Tag: polychromy

Everything old is new again

Old fossil that I am – or, rather, on my way to being – I read with interest this review by Liam Shaw in the London Review of Books. The book in question: Remnants of Ancient Life: The New Science of Old Fossils by Dale E. Greenwalt, Princeton, March 2023.

Shaw’s piece has a lot of very interesting references; whether they are his own or come from Greenwalt I am not sure. For instance, Michael Crichton; I am of the generation that belatedly discovered a fascination for the Jurassic and recall being very open to the possibility of dinosaur DNA being preserved in fossilized mosquitos or the like – and was absolutely terrified of velociraptors. And I also took notice of those first reports – from not so very many years ago – that dinosaurs had, not only ‘beautiful plumage’, but colorful ones as well! Here are some nice pages at the University of Bristol, where some of the leading paleontologists in the field are stationed. And to stretch the powers of the imagination even further:

Shaw also points to a piece by Francis Gooding in the LRB (Vol. 41 No. 1 · 3 January 2019) which discusses Stephen Brusatte’s 2018 best seller The Rise and Fall of the Dinosaurs.

Then there are the long ago ‘fossil’ observations of one Athanasius Kircher, who I came upon during a reading of Daniel Kehlmann’s novel Tyll a few years ago, and his and Steno’s struggles to reconcile there observations in the natural world with their Christian faith. (I actually have in my possession at this time an academic collection of writings about Kircher which I may be inspired to dip into.)

And, in the not so natural world, Shaw mentions another abiding interest of mine: the struggle to come to terms with a colourful past that is contrary to the long accepted white aesthetic. New to me that a landsman should be one of those.

Thank God and every other god there is
That time is an aesthete
Who strips the colours from the Parthenon.
We are left, were it not
For the play of shadow,
With the acres and square miles
Of Fuseli’s white ghost-flesh
But it beats the polychromatic
Crap out of the Disneyland
That antiquity once was.
[lines 845-854] The River in the Sky, Clive James, 2018.

One may think we are talking about two very different things here – science and art, if you will – but Liam Shaw in the conclusion to his article says: ‘Like sculptures, fossils need curators.’ And, seemingly echoing the sentiments of Greenwalt, that, faced with ever newer technologies, ‘Extracting new information from old fossils is a question of knowing what to look for – but it’s also a question of knowing when to stop.’

Murder in Trieste

I intermittently catch the BBC Radio 3 cultural program “The Essay”, and are often surprised by its content, but it actually took an article in the Frankfurter Allgemeine to alert me to these episodes (still available as I write on Sounds) about the circumstances surrounding the 1768 murder in Trieste of Johann Joachim Winckelmann – considered to be one of the first practitioners of what we would now call art history and archaeology. I say that, but it is more. The cultural historian, Seán Williams, is also telling the wider narrative of a celebrity “gay life” (and death) during the Enlightenment – what could be done and what not, where and with whom – and how it has been interpreted in the afterlife, both in respect to Winckelmann but in the myth building around cultural icons.

Johann Joachim Winckelmann (1717–1768) by Anton Raphael Mengs ca. 1777 (The Met object ID 437067)

Winckelmann interests me. He turns up in this blog post, in which I touch upon newer research and reconstruction methods in polychromy that supports the view that the artifacts of antiquity were very colorful indeed; running counter to the monochromatic orthodoxy which had first arisen during the Renaissance but the certainty about which began to crack during the Neoclassical period of the 18th century – a cultural movement and time of which Winckelmann was a “mover and shaker”. Under nearer scrutiny, traces of pigment were being observed for the first time on objects, and even Winckelmann (albeit belatedly) changed his stance. But, by the 20th century, and for whatever reason – racism, the aesthetic of fascism it has been suggested – all the scholarship and practical methodology of the 18th century was being rejected in favor of the marble white, purity narrative, and prevails still in the contemporary consciousness. The latter is hardly surprising when the artifacts and fragments on display in the museums of the world mostly have very little pigment remaining, and labels are not always explanatory.

As I say, Johann Joachim Winckelmann interested me anyway, but Sean Williams’ radio essay has added an extra dimension. (Here, in his own words, a short accompanying text.)

Coloring antiquity

This NYT article alerted me to the Metropolitan Museum of Art exhibition entitled Chroma: Ancient Sculpture in Color; an adaptation it seems of that which I viewed at the Liebieghaus (the home, so to speak, of many of the exhibits) in Frankfurt – there called “Gods in Color” – in February 2020, and about which I posted here. In fact, various versions have been touring the world over the last decade or so, but given the larger space available (not to mention, the budget) it is possible that the Met show is more ambitious. The Met web page is very informative (as was also that during the Frankfurt show) but new is an app than encourages virtual recreations and reflects the collaborative work of those behind the polychromy project. (And everybody knows nothing works without an app these days!)

My own photograph of the reconstruction of a marble archer – taken at the Liebieghaus, Frankfurt, in February 2020.

Of course, times being as they are, it is inevitable that the conversation surrounding the content and merits of the show would be dominated by matters of identity. And given the particularities of the project and the issues that arise from the reconstructions of Vinzenz Brinkmann and Ulrike Koch Brinkmann, the pivot is not hard to make.

And the NYT piece certainly doesn’t let down in this respect; pointing out how the Brinkmann team’s reconstructions have led to degrees of disquiet in academic and research circles. It seems some would contend that these particular reconstructions have been afforded such celebrity in recent years that it is often overlooked that they, in fact, represent only the scholarship of one pair of researchers, and should not be seen as a definitive verdict. This further leads to wide-ranging debates (often motivated through self or particular interest) on variations of polychromy and, of course, whiteness – and not just during antiquity. In this respect, the Times points to an interesting 2017 blog post from the historian, Sarah E. Bond, and this very lengthy and very excellent 2018 New Yorker article.

The following YouTube video (also on the Met site) is an excellent introduction to the scholarly and technical background to the project.

Vinzenz Brinkmann and Ulrike Koch-Brinkmann on their research into ancient sculptural polychromy and their work in creating full-size reconstructions of original Greek and Roman artworks.

By the way, I was incredibly informed by the exhibition in Frankfurt – loved it, really; even if a favorite jacket came to grief in the cloakroom and it was to be my final cultural adventure before the pandemic took over our lives. If I knew anyone in New York I would highly recommend heading for Fifth Ave. (through March 26, 2023), and I am also fairly sure it will turn up elsewhere in the future – probably with new exhibits.