I have just read Guy Hedreen’s review of Robin Osborne’s recent book The Transformation of Athens: Painted Pottery and the Creation of Classical Greece (Princeton University Press, 2018). I’ve always had a soft spot for Athenian painted pottery, as it is such a large and rich corpus of evidence, waiting to be interrogated by scholars interested in more than, for example, the chronological development of the Amasis Painter’s elbow dimples. Similarly, I also have a significant appreciation for Michael Baxandall, whose work (especially Art and Experience and Patterns of Intention) has been fundamental to my own attempts to write social history from art. According to the review, in this book Osborne combines these two enthusiasms of mine. Hedreen’s view is that the attempt is not altogether successful, which is too bad. I haven’t read the book myself (and may not for some time, given how much is on my plate right now), but the review is stimulating and brought me back to material I haven’t thought about for some time.
Archaeologist, Art Historian, Sometime Curator, and Ocassional Classicist