Day 75 - Fantastical mountain sculpture

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 (including the stand), and 15 inches deep, and dotted with indentations and with holes that tunnel all the way through, the sculpture's craggy irregularities remind me of the mountains appearing in Chinese landscape paintings. I remember that when I first saw the seemingly impossible shapes of the mountains depicted in scroll paintings and prints, I assumed that the forms were simply artistic conventions -- how artists believed they should paint mountains. Then, when I went to China and took a boat ride on the Li River, near Gweilin, I realized that the paintings largely mirrored  the mountains' indeed fantastical forms! 

I find myself wondering how the object was made and where and how it was used. What qualities was the sculptor looking for in deciding which rock to sculpt? What tools did he employ?  And where was this object placed? I assume -- on the basis of absolutely nothing --  that it was privately owned and kept in the owner's home. I also would like to think that it was an object of contemplation. Was the solidity of the form meant to  speak to what is permanent, while the crags and holes suggest what is mutable and transitory? 

The two objects provoke so many questions, I hope museum visitors actually look at them as they move on to their destinations, but  as I watch the flow of passers-by, there's little evidence that the sculptures are attracting viewers'  attention.  That is a loss.

I discover a stairway that I've never taken before.  It leads down to the Egyptian collection, which now feels like an old friend.