A starting point for understanding the stationes from a visual point of view is the dissertation of Clarke (1973) about Roman black-and-white mosaics, published in 1979, and now also available digitally with more figures, of high quality. Clarke stresses the physical movement of the viewer, provoked by the mosaicist ("kinesthetic address"). His other primary focus is the relation to architecture. Becatti had mainly focused on the depictions, not on their context. All photos published by him show only the ships, dolphins and so on, not the enitre mosaic, marble frames of the mosaics, and the masonry. Clarke's work is fundamental and groundbreaking in opening a wider scope.
On the square, Clarke argues, the attention of the visitor walking on an axis along the stationes was attracted to the stationes in various ways. He notes "the heraldic arrangement of twin figural elements on either side of the axis line and the placement of a single element on the axis". There is no framed emblema, placed on the axis line. "The axis is often also marked with a figure placed on the axis - usually a lighthouse, a perfect arrow-shaped marker". The bushel (grain measure) is used as another marker on the axis. The heraldic composition can also involve two stationes, witness the dolpins swimming to the right and left in the front rooms of stationes 51 and 52.
The scope can be widened further by learning from neuroesthetics, a discipline coined in 2002. This is the study of the relation between the brain and art, especially visual perception (where art does not equal beauty, and should not be pulled out of its cultural context). What is registered by the eye is processed in the brain. A better understanding of this processing is helpful in understanding the communication between the artist (in our case the mosaicist, shaping the wishes of those working in a statio) and the viewer. How was the attention of the viewer attracted, which responses were provoked?
Here are some concepts that have been put in the spotlight in the discipline.[1]
- First of all we can search for amplification: have essential features been highlighted, for example by enlarging them or illuminating them in a special way?
- Has anything been isolated, or selected as the main feature of a more complex object to be depicted, with reduction of other features?
- Has a pattern been depicted, which is to be discovered and then understood?
- Have strong colour contrasts been used, with hard edges?
- Has a challenging problem been depicted, that can only be solved with some effort?
- Are objects in full view, easily understood, or partly hidden?
- Have metaphores been used, pointing to deeper connections?
- Has symmetry been used, implying that an object is in order, or asymmetry, suggesting that something is wrong?I believe it is helpful to be aware of these concepts, applied to human interaction. I have used them as a checklist of features known to lead to a neurological response.[2] Opening up to these features is quite a challenge for someone writing in the early 21st century, used to a plethora of images and impressions, therefore with a brain trained exceptionally well in neglecting visual information.
The square seen from the north-west. Photo: Parco Archeologico di Ostia Antica.
(1) Here I briefly outline the "eight laws of artistic experience" of Ramachandran (Ramachandran - Hirstein 1999).
(2) I am not happy with the expression "kinesthetic adress": "the power of ... imagery to dictate both viewing positions and paths of movement" (Clarke 1979, 20). It seems to me that movement as such is a "tool", facilitating the answering of questions. Focusing on that tool obscures the essence of communication. In his analysis of the mosaics on the Foro Italico in Rome, Tymkiw states that the artists depicted a sequence of images "in order to heighten a spectator's awareness of the dynamic relationship between his or her own moving body and transformative social and political movements" (Tymkiw 2019, 123). Rather, the sequence of images incites the brain to start understanding the pattern. How this is practically realized (walking along the images, leafing through a catalogue, questioning another visitor) is of secondary importance.
