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Peintre de Léningrad

Red-figure Column Krater: Men Celebrating the Komos

Artist

Peintre de Léningrad
Active in Attica, Greece, 480-460 B.C.E.

Title

Red-figure Column Krater: Men Celebrating the Komos

Materials

Earthenware, painted decoration

Dimensions

45.3 x 45 x 38 cm

Credits

Purchase, inv. 1946.Cb.2

Collection

Archeology and World Cultures

Dionysus was not only the god of wine but also of revelry, creativity, instinct or impulse, and ecstasy, as well as madness, violence and savagery. He is a reminder of the highs and lows the ancient Greeks associated with chaos, anarchy and a world with a lack of self-control. Grouping into one individual the seemingly opposing character traits of ecstatic and blissful abandon on the one hand, and savagely brutal violence on the other, have been a subject of interest for modern philosophers, including Friedrich Nietzsche. Nietzsche believed that by cultivating our own tragic disposition, like Dionysus, only then can we reach our true capacity to achieve human greatness. The Komos procession, pictured here, was a ritualistic procession performed by drunken revelers without any script or leader.

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