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All right, so more audience participation,
but I'm not going to make you stand up:

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00:00:04,248 --> 00:00:06,776
How many of you have been to Pompeii?

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00:00:06,776 --> 00:00:08,499
Raise your hands.

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00:00:09,329 --> 00:00:12,744
So, maybe about a quarter of you, right?

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But you all know the story, don't you?

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1,933 years ago tomorrow,

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(Laughter)

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yeah,

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August 24, AD 79,

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00:00:28,199 --> 00:00:34,310
Mount Vesuvius on the Bay of Naples
in central Italy suddenly erupted

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and buried not only the city of Pompeii

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but Herculaneum, Stabiae
and the whole region

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under tons of ash, gas,
mud and volcanic debris,

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totally obliterating them.

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Now, we know a lot about this disaster

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that's really become
part of our own civilization.

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We know a lot about it
because a young man named Pliny

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was on the northern edge
of the Bay of Naples

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and witnessed the eruption,

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and he wrote an account of that event.

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And central to his story
was the story of his uncle,

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conveniently also named Pliny,

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who was the admiral of the Roman fleet,

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and he was really interested
in natural history, the elder Pliny,

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and he was setting out to observe,
at closer range, the volcano,

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when he got messages
that people needed rescuing.

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So what began as a scientific expedition
ended up as a heroic rescue mission.

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And Pliny the Elder sailed south
into the volcanic cloud

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and eventually died there.

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And that's what we see
in this painting by Jacob More -

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now in the National Gallery of Scotland -

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we see Vesuvius erupting,

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the lava flowing down the hill,

34
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and in the foreground,

35
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the elder Pliny succumbing, falling,

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collapsing in the arms
of two of his slaves

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while other refugees are moving off.

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So we have this eyewitness account

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that makes it really vivid
exactly what happened there,

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and, of course,

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from the early 18th century,
we have actual remains

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because well diggers discovered Pompeii
and the other Vesuvian cities.

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And unlike other ancient sites,
like Rome or Athens or Jerusalem,

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that have been overbuilt for years
and years and years, centuries, millennia,

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Pompeii was buried, 
sealed by the volcano and all that ash,

46
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like - we seem to think,
we hear over and over again -

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a time capsule, frozen.

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And we find there not only cooking pots
and houses and buildings -

49
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things that we find in Rome
and Athens and Jerusalem -

50
00:03:03,930 --> 00:03:06,384
but actual perishable materials:

51
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eggs, carbonized bread loaves,
food stuffs, medical instruments -

52
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the daily life of antiquity.

53
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We can experience it directly
when we go to Pompeii,

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have this unmediated experience

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of what life was like
in the ancient world,

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and we have the whole city here,

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spread out before, now, the ruined,
collapsed cone of the volcano

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that was so much larger.

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We have the city plan, we have paintings,
we have houses, we have sculptures.

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Now, I'm trained
as a classical archaeologist,

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which means I have to go
to the Mediterranean to do my work

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and go to the Greek islands,

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and it's really tough and yeah, yeah -

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(Laughter)

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That's the way it is.

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And like all of my colleagues,
I've studied Pompeii,

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but I never really worked on it
until a few years ago

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when I was asked
to collaborate with LACMA

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when they had their exhibition

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"Pompeii and the Roman Villa:

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Art and Culture
[around] the Bay of Naples."

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Did any of you see that show?

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A few of you saw it.

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And my job, really,
was to translate this exhibition -

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which opened at the
National Gallery in Washington -

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to LACMA's space,

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and working with the designers there,

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especially Victoria Behner,
who is wonderful,

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we made this show look
really beautiful in LACMA's space.

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And it was all about art and culture,

81
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although most of this stuff
wasn't about art.

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As an archaeologist,
I deal with old and broken stuff.

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Some of it's very beautiful,
but it wasn't created as art;

84
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it was created to decorate houses
or to commemorate important people.

85
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But we did a nice job at LACMA,
and I was very happy with it,

86
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although I have to admit,

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I wasn't responsible for its placement
in the Art of the Americas building.

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(Laughter)

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That was LACMA's choice,

90
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and I don't know what they did
to a whole generation of schoolchildren

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who now are going to think
Pompeii's somewhere in South America.

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I don't know.

93
00:05:02,506 --> 00:05:03,868
(Laughter)

94
00:05:04,378 --> 00:05:08,394
I was very happy with the exhibition,
but it was in many ways traditional

95
00:05:08,394 --> 00:05:10,209
because it perpetuated

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what I've come to think of
as the myth of Pompeii,

97
00:05:13,899 --> 00:05:16,980
that we can go and recover the past,

98
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and the ruins and the finds

99
00:05:19,287 --> 00:05:23,246
give us insight directly
into the lives of ancient people.

