365 Days at the Met

As much as I have enjoyed these galleries, I find I have little to say about them that I haven't said before. Upon reflection, one thing that strikes me again is what a mix of cultures and peoples this area experienced, and how that mix is reflected in the region's art. It will be interesting to bear this in mind  as I explore the Islamic galleries. To what extent, I wonder, is Islamic art uniform from one place to another? To what extent does it incorporate local traditions that identify a work as specifically Turkish, or specifically Moroccan, or specifically Persian?  How much does the answer vary with the medium -- ceramics vs. calligraphy, for example? I am a little surprised by how warmly I responded to images of animals; they account for the large majority of works I chose to write about. But maybe my enthusiasm just reflects the enthusiasm of the artists themselves -- or the fascination that nearly all of us feel about other living beings. The presence of Oasis Bib...

May 17, 2019 Galley 406, the last of the Near Eastern galleries, seems a bit incoherent to me, with objects from all over the area and dating from the second millennium B.C.E. to the Sasanian period. But one thing the exhibits make clear is the mix and overlap of cultural influences. The distinctive head of the Egyptian goddess Hathor decorates fragments of ceramics from Mesopotamia and central Anatolia.  A wall sign states that Dura-Europos was home to a synagogue, pagan temples, and a house converted into a Christian place of worship. While I have always thought of Aramaic as the vernacular  of Palestinian Jews and of early Christians, I'm surprised to see Aramaic texts inscribed in incantation bowls from Sasanian Mesopotamia with images of demons in their interiors.  And I am stunned to learn that, according to two recently discovered inscriptions, some Israelites regarded Asherah, the wife of El, the chief Canaanite god, as the consort of Yahweh. Oasis Bibli...

May 15,  2019 Gallery 405 is largely devoted to works from Iran and other areas that formed part of a series of  empires whose lands stretched from Anatolia to Afghanistan. Useful wall signs describe the Achaemenid rulers (Cyrus, Darius), the defeat of the Achaemenid dynasty by Alexander the Great, the Seleucid kings who were Alexander's successors, the rise to power of the Parthians, and the Parthians' defeat by the Sassanians, who ruled until they were conquered in the 7th century by Arab armies bringing Islam to the area. (How's that for centuries of Iranian history summarized in a single sentence?) It's fascinating to see how the art of these empires incorporated elements of other cultures with which they came in contact. The Greco-Roman influence wasn't surprising, given my prior exposure to Gandaran images.  But I did not expect to see painted wall panels from the Kushan empire in Bactria that demonstrate the identification of local gods with both ...

May 14, 2019 Gallery 404 contains objects from many areas and empires- Iran, Mesopotamia and Babylon, Anatolia, Assyria, and Thrace. They date from the second millennium B.C.E. all the way up to the conquest of the Persians by Alexander the Great. In perusing the labels, I come across three new vocabulary words: "carinated" (a pottery style in which a vessel with an inward-sloping form rests on a rounded base); "steatopygy" (a noun describing a human form- typically female, I suppose- with very heavy and curvaceous buttocks); and "atropaic" (having the power to ward off evil). I have my cell phone with me and look all these terms up. But I wonder if the average viewer, with less leisure than I, wouldn't be a bit annoyed by seeing these high-falutin' terms for concepts that could be expressed clearly enough in plain English. At least the caption-makers could incorporate the definitions in parentheticals if they are determined to use these...

May 10, 2019 Gallery 403 contains many small metal and ceramic objects from Mesopotamia, Syria, and Anatolia that date from about 3000-1000 B.C.E. Perhaps because they are small, perhaps because some are fragmentary, they engage my interest less than did those in the preceding galleries. Still, several things capture my attention. I notice many female figures that I think must be fertility symbols (reinforcing this interpretation,  a couple have small holes in their vulvas), along with a beautiful second millennium B.C.E. gold ewer from central Anatolia that is decorated with concentric circles.  There are cymbals and rattles, presumably used in ritual performances, and numerous cylinder seals shown with images of their impressions. I'm sure I'd find the latter fascinating if I had the patience to look closely at them. Perhaps another day. Animals continue to figure prominently among th,e works on display. Today's object is one of these: a copper alloy foundation...

May 9, 2019 Galley 402 goes even further back in time and contains what must be some of the museum's oldest objects, some dating to the 8th millennium B.C.E. Most come from Israel, Iran, and Turkey. Those lent by the Israel Antiquities Authority are, not surprisingly, of particular interest to me.   Excavated from a site near the Golan Heights and dating from the 7th millennium B.C.E, they include pebbles incised with lines - yet another suggesion that the impulse to create art out of the simplest resources imaginable may be a general human instinct. There are also small clay figures of women that, according to the placard, may have been images of fertility goddesses. Of course I realize that monotheism arose in response to something different; nonetheless, it's a bit jarring to me to see these goddess figures that hail from the land where the belief in one god was presumably born. I also learn that, by a few millennia later (the 4th millenni...

May 7, 2019 Gallery 401 is a large skylit space lined with alabaster gypsum wall reliefs from the palace of Ashurnasirpal II, an Assyrian king who ruled from 883 - 859 B.C.E. at his capital of Kalhu (now Nimrud) in northern Iraq. The reliefs have been arranged to provide an idea of what a reception room in the palace would have looked like.  Picking up on the notion that asymmetry makes things interesting, I note that the reliefs are not perfectly symmetrical. Then I read that they were assembled from different parts of the palace, so who knows whether the figures in their original locations were symmetrical? As it is, at one entrance to the gallery are two massive guardian figures, both with the faces of bearded men (their beards  elaborate masses of intricately carved spirals and wavy lines), but one with the body of a horse and the other that of a lion. The placard explains that the two figures came from different doorways; in their original settings, two lio...