Under Pompeii’s Ashes:
Contesting Roman Identities Contesting Roman identities and beyond: week 7 MWF 10:00-10:50 Eva Mol This week • Roman art and Pompeii • Visual culture and Roman art in houses • RISD Museum ART?
• the expression or application of human creative skill and imagination, typically in a visual form such as painting or sculpture • producing works to be appreciated primarily for their beauty or emotional power
Roman art?
• What we call “Roman art” was not “art” as far as Romans were concerned • “Roman art” is a modern category; it fulfills modern expectations of “art” • Art to us • Art to Romans • Visual culture Style
• Greek ‘copies’ • Eclectic-visual culture • Official versus private (otium/negotium) • Arte Plebea
Greek vs Roman art
We cannot be so elegant, let us be more forceful They win in terms of refinement, let us excell in weight Their sense of propriety is more sure, let us surpass them in our copiousness Even te lesser talents of the Greeks have their harbours, we are usually driven by larger sails. So let them be filled by a stronger wind
Quintilius, marcus fabuis Quintiianus, 35 AD Roman spain. Educated in Rome
Roman copy myth
• Hallet: Roman’s did copy: authenticity • Gazda: no they did not: emulation
Focus on original
• http://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/thanks- sneaky-scanners-anyone-can-3d-print-copy-nefertitis- bust-180958213/?no-ist
• For the first time since the sculpture was excavated and stolen over 100 years ago, the iconic artefact will be shown in Cairo... With the data leak as a part of this counter narrative we want to activate the artefact, to inspire a critical re-assessment of today’s conditions and to overcome the colonial notion of possession in Germany. New copycriticism: 3D print
“hacked Nefertiti is an accusation against western museums”
If you’ve ever fancied having Nefertiti’s likeness on your shelf at home, it’s now eminently achievable. Roman sculpture- not just Greek copies -Copying -Interpretation -Adaptation -Innovation -Appropriation Copying
Ernst Gombrich
• Vienna, 1909 – Londen 2001
• Art and Illusion, A Study in the Psychology of Pictorial Representation • Artist begins not with his visual impression but with his idea or concept- schemata
Arte Plebea
• Lower class art • Private art • otium (leisure) and negotium (the world of business, politics, and public service) Tomb of the Baker (Eurysaces) relief, Rome (Porta Maggiore) 50 BC: ‘native plebeian’ style
Bianchi Bandinelli arte plebea
- one style is not necessarily of higher aesthetic value than the other - each is determined primarily by class interests - Dualisms entrenched in Bianchi Bandinelli’s theory—classical/unclassical and patrician/plebeian
Petersen
• Most surveys of Roman art tend to present a narrative that is biased toward the capital city of Rome, thereby privileging monuments produced by and for the emperors and the imperial retinue
Revival of styles was a defining principle
Ahenobarbus altar
Plebeian art should be integral to Roman art until we question some of the biases that drive the elite/non‐elite dualism (namely an unqualified valuation of Hellenic‐looking art), and ask new questions of plebian art (rather than putting it in a self‐evident stylistic container), we will continue to construct a history of Roman art that places on the margins that which was omnipresent and which actually tells us a great deal about the Romans
Statuephilia exhibition in the British Museum: female beauty as context
Under Pompeii’s Ashes:
Contesting Roman Identities Contesting Roman identities and beyond: week 7 MWF 10:00-10:50 Eva Mol This week • Roman art and Pompeii • Visual culture and Roman art in houses • RISD Museum Art and Agency in the Pompeian House
• Religion • Mythological paintings • Sculpture Art and agency
• Reacting to works of art as if they were living beings or even people acting (agency), entering into a personal relationship with them, triggering love, hate, desire or fear. • In this way for Gell works of art, in all cultures, are able to create shared common sense • Representing the gods Identity and Art Gell’s notion of the distributed person
• the idol (for example) is not merely a visual representation of the deity, but a bodily extension of its personhood – a sort of prosthesis.
Shrines
Paintings of the villa at Boscoreale Neapolis Herculaneum
Boscotrecase Boscoreale
Oplontis POMPEII
Stabiae Villa of the Farnesina, Rome Villa of the Mysteries, Pompeii
Villa of P.Fannius Synistor, Boscoreale
Casa dell’Ara Massima Casa dell Frutteto House VII 2, 14 Museo Archeologico Nazionale di Napoli Pompeii, VI, Museo Archeologico Nazionale di Napoli Insula Occidentalis Pompeii, Casa di Terentius Neo VII, 2, 6
Style
“In effect, what we see at Pompeii [in wall painting] is none other than Greek art mutated at Pompeii through Rome, and therefore not more than a pale reflection.” From the catalogue of an exhibition by among others the superintendencies of Rome and Naples, Leiden University and the British School at Rome, edited by Joanne Berry 1998
House as a memory theatre
Zeus and hera on mount ida Panel of Achilles surrendering Briseis to Agamemnon “..not just the memory of those stories, but traces of the styles of lost Greek or Hellenistic encaustic panels that had been created centuries earlier. Visual models, then, were projected into this space, transforming the domestic and ancestral focus into an open reception hall, in this case, into a pinacotheca for the display of famous works of art.”
Casa dei Vettii
-Punishment of Ixion -Daedalus and Pasiphae -Dionysus discovering Ariadne -Death of Pentheus -Punishment of Dirce -Infant Herakles strangling the snakes -Wrestling match between Pan and Eros -Cyparissus -Achilles on Skyros -Herakles and Auge -Ariadne abandoned by Theseus -Hero and Leander
Trimalchio’s Party: nouveau riche gone wrong • Satyricon by Petronius • A dinner party at Trimalchio’s house • former slave, who has become very wealthy • Bald, fat, wearing a scarlet robe and weighed down with jewelry • palace with ‘four dining-rooms, twenty bedrooms’ • sixteen people are invited The Breakers, Newport
• The Great Gatsby - F. Scott Fitzgerald First course – A bronze donkey bearing a double pannier of olives flanked by a gridiron of sausages, damsons and dormice coated with poppy seeds and honey. Second course – A wooden hen sitting on a nest full of peahens’ eggs, which in turn contain garden warblers cooked in spiced egg yolk. Third course – A zodiacal arrangement of hors d’oeuvres concealing a surprise dish of winged hare surrounded by stuffed capons and sows’ bellies. Fourth course – Whole wild boar accompanied by pastry suckling piglets and filled with live thrushes. Fifth course – A hog stuffed with sausages and meat puddings. Sixth course – A boiled calf wearing a helmet, sliced up by a slave dressed as the hero Ajax who serves the meat on the point of his sword. Seventh course – A statue of the fertility god Priapus whose paunch holds a medley of saffron- squirting cakes and fruits. Eighth course – An array of boneless fattened chickens served with pastry-capped goose eggs. Ninth course – Thrushes made out of pastry, stuffed with nuts and raisins, accompanied by quinces. Tenth course – A dish of pork dressed up to look like a fattened goose garnished with birds and fish. Eleventh course – Water jugs full of oysters and scallops accompanied by a gridiron of snails. Twelfth course –a rooster which had crowed early (regarded by the superstitious host as a bad omen) is captured, slaughtered, pot-roasted in wine and served to the guests, who somehow find the appetite to devour it. House of Octavius Quartio “In effect, what we see at Pompeii [in wall painting] is none other than Greek art mutated at Pompeii through Rome, and therefore not more than a pale reflection.” Casa degli Amorini Dorati