Powell’s Patterns 2, 11, 20, 25 is a series of nine sculptures created between 2018 and 2020.
These works explore four of the 29 Greek contingents that went to Troy as described in the Catalogue of Ships in the Iliad. The name of the series derives from the Homeric scholar Barry Powell, who noted patterns and structural similarities underlying this great catalogue.
While Powell’s theory is based purely on formal and structural analysis, I found that the pattern (which occurs only four times in entries 2, 11, 20, and 25) may also share thematic links. In this sculptural series I explore these links through nine significant characters. These are not necessarily the main characters named in each entry, but the ones whose presence serve as allusions to core themes in the larger poem.
The 9 sculptures comprising the series are derived from each entry as follows:
Entry 2 (Il. 2.511-516)
“Askalaphos and Ialmenos, sons of Arēs, led the people that dwelt in Aspledon and Orkhomenos the realm of Minyas. Astyokhe a noble maiden bore them in the house of Aktor son of Azeus; for she had gone with Arēs secretly into an upper chamber, and he had lain with her. With these there came thirty ships.”*
ARES ΝΟΣΟΣ, 2018
Constructed from a fishing buoy, outside spring callipers, trophy cups, lamp holder components, push switches, Mezzaluna, saltshakers, Jamboli food press blades, outdoor umbrella slider, wood, and enamel paint.
Ares ΝΟΣΟΣ
Entry 11 (Il. 2.591-602)
“The men of Pylos and lovely Arene, and Thryon where is the ford of the river Alpheus; strong-built Aepy, Kyparisseis, and Amphigenea; Pteleon, Helos, and Dorion, where the Muses met Thamyris, and stilled his minstrelsy for ever. He was returning from Oikhalia, where Eurytos lived and reigned, and boasted that he would surpass even the Muses, daughters of aegis-bearing Zeus, if they should sing against him; whereon they were angry, and maimed him. They robbed him of his divine power of song, and thenceforth he could strike the lyre no more. These were commanded by Nestor, charioteer of Gerenia, and with him there came ninety ships.”*
NESTOR ΔOΣIΣ, 2018
Constructed from a fishing buoy, Chilean Gaucho spur, spoon, bead, brass ashtray lid, brass bell, lamp holder components, wood, and enamel paint.
Nestor ΔOΣIΣ
THAMYRIS ΕΥΧΟΜΑΙ, 2019
Constructed from a bicycle brake disc, brass circular Bulb Taxi Horn, hand mixer beater, combination square centre head, pot lid, brass lamp-holder component, spring callipers spring, protractor leg, dart flight, wood, and enamel paint.
Thamyris ΕΥΧΟΜΑΙ
MUSE ΑΟΙΔΗΝ, 2019
Constructed from a trivet, dart, trowel, washer clip, fishing reel, microscope stand, spherical clock weight, Eclipse piercing saw frame, brass oil can, swing arm desk lamp shade, brass rod, decorative lamp-holder component, depth gauge frame, coffee plunger pot component, wood, and enamel paint.
MUSE ΜΝΗΜΗΝ, 2019
Constructed from a Moulin-Legumes food mill, egg separator, chalk line reel, pizza cutter disk, icing piping nozzle, Eclipse piercing saw frame, trigger lobster clasp, brass lamp-holder component, copper wire, wood, and enamel paint.
Muse ΜΝΗΜΗΝ
MUSE ΜΕΛΕΤΗΝ, 2019
Constructed from an aluminium candleholder, stove plate spiral, Eclipse piercing saw frame, Stanley Surform half-round plane, pulley, bead, rotary drill gear wheel, sugar bowl lid, guitar tuning pegs, thimble, nut, trophy cup feet, brass lamp-holder component, copper wire, wood, enamel paint.
Constructed from a fishing buoy, outside spring callipers, hand-forged outside callipers, Primus camping stove, pendant light fixture ceiling hook cup, combination square blades, Apsco Vacuhold pencil sharpener, tracing wheel, saltshaker foot, gate valve head, toast rack components, pepper grinder components, washers, wood, and enamel paint.
Entry 20 (Il. 2.676-680)
“And those that held Nisyros, Karpathos, and Kasos, with Kos, the city of Eurypylos, and the Calydnian islands, these were commanded by Pheidippos and Antiphos, two sons of King Thessalos the son of Hēraklēs. And with them there came thirty ships.”*
Constructed from a fishing buoy, cast iron three-legged pot, Jaffle toaster mould plate, outside spring callipers, rotary saw blade, cork pull, pickle fork, lemon juicer, wood, and enamel paint.
