Image and Frame in Greek Art

The relationship of the pictorial image to the frame that contains it is a reliable and significant guide to form and style. The article attempts to examine this relationship in Greek art. The painted or sculptured figure interacts with its limits in one of five modes, each of which evokes distinct responses from the spectator, either fulfilling or frustrating his visual expectations. The first mode corresponds with "closed form"; its values of stability and order are achieved by the subordination of the image to the frame. The other four modes express varieties of the correlative "open form"; its values of motion, change, and even violence are achieved by release from visual confinement. The first part of the article describes the applicability of the five formal modes to vases and metopes of the Archaic and Classical periods. The second part applies the principles of closed and open form to a specific and crucial change in the Greek vase painter's conception of his surface: in the Orientalizing reaction to Geometric art, the narrative power of open form is discovered.