by Jon Lackman | 18 September 2006 | Ancient, Books
Also in CAA Reviews, Genevieve S. Gessert writes:
“The title of Peter Stewart’s Statues in Roman Society subtly delineates the major premise of his innovative study: that the modern notion of sculpture hinders our ability to understand the quotidian functions of statues within Roman society. As explained in his introduction, ‘classical art history has generally been concerned with Roman sculpture as a kind of art, not Roman statuary as a remarkable accumulation of objects working in society.’ Using a variety of approaches, Stewart attempts to reintegrate Roman statues into their physical and social contexts, and at the same time, to provide a thought-provoking criticism of some of the conventional methodologies that have created this separation … Stewart’s book is difficult to classify, and he makes clear from the outset that it is not strictly a sociological investigation. But Statues in Roman Society is also not a work of art history in the conventional sense … Stewart devotes little space to the well-studied major monuments, and instead concentrates his efforts on close analysis of the texts, inscriptions, and smaller artifacts (coins, lamps, etc.) that collectively offer clues about the ways Romans classified, depicted, and physically interacted with statues. His interest lies primarily in social responses to statuary in general as opposed to the reception of individual pieces, and therefore he is less concerned with artistic style, iconography, typology, or chronology … Stewart generally seeks to reexamine the taxonomies traditionally used to analyze Roman art and society … Analyses of Roman art which are based on absolute categorization (religious vs. secular, public vs. private, etc.) force ancient statuary into a modern social framework, yet classification is still valuable provided it is undertaken from an ancient perspective. Therefore Stewart rejects such recently conceived taxonomies, and instead begins his study with a detailed analysis of the vocabulary that the ancient Romans themselves applied to statuary …
Stewart has set himself a monumental task, and his broad scope and innovative approach at times undermine the strength of his argument. Stewart often describes his project in terms of what it is not, and occasionally seems reluctant to state directly his most important (and contentious) ideas at the beginning of each chapter. For this reason, it is often difficult to keep track of his multifaceted argument across the disparate topics and evidence he presents, and the work does at times read like a collection of related essays rather than a unified monograph, particularly in the later chapters. Much of this lack of continuity is remedied by Stewart’s conclusion, which cogently summarizes his wide-ranging theories and suggests directions for further research. It is in the latter area that his study is most significant, for it poses a myriad of novel and necessary questions about statues and their collective role in Roman society. Though Stewart’s answers to these queries may be contentious, he has undoubtedly created an impetus for scholars of Roman art and society to consider Rome’s ‘other population’ in entirely new ways.”