Entry 25 (Il. 2.729-733)
“Those, again, of Tricca and the stony region of Ithome, and they that held Oikhalia, the city of Oikhalian Eurytos, these were commanded by the two sons of Asklepios, skilled in the art of healing, Podaleirios and Makhaon. And with them there came thirty ships. The men, moreover, of Ormenios, and by the fountain of Hypereia, with those that held Asterios, and the white crests of Titanos, these were led by Eurypylos, the shining son of Euaimon, and with them there came forty ships.”*
ASKLEPIOS ΟΙΞΕΣΘΑΙ, 2019
Constructed from an aluminium light holder component, brass lampholder component, horseshoe, outdoor umbrella slider, can opener, vegetable peeler, brass ashtray lid, Fisher space pen refill, latch component, bead, wood, and enamel paint.
Background
Lists of people, places and objects are a common feature of the ancient artform of orally composed and transmitted poetry. Long overlooked as purely ‘decorative’ feats of memory, such catalogues are now believed to represent a different – albeit telegraphic – mode of storytelling. Created by means of the sculptural technique of assemblage, which the artist argues echoes the compositional methods of oral poetics, Powell’s Patterns 2, 11, 20, 25 is a sculptural exploration of four contingents from the list of combatants in Homer’s Iliad. These include the sons of the war god Ares, the old sage Nestor, the grandsons of the hero Herakles, and the sons of the physician Asclepius. Superficially, the only link between these four catalogue entries are the structural similarities first identified by the scholar Barry Powell. A deeper reading suggests that this structural connection reflects a thematic one.
Powell’s Patterns 2, 11, 20, 25 derives from an intersection of the ideas of three Homeric scholars: Barry Powell, Benjamin Sammons and Douglas Frame. In a 1978 article on the organization of the Iliad’s Catalogue of Ships, Barry Powell identified three basic patterns to which all its entries (except for the Athenian entry) conforms (See Powell, B. Word Patterns in the Catalogue of Ships (B 494-709): A Structural Analysis of Homeric Language. Hermes, Vol. 106, No. 2 (1978), pp. 255-264). Powell ascribed the catalogue’s “unusually firm structural substratum” to the functional requirement of organizing “highly heterogenous material without the support of plot or action” (1978, 255).
In this reading, differences between the catalogue and narrative formats need not prove that the catalogue is an archaic remnant or a later insertion, but instead reflects the challenge of retaining and transmitting large volumes of static “frozen” information within an evolving narrative.
In The Art and Rhetoric of the Homeric Catalogue (Oxford University Press, 2010) Benjamin Sammons proposes a more complex function for the Homeric catalogue format than the listing of objects, names and places. In Sammons’ analysis the catalogue assumes a distinctly rhetorical function – as a type of internal critique – in relation to narrative. He also argues that this aspect of the catalogue allows either real or invented allusions to external epic traditions against which the poet may “define the excellence of his own work relative to other competing epics” (2010, 209). In this reading, the formal attributes of the catalogue format (such as its paratactic syntax) represent an intentional differentiation between plot and commentary (that is often reflexive).
While Powell interpreted the patterns he identified in purely structural terms, Sammons’ approach to understanding the Homeric catalogue raises the possibility that these similarities could also serve a rhetorical function.
An analysis of four specific entries (2, 11, 20 and 25) in the Catalogue of Ships suggests that this may indeed be the case. Particularly when viewed in the context of Douglas Frame’s Hippota Nestor (Center for Hellenic Studies, 2009). Frame argues that the figure of Nestor – and specifically the stories Nestor tells about the past and his own youth – serves as a type of commentary on the events in the poem’s present. Frame does not draw any connection between his reading of Nestor and the Catalogue of Ships, concluding that “the catalogue operates outside Nestor’s old traditions and has its own agenda and resources” (2009, 132 n.27). However, the catalogue’s description of the contingent that came from Nestor’s kingdom of Pylos forms part of a set of only four entries to conform to a sub-pattern designated in Powell’s scheme as IIA IIB(1) IIC(2).
A core part of Frame’s thesis rests on the idea that the figure of Nestor retains and alludes to attributes associated with figures such as the Dioscuri and the twin gods of the Rig-Veda.
Three of the four entries that conform to the structural pattern IIA IIB (1) IIC(2) feature sets of brothers: the sons of Ares in entry 2; the grandsons of Herakles in entry 20; and the sons of Asclepius in entry 25. The only exception being Nestor’s own entry (11) which instead features two victims of the gods – the singer Thamyris who is maimed by the Muses and the Oichalian king Eurytos, who in the Odyssey was killed by Apollo.
In this sculptural series the interactions and cross-references between these seemingly unrelated figures are explored by means of sculptural assemblage. The combination and juxtaposition of previously unrelated elements in a sculptural assemblage in many respects echoes the paratactic syntax of the Homeric catalogue. In addition, the intentional ambiguity and reflexivity common to this art-form recalls Sammons’ characterisation of the Homeric catalogue as a form of internal critique and artistic self-definition.
Powell’s Patterns 2, 11, 20, 25 exhibition layout schematic
*All translations from the Center for Hellenic Studies