100
00:05:23,246 --> 00:05:26,025
And, of course, as an archaeologist,
that's what I live by,

101
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that is to some degree true.

102
00:05:27,741 --> 00:05:31,925
But at the end of the LACMA show,
like so many exhibitions,

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00:05:31,925 --> 00:05:33,684
as a coda, as an add-on,

104
00:05:33,684 --> 00:05:36,376
there was a little section
on the afterlife of Pompeii,

105
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and there were more
of these volcano paintings.

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This is another one, by Valenciennes,

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from the museum in Toulouse, France,

108
00:05:42,284 --> 00:05:45,166
and it's similar to the one by Jacob More:

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the volcano is exploding,
the sea is roiling,

110
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and Pliny the Elder
is collapsing in the foreground

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00:05:50,658 --> 00:05:56,192
as per the letter his nephew wrote
to the historian Tacitus.

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And you've got more architecture
collapsing in front.

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Now, what's important here

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00:06:02,847 --> 00:06:06,954
is that when Jacob More
painted in the 1780s

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00:06:06,954 --> 00:06:11,347
and Valenciennes
painted this 40 years later,

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they weren't eyewitnesses
like Pliny the Younger

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to the ancient eruption,

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but Vesuvius was erupting again;

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it was continually erupting
until about 1944,

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which was the last eruption.

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And what these painters did
is they took contemporary eruptions,

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which they witnessed and painted -

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00:06:28,757 --> 00:06:30,810
here's one by [Joseph Wright] -

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and they superimposed the ancient past.

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You'll notice it looks very much the same,

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except the sea is calm
because it's a smaller eruption

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and there's a lot of lava.

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There was more lava in the modern
eruptions than the ancient one

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00:06:42,690 --> 00:06:44,523
because the ancient one was explosive,

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and that's why all that ash
came down and buried everything.

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If there had been lava,

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it would have burnt everything
and we wouldn't have anything left.

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But this is Volaire,
which looks like Valenciennes.

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This is by Joseph Wright,

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00:06:59,921 --> 00:07:02,970
and you see, it's painted
about the same time as Jacob More -

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here's Jacob More's painting.

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00:07:04,522 --> 00:07:07,483
He just added some guys in togas
in the foreground

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00:07:07,483 --> 00:07:09,997
and some ancient ruins in the background,

139
00:07:09,997 --> 00:07:11,475
and you get antiquity.

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00:07:11,475 --> 00:07:12,492
(Laughter)

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00:07:12,492 --> 00:07:18,257
And I came to realize that so much
of what we think about Pompeii today,

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where we think we're having
this direct connection to the past

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00:07:21,739 --> 00:07:24,193
when we go and we can experience the past,

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00:07:24,193 --> 00:07:30,217
it's not as much a window to the past
as it's a mirror of the present:

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We're superimposing what we expect,
what we know and what we see

146
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onto the past.

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00:07:38,297 --> 00:07:41,538
Andy Warhol never saw Vesuvius erupt,

148
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but he did a whole series
of Vesuvius in 1985,

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when the AIDS crisis
was ravaging his community,

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to symbolize the catastrophe,
the apocalypse, that was happening.

151
00:07:55,974 --> 00:07:59,612
And Pompeii has become
a kind of ground zero for us,

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the type site for any disaster,

153
00:08:03,797 --> 00:08:06,740
whether it's the Lisbon
earthquake of 1755,

154
00:08:06,740 --> 00:08:10,048
the San Francisco earthquake of 1906,

155
00:08:11,218 --> 00:08:16,175
whether it's Katrina or Haiti
or the Fukushima earthquake,

156
00:08:16,175 --> 00:08:18,295
all those natural disasters,

157
00:08:18,295 --> 00:08:20,058
or man-made ones -

158
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the Civil War, Hiroshima, Nagasaki, 9-11 -

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Pompeii is always invoked,

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and it's invoked

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because it's become for us
the foundational disaster of all time.

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And that it was,

163
00:08:38,249 --> 00:08:43,648
but again, the idea that we
can really experience this

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00:08:43,648 --> 00:08:46,969
is what I think of as the myth of Pompeii.

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And this has been promulgated most greatly
after Valenciennes and after Jacob More

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00:08:53,464 --> 00:08:55,751
by Edward Bulwer-Lytton,

167
00:08:55,751 --> 00:08:58,559
the guy who did "The Dark
and Stormy Night" novel.

