JEAN-PIERRE VERNANT AND THE HISTORY OF THE IMAGE

Author(s): RICHARD NEER

Source: Arethusa , Spring 2010, Vol. 43, No. 2, The Art of Art History in Greco-Roman
Antiquity (Spring 2010), pp. 181-195
Published by: The Johns Hopkins University Press

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 JEAN-PIERRE VERNANT AND

THE HISTORY OF THE IMAGE

RICHARD NEER

Ambitious writing on classical art has, in recent years, made efforts to

rethink or to bypass traditional categories of academic aesthetics.1 It h
offered historicist accounts of the image, pondered classical artwriting (or t
absence thereof), embraced new terms like "visual culture," borrowed met
ods from the social sciences, traded art objects for "viewing experience
and so on. These developments have reinvigorated a field that, almost b
definition, is not on the cutting edge; they have been an unalloyed good.
the present essay, however, I voice some long-standing concerns about
viability of this "new classical art history" as presently constituted. Simp
put, I am not convinced that the category of the aesthetic is so easily jet
soned, or that terms like "visual culture" or "viewing experience" provi
real alternatives to the traditional vocabulary of the history of art (after
"culture" and "experience" were, along with "style," probably the three c
concepts of that discipline in its High Modern orthodoxy). At the same tim
I strongly suspect that the strangeness and, indeed, the radical promise
those terms often go unacknowledged. There is something undisciplined
even deeply crazy, about the idea that we can make meaningful statemen
about lumps of stone and clay that were shaped twenty-five centuries ag

1 The present essay is adapted from my forthcoming book The Emergence of the Class
Style in Greek Sculpture © 2010 by The University of Chicago Press. All rights reserved
Used with permission. I am grateful to Verity Piatt and Michael Squire for the invitatio
to contribute to this volume and for their comments, and to numerous friends, especial
Jaś Elsner and Arnold Davidson, for discussing the issues with me.

181

Arethusa 43 (2010) 181-195 © 2010 by The Johns Hopkins University Press

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 182 Richard Neer

I wish to hold onto t

a Winckelmann, a Ri
It is telling that Ma
tique contemporary a
the present volume (

The magnificent ar
responding cogniti
meditation not ha
The lack of such a simultaneous reflection or medita-

tion on great art does*not imply that Greek art was only
"lived," that the Greeks wallowed in a murky brew of
"experiences" braced by neither concepts nor knowledge.
It was their good fortune that the Greeks had no "lived
experiences."

For Heidegger, the problem of an "art of art history" in classical Greece

(that is, the absence of a fully fledged "cognitive-conceptual meditation" on
art before Plato) does not throw us back onto a Romantic notion of "experi-
ence"; it is not evidence for or against the intelligibility of Greek "aesthetics"
in the strict sense; and it does not imply that the Greeks lacked "concepts,"
whether of art or anything else. The point, for now, is simply that the terms
have changed remarkably little in the seventy-five years since Heidegger
wrote. My impulse, accordingly, is not to suggest that the new developments
in classical art history are too radical and that we need to stick with the old
terms; it is, on the contrary, to suggest that the new developments do not
go half far enough, and that an investigation of terms like "image," "style,"
"beholder," in their ordinary use, might show us a way out of an impasse
that, all too often, goes unacknowledged. To that end, the bulk of this paper
will be devoted to an examination of the work of the most important and
the most authentically "new" voice in the study of ancient art of the last
fifty years: the great French classicist Jean-Pierre Vernant.
This characterization of Vernant may sound extravagant, since
most people would not call him an art historian at all but an historian of
religion. But Vernant's studies of the historical ontology of the classical
statue have been influential even amongst scholars with no connection to
the Paris School. The present volume simply would not exist without Ver-
nant's Collège de France seminars of the 1970s. Vernant's historicism was
extreme, and problematic, and yet profound in every sense. With charac-

