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Plaster casts made from hollowed-out molds of rock, where bodies had been captured a moment before they ceased to be.
By EDWARD ROTHSTEIN
Published: March 3, 2011
There is a lot of traffic these days in well-preserved bodies, human
and otherwise. They are sliced and pickled for artistic effect or
uncannily dissected and plasticized, with every blood vessel visible.
They have toured the world, wrapped and mummified in the manner
of ancient Egypt, or have been displayed, more modestly preserved by
the dry desert sands of the Silk Road. And there are many, many more
mummies yet to come.
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Why this onslaught of the almostliving dead in museums? Are we
latter-day Ezekiels seeking prophetic
messages from ancient skeletal
remnants? Has the technology used to
prepare the dead for world travel suddenly advanced? Or
has the need for income by the overseers of mummies
suddenly increased?
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Perhaps all are true. But “Pompeii the Exhibit: Life and
Death in the Shadow of Vesuvius,” which opens on Friday
at Discovery Times Square, is unusual because its dead
bodies are not really dead, and they are not really bodies.
They are, however, often more affecting, and they form the
fulcrum of an absorbing show about a place more widely
heard of than thoroughly understood.
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The bodies are made of white plaster, and their rough
surfaces allow only vague outlines. But, like death masks,
they capture a moment when their subjects ceased to be. A
man sits crouched, his legs pulled up to his chest, covering
his face, as if in despair. A girl desperately thrusts herself at
her mother, grasping for comfort. A man, prostrate, begins
to pull himself up a staircase but can go no farther. These
bodies are writhing, groping, reaching, protecting. And
their white forms are starkly displayed on black platforms
in a dimly lighted gallery, looking like otherworldly figures
enduring infernal agonies.
They are plaster casts from Pompeii — more, we are told,
than have ever been gathered together for an exhibition.
Pompeii, of course, was the Roman village near Naples that
was entirely wiped out in the year 79, when Mount
Vesuvius erupted, engorging the town with its ash and lava,
preserving it as if it were a bug caught in sap that would turn to amber.
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Making the most out of less
William Starling
Part of a frescoed wall from a Pompeii
home, depicting a winged female
figure, possibly Victoria, goddess of
victory.
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Waves of volcanic ash, heat and poisonous gases trapped the fleeing remnants of the
town’s population, often in midstride, some carrying keys and valuables. Others cowered
in basements or clung to family. The plaster is rough, but we can see touching detail,
including the delicate folds of a dead child’s tunic. And there are suggestions of bronze
studs in a collar on a chained dog’s neck: did it strangle itself as it strained to escape, its
body rolled into a contorted ball?
Volcanic detritus swept over these beings, liquid eventually solidifying into tombs of stone.
Flesh and muscle decayed, leaving for later archaeological study hollowed-out molds of
rock. A 19th-century archaeologist had the brilliant idea of pouring plaster into those
hollows, then shattering the rock. What remained were life-size reproductions of animals
and humans caught in the final moments of life.
These images also confirm the account of the eruption by Pliny the Younger, who was a
safe-enough distance away to observe, but close enough to want to flee: “You could hear
women shrieking, children screaming, men shouting,” he wrote. (The words are cited on
the exhibition walls.) “Some called for their children, others for their parents or
husbands.”
Some, he continued, “raised their hands to the gods, but most of them thought there were
no gods at all.”
One room here is devoted to casts of 32 skeletal remains found four miles away from
Pompeii, in Herculaneum, which was also destroyed. Nine of the skeletons were of
children younger than 12. Another was accompanied by a complete set of surgical
instruments, suggesting, perhaps, preparation and precaution, but no recognition of the
forces unleashed.
These scenes are all the more stark because the exhibition — deftly designed and planned
by Ralph Appelbaum Associates — makes sure that we encounter them only after we have
come to know something about Pompeii as a thriving town. The volcanic debris that
destroyed it also preserved it, along with elaborately painted frescoes, exquisite mosaics,
tools of business and trade, gladiators’ armor, and artifacts and murals that this exhibition
associates with bordellos. The show provides a brief glimpse of that world. It decorously
places erotically explicit items in a nearly private space, prefaced by a warning and tucked
away inside the main galleries.
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A version of this review appeared in print on March 4, 2011, on page
C21 of the New York edition.
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