The Peloponnesian War

The artist statement for my upcoming art book on The Peloponnesian War by Thucydides.

One of the main sources of inspiration for artists over the centuries has been famous books. The Bible and Greek myth figure prominently across the history of art – one could easily argue they were the main subject matter from Cimabue until the 18th century – and in the 20th century, artists such as Salvador Dali and Robert Rauschenberg have portrayed Dante’s Divine Comedy, and Picasso, Ovid’s Metamorphoses (however quickly executed the drawings might look).

After reading Thucydides’ history of The Peloponnesian War, and realizing, somewhat surprisingly, that it hadn’t yet been conveyed as an art series, I decided to embark on the ambitious journey to retell the story, however fragmentary, using an iPhone as my tool and Greek vase paintings as my source imagery.

One might ask what the relevance of a 2,500-year-old history is to our technological society, far removed from the concerns of warring Greek city states, but many of the big questions on why people go to war – and the timeless, cruel qualities of human nature – are first raised in this book, which continues to give it a pressing relevance in contemporary society.

In this respect, The Peloponnesian War can be seen as a kind of Bible of military history, an ur-book of war. And I hope that by casting light onto the narrative in an accessible and contemporary format, it might contribute, in its own way, to the prevention of its occurrence in our own time.