The Poetics of Appearance in the Attic Korai by Mary Stieber (review)

BOOK REVIEWS/COMPTES RENDUS MARY STIEBER. The Poetics of Appearance in the Attic KoraL Austin: University of Texas Press, 2004. Pp xiv + 230, 47 figures . US $45. ISBN 0-292-7°180-2. Lovers of Archaic sculpture have had much to celebrate since the millennium . The last few years have brought us not only the discovery of the Kerameikos kouros and the long-awaited publication of Phrasikleia. but also a flurry of new studies revisiting one of the most studied and stubbornly enigmatic groups of ancient sculptures. the korai.I Katerina Karakasfs lavishly illustrated Archaic Korai documents works from the Eastern Mediterranean and mainland Greece. while Catherine Keesling 's recent book. The Votive Statues of the Athenian Acropolis. devotes two full chapters to the Acropolis korai and related inscriptions.2 As the title suggests. Mary Stieber's The Poetics of Appearance in the Attic Korai explores both the visual poetry of the korai and the way in which textual sources can illuminate our reading of the statues. Although she focuses primarily on the votive Acropolis korai. she concludes with a chapter on the irresistible Phrasikleia. In the introduction. the author characterizes her methodology as an alternative to Gisela Richter's fundamental 1968 study which laid out a developmental typology and chronology for the korai (2-3). In order to move beyond this approach. Stieber employs the term "mimetic realism " to describe a condition of likeness to real women which stops short of actual portraiture. Realism. she argues. is the accumulation of details. which "may be stylistic or iconographic. intellectually erudite or philosophical . subtle or overt, aesthetically or extra-artistically inspired: the more of them there are. the more realistic an image will seem to the viewer" (7). The korai. with their exquisitely sculpted and painted deI The Kerameikos kouros was found on April 5. 2004 and published almost immediately: Wolf-Dietrich Niemeier. Oer Kouros vom HeiJigen Tor (Mainz am Rhein 2002). Publication of Phrasikleia: Nikolaos Kaltsas. "Die Kore und der Kuros aus Myrrhinous." Antike Plastik 28 (2002) 7-40. 2 Katerina Karakasi. Archaic Korai (Los Angeles 2003) originally published as Archaische Koren (Munich 2001); Catherine Keesling. The Votive Statues of the Athenian Acropolis (Cambridge/New York 2003). BOOK REVIEWS/COMPTES RENDUS tails, are therefore examples of realism, which Stieber carefully distinguishes from naturalism. A preoccupation with the issue of realism and mimesis originates, the author admits, in her PhD thesis on realism in Archaic art, and this line of inquiry provides an original framework for a study of the korai. Chapter One, "Historiography," provides an overview of the scholarly investigations of the koraL including the ongoing debate about the identities of the Acropolis koraL namely whether they should be understood as divinities or agalmata (pleasing gifts for the goddess). In accordance with Stieber's interest in the visual details of the statues, she also analyzes many early descriptions of the statues written soon after their excavation. She demonstrates the significance of these early histories for a genre whose painted decoration has faded or disappeared, although she is perhaps too willing to trust unquestioningly every nuance of these often exuberant written descriptions. More importantly for her purposes, these accounts show that, while scholars could point out minute differentiating details in the statues, the long-standing resistance to recognizing individuality in the korai developed early in the scholarly record. More problematic is Stieber's attempt at the beginning of the chapter to reconcile her idea that the statues are "portraitlike" with the lack of reference to any women in the related dedicatory inscriptions. Ultimately her explanations for this disjunction are unclear, and she dismisses the inscriptions as generic. Referring to the verse inscriptions, she notes that "as far as their content is concerned, they are scarcely worthy of the art of inscribing or of the artistry of the statues which stood over them" (17). Indeed, in these efforts to highlight the layers of detailing added to the female figures, Stieber underestimates the role played by the accompanying inscribed texts. The discussion then moves to an overview of the constituent elements of the statues (hair, skin tone, color, garments and so forth) in Chapter Two, "The Reality of Appearances." Stieber's keen eye...