168
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He did another novel
that was much more famous,

169
00:09:01,009 --> 00:09:03,110
"The Last Days of Pompeii."

170
00:09:03,110 --> 00:09:05,520
Published first in 1834,

171
00:09:05,520 --> 00:09:08,401
this was the bestseller
of the 19th century.

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00:09:08,401 --> 00:09:13,718
It was The Da Vinci Code,
the Twilight series, Harry Potter

173
00:09:13,718 --> 00:09:17,363
all rolled into one, right?

174
00:09:17,363 --> 00:09:22,552
And it came to inspire
theatrical plays, operas,

175
00:09:23,642 --> 00:09:25,962
pyrodrama re-creations

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00:09:25,962 --> 00:09:27,619
as well as, eventually, films.

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It revolves around
two interlocking love triangles,

178
00:09:32,168 --> 00:09:37,329
people really intersecting
with each other in intrigue

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00:09:37,329 --> 00:09:39,273
just before the eruption of Vesuvius,

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00:09:39,273 --> 00:09:41,494
which, of course,
is the climax of the novel

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00:09:41,494 --> 00:09:45,445
when the poor, blind
flower girl, Nydia, is able -

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00:09:45,445 --> 00:09:47,667
as you see on the right hand slide -

183
00:09:47,667 --> 00:09:49,693
to lead her people out

184
00:09:49,693 --> 00:09:53,031
because she alone can see
or find her way in the dark

185
00:09:53,031 --> 00:09:55,052
because she knows
the city in its darkness.

186
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And it's this title,
"The Last Days of Pompeii,"

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that we've taken as the title
for an exhibition

188
00:10:00,780 --> 00:10:03,849
that will open in two weeks
in the Getty Villa,

189
00:10:03,849 --> 00:10:06,415
but we've added the subtitle

190
00:10:06,415 --> 00:10:09,941
"Decadence, Apocalypse and Resurrection."

191
00:10:09,941 --> 00:10:10,955
(Laughter)

192
00:10:10,955 --> 00:10:13,868
Not just because these are great words
that are very exciting,

193
00:10:13,868 --> 00:10:15,345
but they are -

194
00:10:15,345 --> 00:10:18,042
we didn't focus group this,
but we thought hard -

195
00:10:18,042 --> 00:10:19,390
(Laughter)

196
00:10:19,390 --> 00:10:24,187
because we bring these ideas
to the ancient city.

197
00:10:24,187 --> 00:10:26,137
Why was Pompeii destroyed?

198
00:10:26,137 --> 00:10:28,690
Not just because a volcano
happened to erupt

199
00:10:28,690 --> 00:10:31,624
but because they were decadent
and they deserved it.

200
00:10:31,624 --> 00:10:34,959
Was that because they didn't
accept early Christianity?

201
00:10:34,959 --> 00:10:36,883
Pat Robertson would have you believe so:

202
00:10:36,883 --> 00:10:38,477
he said that about Haiti,

203
00:10:38,477 --> 00:10:41,466
he said that about
Greenwich Village on 9-11.

204
00:10:41,466 --> 00:10:47,123
Whether it's religious decadence,
sexual decadence, gluttony,

205
00:10:47,123 --> 00:10:49,502
the violence of the arena
or something else,

206
00:10:49,502 --> 00:10:53,986
Pompeii was destroyed
because it deserved to be destroyed.

207
00:10:53,986 --> 00:10:55,973
That's one of our ideas.

208
00:10:55,973 --> 00:11:01,145
Apocalypse - we can't think of the city
without thinking of its destruction.

209
00:11:01,555 --> 00:11:05,465
The daily lives of its inhabitants
that we reconstruct

210
00:11:05,465 --> 00:11:08,418
we think we experience
when we go there or go to an exhibit -

211
00:11:08,418 --> 00:11:10,893
we know the ending: it's the eruption.

212
00:11:10,893 --> 00:11:12,797
Well, they didn't know the ending.

213
00:11:12,797 --> 00:11:17,223
And then resurrection has to do
with the fantasy of archaeology,

214
00:11:17,223 --> 00:11:20,401
the fantasy that we can
somehow recover the past.

215
00:11:20,401 --> 00:11:24,731
So quickly, I want to run through
just a few objects in the exhibition

216
00:11:24,731 --> 00:11:27,311
and talk a little bit more
about these three themes.

217
00:11:27,311 --> 00:11:29,162
Decadence - a painting like this,

218
00:11:29,162 --> 00:11:32,459
by John William Godward
in the Getty's own collection.

