The Concept of Space in Theran Compositional Systemics

In Theran painting, the systemics system is especially complex, and it is different from that used by Egyptian and Mesopotamian artists. Theran systemics seem to consist of three compositional aspects which may be thought of as playing specific roles within the design, with individual motifs assigned to one of the three roles. The three aspects include a background, a series of elements over the background, and a framing device.

Aegean painting and other two dimensional figural work can easily be recognised in comparison with the styles of Egypt, Syria, Palestine and elsewhere because of a number of factors that distingnish the Aegean style. One of these factors is a concern for spatial relationships in the compositional arrangement. The compositional systems which characterise the painting of Thera, Crete and other parts of the Aegean are subtly different from those of other contemporary styles, and they help distinguish the purely Aegean character of the resulting images. Akrotiri, with its great number of examples from an early phase in this style, provides a glimpse of one of these systems in LM IA/LC IA.

The Swallows and Lilies fresco, in particular, has been discussed as an example of a new spatial relationship in monumental painting in which a concern for three dimensional views has reached important new dimensions (Betancourt 1977).

Several authors have discussed the spatial relationships in Theran paintings. Their researches have contributed substantially to our understanding of the paintings' compositional systemics, and the present contribution builds on these earlier studies. Basic work in this field has been published by Groenewegen-Frankfort (1951), Matz (1962), Iliakis (1978), Walberg (1986, 116-138), Morgan (1988), Laffineur (1990) and Blakolmer (1996). They isolated and described a number of the principles which operate in Aegean compositions, and Laffineur showed that some of the typically Cretan principles, like the use of a landscape element hanging down from the upper border, do not occur in large scale painting at Akrotiri, suggesting an essential independence of the local Theran style, although this element does occur in the decoration of pottery on Thera (Marinatos and Hirmer 1976, pl. 44). This independence was associated with local Cycladic tendencies in iconography as well, as shown by the work of Davis (1990) and Morgan (1990).

As Laffineur (1990, 246-247) has shown, Theran painting is characterised by a number of exceptions to the usual practices in perspective and spatial arrangement. In the most common arrangement of landscape elements, features like rivers and the sea are depicted from above, as an aerial view, while human beings and other elements are shown in profile from the side, with elements which are farther from the viewer painted above the nearer ones. This is the system used, for example, for the Meeting on the Hill, the Ship Procession and the Nilotic landscape in the West House (Doumas 1992, figs. 28-48; Pls. 1-3). It is widespread in the Aegean, occurring many times, as, for example, on the inlaid daggers from Mycenae, where the river, shown from above, acts as a background for fish that are shown in profile (Marinatos and Hirmer 1976, pl. 49).

Thera, however, has exceptions. Landscape is treated as an element to be shown in profile on the portion of the Nilotic scene from the West House with the mountains (Doumas 1992, figs. 30-34; Pl. 2), while the landscape is shown very differently in the Swallows and Lilies fresco (Doumas 1992, figs. 66-67). The rocks in the Swallows and Lilies fresco have usually been regarded as being in profile (Laffineur 1990, 247), which is probably correct, but one cannot be completely sure that they are not painted from above, as they bear a relationship to marine elements in the sea and in rivers, which are certainly shown from above (see, for example, the rocks in the sea in the miniature fresco in the West House (Doumas 1992, fig. 29)). A different system for landscape is in the Room of the Monkeys where the rocks are reduced to an interlocking pattern that seems to occupy all of the picture field up to the top of the composition and forms a background for the other elements (Doumas 1992, figs. 85-86). Yet another treatment is in the scene of the Antelopes and the Boxing Children where the landscape is reduced to a line below the figures, with an upper undulating border so abstract one is unsure whether it is even landscape at all (Doumas 1992, figs. 79-94).

Exceptions to the most common practice of handling spatial relationships are even more pronounced when one looks at the treatment of smaller individual elements. For animals and human figures, the usual system is very clear. The parts are flattened and treated as two dimensional renderings in profile or in full front. Colourful patterns can be put on the individual elements, but the patterns are flat, not distorted with curvature as in the natural world. For this treatment, the most pronounced exception is the flying swallows in the Swallows and Lilies fresco (Betancourt 1977). Some of the swallows are shown in a three-quarter view (Doumas 1992, figs. 71-72, 76), with the back wing at an angle and smaller than the near one, a clear example of close observation of the natural world, and perhaps the first instance of true perspective in ancient wall painting.

To reconcile all of these variations into a single coherent interpretation that explains the Theran treatment of pictorial space requires that we look at the way in which a composition is handled in Aegean painting in general, and in Theran painting in particular.

Systemics can be defined as the visual relationships resulting from the overall compositional and spatial organisation of a design. They are a complex product resulting from unconscious as well as conscious decisions. In Theran painting, the systemics of the designs are especially complex, and Theran systemics are different from the systems used by Egyptian and Mesopotamian artists.

Theran systemics seem to be based on three aspects. These three compositional considerations can perhaps best be considered as three levels in conception, because it is not necessary that they be rendered in successive painting stages.

COMPOSITIONAL ASPECT 1

The first compositional aspect is the setting. This is the background against which the action or symbolic iconography will be set. It can be blank, it can be set out with an undulating line for the ground, it can consist of panels of different colours, or it can be given a pattern or a series of patterns. The setting can have elements assigned to it, especially if they can be rendered in large, flat areas of colour or simplified design. This is the role played by the rocks and the river in the Blue Monkeys fresco (Doumas 1992, figs. 85-86) and by the areas of sea, river, land and sky in the West House miniature fresco (Morgan 1988).

