Caldwell, Rome: Continuing Encounters

Dorigen Caldwell and Lesley Caldwell, eds, Rome: Continuing Encounters Between Past and Present.  Aldershot: Ashgate, 2011.  

Reviewed by Christina Szilagyi

“It is true to say that there is no single classical past to which all subsequent ages refer, but several, which were privileged at different times and which evoked different ideas of antiquity and its contemporary relevance.”[1]  Through a series of essays, this book introduces its readers to the different ways in which Rome has been seen – in person, on maps, on the page and in film, and through archaeology.  These varied visions of the Eternal City have been used to any number of ends, from political and religious to artistic and historical; and any of these purposes have had difficulty pointing to one particular time or place in the city to suit their needs. There is simply too much history, in too many layers, to separate in the perception of the city.  The Caldwells’ volume is intended as an interdisciplinary approach, thus while the entire volume is of interest to the student of the city of Rome, of particular interest to the historian are the essays on Roman archaeology (chapters one and nine), maps of the city (chapter two) and the political uses of perceptions of the city (chapters five and six).  

While it was not uncommon in the centuries after the dissolution of the Western Roman Empire to “resource” material from ruins, there was “a perception from very early on that Rome was uniquely embellished and should therefore be preserved.”[2]  It is the method of preservation that seems always difficult to determine.  Should an entire building that has no current use be preserved for its own sake, or is it enough to document it before demolishing?  Often buildings were preserved by repurposing, in part or in whole.  Caroline Goodson, in the book’s first essay “Roman Archaeology in Medieval Rome,” discusses how there came a change in the early Medieval era from building churches away from the monuments of the ancient city to using existing buildings or building anew in the center of the city.  These new buildings, wherever possible, echoed the ancient architectural styles of their surroundings.  The same was true of houses, which if they could not be matched architecturally to their environs, would be given a false front to create a similar appearance.

“Though the uses of the buildings were different, the new houses carried on traditions of the previous centuries of building in the Forum as they preserved both street frontage and the monumental layout of the area, and its architectural design principles.”[3]

Despite a desire to maintain the appearance of the old, Goodson goes on to say “there was never a moment when the Fora were entirely ancient or entirely new, but part of a continuum of construction, demolition, and reconstruction which continued for centuries.”[4] 

Structures are not the only issue when dealing with the archaeological remains of a city.  Religious relics, especially in a city like Rome, hold great importance in and of themselves, as do their places of discovery.  By the time we come to the Middle Ages, cults of saints had for centuries been venerated at a particular place, usually the burial site of the patron saint.  This did not change even as land changed hands and was used for other purposes, and even when churches were built up over these sites, many came not to visit the new building, but to be near the “sacred stratigraphy” beneath it.[5] 

Archaeological questions lead to political ones as well, because it is often the case that the determination of what is to be done with any given plot of land is in the hands of those who run the city, be it the Church or a secular power.  Regardless of the location, when politics comes into play it is rare, if ever, that the best interests of antiquities themselves, or their use in study, are foremost in mind.  The authors tell us of Roman temples being repurposed into churches, with all of the requisite destruction of pagan materials.  Later, some of these churches were repurposed to serve secular needs, with all of the requisite destruction of religious material.  This is discussed in Aristotle Kallis’ essay,  “‘Reconcilation’ or ‘Conquest’? The Opening of the  Via della Conciliazione and the Fascist Vision for the ‘Third Rome’”, which focuses on the Fascist attempts to repurpose the entire city, in one way or another, to legitimize themselves as the ultimate culmination of all of Roman history. 

