Apotropaic Middle Ages laughter: Visions of the Sacred Obscene in Classical Greece
Manuel ÁLVAREZ JUNCO
Original title: La risa apotropaica medieval: visiones de lo obsceno sagrado de la Grecia Clásica
Published in Music in Antiquity, Middle Ages & Renaissance
Keywords: Apotropaic, Classical Greece, Evil eye, Middle Ages, Romanesque, Sacred obscene.
In classical Greece, the images of the apotropaic –protector against evil eye, satanic spirits or misfortune–, together with their magical and sacred aspects, combined the grotesque, the obscene and the laughable. This article delves into the analysis of this surprising conjunction in the symbolic visualizations of that culture, pointed out by some authors as belonging to the “sacred”. It also analyzes them as a possible origin of the images of explicit obscenity of the carvings on the exteriors of many buildings of the European Middle Ages, such as the spinaries, sheelas, double-tailed mermaids, moons, gargoyles, caganers, etc.
Graphic parody in classical Greece
Manuel ÁLVAREZ JUNCO
Original title: La parodia en la Grecia clásica
Published in Mirabilia Journal 34
Keywords: Classical Greece, Figurative ceramics, Graphic parody, Visual humour.
What we now call graphic humour did not emerge until the 19th century with European and American periodicals. Tracing its precedents in the figurative ceramics of classical Greece is the reason for this study, focused exclusively on graphic parody. To find it, it has been necessary to contextualize its opportunity and analyse its specific visual resources. If a culture like the Greeks provided us with the formal, conceptual, and aesthetic bases of Western civilization, this article delves into the figurative counterpoints developed by these fundamental ancestors of ours.
Humorous Discourses on Classical Greek Pottery
Manuel ÁLVAREZ JUNCO
Original title: Discursos humorísticos de la cerámica griega clásica
Published in The World of Tradition
Keywords: Classical Greece, Conceptual wit, Iconography, Visual insight.
The figurative pottery of classical Greece developed some visual discourses recognizable in the current Western humorous graphics. An important legacy of these significant images, of a high-quality technical workmanship and artistic expressiveness, has reached our times. This paper shows and analyses some examples of that visual world and its communicative methodology. The festive, the comic and, above all, the conceptually witty, has been the criteria followed for their selection.