219
00:11:32,459 --> 00:11:35,202
We see these women
in very sheer garments -

220
00:11:35,202 --> 00:11:37,715
I mean, we really see these women -

221
00:11:37,715 --> 00:11:41,021
and they're in an archaeologically
correct interior:

222
00:11:41,021 --> 00:11:45,670
luscious, colored marble veneers,
mosaic floors in the corner,

223
00:11:45,670 --> 00:11:47,277
tiger skins, bear skins.

224
00:11:47,277 --> 00:11:51,260
They're playing with each other,
or one's teasing the other,

225
00:11:51,260 --> 00:11:56,049
with little bone hairpins
with carved figures on them.

226
00:11:56,049 --> 00:12:00,057
These are all things taken from Pompeii
and the Naples Archaeological Museum.

227
00:12:00,057 --> 00:12:01,723
It's foundationally accurate;

228
00:12:01,723 --> 00:12:05,089
there's the support system
that's totally credible,

229
00:12:05,089 --> 00:12:07,390
but the scene is a Victorian fantasy.

230
00:12:07,390 --> 00:12:08,395
(Laughter)

231
00:12:08,395 --> 00:12:10,783
It's the fantasy of a Victorian male

232
00:12:10,783 --> 00:12:15,089
who's imagining what a pair
of courtesans is doing all day,

233
00:12:15,089 --> 00:12:17,919
waiting for their lovers
to come in the evening.

234
00:12:17,919 --> 00:12:22,777
This is, again, the past being used
to mirror the present,

235
00:12:22,777 --> 00:12:24,055
to see what's forbidden.

236
00:12:24,055 --> 00:12:27,194
And, of course, Godward 
couldn't paint this in contemporary terms;

237
00:12:27,194 --> 00:12:28,782
it wouldn't have been acceptable.

238
00:12:28,782 --> 00:12:32,294
But he can dress it up in classical garb
and make it Pompeian,

239
00:12:32,294 --> 00:12:34,559
and it's okay for his audience.

240
00:12:35,059 --> 00:12:38,901
We're very pleased to get this painting,
The Gladiator at the Banquet,

241
00:12:38,901 --> 00:12:41,663
from the Museo di Capodimonte in Naples,

242
00:12:41,663 --> 00:12:43,969
the masterpiece of Francesco Netti,

243
00:12:43,969 --> 00:12:46,291
which, again, I've researched this.

244
00:12:46,291 --> 00:12:48,678
Archaeologically, it's perfect.

245
00:12:48,678 --> 00:12:51,967
The building, the mosaics,
the frescoes on the wall,

246
00:12:51,967 --> 00:12:53,697
the helmet of the gladiators -

247
00:12:53,697 --> 00:12:58,791
everything can be traced back
to remains on site in Pompeii

248
00:12:58,791 --> 00:13:01,530
or in the Naples museum
where most of the finds went.

249
00:13:01,530 --> 00:13:04,443
And Netti, we know, studied those finds,

250
00:13:04,443 --> 00:13:10,464
and yet the overall scene
is a fantastic invention.

251
00:13:10,464 --> 00:13:12,463
Gladiators at a banquet?

252
00:13:12,463 --> 00:13:15,292
Now, if you watch gladiator movies
on TV or something,

253
00:13:15,292 --> 00:13:17,011
you might just think this happened.

254
00:13:17,011 --> 00:13:19,571
But gladiators were highly trained
and very expensive.

255
00:13:19,571 --> 00:13:21,402
They didn't perform at dinner parties.

256
00:13:21,402 --> 00:13:23,314
They performed in the arena,

257
00:13:23,314 --> 00:13:27,015
and they were rarely killed,
because they were too expensive.

258
00:13:27,015 --> 00:13:31,480
So this scene of drunken,
murderous, dissolute Romans

259
00:13:31,480 --> 00:13:35,081
falling over themselves,
literally, into the dirt,

260
00:13:35,081 --> 00:13:39,789
or swooning, the women
offering wine to the victorious gladiator

261
00:13:39,789 --> 00:13:45,145
as these emaciated slaves drag his victim
out through the bloody sand.

262
00:13:45,145 --> 00:13:49,362
This is not only an indictment
of Ancient Rome;

263
00:13:49,672 --> 00:13:52,334
we know that Netti was a social reformer.

264
00:13:52,334 --> 00:13:53,841
He wrote copiously

265
00:13:53,841 --> 00:13:56,852
about the terrible conditions
of peasants in Southern Italy.

