My Laocoon: Alternative Claims in the Interpretation of Artworks (Discovery Series) Book

Analyzing the theme, provenance, and history of the Vatican Laocon, Richard Brilliant traces the interpretation of this masterpiece of Greco-Roman sculpture through the ages, showing how these interpretations have shaped its reception. The Vatican Laocon has suffered the vicissitudes of changing tastes, differing agendas of incompatible interpretations, and relegation to the margins of aesthetic preference. Several Laocons are identified in this erudite and strikingly original study: the alleged, lost "Greek original" the extant marbles sculpted in the first century; the sixteenth-century restoration and its impact; the eighteenth- and nineteenth-century topos of critical judgment; the twentieth-century re-restored artifact of ancient art. Yet, the Vatican Laocon contains all of them in its obdurate self, and My Laocon treats their history as a means of demonstrating an artwork's power to transcend its critical reception.Read More