365 Days at the Met

July 31, 2018 Gallery 210 is the first gallery in a special exhibition called "Streams and Mountains Without End," which centers on different traditions of Chinese landscape painting. The gallery's three sections focus on the majestic landscape, the poetic landscape, and the magical landscape. Ironically, the last of these feels the most familiar to me, perhaps because of the analogues in European art. A lapis lazuli sculpture of an arbat in a cave  conjures up paintings of Christian hermits in mystical settings, for example, while a Daoist holy man  floating in the air reminds me of the Madonna on a crescent moon, not to mention the fiddler on the roof! The connection between poetry and images in Chinese landscape painting was, I learn, profound. One of the placards quotes a saying: "Poetry is formless painting; painting, poetry in form." Some painters were also poets, or adopted famous poems as their subjects. What really seizes my attention, howev...

July 30, 2018 Gallery 209 tutns out to be a long room with doorways that lead to a number of other galleries: a special show of Chinese landscape painting (my next destination); a show of Japanese art from the Edo period (I guess I'll learn when that was!); the Astor Court; and the South Asian collection. It displays only two objects, both of them limestone rocks sculpted to represent fantastical mountains. One dates from the 18th or 19th century (the Qing dynasty), the other from the 20th century. I suppose that the latter represents the continuation into recent times of a recurring subject for sculpture. Both statues are mounted on carved wooden display stands.  The 20th century  piece is roughly pyramidal in form, with various circular indentations that make me think (I hope correctly - I haven't taken anything resembling geology since high school!) of the air pockets in tufa rock. I prefer the earlier piece.  Approximately three feet wide, two feet high (inc...

July 23, 2018 Gallery 208 is devoted to Buddhist statues in bronze (often gilded), ceramic, stone, and wood from the 7th through the 18th centuries. I am immediately impressed by a pair of lifesize stoneware figures of arhats (another kind of enlightened being) that flank the gallery's entry . Both are seated in the lotus position, their garments decorated with the same three-color (green, gold, and beige) glaze. But their faces are highly individualized - and arresting.  I admire today's object for its grace.  Dating from the 11th century, it is a lifesize sculpture showing the bodhisattva Avalokiteshvara (Guanyin) seated in the "Water Moon" position, his right knee raised to the side, his left leg bent inward.  He appears to be nude to the waist except for a band that extends  diagonally across his chest, a cape draped over his left shoulder, a large pendant necklace, and armbands around his upper arms. A dhoti-like long cloth is tied around his lower bo...

July 19, 2018 T his extremely long and packed-full gallery (207) covers many millennia of Chinese art, from Neolithic ceramics to Shang and Zhou bronzes to objects from the Han and Tang dynasties and beyond. I have to confess that the earlier pieces leave me cold; I admire the technical skill they reflect without much liking them. But I both admire and enjoy many of the small ornamental objects (belt clasps, harness pieces, finials, etc.) from the Han period that have very naturalistic depictions of animals.  There's one in particular that seems both beautiful and odd: a gold belt clasp that shows a leopard, its spots defined by turquoise inlays, that is attacking  a recumbent man. The man holds a large knife, but his mouth is open in apparent agony. Will he be able to stab the leopard before he is eaten? How would the person wearing this belt have possibly felt about the image? I am struck by the resemblance between Egyptian and Chinese beliefs and funeral customs. ...

July 18, 2018 Gallery 206 centers on Chinese Buddhist sculptures from the 5th through the 8th centuries  C.E., many monumental in size and originally adorning cave shrines. But the gallery also serves as a primer for me on Buddhism, reminding me how little I know about this religion. I was aware that there are multiple bodhisattvas. But I didn't know that there are also multiple Buddhas, not just the deified form of the man we know as Siddhartha Gautama. Rather, a Buddha is a celestial creature who has gained enlightenment, and there are many of them, whereas a bodhisattva is an enlightened person who has remained on earth to act as intercessor and model for others who are less enlightened. That's the "standing on one foot" version of it, at any rate.  Today's image, a limestone stele perhaps 18 feet high and dated from 533-543, speaks to another kind of fluidity within Buddhism - gender fluidity - that seems particularly appropriate to think about giv...

July 17, 2018 I'm frustrated that the numerical order of the Chinese ceramic galleries doesn't correspond with their chronological order: Gallery 205, the highest-numbered of these galleries, also contains the oldest objects. A placard describes the broad factors that influenced the development of ceramics in China. Two of these -- technological advances (the discovery of porcelain, for example) and foreign trade -- are by now familiar to me. But an additional element, I learn, was the growing prominence of tea-drinking, which was seen as a stimulus to Buddhist meditation.  Who knew? Some glazes were particularly prized because they were seen as enhancing the color of the tea. A number of objects  catch my eye. They include: a vessel whose unusual horizontal oval shape resembles a cocoon (or so the caption describes it); a multi-colored ewer whose shape derives from Iranian metalwork (evidence of trade along the Silk Road); and a stoneware "pillow" (more like...