266
00:13:56,852 --> 00:14:00,410
This is an attack on contemporary
aristocrats and landowners

267
00:14:00,410 --> 00:14:02,512
translated into the past.

268
00:14:02,512 --> 00:14:06,609
Again, Pompeii as mirror, not window.

269
00:14:06,609 --> 00:14:08,706
I've spoken a lot about apocalypse.

270
00:14:08,706 --> 00:14:10,889
We have lots of volcano
paintings in the show.

271
00:14:10,889 --> 00:14:12,886
I just want to talk briefly
about this one,

272
00:14:12,886 --> 00:14:14,342
which is one of my favorites.

273
00:14:14,342 --> 00:14:18,201
Sebastian Pether, a poor, British artist,
never made it to Naples,

274
00:14:18,201 --> 00:14:19,929
copied other people's paintings,

275
00:14:19,929 --> 00:14:23,335
and that's why there's confusion
about this architecture in the middle -

276
00:14:23,335 --> 00:14:25,688
Roman architecture with cupolas - un huh.

277
00:14:25,688 --> 00:14:26,760
(Laughter)

278
00:14:26,760 --> 00:14:27,780
The sea is calm,

279
00:14:27,780 --> 00:14:30,010
but what I really love are two things.

280
00:14:30,010 --> 00:14:35,977
There are figures in the painting
in 19th century dress,

281
00:14:36,257 --> 00:14:39,565
collapsing the time between now and then.

282
00:14:39,565 --> 00:14:42,139
They're spectators
to this ancient disaster.

283
00:14:42,139 --> 00:14:44,389
But what I really love is this frame,

284
00:14:44,969 --> 00:14:50,793
the gilt frame with chunks
of lava set in and gilt.

285
00:14:50,793 --> 00:14:56,799
So we have here physical proof
of the veracity of the scene, right?

286
00:14:56,799 --> 00:14:58,177
Chunks of Vesuvian lava.

287
00:14:58,177 --> 00:14:59,506
This really happened.

288
00:14:59,506 --> 00:15:01,839
And this is what all the literature said.

289
00:15:01,839 --> 00:15:05,176
But we went to the Boston Museum
of Fine Arts to examine the painting,

290
00:15:05,176 --> 00:15:07,516
and we got it down,
and we started looking at it,

291
00:15:07,516 --> 00:15:09,739
and one of my colleagues there
is a woodworker.

292
00:15:09,739 --> 00:15:14,042
He said, "This isn't lava;
it's shaved wood burl."

293
00:15:14,452 --> 00:15:19,460
So even the foundational testimony
to the truth of the image is fake.

294
00:15:19,460 --> 00:15:20,940
(Laughter)

295
00:15:21,810 --> 00:15:24,668
And that's true of a lot
of what we see at Pompeii.

296
00:15:25,288 --> 00:15:28,906
Many, many people,
many specialists, my colleagues,

297
00:15:28,906 --> 00:15:33,450
don't know that Pompeii
was very badly bombed

298
00:15:33,450 --> 00:15:36,335
by the Allies in the Second World War,

299
00:15:36,335 --> 00:15:37,813
collateral damage.

300
00:15:38,243 --> 00:15:39,558
There were no smart bombs,

301
00:15:39,558 --> 00:15:42,443
and Pompeii is located
very near major supply routes,

302
00:15:42,443 --> 00:15:44,431
roads, bridges, railway lines,

303
00:15:44,431 --> 00:15:48,520
and after the invasions
of Salerno in 1943,

304
00:15:48,520 --> 00:15:51,585
the Allies needed
to cut off German resupply.

305
00:15:52,795 --> 00:15:58,484
Over 160 bomb strikes are recorded;
I'm sure there are many, many others.

306
00:15:58,484 --> 00:16:01,762
And many of these buildings
that were so badly bombed out

307
00:16:02,182 --> 00:16:06,495
were quickly restored
in the late 1940s and '50s.

308
00:16:06,955 --> 00:16:11,787
So what we see at Pompeii
isn't what Vesuvius left;

309
00:16:11,787 --> 00:16:13,814
it's part of an ongoing process.

310
00:16:13,814 --> 00:16:17,800
Our experience there isn't
a direct connection to ancient Rome;

311
00:16:17,800 --> 00:16:19,805
it's one that's highly mediated.

312
00:16:19,805 --> 00:16:26,210
And that's true of the most famous
and familiar "artifacts" from Pompeii,

313
00:16:26,970 --> 00:16:28,531
the bodies.

