The Jackdaw

Tag: British Museum

  • Fibres torn from the brain

    Body in ancient Greek artIn all the doting coverage of ‘Defining Beauty: The Body in Ancient Greek Art’ at the British Museum, no mention was made of the fact that the bulk of major exhibits featured were from the museum’s own collection. Stupidly, I had believed – and perhaps was even misled by advance publicity – that the exhibition would feature a range of major sculptures I hadn’t seen before. I should have known better. During the months before the display opened, regular visitors would have noticed a weekly disappearance of prize pieces from the Greek and Roman galleries. Indeed, for two months in advance of the show half the Duveen gallery exhibiting Parthenon material was crudely boarded off like a building site. Art critics, many of whom nowadays are at sea dealing with anything made before last weekend, were bowled middle stump by Defining Art. They didn’t know the BM sufficiently well to realise that many works for which they were recommending the public pay handsomely could have been seen free any time in the preceding 262 years and will be free again after July 5th when the spectacle closes. It serves the museum right that attendance for what was doubtless planned as a cash-cow blockbuster hasn’t risen above a trickle. A sad irony is that works are better appreciated in the deserted exhibition than they are normally when enveloped by noisy swarms of disaffected foreigners shuffling along with scarcely a glance at anything deemed unworthy of a selfie. It goes without saying that the more important works illustrated in the accompanying book (which isn’t a catalogue), indeed the crucial ones to the show’s thesis, were not included in the exhibition: they live in Greece, a country with whom regrettably we have no dealings.

    We’ve become inured to the scam operated by many museums whereby they demand payment for what should be gratis. And the Department of Culture, the House of Commons’ Select Committee, and assorted museum trustees, all otherwise so proudly defensive of our free museums, let them get away with it. However, Defining Beauty set new standards in such fraud. With the exception of a rare bronze of middling quality recently trawled from the Adriatic off Croatia, the influential Belvedere torso from the Vatican and a few oddments, I emerged feeling well and truly robbed of £16.50.

    In previous issues I’ve criticised the BM for misrepresenting the experience of a visit there. We’ve been told often, mainly by the Director, that the museum tells a definitive story of classical sculpture and civilisation and shouldn’t be tampered with – this is their Elgin Marbles Sicilian defence. The collection is too patchy to attempt any such thing. And even if it were not, all the galleries are not open at the same time anyway. Visitors are never allowed to see the full story. Recently, I was ejected from two rooms in quick succession as they were closing only minutes after opening. They claim shortage of cash but in the last 15 years the BM has spent hundreds of millions on two major building projects, one of which is a shopping mall with a vile swimming pool roof. Constant closures ensure that many of the more fascinating pieces are off bounds every day. On my most recent visit galleries housing the Bassae frieze and the Mausoleum of Halicarnassus were, as usual, shut. But at least the wondrous, blissfully empty architecture galleries, in my experience closed for years, were open ­– a red letter day indeed.

    ­ As I write, news arrives that the BM has leased for five years 500 works to a Qatari museum for an undisclosed fee. Depletions to galleries of the sort mentioned above will, it seems, become a permanent fixture as the museum realises its main financial asset is the quality of collections they can pimp to the highest bidder (which, conveniently, fucks Greece). Am I the only one who thinks renting masterpieces in bulk to the Middle East is just a tad risky?

    We are entering a different age to that post-war world of museums where I discovered escape, solitude, inspiration and willing expertise on tap. Museums no longer principally exist to benefit those dedicated to what they preserve. I regret this loss of innocence and its replacement by venal opportunism. At the same time, I’m grateful to have experienced the best of it while it lasted.

    David Lee

    July/August 2015

  • Elgin marbles: should they go or should they stay

    Elgin marbles: should they go or should they stay

    David Lee thinks loans both ways should be considered.

    We have rehearsed the pros and antis of retaining, loaning, handing back or exchanging the Elgin Marbles in the pages of the Jackdaw many times. The main arguments on both sides, few as they are, remain the same and recent reiteration of these familiar points would suggest nothing new will ever be proffered on either side. Certainly the case for the sculptures’ return will not be advanced by the Greeks enlisting a junior lawyer because she’s married to a famous actor. Any impetus given by that opportunistic stunt petered out once the press wearied of airport snaps of Mrs Clooney’s million-buck grin while offering nothing but the most fatuous of platitudes.

    Greece claims the balance has recently tipped in their favour with the opening of a new museum below the Acropolis. But their chief arguments in favour of restitution remain predominantly emotional and sentimental ones which play to the home gallery.

    The Acropolis marbles are handsomely exhibited free of charge in the British Museum and have been well cared for, in contrast to the way in which the Greeks have demonstrably failed to protect their own allegedly cherished carvings. Far more visitors will see the works in London than would be the case in Athens where, admittedly out of season, the Acropolis Museum – £12 to enter – can muster negligible trade bulked up (as indeed it is in London) by noisy parties of demob-happy schoolchildren – in the Greeks’ case a generation deemed ripe for the most shameless brainwashing.

