I'm not a professional art critic. (I'm barely a professional writer.) My account of the press preview for Seattle Art Museum [0]'s extensive show of ancient Roman art -- courtesy of the Louvre [1], where the Romans live when their display space isn't being renovated -- isn't going to be as knowledgeable or incisive as that of The Stranger's Jen Graves, who scribbled out copious notes, asked thoughtful questions and seemed generally familiar with what she was seeing.
By comparison, I was too awestruck to take notes, and I spent too much time trying not to think of "Gladiator," Caesar's Palace, that one Roman episode [2] of "Star Trek" and the noneducational bits of "Caligula." But if even the Lusty Lady [2] can rise to this auspicious occasion (this week's marquee pun: "Veni, Vedi, Veni"), I can do my best to tell you why "Roman Art from the Louvre" is something you absolutely have to see. If there was ever a reason for SAM to expand, this exhibit is it.
Occupying the entirety of the Simonyi Special Exhibition Galleries on the museum's fourth floor, "Roman Art from the Louvre" [2] is as epic as its subject demands. You are greeted at the entrance by a 5 1/2-foot-tall, 3,420-pound gray-veined marble bust of Lucilla [3]; the "family tree" of Augustus [4] and Livia [5] is presented as a cavernous room full of statuary and busts; the lintel from a temple façade is placed atop an ad hoc archway, relative to the manner in which you would have viewed it in antiquity.
The pieces are strikingly lit (look for the small bronze figure, "Dancing Lar," that throws a pair of shadows to evoke movement) and are arranged in cinematic vistas that put "Gladiator's" computer-animated, rinky-dinky Rome to shame.
It's so easy to be awed by the scale and grandeur of the exhibit that you might miss its central notion -- that Rome was a civilization of people, not just temples and statues. Its artists did not occupy a particularly venerated position in society, and the statues, busts and mosaics they made were common fixtures in most civilized homes.
"Roman Art from the Louvre" doesn't present the art simply for its own sake, but as a means to humanize the monolith. These weren't alabaster demigods; like us, many of them lived in apartments, dug professional sports and got up-dos. Looking through the exhibit, you truly get a feeling for how the Romans worshipped, fought, procreated and perished.
"Roman Art from the Louvre" runs through May 11, and admission to the exhibit costs a bit more than your basic visit to SAM (about $7 more, and you have to make a reservation). Don't hesitate on that or any other account. Pay the money and suffer the long lines. You won't regret it.
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