Why Read the Classics?

Abstract

Why Read the Classics? is a work made around a damaged classical statue in the Villa Aldobrandini, a public garden in Rome. A flight of stone steps leads past ancient ruins up to palms and orange trees, in a garden, which though beautiful, is rather used and neglected. Near the top of the stairway stands the marble figure of a young woman, on a pedestal in an alcove in the wall. Like so many statues in Rome, the head of the figure is missing. Behind the space of the figure’s head we hung a golden disc, of the kind used to reflect light onto the faces of actors and models. Opposite the figure we installed a powerful film and television lamp, so its beam of light reflected onto the disc and created an aura or halo. Visitors to the garden where confronted by the dazzling light shinning from the iconic vision of a mythical woman. Yet the lamp and electrical cables that produce the light anchored the scene firmly in the present. Later, the work will exist as a pair of still photographs which will formulate a relationship between the fragment and its setting of loss and decline. In Why Read the Classics? three conceptions of femininity converge: the classical goddess, the Christian Madonna, and the contemporary film star. ‘Why Read the Classics?’ is the title of a book by the great