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Vernant and the History of the Image 1 83

teristic acuity, he zeroed in on the crucial question: what is at st

is entailed, in the seemingly innocent application of the word "i
certain ancient artifacts? In so doing, he interrogated our agreem
disagreement, with criteria of identification, recognition, denom
and classification. What are the criteria by which we recognize a
image as such, and by which we recognize changes in style in im
time? Although Vernant's account has serious problems, as we sh
is truly exemplary in the sense that even its vulnerabilities are illu
Working through Vernant's arguments brings out very rapidly som
problems inherent to any historicist account of the image - probl
confront both culturalism and what, for want of a better term, I
neo-empiricism (the study of the "viewing experience").
Vernant begins from the crucial insight that figurai repre
tions were grouped with signs in the archaic period. The verb ypd
instance, could mean writing, drawing, and painting; ypdppaxa c
both letters and painted figures; orjpaxa, "signs," could be statues,
slabs, bird omens, or symbols. By the fourth century, however, ph
like Plato and Xenophon could think of figurai representation as a
mous category, distinct from signs. Not only that, but they could
figurai representation in a new way: as the imitation or pípr|Giç o
appearance. For Vernant, this change was momentous. He argued
amounted to the emergence of a new, historically specific class o
"The image properly speaking, that is, the image conceived as an
artifice reproducing in the form of a counterfeit the external app
real things" (Vernant 1991.152; emphasis added). The classical
Greece witnessed "the birth of images."
Vernant traces this emergence in a number of studies. In ge
he argues that all of early Greek statuary evolved out of "aniconic
mere slabs of stone and planks of wood. Such objects did not rep
means of imitation or resemblance but through substitution.2 For
all of archaic statuary was an extension and elaboration of this p

2 Vernant 1983.305-20, 1990.17-82, 1991.141-92. See also Eisner 1996. Mor

Steiner 2001.3-78 and passim follows Vernant's arguments. Although they a
chiefly from literary accounts, such argoi I it hoi, "unworked stones," have bee
a late seventh-century context near the Temple of Apollo at Metaponto in South
and in a sixth-century context at Paestum. Metaponto: Adamesteanu 1970. Paest
et al. 2001.39.

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184 Richard Neer

What we might call

a substitute or a stan
"sign."3 Its referent
a divinity (in the cas
votives). All were, in
were gone below, th
ephemeral act that sl
ence in the here and
mark absence while o
while giving it form

In the context of r
ration must produc
establish real conta
it, to make it prese
in the divine; yet b
size what is inacce
alien quality, its ot

Even in iconic statua

manner of a double"

It inscribes absence
which it makes visi
a substitute, appears
has gone far away,
that which belong

On this view, in shor

a chiastic interplay o
1991.168). Only in th
century - did the con
Vernant's interven
taking the identifica

3 Greek applies this last ter

nature of early Greek sta
nomenclature. In this re

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Vernant and the History of the Image 1 85

Vernant made it a topic of historical investigation. In so doing,

study of classical art to new types of questions and new types
the strict definition of a "paradigm shift." While one might qu
philology and the evolutionary history that he proposed, this
was nothing short of a landmark, and much of the most exc
Greek sculpture over the last thirty years shows his influence. Th
giant in the field of Greek religion, wound up being one of the
tant classical art historians of his generation as well.
Yet Vernant's work is not without difficulties. Specificall
has a tendency to elide a crucial distinction between what
image, properly speaking," an historically specific category t
in the classical period, and "the notion of figurai representat
broader term. This elision has important consequences for hi
overall, for it renders unclear the very nature of archaic art
was new about the classical image.
Sometimes it sounds as though Vernant is making a fairly
forward claim to the effect that a new concept of "the image" em
classical period. Earlier Greeks, accordingly, lacked this conce
they used the language of signs to talk about figurai represe
is, they classed figurai representations along with symbolic o
bird omens and alphabetic characters. Note that, on this view
follow that the Greeks made no distinction between figurai re
and symbols, anymore than the fact that the Greeks classed me
together as mortals would mean that they equated men with w
ogy is not identity.
At other times, however, Vernant seems to make a mu
radical claim. In this version, it is not merely the concept of
"properly speaking" that turns to have been absent from arch
is the very "notion of figurai representation" as such (Verna
emphasis added):

The notion of figurai representation does not just come

from itself. Neither univocal nor permanent, it is wha
might be called a historical category; a construct elabo-
rated, not without difficulty, through very different route
in different civilizations ... At the pivotal point of the
fifth and fourth centuries ... the category of figurai rep
resentation emerges in its specific features.