COMPOSITIONAL ASPECT 2

The second compositional aspect involves the arrangement of individual elements on that setting. The elements can be observed in perspective, as the flying swallows are, or they can be flattened, as the dumps of lilies are in the same composition. Individual elements can be large, like the rocks in the Swallows and Lilies fresco (Doumas 1992, figs. 66-67), or they can be single figures or small groups. If the element is a group, as in the pair of boxing children or the pair of antelopes, overlapping is possible within the group (Doumas 1992, fig. 83); for single elements, overlapping is not a normal part of the system. The lack of overlapping between elements contributes substantially to the decorative quality of the style.

COMPOSITIONAL ASPECT 3

The final aspect is a framing device. The framing device can be a horizontal line or group of bands, as in the Sea Daffodils from the House of the Ladies (Doumas 1992, figs. 1-5), an undulating line as in the Room of the Ladies from the same house (Doumas 1992, figs. 6-7), or a floral band, as in the Room of the Antelopes and Boxing Children (Doumas 1992, fig. 79). It might be omitted entirely, or it might be a prominent part of the composition.

Because pictorial elements can be assigned to any of the three compositional aspects, they are treated differently in terms of their spatial relationships. The rocks in the Blue Monkeys fresco are different from the rocks in the Swallows and Lilies fresco because they are assigned to different aspects of the paintings; rocks in the background must be treated very differently from rocks used as an element of the main composition.

If the compositional systemics are thought of as these three aspects, the system of Theran pictorial space forms a unified style. Palm trees are in front of the background elements in the Nilotic scene in the West House because they are a different compositional aspect. The principles that operate within this style are peculiar to the Aegean, and one cannot assign values from other cultures to the Theran compositional systemics: spatial coherence is not a factor, as it is in high Renaissance Italian painting, and strict adherence to selected but consistent points of view, as in Egyptian painting (Schäfer 1974), or the system of reading a narrative from a specific direction, as in Mesopotamian reliefs (Winter 1991, 63), do not seem to be factors, either. The important point is not whether the sea in the West House miniature fresco or the rocks in the Blue Monkey fresco are seen from above or from the side; the crucial point is that if they are to fulfil their roles as a part of the background, they must be painted as large, flat, decorative elements. Whether they are an aerial view, a profile view, neither one, or a combination of both, is irrelevant.

For the swallows in the Swallows and Lilies fresco, one need not wonder how they can be so carefully observed from nature that they have three-quarter views and back wings in perspective while the flowers in the same composition are rendered in a much more schematic way. As individual elements, they can be assigned roles that have to do with functions like symbolism or visual emphasis rather than with the non-Theran view of spatial coherence.

Within this three-part compositional system, the Theran paintings display a remarkable amount of experimentation and innovation. The flying swallows are unique in the Aegean. Examples of similar compositions from Crete, like the flying bird on the stone 'Rural Shrine' rhyton from Zakros (Marinatos and Hirmer 1976, pl. 108), only point up the dynamic differences between the Theran and Cretan pieces. A bird on the rhyton flies above a landscape with architecture in it, so that it is set against a plain background very much as the swallows on Thera are, but the body of the bird is in profile and its wings are flattened and rendered at the same scale, so that the image has none of the life-like dynamic movement of the Theran swallows.

One ecan easily conclude that the Theran painters have a considerable amount of freedom within their system, and that they can experiment and innovate to a great degree, but the situation may be more complicated than this. The variations in style on Thera include not only differences in spatial representation, but in many other aspects of the style as well.

The explanation for this apparently wide ranging variation may have something to do with the size of our sample of ancient work. Perhaps we have only a tiny part of a very large tradition. At Pseira, before the modern excavations, it was thought that this small provincial town had only one wall painting. To our surprise, badly preserved painted plaster has been found in several other buildings. Perhaps wall paintings were much more common in the Aegean than was once thought. We may be dealing with a small surviving part of a tradition that consisted of literally hundreds of workshops, travelling throughout the Aegean and painting thousands of frescoes in every generation. Among those thousands of examples, variation would be inevitable.

One can understand this Theran system better if one compares it with an alternative way of depicting figural groups in landscape which is fundamentally different. A more complex, more integrated relationship between pictorial distances is depicted in a series of objects from LM IB-II found both in Crete and on the Greek mainland. Examples of this different system include the Vapheio cups (Marinatos and Hirmer 1976, pls. 200-207), the Harvester rhyton (Marinatos and Hirmer 1976, pls. 104-105) and a few other pieces. In this alternative system, the separation between aspect 1 (the background setting) and aspect 2 (the active elements before the background) is not present, and groups of figures are integrated within a landscape setting with substantial overlapping. In some of the contemporary pieces, like the Boxer rhyton (Marinatos and Hirmer 1976, pl. 107), even aspect 3 (the framing device) is no longer regarded as a separate and inviolate compositional device.

Because the pieces in this alternate system are separated from the examples at Akrotiri by both time and space, one cannot be sure if the tradition is a Cretan one, a later development, or both. However, it is worth noting that the seeds of this more spatially integrated system can already be detected in Theran painting. Some of the details in the paintings from the West House show hints of experimentation with a more integrated system of pictorial space in which it is not possible clearly to distinguish background from foreground, as plants are placed in both roles (Doumas 1992, figs. 31-32). Theran painters were truly innovative in their many approaches, and out of their tentative experiments would come the dynamic developments of the next chapter of Aegean pictorial depiction.

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