314
00:16:29,331 --> 00:16:31,316
The bodies aren't petrified,

315
00:16:31,456 --> 00:16:32,945
they're not calcified,

316
00:16:33,085 --> 00:16:34,508
they're not ossified -

317
00:16:34,978 --> 00:16:37,234
they're modern sculptures.

318
00:16:37,884 --> 00:16:41,313
They were created first in 1863,

319
00:16:41,313 --> 00:16:44,615
when archaeologists
who had long found hollows in the ash -

320
00:16:44,615 --> 00:16:49,996
where people who had died from suffocation
had been buried by the falling debris

321
00:16:49,996 --> 00:16:52,965
and then their bodies
disintegrated, leaving hollows.

322
00:16:52,965 --> 00:16:56,259
Archaeologists realized they could
pour plaster into these hollows

323
00:16:56,259 --> 00:16:57,682
and create forms

324
00:16:57,682 --> 00:17:02,801
that were modern casts of the lost voids
of the disappeared victims.

325
00:17:02,801 --> 00:17:05,407
And that's what you see
if you go to Pompeii

326
00:17:05,407 --> 00:17:07,760
in cases around the site.

327
00:17:07,760 --> 00:17:11,067
But if you go to exhibitions
in Malibu or San Diego or New York

328
00:17:11,067 --> 00:17:13,715
or Denver or Cincinnati
or anywhere else in the world,

329
00:17:13,715 --> 00:17:15,477
you don't see those plasters -

330
00:17:15,477 --> 00:17:18,858
I always have to catch myself
that I don't call them original plasters,

331
00:17:18,858 --> 00:17:21,650
because they're not original,
they're already one removed -

332
00:17:21,650 --> 00:17:25,260
you see second-generation resin casts,

333
00:17:25,260 --> 00:17:28,928
after those first-generation
plaster casts,

334
00:17:28,928 --> 00:17:33,308
after the empty voids
of the disappeared victims.

335
00:17:33,778 --> 00:17:37,718
So we're three or more times
removed from those victims.

336
00:17:37,718 --> 00:17:40,413
That doesn't mean
these aren't powerful images

337
00:17:40,413 --> 00:17:41,855
that affect us emotionally,

338
00:17:41,855 --> 00:17:45,378
and that doesn't mean
that they've inspired artists since then,

339
00:17:45,378 --> 00:17:47,094
generations of artists.

340
00:17:47,094 --> 00:17:50,709
Just as More and Valenciennes
and Piranesi and others

341
00:17:50,709 --> 00:17:53,743
were inspired in the 17th
and 18th century,

342
00:17:53,743 --> 00:17:57,365
in the 19th and 20th
and 21st centuries,

343
00:17:58,215 --> 00:18:01,829
artists have been inspired
by Pompeii and the bodies

344
00:18:01,829 --> 00:18:06,473
and the calamity
that befell the inhabitants.

345
00:18:06,473 --> 00:18:09,418
On the top, I show you
a sculpture by Arturo Martini,

346
00:18:09,418 --> 00:18:11,683
an Italian sculptor of between the wars,

347
00:18:11,683 --> 00:18:13,908
who deliberately rejected

348
00:18:13,908 --> 00:18:18,709
the beautiful neoclassicism
of Mussolini's fascist era

349
00:18:18,709 --> 00:18:23,535
to carve in this rough stone
a figure he called "The Drinker,"

350
00:18:23,535 --> 00:18:25,873
modeled on the Pompeian bodies.

351
00:18:25,873 --> 00:18:29,330
And we'll have in the exhibition
this figure on the bottom,

352
00:18:29,470 --> 00:18:32,146
by our contemporary, Anthony Gormley,

353
00:18:32,146 --> 00:18:37,056
who uses his own body
to image, in this case,

354
00:18:37,056 --> 00:18:41,091
what he calls "The End
of the Human Project."

355
00:18:41,441 --> 00:18:44,279
We also have a modern work,
a contemporary work,

356
00:18:44,279 --> 00:18:48,297
that reflects the most famous
of the casts, the dog of Pompeii.

357
00:18:48,727 --> 00:18:50,199
Allan McCollum,

358
00:18:50,469 --> 00:18:56,092
to emphasize our distance
from the original loss and sorrow

359
00:18:56,242 --> 00:19:01,819
and yet how it's still with us, although
in this very mitigated, mediated form,

360
00:19:01,977 --> 00:19:05,011
has created a work based on multiples,

361
00:19:05,391 --> 00:19:07,801
to remind us that we're
not seeing the dog;

362
00:19:07,801 --> 00:19:12,034
the dog is gone, and we're seeing
a reflection of it.

