Thursday 15th November 2012

Lord Bolly Stunning, lion-haired, Monaco-royal-linked, occasional catwalk model, director of Purbeck Crowhurst’s gallery in Berlin, for whose show I gained Berlin, insisted on the Pergamon Museum. If you’ve only got one day, he said, you must take the Perg.

I’d never heard of it. Grim monumental building in grim grey, like a Greek temple, sheering straight out of a river, so dark, grim waters swirling at its base. You go in and straight away are whammed by a massive, massive room containing the Pergamon altar.

Altar! Forget the C of E. Set of steep marble steps, 70 metres wide at least, flanked by temples, all raving with sculpture. Originally there would have been a plaza in front of the steps whose walls had a frieze running round on three sides, the fourth side being the steps up. All this re-assembled in the room.

It’s Greek. Couldn’t find the date. Must be contemporary with the Parthenon, I would have thought. But my goodness, the Elgin Marbles quite put to shame. As nothing. This frieze is easily 150 metres and in a marvellous state of pres. Many thrusting limbs, horses, bums and fainting maidens. No idea if a story but awfully dynamic.

There were two other rooms, one containing several entire fronts of palatial Roman buildings and the last one Islamic.

Was not quite sure what a Poor Little Rich Gay should do. In 1977 Anthony Mottram and I bickered round Greece. Latterly we were at Baalbec with the Gay Mother. Otherwise we’ve tended more towards Islam and have been less known in Ancient Rome and Greece. In 1977, our thing was statues of wet queen, Antinous, of which, we fantasised, ‘only the genitals remain.’

At last, at last I saw the Poor Little Rich Gay angle, as far as the frieze was concerned. In some of the panels only a foot or bit of limb survived. These were the ones to love. Fragments! Fragments! We don’t want great slabs of the Ancient World. Fragments are much more enticing.

Otherwise I made the Islamic room my favourite. There was a house front, so plain and different. I think Bolly said it was from Aleppo. Unfort. entirely reconstructed, not ancient at all, an attraction from my point of view.

Islamic House Front: Possibly from Aleppo: A Replica: Love It Best of All in the Perg

My Favourite Frieze Slab at the Pergamon