4. Triclinium In the ancient world the meaning behind numbers was deeply significant, and the number three was considered perfect, manifesting harmony, wisdom, and understanding. The triclinium, as the formal dining room was called, embodied this belief. Triclinium literally means “three couches,” a reference to the dining ritual, which involved participants reclining while eating, three to a couch, on three separate couches. Harmony and wisdom sound quiet, and surely some evenings were relaxed, but this was where the party happened, and it could get wild. In a room painted black with elaborate decorations, friends, enemies, or associates gathered to indulge in food and drink, talk and gossip, politics and persuasion. There was live music, dance performance, and delicacies like sweet fried mice, peacock tongues, and artistic presentations of meats stuffed inside other meats—a good metaphor for debating. Extending this triclinium of relations, what sort of discourse would paintings have between themselves, across time, motif, and material? Whispering transmissions, mixed signals, and oral traditions; communicating about architecture, the making and breaking of columns, and what sort of meaning resides on the surface; or drunkenly gossiping about hormones, attachment styles, fantasies, and the constraints of coupling (the ancients have proven that three is more fun). A plurality of painting on the wall, seen together temporarily, creates for a moment a new wall painting. This has some kinship to the “Four Styles” of ancient painting, porous classifications developed by historians as the excavations at Pompeii proceeded. Minimalism, abstraction, figuration, and fantasy each staked their claim in a nonlinear development of taste and tolerance for visual overload. It was commonplace to have several styles coexist within one house, much like it is in homes today. —AK
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