The final essay, “Archaeology and the Modern City: Thoughts on Rome (and Elsewhere),” by Daniele Manacorda, discusses how antiquities in general have been dealt with since Late Antiquity.  He discusses how the Medieval and Renaissance Popes were “favourably disposed towards research into antiquity, [but] were in fact the perpetrators of the systematic destruction of the ancient city, which was plundered piece by piece for the construction of buildings.”[6]  He also echoes an issue brought up in other essays in the book: how people dealt with archaeological pieces and their preservation (or lack thereof).  Manacorda tells us the pieces were often appreciated “if for nothing more than the technical skill they demonstrated, which was greatly admired,” but that was less important than how they could be used in the current project.[7] 

When it comes to maps of the city, these could be attempts to show the entire history of the city in one depiction.  The concern was not religious versus political, as with the antiquities, but with functional versus artistic.  In the Medieval and Renaissance periods, the artistic generally won out, as “city portraits were intended to distill essential, idealized qualities of character as well as physical appearance.”  The mapmakers often emphasized individual elements of the city to give the viewer a feel for the long history of the city: “individual elements, such as the equestrian statue of Marcus Aurelius or the new St. Peter’s, were mined for their power to distill the city’s history and its current resurgence with the greatest eloquence in the least space.”  Medieval and Renaissance mapmakers sought to combine the old and new Romes into a beautiful, though completely inaccurate, representation of the city.  We can be thankful that by the end of the Renaissance, mapmakers no longer wished to portray the long history of Rome, but to show a somewhat accurate depiction of the contemporary city, one that might be a useful tool with which to navigate. 

In the end, the question is what to do with Rome?  All of essays center around a theme of how to maintain some awareness of the entirety of Roman history while also allowing the city to become modernized, and if that is feasible.  The authors lead us to believe that, with some care, it is indeed possible.  The difficulty is well summed up in a quote from Ferdinand Gregorovius on witnessing the takeover of the city in 1870: 

“The Italians gained possession of Rome and the most venerable of historical legacies that never gave a people a seat more exulted and never imposed a mission more difficult and a duty more grievous than this: to be the great conservator and the renewer of Rome.”

Christina Szilagyi

Delta College

---

[1] Caldwell and Caldwell, 2. 

[2] Ibid.

[3] ibid, 23. 

[4] Ibid, 25.

[5] Ibid, 28.

[6] Ibid, 208-209.

[7] Ibid, 208.

---

"It's more a part of living culture": an interview with Sandow Birk, Dante Illustrator

From 2001 to 2005, the well-known Los Angeles artist Sandow Birk created 100 full-page and 100 vignette engravings for his and Marcus Sanders’ three-volume translation of Dante’s Divine Comedy.  The engravings were originally published by Trillium Press as a three-volume limited-edition livres d’artiste.  In 2005 they were republished by Chronicle Books in a softbound commercial format.  While working on the engravings Birk also completed three paintings related to the prints, and in 2007 he constructed a feature film of the Inferno voiced by such celebrities as Dermot Mulroney and featuring hand-drawn paper puppets on a toy theater stage.  The interview below was conducted by e-mail in mid-May of this year.

KF:  In earlier interviews and acknowledgments, you’ve described your Commedia knowledge as coming mainly from your own reading of it, conversations with Dante specialists, especially Michael Meister, and Gustave Doré’s engravings.  Were there any other, perhaps less influential sources you can recall, such as other illustration cycles?

SB:  Yes, I came to the Commedia by accident, actually. Trained as a painter and an artist, I stumbled on an old copy of the Divine Comedy with the Gustave Doré illustrations in a used bookstore in Los Angeles and I was really drawn in and attracted to the illustrations. I bought the book and had it laying around my studio for a year or so, casually glancing through it and then eventually reading the text. My initial idea was to do a series of paintings based on the Inferno, but over several years the project grew into a series of some 200 prints, drawings, paintings, books, and eventually a feature film. 

"Inferno." Image used with permission from Sandow Birk.

Yes, Michael Meister was influential and a great help, but perhaps even more so was Peter Hawkins, who helped mentor the projects along and became a friend over the years. 