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 186 Richard Neer

When arguing in th
lacked the specifical
any concept of figur
like statues are in f
representation" is a
In the first, or we
"figurai representat
early Greeks could
ond, or strong, vers
"images properly sp
lacking the former
more interesting bu
One problem imm
sentation did not exi
statues were really
terion of identity f
If every civilizatio
of figurai represent
one "notion" with a
practical matter, th
philologists to recog
Here the example of
Paleolithic cave dwe
be sure, they need n
as "an imitative artif
appearance of real t
is not the same as l

4 All quotations to be f
can be tricky. In the spa
figuration" in eighth-cen
has "any relation whatso
tation in the strict sens
in its specific features"
from the eighth century,
Here "figurai representa
or imitation," that is, to
the key questions. In wh
is always the risk of for
5 bee lhe Birth ot Images in Vernant 199U.

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I Vernarti and the History of the Image 1 87

concept, Vernant and the rest of us ought not to be able to rec

cave paintings as paintings in the first place. By extension, there
be no good reason for Vernant to introduce kouroi into his discu
not ashlar blocks or retaining walls or spindle whorls. The very s
some artifacts (i.e., kouroi) as bearing comparison with "images
speaking" begs some important questions.
But the real issues lie deeper. The essence of Vernant's
argument is that the early Greeks did not experience, did not s
either as "figurai representations" or as "images properly speak
experienced them, saw them, as signs or "presentifications." So
tion is: what will count as experiencing something as a "figurai
tation" or an image? The question is one of criteria, and it hold
to our understanding not just of Vernant but of the problem he
problem of radical historicism in the history of art. How can w
what people saw, hence what counted as a figurai representation
image) in the Greek form of life? What will count as proof of
in this regard?
It is useful at this point to contrast Vernant's historicization
image with a better known exercise in the historical analysis of
Michel Foucault's account of Greek erotics.

Our carving of sexual behaviors into homo- and het-

erosexual is absolutely not relevant to the Greeks and
Romans. This means two things: on the one hand, that
they did not have the notion, the concept , of homo- and
heterosexual; and, on the other hand, that they did not
have the experience of them.6

Of course, Foucault was not out to deny that Greek men engaged in prac-
tices that would today cause them to be identified (and, in many cases, to
identify themselves) as homosexuals. Quite the opposite: that fact was his
point of departure. His argument was that the ancient practices were articu-
lated according to different criteria, proceeded under different rules and in

6 Michel Foucault, quoted in Davidson 2001.180-81. My reading of Foucault is indebted to

Davidson in every way. For other retreats to "erotics" as a comparison for the historicist
and essentialist dilemmas of the "art of art history" in antiquity, see Squire and Habinek
in this volume.

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 188 Richard Neer

different institutio
were certain physic
stancy is what enabl
place. On the other,
and experiencing th
fields were the top
his prime desideratu
It may sound as t
Like Foucault, he sa
that most moderns
image" and the exp
image as such" (the
the following analo

Statues : The Con

Sexual Behaviors

But this analogy wo

cault's claim is that
condition for being
the relevant behavi
but they were not
Foucault, that they
homosexual. But thi
a crucial difference between sexual behaviors and statues. The difference is

that a particular kind of experience is definitional of figurai representations.

That experience is: seeing the entity in question as a figurai representation
in the first place (as opposed to failing to see it as such, say by mistaking
it for "the real thing" or by walking past it all unawares). The experience is
a necessary condition of identity. In most cases, it is a sufficient condition
as well (an exception being cases where one mistakes something for a fig-
urai representation of that thing, as when a street performer stands so still
that passersby think he is a statue). Thus where the historian of sexuality
can distinguish between certain behaviors, experiences, and concepts, the
historian of images and figurai representations does not have this luxury.
Behavior, experience, and concept hang together in a distinctive way.

