Book Review: The Frame in Classical Art: A Cultural History by Verity Platt, Michael Squire, et al. (2017)

The Frame in Classical Art: A Cultural History is an enticing foray into an oft neglected niche subject in Art History: frames. More specifically, this over 600-page publication is a voluminous, in-depth investigation of the representation, function, and influence of frames and framing devices in Ancient Greco-Roman art, culture, and history. With 13 essays divided amongst different Classical scholars, each offers compelling arguments for the pertinence of frames on aesthetic, philosophical, political, cultural, and theological grounds - from the optical illusions of still life wall paintings in sumptuous Pompeiian home interiors to the larger-than-life characterizations subsumed into Greek marble relief sculptures of the female deity Cybele. As a multi-scholar research initiative, this publication was spearheaded and edited by Verity Platt (Professor of Classics & History of Art at Cornell University) and Michael Squire (Professor of Classical Art at King’s College London).

The authors make it clear that a perception of how frames functioned and were intended to be seen in Antiquity should be divorced from our modern conception of framing. References to the philosophical concepts on frames by Enlightenment thinker Immanuel Kant (1724 - 1804) and Postmodern writer Jacques Derrida (1930 - 2004) are persistently incorporated to underscore how they conflict with the actual, lived usages of frames in the Ancient world. Although extensive portions of the book engage with frames in paintings (particularly wall paintings), the authors apply a holistic approach to the study of frames across mediums: funerary monuments, vase paintings, sculptures, text & epigraphs, and architecture.?

While this is not the first book to analyze the role of frames, this text is a novel study of the manners in which frames “both anticipate and diverge from those [ideologies] of later western traditions.” In effect, the book’s functions are three-fold: 1) how frames operated and were intended to be seen/received/read in Antiquity; 2) how frames reinforced, explained, and gave meaning to the subjects they contained; and 3) how Ancient framing devices influenced leading figures in the History of Art and their writings on the nature of seeing, audience reception, and functionality versus ornamentation.?

The chapters delve deeply into individualized media within key thematic sections: “Framing the Frame”, “Framing the Pictorial Space”, “Framing Bodies”, “Framing the Sacred”, and “Framing Texts.” Written as a highly specialized academic book, the authors continually refer back to the visual, contextual, and theoretical underpinnings that surround this seldom discussed topic. Given the vastness of Ancient Greco-Roman visual culture, the text abounds with illustrations that further explicate the concentrated visual analyses that bolster each authors’ theses, including: photographs (full-length and detailed close-ups), drawn illustrations, diagrams, and digital reconstructions.?

A recurring theme throughout the text is that one must not merely dismiss frames in Classical art - and even beyond this period - as simply “ornaments” but rather inseparable elements to their connected subjects. Essentially, both are dependent on each other and the removal of the said frame would completely alter or diminish the symbolic, aesthetic, and functional value of its respective subject. Initially, one might come into this text with a modern mindset of frames as solely applicable to two-dimensional media. However, one will come away with a much more comprehensive perspective into the multivalence of framing devices across disparate media that not only existed in the Ancient Greco-Roman world but are ever-present in our contemporary society. Because of their inherently multi-layered readings, frames are revealed to be complexly relevant to the point where there is an almost self-referential joke about how this publication is literally “framed” around framing.?

Book Excerpts:

https://www.academia.edu/33034529/V_Platt_and_M_J_Squire_eds_The_Frame_in_Classical_Art_A_Cultural_History_Cambridge_Cambridge_University_Press_2017_