WB Yeats

At first I want to thank you, for your answers. In second, I want to more specify my question, and explain what is the main intention.

My research tries to makes correct, or rather, most sensitive analysis of Celtic artifacts (also of Traco – Scythian artifacts, but my question wasn´t supposed to be about them) where I don’t try to examine some socio – cultural aspect of their culture (not in the first place) but and only the artifacts. In most analysis that I´ve met till now were artifacts analyze just as aspect of some “bigger picture” and the main focus was on e. g. cult, burial, militaries, mythology and so on. My effort is totally different. So I understand artifacts of each cultures as independent aesthetic objects (independent in the meaning of not needed to be limited by the established view of research), where is although needed to understand their context – context of creating, context of original understanding and of original (aesthetic) experience and context of their place in the creating culture. This all is needed to accept, and furthermore to fully respect, and so archeology, cultural studies and anthropology has very important place in my research. This is one way to use aesthetic optics on given artifacts, where I try to reconstruct the form and possibilities of aesthetic potential of them. But especially actual aesthetic theories are used and applied.

The second way how to combine aesthetic and protohistory (in the case of thraco-scythian artifact in the area of middle Europa still prehistory) is to apply todays optics in analysis and examine how has the role and the function of artifacts change, and besides it, how are they interacting (aesthetically) with present recipient or more with the world of Fine Art.

This are two premises crucial to my examination. And again, back to my question above. What I want to gain, are some more supplement sources and informations, besides M. Aldhouse – Green and L. Lengyel which represent not strictly speaking aesthetic sources and aesthetic examination, but iconological and symbolic interpretation of Celtic coins and sculptures, much closer to theory of art than aesthetics. Similar approaches but for other periods of human history are far more extended and more explicit and concrete in their use and conception. If archeologist use some kind of aesthetic theories, they don’t use their apparatus correctly and aesthetic terms are used very general and without understanding of aesthetics. So my intention was to extend bibliographical ground in my research – concrete analysis and interpretation of artifacts and add possible thoughts of original Celts and create interesting view on Celtic artifacts and artworks.

Hello,

here is some basic bibliography in French :

V.Kruta "L'art des celtes en Bohème"

P.-M.Duval "Les Celtes", Gallimard - L'Univers des formes

C.Eluère "L'art des Celtes", Citadelles & Mazenod

"Les Celtes", cat. expo. Palazzo Grassi 1991

These books constitute a minimal collection of articles and texts intended to the wider public but they do expose the classical opinions of archaeologists and historians of the french tradition on celtic art and aesthaetics

Best regards

For early Celtic art, try:

Castriota, David Richard,

Continuity and innovation in Celtic and Mediterranean ornament : a grammatical-syntactic analysis of the processes of reception and transformation in the decorative arts of Antiquity

Columbia University thesis, 1981