    The argument that these sculptures are by Greeks from a unique moment in Greek history and from which all modern Greeks are descended is so much jingoistic claptrap. Greeks claiming descendance from the Athenian Pericles is as preposterous as me citing the ancestry of King Caractacus; as if the Roman, Angle, Saxon, Viking, Pict, Celt, Visigoth, Dane and French invaders, commonwealthers, colonisers and asylum seekers had never come between us, and changed our make up beyond recognition. It’s just silly.

    As someone who simply enjoys looking at classical sculpture, I recently visited Athens to see if workable alternatives about the future of the Elgin Marbles might be considered. Currently, the issue is clouded by irritating, point-scoring politicians intent on manipulating publics for their own ends. All those who love sculpture and art history should have an important say in any outcome because in the end we are the only ones who will actually take the trouble to look at them properly.

    From the outside the new Acropolis museum is as inelegant as most new buildings, its one quirk being a penthouse floor twisted from true as if a Rubik’s cube had had its top layer half-turned. What was left of the Acropolis sculptures after the explosion of 1687 when the Parthenon blew up destroying most of its peristyle and interior, not to mention assorted subsequent lootings, defacings, quarryings and Elgin’s removals, is exhibited on the top floor with gaps left where the frieze and pediment sculptures from other museums, chiefly the BM, would fit in. Having been eroded smooth and rounded by the most poisonous atmosphere of any city in Europe, much of this material is of disappointing impact and quality. Snatches of detail and passages of beauty hint at what might have been, but little in the way of real art appreciation is possible. From looking here at what remains of the Parthenon sculptures you would never suspect them of forming part of an inimitable masterpiece.

    A cynic might conclude that the Greeks need the BM sculptures because their own are largely unreadable wrecks. Unpalatable as it may be for the Greeks, an objective conclusion must be that if Elgin had not removed sculptures their survival may have been jeopardised. This cuts no ice in Greece because wherever you travel Elgin is presented as the Great Satan. The poor wee Scot is denounced in tube stations, museums, airports and on street placards, and even at remote archaeological sites across the country. Nowhere is there any acknowledgement that without Elgin’s intervention during a volatile period of foreign occupation, there might be little worth a second look.

    The argument that the nearly complete frieze would be exhibited within sight of its original location has some little merit. From one side of the new museum (see picture above) one can look up to the rear, less photogenic aspect of the Parthenon, though you can’t see where the frieze would originally have been placed because it was obliterated in the explosion and subsequent collapses, earthquakes and demolitions. It was in any case more or less invisibly located high behind the peristyle arcade.

    In its other galleries the Acropolis Museum is an unforgettable experience, spacious and with the most fabulous carvings and bronzes sensitively displayed. For devotees of sculpture and the classical world it is unforgettable, joyful even. The calibre of work, the gradual evolving understanding of form and surface pattern, especially in the archaic, pre-Periclean period, is staggering – the scholarly designation ‘primitive’ is laughably inadequate when dealing with such accomplishment. For students of Greek sculpture this museum, as well as the quality of the even more breathtaking collection at the National Archaeological Museum on the other side of the Acropolis (see cover), fills in stylistic gaps not even hinted at in the British Museum’s story of classical sculpture – it is revelatory.

    Among the main arguments against restitution adduced by director MacGregor is that the BM’s Greek galleries tell the full story of classical sculpture. Familiarity with museums in Greece gives the lie to this fantasy. The British Museum doesn’t even get close to giving a complete account. To start with it is rare that any visitor to the BM experiences all its classical galleries open at the same time. Even after a lifetime of regular visiting I’ve rarely managed it. The architecture galleries in the basement are open only every Preston Guild, and the Halicarnassos galleries daily closed. Getting to see the marvellous Bassae Frieze in its bespoke attic is more of a lottery than El Gordo. MacGregor’s rhetoric  gets a far better press than it deserves.

    BM displays give a decent impression from, say, 450BC to 300BC but a visit to Greece soon exposes the threadbare nature of even that proposition. For all the beauty of some of its exhibits, the BM doesn’t present the full subtlety of what happened. Indeed, it will only be able to make such a claim when major loans are vouchsafed from Greece. This is why we should stop the war of bickering and insults and seriously consider a series of temporary swaps of material that would thrill aficionados in both countries.

