The Reading Room is currently packed with Roman remains and with visitors attempting (or pretending) to look at them. The latest blockbuster at the BM (sponsored by Goldman Sachs) looks set to exceed all other oversubscribed sensationalist exhibitions, with more than 250 objects in a mazy but airy layout. When I first heard about this show, my main concern was how it could possibly compare or compete with the experience of visiting what’s actually left of the cities of Pompeii and Herculaneum in Italy. The principal attraction of this subject for those with some interest in the fine arts must be the famous wall-paintings, and how could these be transported to London? Yet, as is swiftly apparent on entering the display, there is enough here to make even the specialist excited.
The hopeful viewer is greeted by three dramatic objects at the exhibition’s entrance: a fresco fragment of lovers drinking, a carbonised table (very similar to the painted one in the fresco behind) and a cast of a dog that perished in the disaster, looking rather like a convoluted stone sculpture. If these are not enough to grab your attention, then settle down in front of a wide-screen film nearby about how like life now it was in AD 79 when Vesuvius was about to erupt and seal the two living cities in mausolea of ash and lava. The small seaside town of Herculaneum was destroyed by what has been described as a ‘fatal pyroclastic surge’ (a dense mass of very hot ash, lava fragments and gases), while the industrial city of Pompeii was buried in ash and pumice. A great deal was preserved and artefacts are still being excavated: this show combines recent discoveries with earlier finds and focuses on the Roman domestic set-up in order to provide a picture of ordinary daily life.
The lares et penates, the gods of hearth and home, will probably not be best pleased to find their precincts transported to London, and I don’t expect they will be satisfied by the filmed reconstructions or photographic displays, or even the twittery jingly soundtrack, interspersed by the watery burbling of a fountain. All this is rather fake and trying too hard to set the scene, though some context is of course needed. However, the objects themselves soon begin to exert their magic: the ordinary inscriptions (an electoral notice, for instance) or the frescoed Phoenix inn sign — not of very high quality, but a sight more interesting than most pub signs today. Wind chimes and red pottery tableware all add to the crowding impressions. But the exhibition really livens up in the Atrium section, with some beautiful sections of mosaic (a lovely portrait of a woman, a guard dog from the House of Orpheus, one depicting fish sauce). The spirits lift and the imagination begins to take wing.
I wish I could advise you not to look at the labels, but you probably wouldn’t listen and natural curiosity would no doubt get the better of you. So you’re likely to notice that the label-writers felt the need to define ‘phallus’ as ‘erect penis’. Who exactly do they think they’re doing this for — ignorant children or ignorant adults? And is the term ‘erect penis’ likely to cause less giggling among the school kids (of all ages) than ‘phallus’? I think not. This kind of dumbing down does the British Museum no service: best to try to ignore it and concentrate on the very real beauty of some of the exhibits. There are plenty of things to marvel at: the washing bowls and gold jewellery, the glass window panes, a chunky carbonised linen chest, or a bedroom oil lamp in the shape of a substantially endowed satyr. (Don’t mention the p-word.) The distinctly unerotic bedroom scenes are put in the shade by a very lovely fresco of Flora, goddess of fertility and abundance, set against a vernal green background.
By far the best and most encompassing exhibit is the garden room from the House of the Golden Bracelet, consisting of three almost complete frescoed walls and an over-door. Decorated with patterns of foliage, garden furniture and birds, this is a superb and tranquil example of informal domestic architecture, much more worth the entrance fee than the lusty Pan and nanny goat sculpture round the corner, though it’s quite extraordinary that there’s no postcard of the latter available — a very serious missed sales opportunity.
After the frescoes, I found the mosaics of greatest interest, particularly one featuring a jolly skeleton swinging wine jugs. (The use of line is wonderfully economic and expressive: Patrick Caulfield must have known and admired such designs.) And I also liked the incised graffiti on one of the frescoes, of hunters and stags and boars, perhaps drawn by naughty (and possibly bored) children. Some will find the dormouse jar or the charred loaf or dish of carbonised figs strangely moving, but it was the cast resin human figures that brought home to me the reality of this holocaust.
The favourite fact about this exhibition is that more than 45,000 tickets were pre-sold. Obviously the BM wants the show to be a great success and needs the revenue (the basic admission charge is £15, so we’re talking decent money), but if I’d pre-sold that many tickets I’d keep quiet about it, because the show can only be packed to the gunnels in those circumstances, which means that you will be able to see little and contemplate less. But the fact that this ticket figure is so delightedly bandied about indicates recognition of a recent development in our society — that culture has become the new leisure and entertainment industry. There will be many more people who will want to go to the BM simply because tens of thousands of their friends and contemporaries have been, than those who are serious enthusiasts or genuinely curious. To be able to say you’ve seen Life and Death will be, in certain circles, more important than being able to discuss or describe a particular mosaic or fresco fragment that especially beguiled you. As a committed British individualist, I abhor this herd instinct and wish I didn’t have to condemn overcrowding in exhibitions, but this is no way to see art.
If you really want to appreciate the wonders of Pompeii and Herculaneum, go to Italy; but if you’re happy to be a squashed and sticky statistic, queue for the BM’s latest fund-raiser.
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