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Roman Tics
An archeological voyage with Allison Katz
Allison Katz, Pompeii Circumstance (Monopodium), 2023
In 2022, the artist Allison Katz traveled to Italy to undertake a research fellowship at the Archaeological Park of Pompeii as part of Pompeii Commitment, the site’s first long-term engagement with contemporary art. In this framework, she created Pompeii Circumstance, a series of seven posters displayed in locations throughout the archaeological grounds.
On the occasion of staging a major exhibition at the Aspen Art Museum, Katz writes about her continued entanglement with the ancient world, a collection of prose fragments presented in the spirit of Pompeii’s scattered vestiges.
I went to Italy for the first time in March 1996, on a school trip, girls only. I was fifteen. We walked through Pompeii arm-in-arm, passing around a Discman playing Oasis’s “Don’t Look Back in Anger.” Every photo I took with a disposable camera has now been lost. We let loose that night at a disco in Sorrento. Local boys. One kissed me on the dance floor, tasting of salt. He asked for my home address. I gave it to him, but lied about my name. A week later, landing back in Canada, my mother greeted me at the airport with a baby blue aerogram from “Davide”: “Who’s Jenny Katz?!” I was mortified, especially by my choice of pseudonym. Jenny was the name of my aunt’s dog.
Among the most compelling victims of Pompeii is the plaster cast of a dying dog found chained to the House of Orpheus
Watching Fellini Satyricon (1969) for the first time, stoned, aged sixteen, I thought it was the drugs. Watching it sober several years later, I realized it was the Romans. I now understand it was a formative experience of the sublime, on par with visiting the Grand Canyon.
Allison Katz, Pompeii Circumstance (Hippolytus), 2023
Allison Katz, Pompeii Circumstance (Be nice), 2023
Fellini, while recuperating from a debilitating illness, read Petronius’s classical Roman satire—(the work survives only in fragments, and the film reflects this by being very fragmentary itself, even stopping mid-sentence)—
It was the missing parts that intrigued him most. In adapting it for the screen, Fellini said he wanted to eliminate the borderline between dream and imagination. Filming during what became known as the Summer of Love, he made ancient history look like science fiction.
Freud considered Wilhelm Jensen’s novella Gradiva, about a young archaeologist who comes to realize his repressed love for his friend by associating her with the figure of a walking woman in a Pompeiian bas-relief, as a prime example of something that might be called “cure by seduction” or “cure by love”
Frame with Bust of Maenads and Satyr, 1st century AD. Fresco, 17.72 x 17.72 in. (45 x 45 cm), inv. 17713
Painted Stucco Fragment with Dog and Deer within Medallion, 1st century AD. Fresco-painted plaster, 13.6 x 13.6 in. (34.5 x 34.5 cm), inv. 2019
Silenus Head, 1st century AD. Fresco, 13.8 x 9.4 in. (35 x 24 cm), inv. 20881
Using charcoal and gold pastel, I drew, aged seventeen, for my art school portfolio, a self-portrait in a three-quarter pose, wearing a Roman infantry helmet with a nose guard.
Turns out my most memorable art history class as an undergraduate was “The English Country House,” which was actually about the discovery of Pompeii, the Grand Tour, the birth of tourism, the origins of collecting, nascent museology and how Robert Adam copied whatever household decoration was being unearthed and started interior design trends that continue to this day.
In Russia, Christmas 2007, lovesick, Saint Petersburg, a deep freeze. With friends at the Hermitage. We are surprised to see a trove of Pompeiian frescoes on display, heat baked into the cracks. Consolation. We are all very fragile. For example, J burst into tears in the museum cafeteria when we all rose too quickly from the table and she hadn’t yet finished her coffee.
Examples of situations that can provoke an uncanny feeling include: inanimate objects coming alive, thoughts appearing to have an effect in the real world, seeing your double (doppelgänger)…
Allison Katz, Pompeii Circumstance (Milk glass), 2023
Allison Katz, Pompeii Circumstance (Maenad in the Barracks), 2023
Allison Katz, Pompeii Circumstance (Mask, from the House of the Large Fountain), 2023
Back in New York, I began painting what I felt I had finally recognized in those Pompeiian fragments: my own hand.
September 2022. My first research trip to the storage unit in Pompeii. A living archive. Nothing is packed away. Every object stares back: an encrusted pot, corroded tweezers, a marble boy holding a duck. But M, the one in charge, does not show me all the fresco pieces, preserved in cement frames and leaning against each other in the racks, not even when I ask. I have not yet earned his trust.
October 2023. My second research trip to the storage unit in Pompeii. On the way to the racks I see one of my posters hanging above M’s desk, between two maps and above a crucifix. I am really happy, even if M feigned at first not to remember me –
A poster always frames an event.
An event is always happening.
Even if
we can
not
remember
it —
Allison Katz, Cocteau, 2021. Oil, acrylic, rice and sand on linen, 70 7/8 x 47 1/4 x 1 3/8 in. (180 x 120 x 3.5 cm)
Allison Katz, Mosaic, 2008. Oil on wood, 20 x 16 in. (50.8 x 40.6 cm)
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Allison Katz’s Pompeii Circumstance (2023) was photographed in situ at the Archaeological Park of Pompeii in January 2023.
All artwork © Allison Katz. Courtesy the artist. Fragments courtesy the Archaeological Park of Pompeii in the context of Pompeii Commitment. Archaeological Matters. By concession of the Ministero della Cultura—Parco Archeologico di Pompei. Photos: Amedeo Benestante
“In the House of theTrembling Eye,” an exhibition staged by Allison Katz, is on view until September 29 at the Aspen Art Museum.
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Allison Katz is an artist living and working in London. She investigates the ways in which aesthetic practices link and absorb autobiography, commodity culture, information systems and art history. She received widespread critical recognition for her first traveling U.K. solo exhibition “Artery” at Nottingham Contemporary (2021) and Camden Art Centre (2022).