    Presently Greek arguments for complete restitution are too easy to skittle. Not least the one about how important they claim the Parthenon marbles are to them. I first visited the Acropolis in 1971 since when the site has changed indiscernibly. The cranes themselves must be antiques by now. My generation is likely to live its entire lifespan with the Parthenon obscured by scaffolding, sheeting, peremptory signage and heavy lift equipment. The hilltop is a chaos of rubble, building works, ugly police-style cordons and railway lines – small wonder so few of the visitors who trek up linger here for more than a couple of minutes, for this is not a pleasant place to be. The Greeks claim to care passionately about this important symbolic site, yet progress is glacial. So far it’s taken them three times longer to restore a few patches than it took Kallicrates, Iktinos and Pheidias to conceive, build and carve the lot from scratch. But the torpor and apparent indifference evident on the Acropolis is typical of that infecting the country’s other important archaeological sites. Wherever you venture, from Epidavros to Delphi to Knossos, there is little or no building at the one cool time of the year when work ought to be forging ahead. Any urgency to conserve is bewilderingly absent.

    One problem to achieving any rapprochement is Greek resistance to negotiation and their attitude in general towards ‘loans’. One can’t blame the BM for a lack of engagement because the Greeks use the same definition of ‘negotiation’ as do the Argentinians when referring to the sovereignty of the Falkland Islands. In both cases ‘negotiation’ means only one possible outcome, total capitulation on our side. No wonder the British Museum is resistant to embarking on such a journey when the Greeks refuse even to acknowledge that it is the sculptures’ legal owner.

    Definition of the word ‘loan’ presents a serious problem for the Greeks. It is perhaps impertinent to mention that the Athenians built the Parthenon with money stolen from neighbours and never repaid. Old habits apparently die hard… Can one have any real confidence that a ‘loan’ of Elgin material would be returned?

    Despite all of this we should try putting aside childish disputes. The possibilities for exchanges of material between the BM and Athens are tantalising for sculpture lovers. Imagine, a swap of Elgin material for archaic kouroi and kore and bronze statuary of a quality unimaginable to regulars of the British Museum. What a mouthwatering prospect that would be, to see, for example, a large kouros, one of so many in Athens.

    The Greeks should change tack. They should magnanimously offer loans to the BM of works of such greatness that those against any form of extended exchanges between the two countries would be disarmed by so generous a spirit and the genius of the work. The main argument Greeks should deploy is this prospect of the mesmerising works they could offer in return.

    David Lee

    The Jackdaw March-April 2015

  • The Motya Charioteer

    The Motya Charioteer

    Explanations to date concerning this marvellous figure are inadequate.
    What precisely is it? Where did it come from? And what date is it?

    The Motya Charioteer stood for six weeks until the middle of September in the large gallery housing the Parthenon pediments and frieze in the British Museum. It was worth making a special effort to see it more than once as it is among few great works – it is reproduced as standard in most of the better literature of classicism – of ancient art to visit London in recent times. Certainly nothing else in the Cultural Olympiad – so lavishly praised by those who organised it and their dutiful footsoldiers – could touch it for sculptural virtuosity and immediate aesthetic impact. The time required to take in this figure properly far exceeded the twenty minutes needed to dawdle through Damien Hirst’s retrospective at Tate Modern – that institution’s imaginative and unexpected contribution to the art events stapled to the Olympics’ coattails. Additionally the Motya Charioteer was given free of charge.

    This was no off-the-shelf piece like so many antique sculptures in so many museums. On the contrary, it looked to be the work of an important artist, whose name we ought to know, and even may know, but which we will never now discover. The material is pale yellow limestone whose origin is described vaguely as “Greek or Turkish” – modern analysis can surely be more specific than this.

    It was unearthed in 1979 on the tiny island of Motya off the western coast of Sicily close to Marsala where it is housed in a regional museum from which it is rarely loaned. Universally praised for its beauty, not least in British newspapers when it first went on show at the Museum, it is already considered a key piece in classical sculpture. It was, curiously, found among mainly architectural rubble. Motya was a longstanding Phoenician city fortress until it was conquered following a destructive siege by a native Sicilian in 397 BC. It was later taken over by the Carthaginians until in 241 BC it was subsumed into an expanding Roman republic. The debris in which the sculpture was found is said to have been piled up to protect a sanctuary area  of the Phoenician city during the siege of 397 BC. Quite why a sculpture of such obvious refinement should have been condemned to a spoil heap is unknown.

    Sicily, the larger part of which was a Greek colony, was an area renowned in the ancient world for its successful charioteers and for its horse breeding. It has been speculated that this piece was commissioned by a victorious charioteer in the Greek part of Sicily to celebrate an important triumph in the hippodrome. At some point it was looted by the Phoenicians and taken to Motya where its qualities were not apparently appreciated. If you are a scholar desperately in search of an explanation this seems as fanciful a story as any other wild speculation. (With the scholarship of ancient sculpture it only takes a couple of recountings before a speculation becomes accepted fact.)