As for other influences, I think I looked at all of them that I could find over the years I spent involved in the projects, from Rauschenberg’s series to Italian Disney comic books, to all the great painters who painted scenes from the Commedia over the centuries. So, yes, I looked at everything I could find and some of it was influential and some of it was less so, but it all was sort of sucked into my own thinking and my own work.

KF:  Do you think of the Commedia as a “medieval” text?  Why or why not?

SB:  I’m not a medieval scholar, so I’ll answer as best I can. I’m aware that the Commedia came out of the medieval era, but I think you’re asking a different question. I’m guessing you’re implying that the Commedia might be outside the standard definition of “medieval” in a time sense, since it is so complex and multilayered and expansive, that it might be the result of more Renaissance thinking? I guess it depends on how you label things, and I think that the Commedia has always been outside of the boxes of labels and beyond the limits of standard definitions. Is it a poem? It’s a poem, but it’s an amazing one and it’s much more than a poem. It’s not really a religious text and it is at the same time. It’s not a scientific treatise but it sort of is that too. It’s not a history, but it has elements of that throughout it. It’s also philosophical and entertaining and beautiful. So I would say the Commedia is more than what we might generally think of about things from the medieval period, but it’s also so remarkable a work in so many ways, it’s also beyond what we think of using terms from any way you look at it. 

KF:  What (else) do you associate with the terms “medieval” and “Middle Ages”?

SB:  Like I’ve said, I never studied medieval history beyond what I got through art history classes, but I guess from my mainstream knowledge I would think of the medieval period as being a time when science and intellectual thinking sort of took a step back from previous progress and religion became more predominant in Europe. A time when myths and superstitions and religion put technological advancements on the back burner.

KF:  Do you perceive your Commedia illustrations as medievalism, which is often defined as post-medieval responses to the Middle Ages?  If so, in what ways, and if not, why?

"Canto XVI"
Image used with permission form Sandow Birk.

SB:  I actually don’t think of my images as illustrations of the text, but rather as contemporary works of art based on the Commedia and about life in contemporary urban America. They were inspired by Doré’s illustrations, but I’m more interested in thinking about how the Commedia might be relevant and remain interesting in our everyday lives, and I see my images as both critiquing Dante’s poem and its moral and religious points of view and of putting them into perspective, not just illustrating the text. So I guess the simple answer is “no,” I have never thought of my works as “medievalism” because I actually didn’t know that term existed until this interview.

KF:  If you do see your Commedia illustrations as medievalist, how do you perceive your medievalism relating, if at all, to your interaction with earlier intermediaries, especially Doré?  If their responses to the Commedia could be considered medievalism, how does their influence on you compare to your direct responses to the Commedia?

SB:  Again, since I don’t really know the term “medievalism,” I'm going to guess that it’s similar to “orientalism”--the romantic nostalgia and over-simplification and kitschy longing for an era that might not have ever existed as it was imagined. Is this correct? I guess it never really occurred to me that the ongoing, centuries-long engagement with the Commedia might be romantic and nostalgic in that way. I don’t think it is. I believe that the Commedia is one of the greatest works of art of the Western world, not just pieces of literature, but art in a bigger sense, and so I think it continues to be interesting and fascinating today and ever since it was written. It seems like it’s more a living part of Western culture, so I wouldn’t think of those involved in it as being romantic about, in much the same way that studying and being involved in the Torah or the Bible isn’t seen as being romantic for biblical times.

KF:  What, if anything, do you think your illustrations tell us about the world you inhabited when you were making them?

SB:  Well, there are a lot of them, and, so, I hope they talk about many different things, but in general I wanted my works to put the philosophical and theological ideas of Dante’s poem, and of Catholicism and Christianity, in relation to our lives in American today. I wanted to ponder those ideas and consider their relevance in the world, and I hoped to make works that are interesting and thought-provoking and that might make one reconsider both the Commedia and our daily existence. And on a more simple level, I hope that in some way my works might bring more people to be interested in Dante and to read the Commedia.

