Phenomenology and the Painted Vase

Most people today encounter ancient Greek vases as static, untouchable artifacts safely out of reach behind glass, in the quiet of a museum gallery. Once, however, these vessels were also useful objects, made to be held, filled, and generally used in a variety of settings, from the ritual to the quotidian. This volume considers these ancient vases together with the theoretical frameworks developed by pioneers of phenomenology such as Maurice Merleau-Ponty and Edmund Husserl, helping us experience Greek vases as they once were. The principles of phenomenology require that we understand objects as active participants in shaping the manner in which humans experience the world. A phenomenological perspective allows us to see how the function and use of Greek vases shaped both their visual appearance and the perceptual experience of themas well as our continued understanding of them todaywhile taking into account multisensory perspectives. With this