    Dated circa 460 BC by the British Museum, this makes the Motya Charioteer around a generation earlier than the Parthenon marbles. In textbook terms, the piece is described as Transitional; that is, it bridges the missing link, as it were, between Archaic and so-called Severe sculpture (the kouroi centuries) and the more realistic classical ideal characteristic of the best of the Periclean Acropolis. Another of the ‘missing links’ of the same period, the Kritos Boy, found on the Acropolis, only bears a resemblance to the charioteer in the head.

    The carving quality of this figure is breathtaking; an otherwise naked body is seen through a light, diaphanous, skin-hugging robe of a crinkle-cut material similar to cheese cloth. In style the piece is a fascinating enigma. Stylised facial features are indicative of an early-to-mid 5th century BC date. The rest of the figure, however, is less hieratic, more realistic, more human, indeed more suggestive of a carving style and understanding of anatomy seen in some of the figures of the Parthenon pediment itself – it anticipates the so-called ‘wet look’ prevalent in carving in the half century following completion of the Parthenon sculptures. One is forced to state that were this charioteer headless,  experts would surely have to date him fifty years after the current speculation. There is nothing in Greek sculpture of 460BC which resembles even a little in style the body of the Motya Charioteer from the head down. It could not by itself be called ‘Transitional’, or any other name implying fence-sitting. In terms of its style, wherever it was the body of the charioteer was heading, it had already arrived there.

    Being so particular even personal in its details, it is difficult to imagine this figure not having been carved from life, or at least done by reference to drawings. Detailed observations of anatomy are acute and subtle in a figure superlatively athletic. He is built more like a pentathlete than a chariot racer. The only modern equivalent of this chap’s superb physique, especially the buttocks, are those on the most muscular ballet dancers. This fellow has the bodily tone expected of a jumper or a thrower, or at least of a discipline requiring exceptional stamina and strength. Those whose specialism is controlling horses at speed, jockeys, carriage drivers, trotters etc., are not known for their highly developed musculature or domineering size; lightness and agility are more favoured for these pastimes which require deft control and empathy before brute force.

    The figure was dug up in 1979 on the tiny island of Motya off the west coast of Sicily, where the sculpture is housed in a regional museum. He is said to represent a charioteer because his long garment – in being long – seems akin to those worn by charioteers in vase decoration and incised on gems. Another charioteer, albeit in bronze, in the Delphi Archaeological Museum, discovered at Delphi in 1879, wears a long dress harnessed at the chest. If you squint at this figure through half-closed eyes from a distance of half a mile you might conclude that the figures are similar, if only in the number of arms and legs. There are, however, significant differences of emphasis between these two works. One is holding reins, and is therefore clearly in position on a chariot. The Motya figure is more informal. Avoiding the flat-footed frontality of earlier wooden poses, the sculptor places the figure’s weight on one leg while gently twisting the torso – the convincing expression of this inflection is best seen from behind. The restrictive fastening for his long robe, which is itself impossibly twisted at the back, is decorative, the metal clasp missing. He was also originally wearing elaborate headgear, probably of copper or silver. Such impedimentary accoutrements would surely not have been worn during the race. Further supporting the informal attitude of this figure, he is attired then not as a recently victorious athlete but for subsequent presentation to the crowd. One hand is louchely resting on his hip. The other arm, amputated near the shoulder, is raised in some sort of acknowledgement or greeting, or even blandishment. It has been proposed that he is attaching his victor’s laurel wreath. This is improbable, the arm being in the wrong place for that action – it is not even close to the angle needed; that is, if other wreath-fingerers in an adjacent BM gallery are indicative of the pose required. Is it likely that he has one hand on his hip and the other fiddling with his laurel. This sort of cartoon campness might have been convincing in Up Pompeii but surely not for the depiction of a great champion. If this fellow is a charioteer, he is being observed at the post-race press conference having slipped into something a little more comfortable.

    Delphi Charioteer

    As close examination reveals he put on his garb like a dressing gown, one side drawn over the other and fastened tightly at the top; in contrast the Delphi charioteer – dated by inscription to 479 BC, and therefore roughly contemporaneous with our more effete fellow – pulled his kit over his head. Though the rear view of the Motya figure suggests that the pose is stretching the drainpipe of fabric taut, the front is decoratively bunched implying a freedom of movement in the fabric at variance with the tension behind. The could be sculptor’s licence, a decorative flourish. Whatever it is doing, it is certainly an inconsistency, and he could not have tolerated such copious billowing cloth while jiggling on the narrow platform of a chariot for fear of dangerously ensnaring himself in the folds. Whether he is a charioteer or not, this is the most impractical gear for the dangerous job of driving at breakneck speed a chariot drawn by four horses.

    Please correspond your thoughts on this figure to

    dg.lee@virgin.net

    David Lee

    The Jackdaw September 2012