Peter Greenaway: Museums and Moving Images (Essays in Art and Culture) by David Pascoe

Author:David Pascoe [Pascoe, David]
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Publisher: Reaktion Books
Published: 2013-05-24T04:00:00+00:00

47 Terminal prognosis, from The Belly of an Architect (1987).

Sculpture, in particular, is invested with such a metaphorical charge and carries with it the kind of corporeality that obsesses Kracklite and Greenaway. It forms part of the cinematic discourse, which, in many shots, strives for the effect of abolishing the frontier between living people and representations carved in stone. For instance, Kracklite turns his head towards the photographer Flavia at the Piazza Navone, presenting to the camera a profile oddly similar to that of the bearded face of one of the allegorical figures in Bernini’s statue of the Four Rivers. A comparable use of Roman statuary occurs when Kracklite’s doctor, walking with his patient through the cloister of the hospital, pronounces the terminal prognosis (illus. 47). As the pair move glacially down the corridor’s length, the perspective is one that could be derived from Piero. The colonnade – wide with high ceilings and a stone floor – opens on to a sunlit courtyard, the birds sing in the bright blue air and a small fountain trickles into a bowl; and all along the right-hand side of the corridor is a line of Roman busts on plinths or pedestals. As they pass the stones, the doctor gives a brief account of each emperor’s fame and infamy:

Calba … a miserable sort of man … bisexual … fancied mature slaves, especially if they had been a little mutilated … all his freed men had no fingers on the left hands … he’s dead – died screaming … in a cellar.

(They walk on. They stop again.)

Titus … he started well … soon became greedy … disembowelled on the Tiber steps … he’s dead, died screaming … (They walk on.)

Hadrian … as you know, an architect of note … put a lot of faith in stones died peacefully … planning a Temple to Wisdom ... still (Shrugs) … he’s dead … Nero … best not to talk about him – burnt Rome, caused untold misery … deserved to die; died screaming in a summerhouse.

(They come to an unnamed bust and the doctor stops.)

Unknown … no name … he looks serene enough, let’s suppose he was you … same fleshy face … what happened to him? How did he die?8

Through these fragmentary representations of Roman emperors, Kracklite’s future is brought to a point of convergence with a historical perspective; he is petrified into a more reassuringly solid time than his own future. Standing in front of each bust, the doctor repeats ‘died screaming’ in order to remind the architect that these blocks of stone were once bodies, vulnerable and human; and then at the end of the promenade, in front of the final statue, the connection between flesh and stone is made, finally and visually. The doctor stands on the left of the screen, the bust occupies the centre, while on the right is Kracklite, his back to the wall and his body cut off mid-torso by the cinematic frame. In this position he faces outwards,

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