Exhibit Walk-Through: A Selection
The exhibit, "The City of Sardis: Approaches in Graphic Recording" (2003), is about the topographic landscape and historic architecture of Sardis, and their graphic recording since the middle of the eighteenth century.
Architectural and topographical features of the site have been approached in different ways and with different objectives, partly stimulated by changes in attitudes toward antiquity and by developments in technology.
The drawings in the exhibit illustrate a variety of aims and approaches over a chronological span of two and a half centuries, and record major monuments and landscapes at Sardis from Lydian, Hellenistic, Roman, and Byzantine eras.
The oldest drawings are hand-measured, precise pencil and ink renderings from the Age of Enlightenment; the latest employ electronic and computerized technologies that expand traditional aims of graphic recording:
Brush Strokes:
in the 18th and 19th centuries, graphic recording of Greek and Roman monuments typically aimed to provide models that would improve the design and ornament of contemporary architecture, to relate landscape and architecture with historical events, or to evoke through images of ruin and destruction the romance of the past and the sadness of irrevocable loss.
Crisp Lines:
in the 19th and 20th centuries, recording became more catholic and documented ancient monuments regardless of their perceived artistic merit, historical significance, or dramatic qualities. Many drawings are extremely precise, showing assemblage detail, technical features, and damaged parts that have potential value for understanding history and use as archaeological methods became more systematic and scientific.
Dashed Lines:
reconstruction drawings can show helpfully and vividly how ruined buildings once looked; they can be equally instructive in clarifying how such buildings could not have looked, and in revealing the biases of archaeologists and the limitations of information available to the artists.
Infinite Points:
much architectural and topographical evidence has become accessible only in the late 20th century with the computer, electronic transits, and the global positional system (GPS) equipment which are dramatically changing the graphic recording of Sardis, and opening a new window on its complex urban history.
