Vase Painting, Gender, and Social Identity in Archaic Athens (review)

Stansbury-O'Donnell aims to provide insight into the ancient viewing experience and to add to the understanding of gender in archaic Athens with this study of Attic black-figure vase painting. He employs a methodology (following after Claude Bérard) that examines vase painting to learn about Athenian values and codes of behavior, but takes it one step further: he is interested in how looking at an object affects the viewer, as well as the relationship between what one sees and what one does and between images and self-images (52). He explores images on vases as more than a reflection or a re-enforcement of societal attitudes, but rather as playing a direct role in Athenian identity formation. The book uses a broad sample of evidence, a database of 742 vases from the CVA census, to develop a taxonomy of the spectator on vases. The gestures and poses of spectators and their response to a particular scene-nucleus form the core of the study. It is directed at an audience of specialists, primarily in ancient art, but the thorough explanations, clear charts, and inclusion of 76 images make it accessible to a more general readership.

As stated above, Stansbury-O'Donnell's starting point and focus is the spectator, defined as a "figure who observes the action … but is not involved in it, or will not immediately be affected by it physically" (13). Spectators dominate on Attic vases between 550 and 490 BCE. The focus here is the "detached spectator," who remains separate from the action and has no connection with the main actors, such as the viewer of a boxing match, and the "pure spectator," who is not part of the narrative and does not even belong to the time and place of the action, such as men and women watching Herakles battle the Nemean lion. But Athena, watching Herakles fight the lion, is not part of the study because she is an invested spectator," part of the narrative and with a stake in the outcome of the action. The detached and pure spectators, while not part of the main action depicted on the vase, are intimately connected to the viewer of the vase. Stansbury-O'Donnell argues that such spectators represent Athenians (men, youths and women) more broadly and indicate to the viewer important civic ideals of behaviour and his or her expected role in the polis. The viewer thus indentifies with the spectators, who, while marginal on the pots, are integral to constructions of gender and the formation of identity in the archaic polis.

The book is clearly organized into six chapters: Chapter 1, Seeing Spectators; Chapter 2, Defining Spectators; Chapter 3, Vision and the Construction of Identity; Chapter 4, Ritual Performance, Spectators, and Identity; Chapter 5, Men and Youths: Gender and Social Identity; and Chapter 6, Women as Spectators: Gender and Social Identity. As in his earlier book, Pictorial Narrative in Ancient Greek Art (Cambridge, 1999), the text is rich in the use of theory, drawing on structuralism as previously, but also psychoanalysis, gender theory, ritual theory and even ancient theories of vision. Stansbury-O'Donnell is very clear about his purpose and thoughtful and cautious in his method and theoretical application. He uses Lacanian theory of identity formation as justification for examining the relationship between image and self-image. His use of psychoanalytical theory is buttressed by Greek theories of vision that give prominence to sight in stimulating emotion and affecting behaviour. Some readers may take issue with the dependence on classical and later theorists here, but Stansbury-O'Donnell is confident that the intimate connection between viewer and viewed and the power of the gaze was already in existence for the archaic period.

It is through the use of ritual theory that Stansbury-O'Donnell connects the spectator on the vase to the viewer. He argues that public festivals in sixth-century Athens, such as the Panathenaia...