Classical musing Decoding art
Charlotte Higgins
There are lots of weird side benefits in having studied classics—even a bit of classics, not necessarily the full torture version involving learning the dual and the aorist passive. One of them is knowing, roughly, what the hell is going on when you look up at an elaborately painted ceiling in some grand country house, or gazing at the walls of the National Gallery. It has to be said, it doesn’t get you a 100 per cent score—I often think how much better I would be at this if only I could get round to reading the Bible, Ariosto’s Orlando Furioso and a whole bunch of no doubt vastly improving texts that supply subjects for Renaissance and Baroque art. Classics also helps in untangling the references for more recent art, too: Giacometti had obviously submerged himself in the visual world of the Etruscans to create his etiolated bronze figures, and Cy Twombly, who lived in Rome, spent years of his life absorbing classical visual culture, which he refracted into his paintings and sculptures in often indirect ways.