363
00:19:12,624 --> 00:19:15,826
Now, there's a lot more in the show,
but I have to move on quickly.

364
00:19:15,826 --> 00:19:18,224
Resurrection - the fantasy of archaeology.

365
00:19:18,224 --> 00:19:21,240
This French painting
by Sain, in the Orsay,

366
00:19:21,240 --> 00:19:23,451
which is coming to the Villa in two weeks,

367
00:19:23,451 --> 00:19:25,404
shows this happy scene

368
00:19:25,404 --> 00:19:31,298
of peasant women
carrying dirt and revealing finds.

369
00:19:31,298 --> 00:19:32,925
That's not how it was.

370
00:19:33,255 --> 00:19:37,478
The earliest excavations we know
were done by convicts

371
00:19:38,458 --> 00:19:39,992
in chains.

372
00:19:40,712 --> 00:19:43,205
In the 19th century,
they were done by poor peasants,

373
00:19:43,205 --> 00:19:45,219
and notice in the front here,

374
00:19:45,219 --> 00:19:50,171
the guard with a switch
to make sure the work kept going.

375
00:19:50,571 --> 00:19:55,738
I'm very pleased that from the Vatican
we'll have this object.

376
00:19:55,738 --> 00:19:58,061
How many of you
have seen the Sistine Chapel?

377
00:19:59,551 --> 00:20:00,725
I'd say most of you.

378
00:20:00,725 --> 00:20:03,477
Then you've all walked past this
and not seen it.

379
00:20:03,477 --> 00:20:05,017
(Laughter)

380
00:20:05,017 --> 00:20:06,248
I did several times.

381
00:20:06,248 --> 00:20:08,647
It's in the room
right after the Sistine Chapel,

382
00:20:08,647 --> 00:20:10,888
and you walk by in a daze,
and you don't see it.

383
00:20:10,888 --> 00:20:13,850
This is a monumental, beautiful vetrine,

384
00:20:13,850 --> 00:20:15,215
almost a reliquary,

385
00:20:15,215 --> 00:20:17,627
with a Latin inscription
in gilt lettering

386
00:20:17,627 --> 00:20:21,606
saying these are objects
that were excavated at Pompeii

387
00:20:21,606 --> 00:20:23,271
in the presence of Pope Pius IX

388
00:20:23,271 --> 00:20:24,402
in 1849

389
00:20:24,402 --> 00:20:26,585
and given to him by the King of Naples.

390
00:20:26,585 --> 00:20:28,851
Archaeology has always been

391
00:20:28,851 --> 00:20:31,742
the sport of kings
and the stuff of politics.

392
00:20:31,742 --> 00:20:33,153
But think for a minute.

393
00:20:33,153 --> 00:20:36,242
If you're running the excavations
and the Pope is coming to visit

394
00:20:36,242 --> 00:20:38,548
and you're going to put on
an excavation for him,

395
00:20:38,548 --> 00:20:41,467
are you going to leave it to chance
what you might turn up?

396
00:20:41,958 --> 00:20:42,967
No way.

397
00:20:42,967 --> 00:20:45,242
The case is full of wonderful finds:

398
00:20:45,242 --> 00:20:48,538
bronzes, terracotta, glass, marbles.

399
00:20:48,538 --> 00:20:51,848
The marble relief on the bottom
was thought to be Alexander the Great.

400
00:20:51,848 --> 00:20:53,429
Spectacular things.

401
00:20:53,429 --> 00:20:57,905
There's no doubt that
these excavations were staged,

402
00:20:57,905 --> 00:21:01,392
and scholars today debate
the degree to which they're salted -

403
00:21:01,392 --> 00:21:03,846
that the pieces were deliberately
buried to be found

404
00:21:03,846 --> 00:21:05,233
rather than prepared.

405
00:21:05,233 --> 00:21:06,670
In fact, some people think

406
00:21:06,670 --> 00:21:10,849
that relief of the horseman
comes from a different site altogether.

407
00:21:10,849 --> 00:21:16,203
So even what you excavate at Pompeii
might not be Pompeian.

408
00:21:16,783 --> 00:21:19,758
We'll have screens
for film clips, in the show,

409
00:21:19,758 --> 00:21:22,673
from the earliest silents
through the great epics

410
00:21:22,673 --> 00:21:25,834
because the moving picture
has mightily shaped our view

411
00:21:25,834 --> 00:21:30,159
and they follow this arc of decadence,
apocalypse and resurrection

412
00:21:30,159 --> 00:21:32,762
up to the present day,

413
00:21:32,762 --> 00:21:35,626
where the Simpsons

414
00:21:35,626 --> 00:21:36,671
(Laughter)

415
00:21:36,671 --> 00:21:40,811
go to Pompeii, and they find themselves.