KF:  What part, if any, do you think that world played in what the Commedia revealed to you?

SB:  Everything. I’m obviously a product of my times and of the world I live in, and it’s only through that lens that I can read the Commedia. And as an artist, I’m most interested in my times and my city and my life in the world today. So it was from that angle that I sought to use the Commedia as a starting point to make my works.

KF:  Beyond the published reviews and circulation numbers for your trilogy, what sort of response have you received to your illustrations, particularly their relationship to Dante’s text and Doré’s engravings?

SB:  Well, anyone that knows the Doré images certainly sees the connections right off, and that’s intentional. I was drawn to Dante because of Doré’s fantastic works, and I appreciate them and find them fascinating and amazing. So I wanted to create my own works because of Doré and what he had done with Dante. I wanted to start with Doré and Dante and go from there, so I hope that people see the connection--it’s intentional. As far as response, I guess it’s been positive. I can’t think of anything negative off-hand. When I speak to people in person about it, it often leads to discussions about the role of illustration and what illustration is and what it can be, and those are discussions I always hoped would happen. My works are meant to question the relationship between text and image, in the sense that I don’t see my works as “illustrative” of the text, but rather more than that.

KF:  With the benefit of hindsight, is there anything you would do differently in your approach to the Commedia?

SB:  No, I don’t think so. It was very much a long, long project of learning for me. I came on Dante sort of by accident, and I got very interested in the poem and everything about it for years and years and years, and I spent a lot of my time involved in Dante’s view of life and the afterlife and Dante’s world. My work throughout evolved and grew and changed and culminated with the film project, I think, and I’m very proud of it all as a body of work. It was a new direction for me, and it’s led to other projects after that, so I think it was a great period for me. I’ve moved on from it, but I'm very pleased with it.

Karl Fugelso

Towson University

Editor's note: More of Sandow Birk's Dante-inspired work can be seen at his webpage here

Tarsem Singh, dir., Medieval Fighting for Pepsi (TV Commercial)

Director: Tarsem Singh

Brand: Pepsi

Agency: CLM & BBDO

Producer: Radical Media

Year: 2004, international

Reviewed by Claudiu Mesaroș (claudiumesaros@gmail.com)

Warrior leather clothing, dark and heavy metal armors, grocery markets, large glasses of wine, brutal manners, marginalized individuals, wooden but also mysterious artifacts, impressive castles, abusive church power, romantic knights and princesses, pure unaltered nature, wondrous monks, brute stupidity, magic and witchcraft. All these elements meet when medieval imagery is involved in films, computer games or commercials, sometimes giving the impression that the Middle Ages was nothing more than the mundus imaginalis of urban freestylers who can only place their ludic productions in one single space: that of medieval times.
  

Commercials and advertisements, with their ability to reach wide audiences, are by far the most significant medium accommodating this imagery. In an attractive television commercial produced by CLM & BBDO Agency in 2004 for Pepsi (http://www.youtube.com/watch?NR=1&v=AYWAq0AbU-E&feature=endscreen&list=PL32B08521FB3168F8), one can easily see an entire list of selling representations on medieval warfare and urban life. The commercial, featuring VIP football players Beckham, Ronaldinho, Roberto Carlos and Totti, is based on a rebel teens creation concept brilliantly turned into a medieval fighting scene. Pepsi-Cola’s advertisement thus introduces its blue Pepsi cans as the magical items desired in a medieval spoliation.
     

There is a series of statements which may be connected to the sections of the commercial. The list of ludic sentences may start with “Assault is imminent!” Once the commercial opens, viewers are instantly introduced to the medieval world: Knights on horses and individuals on foot are caught in the middle of a rash attack against a poorly defended citadel. It is true, isn’t it, that medieval life was permanently threatened by unpredictable violent harassments by hostile neighboring lords or foreign kings? 
     