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Vernarti and the History of the Image 1 89

Another way of putting the matter is that images and fig

resentations are things, not a kind of behavior. To make the
Foucault, we should compare like with like, as in the followin

"Image Behaviors" : The Concept of "Image"

Sexual Behaviors : The Concept of "Homosexual"

"Image behavior" means, simply, seeing something in a certain

as a figurai or iconic representation (as opposed to not seeing
as when Nabokov's bird crashes into "the false azure of the w
mistaking a reflection for the sky). More specifically, it means
to this way of seeing: reacting, acknowledging in some mann
that one has seen that way. Such behavior is the real analog t
"sexual behaviors." But - and this is the crucial point - the ex
determined by the relevant behavior) is analytic to the concept
representation. This is not the case with erotic acts, which can
without invoking any first-person experience of them. Here
between the history of art and the history of sexuality breaks
But what will count as experiencing something as a depict
image, a figurai representation, what have you)? There is a fam
to this question in the second part of Wittgenstein's Philosop
gations. He is talking about a famous drawing that can be seen
duck or a rabbit (see below). He asks how we can tell which of
person has seen, which "experience" the person has had (duck
"What is the criterion of the visual experience? - The criterio
you suppose? The representation of 'what is seen'" (1958.19
Wittgenstein's point is that there is no better, more direct d
of the experience, no better evidence for "what we do," than s
representation. It is tempting to imagine that science could com
cue. A neuroscientist might want to prove that a subject has
experience by hooking him or her up to electrodes; if certain s
and are measured, then might not that data suffice to prove tha
has had the experience? Alas, such a causal, physiological explan
be of no help, for our descriptions do not invoke physiology. I
my experience of a picture, for instance, I do not say, "Now
cones in my eye are registering light and sending electrical im

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190 R ichard Neer

The Duck Rabbit; after

my visual cortex, cau

ence I have, electrod
Other hidden, inne
gestion that early Gr
process of interpreta
cognitively, to prod
operation work? Wit
as proposing an inner
interpretation. But th
tation had played a r
expression or "repre
a mysterious inner p
reading it makes no
process does no work
experience. If the Gr

7 To be sure, dissimulatio
a cloud is "very like a w
He is a courtier, after al
only way to tell whether

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Vernant and the History of the Image 191

images, then regardless of what they called those entities, thi

satisfy the criteria for their having had the relevant visual e
And what of concepts, as in "the concept of the image"?
tion is forensic. Just as "the representation of 'what is seen'" i
of the experience, so the experience should be the criterion o
(of a figurai representation). It gains us nothing to say that
treated certain objects as figurai representations, experienced
as figurai representations, talked about them as figurai repres
did not possess the concept of a figurai representation. For in
concept of a figurai representation would be, literally, useless
be no use, no behavior, to which possession or lack thereof
spond. Like the "inner materialization," it would be null.
But verbal expressions might not be the only evidence
use to demonstrate experience. Other forms of behavior migh
One might, for instance, adduce the intentional manufacture o
we are inclined to call figurai representations. Examples
kouroi , korai, grave stelai, and so on. Statues, no less than st
"representation[s] of 'what is seen,'" not in the Romantic sen
reveal their makers' subjective perception of the model, but
matical sense that they reveal the maker's perception of the
all, it is not a coincidence that a kouros looks just like a figur
tion. That is a criterion of its being a figurai representation.
a figurai representation because it looks like one, which is to
for us as a Greek "representation of 'what is seen.'"
But did it count that way for them, for the Greeks? H
the example of Lascaux is invaluable: we readily recognize th
the cave walls as figurai representations in the absence of an
ing evidence whatsoever. The paintings themselves are the b
evidence for what the cave dwellers saw. Just so, kouroi , kora
dence for what the Greeks saw. The visual facts are primary
A further example may clarify the point. One of the m
tant achievements of classical archaeology during the last ce
decipherment of the Greek writing system of the Bronze Age
Chadwick 1958). Through a combination of cryptography an
the British architect Michael Ventris assigned hypothetical so
the signs of this script. But his theory found confirmation on
signs, and their sound values, were juxtaposed with pictures
1952, a clay tablet was found at Pylos. It bore pictures of trip
ons; after each picture of a tripod there was a series of mar

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1 92 Richard Neer

a number, followed b
to the scheme Ventri
"tripod." The "Tripod
had tentatively assig
ment followed swiftl
The decipherment
signs (the characters
tripods). The compre
priority over the com
urai representations
the other way aroun
prehensible prior to t
grounds that of the sc
In its strong form
philology, which fin
Greek ones (crrjpa),
content in certain pie
The lesson of Linear
phenomenology grou
in these disciplines. I
thesis. Like Ventris,
hensibility of iconic
For example, he reco
Unlike Ventris, he th
lacked the very conce
statues and pictures
It is a perennially
old lumps of carved
ures themselves prov
theirs. Nothing show

