Acrocorinth 1920s

The Peschke show has forced me to revisit some canonical images of Greek landscapes and I have revisited one of the most important photographic publications on Greece, the Wasmuth volume on Greece, Hans Holdt and Hugo von Hoffmanstahl, Griechenland: Baukunst, Landschaft, Volksleben (Berlin, 1923). This volume constitutes a landmark in the history of visualizing Greece within the German tradition. The subtitle tickled me a bit because it corresponds closely to the thematic divisions that I have given to Peschke's ouevre in the show: Buildings, Landscapes, Folk Life.

Thrilled to find a copy of Griechenland in F&M's library, I sought out photographic analogs for Peschke's placement in the landscape. We know that Peschke used photography in his archaeological and artistic work, and must have been cognizant of the German photographic tradition of a decade earlier. I discovered, for instance, that Acrocorinth (1932) was painted at the same location as Griechenland, pl. 68. In designing the exhibit at F&M, I had placed this photo in proximity to the painting. Holdt's photo and Peschke's paintings, moreover, have proven to be invaluable documents in the on-going archaeological survey of Acrocorinth. I was thrilled that a bunch of archaeologists that were attending Masons at Work: Architecture and Construction in the Premodern World last weekend made it to the show at Bryn Mawr and will be able to use Peschke's paintings to reconstruct missing walls. Stay tuned for more on this topic.