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Thursday September 12, 2013
Pompeii
We left it rather later than planned to catch the Pompeii exhibition at the BM and only just made it before the end date. The whole experience was great, focusing on day to day life and small objects and possessions which tell us about the real human side of the people that lived there. I have visited Pompeii and found it really amazing - but what amazes you at the site is the sheer scale of the town, buildings and streets, all still there and in tact. However, it's easy to overlook all the wonderful but smaller archaeological finds. While bringing some of the larger and impressive objects to exhibit (entire frescoes of a garden room for example), the focus is really on the objects of every day living (such as petrified/carbonised loaves of bread), and a whole active picture of working life, tavernas, gambling, and generally having fun.
I found the description of the demographic of the community quite interesting - there were a higher proportion of middle class citizens such as freed slaves, and you get an impression of a tolerant cosmopolitan and less formal society than say Rome itself (whether a correct assumption or not). I see it as Brighton compared with London, or San Francisco compared with New York. Perhaps because of the more down to earth nature of the inhabitants, (trying desperately not to reveal myself as a pretentious class-ridden snob here!), it has to be said that a lot of the every day objects do seem to be rather ... bawdy. Trinkets, artworks, and souvenirs, on a par I feel with the Manneken Pis, so much beloved of the English-folk abroad, and little working models of which adorned the drawing rooms of my aunts and uncles when I was a child.
We, restrained, nicely-brought-up British folk, at the exhibition kept finding ourselves smiling in amused embarrassment as we found ourselves closely examining household items of lamps, statues, or cake stands that turned out to be intimate portraits of priapi ("Good Heavens" "Well I never...")**.
** I note that the Daily Mail summarises this as "how depraved they were" whereas the Independent states they were "very unembarrassed about sex".
Here's a somewhat safer little portrait of a woman with a spindle - alongside which they had actual remains of spindles - not, thankfully, in any unconventional novelty forms.
They had also brought across some of the fossilised remains of the people of Pompeii, which were displayed in soft lighting with a suitably reverent air. Having made the people come to life as so very human, this seemed doubly poignant. They included the highly memorable Muleteer in his sad little pose found (near a mule) by one of the gates to the City. Goodness knows who or what his profession really was but he is the one you always remember from your trip to Pompeii.
I am never sure whether we regard these stone ghosts with true sympathy or whether it appeals to the Victorian Gothic Horror side to our characters - but whichever it is, these figures are fascinating. There have always been some few hundred (I think) such figures preserved, where the voids left in the ash were filled with plaster, however a recent technique using resin has created a woman with the most fantastic detailing down to the very folds of her clothing. This technique is very expensive which perhaps limits its full potential, but is obviously the future of this form of preservation and research.
Posted by Christina at 11:58 PM. Category: Art and Culture
