The Unswept Room
Hardham’s trompe l’oeil representation of ‘The Deception of Eve and Adam’, painted to look like a curtain suspended by loops from wall hooks, has been described as ‘most unusual, if not unique’. The two elegant, long-limbed figures of the protoplasts certainly remain a main attraction for visitors to Hardham. Appropriately enough, this scene from the Garden of Eden is itself a reflection upon truth and deception. Yes, we can see Eve being deceived by the Serpent, but at the same time the artist is drawing us into our own, new deception.
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Well, this is Eve and Adam, right? Or is it a painting of Eve and Adam? Or a painting of a curtain with Eve and Adam? We're very much in the realm of Magritte's pipe, ‘The Treachery of Images’ (1929), where the testimony of our eyes evaporates, and we're left wondering if there is anything more to the world than what we take in with our senses. The Hardham artist puts us in a position like the Wachowskis's Neo, where we must consider whether to remain as participant in this comfortable deception, or to wake up to the more difficult but satisfying life which we glimpse beyond. The deceptive Hardham painting steers us towards renewing our relationship with the unseen, and with the divine.
The idea of shepherding the viewer towards spiritual reflection through self-regarding, deceptive art was, of course, far from new with the Hardham artist. Trompe l’oeil had played a significant role in the art of Ancient Greece, and continued to do so in later replicas created to satisfy the Roman desire to tap into the authentic mysticism of the older Greek tradition. The triclinium (dining room) of Emperor Hadrian’s Villa on the Aventine Hill in Rome boasted an extravagantly deceptive and playful mosaic floor decoration, the remains of which are now on display in the Vatican Museum.
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'The Unswept Room' Deceptive mosaic from the triclinium of Hadrian's Villa, Rome c. 120 CE based on work by Sosus of Pergamon c. 130 BCE (Vatican Museum) |
The centrepiece of the surviving pavement is now mostly lost, leaving a border of illusionistic friezes which hold up a mirror to our lives, a signal that we're here for a moment of reflection. A tableau of theatrical masks establishes an association between ephemeral human life and the illusion of the stage, while the whole piece is framed by a repeating pattern of acanthus leaves and bull’s skulls, a motif beneath our feet which once mirrored similar decoration on the ceiling high above our heads. Much of the rest of the composition has the appearance of a messy floor, the morning after a sumptuous banquet. The work is signed in Greek by Heraklitos, but evidently made in tribute to a famous design created over three centuries earlier by his compatriot, the master mosacist Sosus (fl. c. 130 BCE) working in the city of Pergamon, now in modern Turkey. Here's how Pliny describes Sosus’s original:
On Pavements, and the ‘Unswept Room’
Pavements are an invention of the Greeks, who also practised the art of painting them, till they were superseded by mosaics. In this last branch of art, the highest excellence has been attained by Sosus, who laid, at Pergamon, the mosaic pavement known as the ‘Unswept Room’ from the fact that he there represented, in small squares of different colours, the remnants of a banquet lying upon the floor, and other things which are usually swept away with the broom, they having all the appearance of being left there by accident.
Pliny the Elder, Historia naturalis, Book 36, Chapter 60
A carefully arranged tableau of dismembered crustacea, shells of nuts and snails, gnawed bones of fish and poultry are all created in opus vermiculatum, a mosaic technique which uses very small and irregular tesserae. From the cube shadows which the objects cast over the cube floor it looks like the sun is low. I can almost smell the stale aroma of party left-overs, imagine how it might feel on the soles of my feet to walk over this scattered detritus. The rustle and crunch made by my light gait might briefly stop the teeth of a scurrying mosaic mouse who joins me in enjoying the memories of yesterday’s feast. Me and the mouse are the only ‘living’ beings left to pick over the dead remains, in our own differing ways.
It’s tempting to hear gales of ancient Greek laughter (xa xa xa!) as diners noticed the mess beneath their couches. Ehud Fathy ('The Asàratos òikos mosaic', Tel Aviv 2017) points out, however, that once the dining couches were arranged in the triclinium, the costly mosaic floor would hardly have been seen. The exquisite mosaic was not created solely to play some cheap gotcha trick during an actual banquet. Instead it took sophisticated guests on a ‘voyage of contemplation and erudite conversation … [to consider] the very nature of reality and limits of human vision and knowledge’.
Even if we could, we’re not supposed to touch the debris left on the floor after a banquet: ‘to sweep the floor even as a guest rises from the table … is considered seriously bad luck’ (Pliny again). Even today some people won’t sweep under the bed of a sick person, or have to spit on a broom that touches their feet for fear of offending the spirits. Scraps were to be left on the floor to nourish dead heroes and ancestors. Nonetheless, like the mouse, we are compelled to nibble at Sosus’s Unswept Floor, chewing over our place in the ontological chasm between the seen and the unseen worlds. The allure of 'The Unswept Room' was a pre-Christian way of tricking us into a mystical contemplation of a spiritual world which lies beyond our dull senses.
We can think of the Hardham trompe l’oeil curtain within the same mystical tradition, taking us on a similar 'voyage of contemplation' as Sosus’s ‘Unswept Room’, using art to challenge the limits of our perception, and to pull us towards reflection upon the mystery of the unseen and the divine. Recasting the theme of artistic deception at Hardham to include biblical Eve and Adam, the artist transports us from the mystical, pagan outlook of Sosus to see things from a personal, Christian perspective. The Hardham muralist exposes us not as detached observers. We become Eve and Adam, reaching out towards the Serpent’s alluring apple, the mouse who can't resist the scraps on a mosaic floor. Like Hadrian's erudite guests who contemplated the divine through a messy floor mosaic, our active engagement with art at Hardham can lead us away from the fate of Eve and Adam, and towards Christian enlightenment.
'Stay in Wonderland, and I show you how deep the rabbit hole goes'
So what does this all mean for a modern viewer? Hadrian's guests may have used the trompe l'oeil pavement to go on a voyage into mystical neo-Platonic ideas, the sort of spiritual, gnostic discussion which would flow into the thinking of early Egyptian Christian teachers such as Valentinus (fl. 150 AD), before being roundly rejected by Irenaeus of Lyons in his tract entitled Against the Heresies (c. 174-189 AD). In twelfth century Hardham, personal spiritual regeneration through immersive art seems to have been considered so transformative that it quite literally formed part of the preparation for Christian baptism. Time-travelling devotees of Rome's Villa Adriana may have felt quite at home with Hardham's continuing love for Classical deceptive art, and its unique adaptation here as part of a Christian ritual of spiritual confirmation.
A modern cinematic audience may prefer to think of such desire for spiritual transcendence through art as like Neo's own rebirth, emerging from a world of being at his desk on time, paying taxes, into a world beyond The Matrix. Becoming aware that there is more to his life than sensory experience had told him, Neo accepts Morpheus's offer: 'stay in Wonderland and I show you how deep the rabbit hole goes. The truth and nothing more'. We'll continue our own search for unseen truth in the works of ancient Greco-Roman spirituality, the creative innovation of the Hardham artist, and The Matrix's immersive world of the moving image in future posts.
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| 'The Deception of Eve and Adam' (Hardham, chancel arch west) |
