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List of contents
List of Illustrations
Preface
Acknowledgements
Introduction
Chapter 1: Seeing Differently
Chapter 2. A Homeric Object
Chapter 3: Sculptural Assemblage and the Composite Object Portrait
Chapter 4: Homeric Iconographies
Chapter 5: A Catalogue of Shapes 2010-13: Descriptive Catalogue of Artworks
Chapter 6: A Composite Object Portrait of an Oral-Formulaic Homer
Conclusion
Notes
Bibliography
Index
About the author
Charlayn von Solms is a sculptor in Cape Town, South Africa. She has held three solo exhibitions and participated in various group shows. She has lectured at the Michaelis School of Fine Art of the University of Cape Town, South Africa, the Department of Fine Art of the University of the Free State, South Africa, and the Department of Informatics and Design, Cape Peninsula University of Technology, South Africa.
Summary
In the popular imagination, Homer as author of the Iliad and the Odyssey, epitomises poetic genius. So, when scholars proposed that the Homeric epics were not the unique creation of an individual author, but instead reflected a traditional compositional system developed by generations of singer-poets, swathes of assumptions about the poems and their 'author' were swept aside and called into question. Much had to be re-evaluated through a new lens.
The creative process described by scholars for the Homeric epics shares many key attributes with the modern visual art-forms of collage and its less familiar variant: sculptural assemblage. A Homeric Catalogue of Shapes describes a series of twelve sculptures that together function as an abstract portrait of Homer: not a depiction of him as an individual, but as a compositional system. The technique by which the artworks were produced reflects the poetic method that scholars termed oral-formulaic. In both of these creative processes the artwork is constructed from pre-existing elements: such as phrases, characters, and plot-lines in the epics; and objects, fragmented items, and borrowed forms in the sculptures. The artist/author presents a largely unknown characterisation of Homeric poetics in a manner that emphasizes the extent and complexity of this Homer’s artistry.
Foreword
A study that looks at how the oral composition of the Homeric epics can be expressed through sculptural assemblage.
Additional text
This is a work which uses an original approach between essay and catalogue, and is fascinating in its transposition of Homeric art onto the language of contemporary sculpture.
