1. Recovering the Strangeness

Abstract

In attempting to recover an understanding of the ancient classical experiences of seeing, sightlines, conventions, and genres, we ought also, I suggest, give weight to what the eighteenth-century philosophers called 'Nature', not as a tiresome and unwanted 'predisciplinary' intrusion to be elided in the same way as eighteenthcentury artists and engravers excluded the storks from their pictures of the Parthenon. On the contrary, they and other birds, animals, and insects, ought to be re-inserted. In ancient times, for example, an area of the Acropolis slopes was called 'the pelasgikon', a place that, according to a local myth, the Pelasgians, a pre-Hellenic people, had cultivated explored the uses of the word. 48 Tyche as a figure on the official inscriptions that relate to the making of a statue is mentioned in Chapter 2. 49 As, for example, in Dem. 60 19 and in the whole tradition of funeral orations. 50 The contradictions of Christian providentialism and the contortions that its advocates found themselves resorting to were discussed in St Clair, WStP, Chapter 22,

8 Greek art: recent developments and current trends

“…Finally, two entirely different authors and their unique contributions to themes of history, collection, and reception combined need be highlighted. The first is the late William St Clair whose two new books on the Parthenon (originally conceived as one) cover between them the many lifetimes of the monument from its construction to the present day, especially within the context of modern Greece itself (from the revolution up to the present), the military conflicts it has witnessed, and the controversy surrounding ownership of removed elements (St Clair 2022a; 2022b). The second author is Dimitris Plantzos, who in recent years has produced an ongoing series of articles connecting modern Greece, along with its unique ups and downs (i.e.…”