Eros in Antiquity

Antonia Mulas – 1978
 

Slim coffee-table book containing photographs by Antonia Mulas and a brief introductory essay.  Despite its title, the book focuses exclusively on Greek art, with a bit of Pompeii thrown in.  Egypt, India, Persia and China aren’t dealt with at all.  (The concentration on Greece is perfectly fine, but I just think the title is a little misleading.)  There is nothing particularly artistic about Mulas’ photographs, and granted the book isn’t marketed as a showcase of her work.  This is an art book, with the ancient pieces represented as clearly and directly as possible.  In surveying the work of anonymous artisans on various walls, vases and cups – so often solid black figures on rust-colored clay backgrounds – one is struck by the continuity of Greek art through depictions of all areas of life; battles, religious ceremonies, athletics and sex are all treated with equal matter-of-fact admiration.  The depictions of sensuality are not rendered in a particularly modest nor salacious way.  The book makes you aware of the extent to which erotic art has typically been censored from histories and curriculum for purely prudish reasons.  But excising this vital element from the Greek aesthetic sensibility only leaves a conspicuous and confusing void.  The casual Greek comfort with nudity, sodomy, polyamory, homosexuality and pederasty may seem decadent or embarrassing to modern readers accustomed to having everything scoured and sanitized before it reaches their eyes, but if looked at objectively, this sampling of the erotic art of ancient Greek civilization is a fascinating snapshot of a healthy, humorous, body-centric worldview that is worthy of emulation rather than condescension.