This medieval tale continues with a second implicit statement: “There is always something secret in the medieval town square.” Warriors enter the open gates of the town and seem to be searching for something valuable, but hidden. They bring down all the tables of the market – the stereotypes about magic and vegetables in the Middle Ages can be confirmed by spotting, among beans and fruits, the most clear and shiny-looking garlic ever!
    

In the third sequence we are allowed to understand why the warriors were invading the city: They were either collecting a tax to be paid in nature (which the inhabitants were presumably refusing to pay) or just robbing the town looking for a particular resource. In either case, this is the point where the viewer can notice what the product is: Pepsi blue cans. Having conquered the town, the leader of the invaders is sitting on a huge load of cans and his soldiers are getting more and more cans from the most unexpected places: from a well, from under a hatching hen, from a wool container. In other words, water, food and clothing, i.e., everything, is symbolically convertible to Pepsi-Cola cans. Thus, the third sentence of the commercial should read like this: “Nothing is what it seems in the Middle Ages.”
    

Suddenly, a child’s leather ball (well, maybe not medieval, but old fashioned-looking anyway) is crossing the screen and the magic is actualized: The invading soldiers see the ball and have a bad feeling about it. Or, maybe, they are well aware of its meaning! They empty the market, regroup and get ready for an imminent attack. A group of heroes can be noticed in the opposite corner of the town, waiting to be provoked. They are Beckham, Ronaldinho, Roberto Carlos and Totti, a magic team that would make any teenager’s day. 
    

The regrouped attackers start an assault, but Beckham sends the ball in the opposite direction, scaring the invaders to death. The other football players take positions and pass the ball to each other using skillful head-striking and doubles. Ronaldinho starts his well-known chest-take and head-holding, while the music turns from European to Samba. 
    

The invaders’ stupidity dims when Carlos sets the ball for a penalty execution: They organize themselves quite efficiently to form a defensive row. Their organization proves inefficient, however, because Carlos’s shot hits the immense Pepsi can container under the upper bar locker, and so the entire war booty is spilled out. The invaders ironically accept the non-violent defeat, and everybody bursts into the square for a final Pepsi feast. Beckham gives an autograph on a parchment for the child with the leather ball, and it seems that the child is receiving some recognition for actually starting the entire fight. 

     

There are several contradictions within this scenario: Football does not mean fighting but rather represents a burlesque confrontation; Pepsi is the object of strong fighting; Pepsi is important but somehow not priceless since the viewer can see how many cans of Pepsi can be found along with common goods in the market: four cans in the well’s water bucket; one under the hatching hen; three more in a wool box. 
     

The factual contradiction of all these characteristics is not problematic since imagery allows the intermingling of the empirical world with fiction: Pepsi-Cola’s mundus imaginalis is permissive with every possible stereotype that is able to sell. The Middle Ages is recreated using contemporary cultural elements such as football and black drinks. What Ernst Gellner [1] called a false collective memory, i.e., that national identity has been retro-actively recreated by nineteenth-century ideologies, proves to work similarly for cultural identities in a large sense, as individuals find this conversion acceptable. It is not historical truth that matters because historical truth is a construct. Imagology, as a critical study of cultural characteristics, can be realized only after abandoning our beliefs in the reality of cultural phenomena features [2].

   
The three sentences formulated to describe the stereotypes in the Pepsi commercial come to conclude on the contemporary public perception of the medieval period and prove that the public representation of the Middle Ages can be summarized as follows:

- Brutality: danger and insecurity was a daily routine;

- Stupidity: mystery was one of the main ingredients of life, probably human beings had no cognitive experience;

- Ludic world: everything was convertible into something else, more or less like in a (computer) game.

Claudiu Mesaroș

West University of Timișoara

 

---

[1] Ernest Gellner, Nations and nationalisms (Oxford: Blackwell, 2006 [1983]).

[2] Imagology. The cultural reconstruction and literary representation of national  characters, A critical Theory, ed. M. Beller and J. Leerssen (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2007).