July 16, 2018 Gallery 204 displays  an extensive collection of primarily Chinese ceramics from the 4th through the 17th centuries. The length and continuity of this tradition is pretty amazing, and perhaps all the more striking to me because I approach it from the "wrong" direction - newer objects first - and keep going farther and farther back in time. There are also pieces from Vietnam, Korea, Japan, and Turkey that demonstrate the Chinese influence on ceramics from these countries. In fact, there is one flask that, based on its shape and medallion design, I take to be Turkish but is really Chinese, from the Ming dynasty. I am not altogether wrong, though, since the caption says that both the shape and the design reflect the strong ties between China and West Asia in the 15th century.  Helpful signage explains the differences among earthenware, stoneware, and porcelain --basically, the type of clay used and whether the object is fired at a relatively low (earthen...

July 10, 2018 Gallery 203 centers on 17th century Chinese porcelains and the creation of new shapes and designs  for changing domestic markets and markets in Southeast Asia, Japan, and Europe. I learn that the Japanese commissioned many Chinese porcelains for use in the  tea cèremony, a ritual that we think of as quintessentially Japanese but that was actually imported from China in the eighth century. I also learn that Japanese porcelains  began to be made only in the 17th century and were heavily influenced by Chinese models. That the Japanese adopted and adapted Chinese forms was, of course, known to me, but in a vague way, so it's interesting to see specific examples in practice. This also somewhat increases my interest in visiting Japan, a country that until now has not been high on my list of "musts."  There are a number of pieces I like a lot. They include: a large multicolored Qing  dish whose center shows a dragon and waves; a Qing vase that i...

July 9, 2018 As I walk through Gallery 200 en route to today's destination, Gallery 202, I see how incredibly rich the Altman Collection is. Entirely different objects than the ones I wrote about earlier catch my eye; they are all beautiful. Gallery 202 consists of two entirely different sets of display cases. On one side are more Qing ceramics. On the other are Japanese ceramics from the 1600s through the present,  along with works by non-Japanese ceramic artists who have been influenced by the Japanese aesthetic. There are works I like a good deal in each set of cases, although I'm bemused by or indifferent to more of the modern pieces. Today's object is a Qing vase, from the 18th century, perhaps 8 or 9 inches high. I love the  purity and simplicity of both its lines and its glaze, which appears blue-ish to me but is described as celadon in the caption. I think it's this quality of simplicity that makes it appear timeless. It would grace a 21st century h...

July 7, 2018 Gallery 201 is devoted to the global trade in porcelain during the 17th and 18th centuries. It is fascinating to see the Chinese and Japanese ceramics and efforts to emulate them in England, France, Germany, and elsewhere. One plate I particularly like turns out to have been made in Italy!  Perhaps it's not surprising that I like it, because it combines a Chinese-inspired  blue and white surface with stylized flowers, made with a stencil, that, the caption tells me, reflect the Turkish ceramics from Iznik that I so admire.The caption says that it was made in the Doccia factory, although whether Doccia is a town or a ceramics works I cannot say. There's  a lovely Japanese teapot with a metal top; the latter was made and added here in the U.S.A. after the pot was imported. There's also a charming  Qing statuette of a boy playing a flute and riding a buffalo; the animal is depicted with wonderful verisimilitude. And there's another Qing figure of a ...

July 5, 2018 When I checked the museum map, I felt very happy that my Asian journey is beginning with  Chinese porcelains,  since I have so often passed these display cases  and marveled at the beauty of their contents. It seemed like an auspicious omen. Upon arriving at the museum, I find that the porcelains occupy six galleries! I hope I will have the same feelings of wonder and admiration when I reach Gallery 206 as I do today in Gallery 200. The gallery houses porcelains collected by Benjamin Altman, the merchant magnate who established the B. Altman department store of blessed memory. Altman was mostly interested in porcelains produced during the reigns of three emperors of the Qing dynasty, between 1662 and 1795 (no more C.E. for a while; it's taken for granted), which were apparently quite fashionable when Altman was amassing his collection. He did a spectacularly good job. I assume he had agents who procured objects for his inspection; I wonder ...

July 4, 2018 After the Egyptian galleries, some aspects of Classical art are comforting in their familiarity. I grew up with the Greek myths and with Homer, so one of the pleasures of the Classical galleries has been seeing their representation in art. Although there have been many reminders of what I didn't know or had forgotten, some scenes - Odysseus hiding from Polyphemus under a sheep,  Achilles receiving his armor from Thetis - are indelibly lodged in my mind.   Furthermore, the "realism" with which the human body is depicted - the way in which musculature and other anatomical features are portrayed, for example - seems completely "natural," in part, I suppose, because Renaissance sculptors adopted similar representational conventions that we have inherited.  Yet there is a kind of tyranny in these conventions, to the extent that they have shaped our ideas of what the human body should look like.  Bodies like those of Venus or Apollo become the idea...

July 2, 2018 Gallery 176, the last gallery of the Cesnola Collection and the last Classical gallery in my enterprise, contains a potpourri of Cypriot sculpture, jewelry, coins, and other objects from the Classical, Hellenistic, and Roman periods. There's a pair of delicate gold and amethyst earrings from the 1st century C.E. that I truly covet, along with a gracefully-shaped glass cup from the 3rd century, aqua-tinted at the base, that I would love to have on my dining room table. I chose today's object because of all the connections it (finally) allows me to make. It's a 4th century B.C.E. life-size limestone statue of a man.  He is completely covered by skillfully modeled drapery. The head has been lost, but in the crook of his left arm, he cradles what the caption explains is a mask representing the head of a bull. The caption says that bulls' heads played a role in Cypriot religious rituals from the Late Bronze Age on. Bulls' skulls served as mask...