Reflections 5 - Southeast Asian and Himalayan art

January 18, 2019

In rereading my entries, I'm struck by how much I liked the particular objects I wrote about. Yet in general, the art of Southeast Asia has limited appeal for me. I think it's because it doesn't strike me as all that original. Chinese art impressed me with its intellectual rigor, and Indian art with its sensuousness. The art of Southeast Asia seems to fall in between, without the strength of either of these great traditions.

The art of Tibet is, unexpectedly, an exception - I find myself curious about it, wanting to know more, perhaps because of its very strangeness, and wildness. An excursion to the Rubin Museum is in order!

I face a choice at this point. I have completed the galleries with numbers in the 200s. But I learn that there are two additional galleries containing later Indian works with numbers in the 400s.  Do I break numerical order to visit these galleries? Or do I move on to the300-numbered galleries, which house the Met's medieval collection (the part not at The Cloisters, that is)? I think I will opt for the latter course, for a couple of reasons. First, the late Indian works are presumably Mughal; they are very much at home in the Islamic galleries, which I'll get to in due course. And second, I am longing to get back to a tradition with which I'm more familiar!

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