8 It is not an uninterestin
paired word and image in
identification.
9I have not in this study
ments of Gell 1998. Inso
semiotics of what he call
of Vernant's historical sem
role of the "representatio

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Vernarti and the History of the Image 1 93

we have words like "statue" and "sign" ready-to-hand to name

their artifacts and concepts (cf. Wittgenstein 1993.133). Nothin
distance from them more clearly than the fact that they identi
Our words and the Greeks' words - the language games - are no
gruent when it comes to statues. But for all that, we do see c
of stone as figurai representations, effigies, icons, statues. W
concept whenever we see their stones in this way. Indeed, if w
do so, then we would have nothing to talk about. We would
sense blind to their statues, deaf to their words. As Wittgens
"The common behavior of mankind is the system of referenc
of which we interpret an unknown language" (1958 §206). In t
instance, the common behavior is seeing, responding to, and r
figurai representations as such. The question of whether early
ues were images or "presentifications" only arises against the
of this broad agreement in criteria and in judgments.
Where does all this leave the "art of art history" and, b
the questions of experience and culture with which we began?
most obviously, the presence or absence of a "cognitive-conce
tation" on art turns out to be incidental to the history of the i
as that history presupposes a mode of seeing that exists indepe
and is irreducible to, verbal discourse. Second, the visual evide
new dignity. In its strong or radical variant, Vernant's philol
render early Greek art occult. We are told not to trust our eye
suspiciously like statues are said to be, in reality, signs. It is a
digging up a marble kouros , an archaeologist needed to check
do a bit of research, before distinguishing it from a fieldstone
ing block.10 But this position turns out to be unintelligible. Th
of Vernant's historical ontology of the image bring out the log
of the historian's own visual experiences in any account of an
representations, or art, or visual culture, or "viewing experienc
It is, of course, a cliché of cultural history that we all s

10 Compare the following newspaper account of the discovery of the Sacre

"Suddenly the experienced excavation worker Tassos Boudroukas struck some
he immediately recognized as sculpted marble. It came from the left shoulder
kouros, lying on its stomach, as a rapid cleaning quickly showed" ("Find o
in the Kerameikos," Athener Zeitung , May 2002; my translation). The origi
be found at www.griechische-botschaft.de/weeknews/2002/mai/220502.htm
09.2008).

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1 94 Richard Neer

from within our cultu

is twofold. First, tha
lems (is particularly
experience is a criter
ond, that a commitm
images, is not somet
experiences - say, va
of the style or the s
tinguishable from g
But it would be wr
Just the reverse: Ver
others have stressed
ferent places in diffe
it is with representa
should not be minim
is, a potential compr
representations as su
Greeks did not posse
his central insight re
appropriate to call si
to call statues, and ev
less the Greeks did j
of the Greeks or to d
evidentiary priority
tion of that strangen
After Vernant, th
chimerical, a bit like
pedia" with which F
xxi). The interesting
is really a proper tra
"the set of other sta
the domain in which
it has to play."11 Wh
We cannot know w
on beholders - for a

11 Foucault, quoted (and

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Vernarti and the History of the Image 1 95

cannot know those effects without knowing the expressions to

give rise - for there is nothing else to know. Classical art hist
on this view, amount to the effort to correlate our description
ments, of artworks with those offered in ancient sources (whic
be "cognitive-conceptual meditations"). It would amount to att
historically informed accounts of particular artworks, "the intr
tion of the monument" (Foucault 1972 [19691.7). Phrased that
sound tame, even conservative, but the methodological implic
actually significant. In place of an anthropology or a sociology
art, we need an "historical criticism," even a phenomenology.12
as knowledge in this discipline is inseparable from aesthetics,
idea of an history of the image is inseparable from our voiced
certain carved stones and marked surfaces. Acknowledgment of
tions ought to be anything but conservative. On the contrary, af
the study of classical art, the production of such "intrinsic d
turns out to be an effort to think an impossibility or, more preci
with Foucault, "what is it impossible to think?" (1970 [1966].x

The University of Chicago

12 "Historical criticism": Baxandall 1983.

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