416
00:21:40,811 --> 00:21:43,110
Right? It's the mirror.

417
00:21:43,110 --> 00:21:45,794
And Doctor Who - I love this.

418
00:21:45,794 --> 00:21:48,865
The eruption of the volcano
and the destruction of thousands

419
00:21:48,865 --> 00:21:49,961
isn't enough.

420
00:21:49,961 --> 00:21:52,080
They have to add space aliens.

421
00:21:52,080 --> 00:21:53,114
(Laughter)

422
00:21:53,114 --> 00:21:55,254
How does that reflect upon us?

423
00:21:55,794 --> 00:21:57,274
Now, a few months ago -

424
00:21:57,274 --> 00:22:00,654
and I've been working on this show
with colleagues for years -

425
00:22:00,654 --> 00:22:05,235
in April, it was the anniversary
of the sinking of the Titanic,

426
00:22:05,755 --> 00:22:09,521
and I was struck to see this photo
of half a Titanic, full-scale,

427
00:22:09,521 --> 00:22:11,136
in Pigeon Forge, Tennessee.

428
00:22:11,136 --> 00:22:12,440
It's bizarre.

429
00:22:12,850 --> 00:22:14,473
But you'll remember

430
00:22:14,473 --> 00:22:19,634
there were all these celebrations
and parties and reenactments

431
00:22:19,634 --> 00:22:21,249
of the sinking of the Titanic.

432
00:22:21,249 --> 00:22:22,394
And I started to think,

433
00:22:22,394 --> 00:22:26,831
How does it happen
that a calamity on this scale

434
00:22:26,831 --> 00:22:31,563
becomes the subject
of entertainment and celebration?

435
00:22:32,333 --> 00:22:34,989
It happened in Pompeii very early,

436
00:22:34,989 --> 00:22:38,168
not only with paintings
but with operas and stage productions.

437
00:22:38,168 --> 00:22:42,789
In 1906, you could dance
The Last Days of Pompeii twostep march

438
00:22:42,793 --> 00:22:45,073
for an evening's entertainment.

439
00:22:45,073 --> 00:22:47,364
Today, taking a little more risk,

440
00:22:47,364 --> 00:22:51,302
you can go to Reno or Las Vegas
and play the Pompeii slot machine,

441
00:22:51,302 --> 00:22:55,112
and if you win, the volcano
will erupt with gold coins.

442
00:22:55,112 --> 00:22:56,377
(Laughter)

443
00:22:56,377 --> 00:22:59,993
And if you have the occasion
to travel to Williamsburg, Virginia,

444
00:22:59,993 --> 00:23:01,388
and visit Busch gardens,

445
00:23:01,388 --> 00:23:04,660
you can take the Escape
from Pompeii water ride.

446
00:23:05,390 --> 00:23:07,047
It's fun, especially on a hot day;

447
00:23:07,047 --> 00:23:08,621
I did it once.

448
00:23:09,331 --> 00:23:14,105
But I submit to you,
we can't really escape from Pompeii,

449
00:23:14,355 --> 00:23:18,670
because we've come to carry it
around with us wherever we go.

450
00:23:19,070 --> 00:23:24,741
But it escapes us,
the real, the historical Pompeii

451
00:23:25,151 --> 00:23:27,343
because the Pompeii we know

452
00:23:27,343 --> 00:23:32,558
is the one that we're continually
reinventing and recrafting

453
00:23:32,928 --> 00:23:38,414
to suit our own preoccupations,
needs and desires.

454
00:23:38,414 --> 00:23:40,882
And that's what
this exhibition is all about.

455
00:23:41,542 --> 00:23:44,561
It opens in three weeks, September 12th,

456
00:23:44,561 --> 00:23:46,444
runs through early January.

457
00:23:46,444 --> 00:23:50,614
There's another show,
more documentary, of photographs,

458
00:23:50,614 --> 00:23:52,182
at the Italian Cultural Institute

459
00:23:52,182 --> 00:23:53,280
in Westwood.

460
00:23:53,280 --> 00:23:55,581
Please come visit it at the Getty Villa.

461
00:23:55,581 --> 00:23:56,880
Thank you very much.

462
00:23:56,880 --> 00:23:58,647
(Applause)