I. Introduction

Abstract

The rise in popularity of school and university courses in Classical civilization, and the related decline in the study of the Greek and Latin languages, have given Classical art, and above all Greek art, a prominence that it never enjoyed before. Increasingly good photographs, the chance to see architecture and art in its local context that improved travel facilities have brought, the need for the material to be seen in its historical setting, and the necessity of explaining the intricacies of the study to a wider audience, all these have produced a wealth of new publications. These new works include one-volume histories, of larger or narrower compass, books that concentrate on one medium (sculpture, painted pottery, terracotta figurines, etc), and much more specific volumes that look more closely at a brief period or restricted region, or even an individual building or a single vase-painter. 1 All this is underpinned by a massive output of more academic literature in journals in all languages that gradually alters our knowledge or understanding of the subject. 2 Such changes are brought about by new finds (one thinks of the Riace bronzes (Figs. 8-9), the tomb of Philip II of Macedon (Colour Plate IB), the Mozia youth (Fig. 5), the kouros from Samos (Fig. 3), the New York Euphronios krater), but new interpretations are also brought about by a fresh look at old material and ideas, a move down different avenues with new preoccupations and emphases. Recently there has been greater stress on the contexts within which the craftsmen of ancient Greece worked and for which they made their products. Pure aesthetics are seen as too inward-looking an approach, Greek art and craftsmanship did not exist in a hermetically sealed vacuum; the social, historical, and religious background to any work of art is felt to deserve an important share of the scholar's and the student's concern. Also, the need to judge the significance of material that has survived against the whole production of any period has been urged, and the 'positivist' approach (i.e. an emphasis on or a restriction to considering only that which has survived) has come in for some hard knocks. Conferences and museum exhibitions are two ways of disseminating new ideas, and the Acta and Catalogues that stem from them are useful publications of up-to-date ideas and finds (here one thinks of the Parthenon Congress at Basel, the Amasis Painter Exhibition in New York and elsewhere, the Athens Conference on Archaic and Classical sculpture). 3 Other museum publications attempt to present the material in a manner that is intelligible to the student and the