Loading...Brian’s Morning Newsletter for July 31st 2009
Good morning
website. Man oh man an art lover can get lost for a very long time in there! I was here http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/ looking at figurines and statues in a time line format. After reading the news in despair again last night, hoping to find something which might positively influence my outlook for humanity, I desperately needed something to look at that wasn’t about murder and mayhem. If I see one more documentary about how we’re being screwed (and didn’t know it) I may just lose my composure. I need something in the way of a healthy and relaxing distraction. Art is it for me.
Here are a couple samples:
Pensive Bodhisattva, Three Kingdoms period (57 b.c.–668 a.d.), mid-7th century
Korea
Gilt bronze
H. 8 7/8 in. (22.5 cm)
Purchase, Walter and Leonore Annenberg and The Annenberg Foundation Gift, 2003 (2003.222)
Images of the pensive bodhisattva—many representing Maitreya, bodhisattva of the future—were produced from India to Japan. In Korea, the type emerged as an important Buddhist icon during the sixth and seventh centuries in the three kingdoms of Koguryô, Paekche, and Silla. While the iconographic and stylistic origins can firmly be traced to India and China, the pensive statue is one of the most distinctively Korean of Buddhist sculptures. This piece is among the best preserved and most attractive of the extant Korean pensive images.
The pensive bodhisattva is easily identifiable by its unique pose. The deity sits with his right leg crossing the pendant left leg, his head and torso leaning slightly forward, and the fingers of his right hand touching his cheek. Because of the complex posture, sculptures of the pensive bodhisattva can have slightly awkward proportions (an extremely attenuated torso and right arm, for example). This piece, however, exhibits fluidity and grace.
Several unusual features of this piece are noteworthy. The atypical multisided dais on which the bodhisattva sits has an attractive openwork design, which is concealed by the drapery folds in the front but is revealed in the back. This type of openwork dais may derive from rattan stools of Tang China (618–906 A.D.). The bodhisattva’s crown is topped with an orb-and-crescent motif, which indicates influence from Central Asia. His braided hair, parted in the middle and falling down his shoulders, has a dramatic linear pattern. The fingers and toes—especially the big toe on the right foot—are extremely pliant and vibrant. The crisp decoration on the garment appears to have been executed after the bronze was gilded.
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Grave stele with a family group, ca. 360 b.c.
Greek, Attic
Pentelic marble
H. 67 3/8 in. (171.1 cm)
Rogers Fund, 1911 (11.100.2)
In the center of this grave stele, a bearded man with a mantle draped over his legs and lower torso sits in rigid profile on a diphos (backless chair); he holds a staff in his raised right hand. Behind him stands a veiled woman who clasps the hand of a little girl. The child, draped in a chiton belted high above her waist, stares out at the viewer. A fourth, now fragmentary, female figure stands to the left of the group. With her left hand, she gently touches the arm of the seated man. Both he and the veiled woman behind him stare straight ahead as if the young woman who gazes down at them were invisible. The impression is that this young woman belongs to a world separate from that of the other three figures.
The name of the deceased would have been inscribed on the framing niche that originally surrounded this relief, but is now missing. Without this inscription it is unclear if the man and his family members mourn a dead daughter that faces them, or if the veiled woman who stands behind the seated man is actually mourning her dead father. Despite the scene’s ambiguity and solemn sadness, it remains one of the most moving funerary reliefs from the Classical period.
Cult image of the god Ptah, Dynasty 22–early Dynasty 26 (ca. 945–600 b.c.)
Egyptian
Lapis lazuli
H. 2 1/4 in. (5.6 cm)
Anne and John V. Hansen Egyptian Purchase Fund, 2007 (2007.24)
This statuette represents the creator god Ptah, the patron deity of Egypt’s capital city, Memphis. His shrouded human form and tight-fitting cap make him quite recognizable. The high quality of workmanship indicates that the sculpture was produced in a royal workshop as a gift from the pharaoh to the god in his great temple in Memphis. It could also have been dedicated to a shrine outside the capital city, as the cult of Ptah became more widespread in the late New Kingdom and Third Intermediate Period (ca. 1190–664 B.C.).
The detail the artist was able to carve on such a tiny sculpture in very hard stone is impressive. Lacking room for an inscription, the artist cleverly used iconography and the material itself to communicate Ptah’s most important roles. Ptah’s epithet, Lord of the Sky, may be read from the lapis lazuli, which stands for the deep blue cosmos studded with stars. The royal beard, the composite scepter, and the sed-festival garment link Ptah with the king and justify his title, Lord of the Two Lands. The sumptuous broad collar signifies his role as Master Craftsman, and the small wedge-shaped base represents the hieroglyph maat, or universal order, an allusion to another of Ptah’s epithets, Lord of Truth.
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I hope this was as inspiring for you as it was for me.
Thanks everyone for a great week
Pop off to our forum for a quick chit chat http://outfitnm.com/forum/index.php?action=recent
Happy happy love love
Brian Rodgers
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