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Document Details :

Title: Seeing Like a City
Subtitle: Eikôn and Andrias in Hellenistic Civic Culture
Author(s): MA, John
Journal: Pharos
Volume: 22    Issue: 1   Date: 2016   
Pages: 99-114
DOI: 10.2143/PHA.22.1.3285003

Abstract :
What is eikôn? Epigraphical examples accompanying actual ancient statues (notably a remarkable early Hellenistic dossier from Erythrai, concerning the statue of the tyrannicide Philitas) allow us to read the word in concept, as an image emanating from or produced by material means (the andrias). The workings of eikôn represent a body of civic thinking about art and images, that reflects the political culture of the Greek civic state. This communitarian connoisseurship determined production, appearance and reception of Hellenistic: if the actual works of this civic art of mostly lost, some playful variants or reactions to it allow us to capture some of its effect.

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