. 42 of 100 copies on Japon impérial paper from a total edition of 250 copies
Spencer Collection

Lysistrata (411 B.C.E.), a troubling mix of gravity and farce, is one of the greatest and still most frequently performed comedies from antiquity. In his play, Aristophanes openly mocked the political leaders and citizens of Athens who supported a twenty-year war against Sparta. The playwright imagines a strike by the women of Athens, instigated by Lysistrata, who seize the Acropolis and the city’s treasury, and then reject all sexual advances by their husbands as long as the war continues to be waged. The men of Athens, in agony over their sex-starved condition, are forced to capitulate and to negotiate the peace.

Kupka visualizes the plot of the play by presenting a frieze-like procession of animated characters across the upper margins of fifteen pages, including here, in a double-spread lineup, a cross section of distressed Athenian men. For too long viewed merely as a pioneer of abstract painting, Kupka, early in his career, was also an extremely witty and incisive illustrator of texts, as Lysistrate vividly demonstrates.

24 AESCHYLUS

Charles-Marie-René Leconte de Lisle (French, 1818–1894) and Frantisek Kupka (Bohemian, 1871–1957)
Les Erinnyés: tragédie antique … illustrée des compositions et gravures à l’eau forte de François Kupka
Paris: A. Romagnol, 1908
Two-part play, illustrated with 75 etching and aquatints, and head- and tailpieces, with additional plate proofs in pure etching and before the letters, and 22 wood engravings. No. 1 of 10 large paper copies on Vélin d’Arches paper from a total edition of 300 copies; and with one full-page watercolor and 18 watercolor vignettes
Spencer Collection

The leader of the nineteenth-century Parnassians, French poets recognized for the classical restraint and technical perfection of their works, Leconte de Lisle translated and adapted Aeschylus’s trilogy the Oresteia for a contemporary audience. In Leconte de Lisle’s two-part adaptation Les Erinnyés, the furies (les erinnyés), minor goddesses who specialize in enacting revenge upon the evildoers of the world, torment Orestes for murdering his mother, Clytemnestra, who had killed his father, Agamemnon.

In copy 1 of Les Erinnyés, shown here, Kupka embellished the lower margins with a series of colorful watercolor vignettes of the principal and supporting characters, in addition to sea monsters, rollicking mermaids, tumescent satyrs, seductive sirens, and raping centaurs. On an elaborately decorated inserted sheet, he dedicated the copy to “ma chère Ninie” (Eugénie Straub), his future wife.

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