Chance your arms!
Lo, the winter solstice is upon us, when (for many of our readers, at any rate) the nights are at their very shortest. But as we move headlong into the festive season and out into the new year, we will see the light growing with every day, and we will slowly claim back the hours for diurnal creativy. So for the Antigone Winter Competition 2024 – now the eleventh in our long and distinguished series! – we encourage your own artistic faculties to shine forth in the world. Here we go then!
Describing imaginary works of art takes exceptional skill. It’s hard enough to make an accurate description of something that does exist. Try to ‘paint’ an accurate picture in words of your favourite painting and you will see just how hard it is to make someone else see what you have seen. The ultimate challenge is to describe a painting or sculpture so accurately that an artist could make a good copy without ever seeing the original.
Well, we aren’t asking you to do anything that hard, luckily. Instead, we’re asking the artists among you to try something even more impossible, and recreate either the Homeric Shield of Achilles (Iliad 18. 478–608, readable here) or the Virgilian Shield of Aeneas (Aeneid 8.623–713, readable here)… in two dimensions. Use one of these poet’s detailed descriptions to bring to life what was, in theory at least, a round shield with a coherent design. Any medium will do, so long as you draw or paint your version of the shield with your own hands.
Of course it’s easier said than done to use divine poetry to forge the divine creations of Hephaestus or Vulcan. But we believe in you! And remember: if you try to cheat with AI, then you will find that it’s going to copy from the magnificent 1821 “Shield of Achilles” that was designed by John Flaxman:
Please feel free to seek inspiration in this, or indeed in Flaxman’s illustrations to the Iliad and Odyssey (available here and here), or Attic vases, or Hellenistic friezes, or Roman sarcophagi, or Renaissance paintings, or all of these… or none of them. Just use your imagination, and the words of Homer and/or Vergil. But no AI!
Remember to scan or photograph your drawings and paintings clearly so that we can see all of the details; multiple images will be welcomed with open arms. And, on the basis of hard-won expertise, we remind those using 35mm cameras to remove the lens cap on their devices before snapping the image.
The deadline is midnight on 31 January 2025. As usual, there will be an under-18 and an 18-and-over category. Please email images of your artwork to competition@antigonejournal.com, stating your name, your home town, and the category for which you are entering. The prizes will be the same for both age groups this time round: £250 for the winner in each, £150 for second place, and five old-school Classics books for third place. Oh, and of course, buckets of kleos aphthiton / fama aeterna / undying glory will be poured upon all the podium-treaders! We look forward to publishing not just the prizewinners but the best of the rest in show.
Good luck, one and all!