A Cultural Interlude

Last night, Mr. Sweetie and I got to take a curator lead tour of the Chinese collection of the Institute of Art. Boy was he a wealth of information, and what a fabulous event!

When I heard we were going to have a "curator," I just assumed a sort of stuffy old guy who spends his time in libraries and the warehouse, obsessing over things like humidity levels. What we got was a facinating man who travels the world and cares deeply about the deep cultural clues imbedded in old artifacts, and who communicates that passion in a clear and absorbing manner. We were there for 2 1/2 hours and I totally could have been there longer.

The newly expanded Chinese galleries are organized around the three main philosophies of Chinese thought: Buddhism, Daoism, and Confusianism. As our curator, Bob Jacobson, summarized them, Buddhism focuses on the self in relation to mind/self; Daoism is self in relation to the natural world, Confusianism is self in relation to community/family. Which, of course, I'd never have realized by myself.

He showed us the layout of the Ming dynasty reception hall, with the furniture placed as it would have been on a formal occasion, with the matriarch and patriarch on the large bench/throne, and the chairs reflecting the relative status of the attendants. (The chairs are also the first in the world to be designed to the shape of the spine--rare, foreign, and ergonomic!) The furniture was all made of a special dense wood that is itself no longer available, and is all constructed along the same principles of architectual building. Plus, furniture came rather late to China--compared to everything else China invented, furniture came with Buddhism from India, starting with an altar, and subsequently raising everything off the floor to become chairs and tables and benches, etc. Who knew?

Even the wall hangings reflect the Confusian ideals--a male and female swan with cygnets, standing as the matriarch and patriarch surrounded by their family. Whereas I had looked at them and thought "oooo! pretty!" they actually had meaning and wouldn't have been merely pretty and wouldn't have ever hung anywhere else in the house.

I don't know about you, but as much as I like the ink paintings, they do start to look alike to me. But Bob showed us a series by a Chinese artist who fingerpainted--actually never used a brush, but his fingers, nails and hands to create art--even the water buffalo are basically just a decorated thumb-print.

What was hammer home, however, is just how OLD China is--they've been casting ornamental bronzes for better than 4000 years! They invented practically every kind of ceramics you could name--and then went on and invented porcelain. Hundreds of years ago they manufactured lacquerware that is as light and thin as what we now make out of petroleum polymers. All under a continuous society--the Chinese have been Chinese since before the classical Greeks or Romans, before anything that remains in Europe, back to the time of the earliest Egyptians. And they're still here!

Now they are revving their economic engine--now is the time to learn Chinese!