China: West Meets East at The Metropolitan Museum of Art

America is a land of great museums and every museum has spellbinding stories to tell there is no better method to penetrate the Chinese frame of mind then through its art it's not only art itself it really tells you about China about a way of life social practices the Chinese philosophy there is something in our gallery from every period China west meets East at New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art on great museums major funding for great museums is provided by the eureka foundation dedicated to the educational power of television and new media exercise your curiosity explore America's great museums one of the most astonishing things about China is how little most Americans actually know about it even though China's culture is so present in our Western world we often see China as a nation casting off tradition in a mad rush to westernize but below the hectic surface lies a steadfast culture that has influenced the West in deep and subtle ways I don't want to downplay the idea that China's culture is very different from our own but China in the long run its philosophy its sense of poetry its sense of history and its sense of reverence for the individual I'll really resonate with the deepest values in the West so that whether we're practicing yoga or meditation or strolling in the landscape and thinking about nature poetry the Chinese have done that too the emergence of China as a major political and economic power today causes people to be curious about China and being curious about China is also being curious about its culture the most comprehensive collection of Chinese artistic masterpieces outside of Asia is found at New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art the Met is a colossus of culture a history of the world told through its art we are the cultural family tree on whose branches all peoples will find their roots in the Mets Chinese art swing these roots reach back more than 5,000 years a spectacular chronicle of the world's oldest living culture a culture both ancient and cutting-edge one of the great advantages of learning about any culture from an institution such as a museum is that you really get to do so by looking some people come and see Oh what wonderful archaic bronzes all these things from the 12th to the 9th century BC and some people may say oh look at the porcelain or some people may say oh what beautiful sculptures and some people may fall it up with our paintings the sheer diversity of Chinese art you'll see Jade and metal and clay and ivory and rhinoceros horn and silk and paper the Chinese used everything you can think of and they used it so skillfully I'm hoping that when people come here to see the museum they will come away not only with a memory saying oh I've seen so many splendid spectacular works part yes they did but they really will learn about the culture the people a behind all these were smart it really will learn about China throughout history and into today art is not a separate thing in China there's something about the Chinese mind the Chinese sense of time the Chinese sense of culture that makes it an integral part of daily life and so understanding Chinese art and culture is a wonderful shortcut to understanding the Chinese mind for many Americans and Europeans in the 18th and 19th centuries China meant China the fine porcelain ware found in the cabinet's of better homes and at that time both in Europe and in this country people tend to identify Chinese porcelain with Chinese out until the 17th or 18th century no European country could rival the quality of ceramics in China the whole creation of porcelain china with the first country to invent it the mets own bounty of chinese cultural treasures began with a gift of porcelain from american department store magnate benjamin altman donated in 1913 of all the nearly 500 pieces of Portland in Altman's collection perhaps the most distinguished group consists of that particular kind of red lace which is called bloom because of their particular hue and it was extremely rare it's really difficult to fire it's not just the beautiful red but they are patches which are green usually called apple green this is something you cannot control it happens by accident but some connoisseurs particularly appreciate this very interesting variation in the color of the glaze most of the other pieces in the Earthmen collection are what we would call export where Benjamin Altman like JP Morgan john d rockefeller and other wealthy American families of the day collected high-quality lavishly embellished export porcelain specifically designed for European tastes to complement their european-style furnishings and paintings the European tradition of collecting porcelains is something that these collectors were looking toward they went looking for the Far East that we really look into was Europe for their methods of collecting but if one word could describe Chinese porcelain design for Chinese taste its simplicity like these ivory glazed pieces they all date from the 11th to 12th centuries that say the time of the northern zone and they reflect a much greater Chinese sensibility as you can see these are very pure forms fluid lines no complicated shapes in many ways the story of Chinese porcelain is the story of China's relationship with the world this earthenware prototype for porcelain is more than 1200 years old even then Chinese artisans were using foreign decorative motifs and shapes in physicals purely Chinese product but there are many aspects of it which are not channelled you can see from the shape and the animal head and the decoration on the body it may culprits influences from the Persian or Iranian world and also as far as a Greek world more than a thousand years ago exporting porcelain was already big business for China Chinese porcelain was always extremely highly prized prized as objects and highly prized in value porcelain really began to flourish in the 14th century when the Mongols were ruling in China that's when blue and white China arguably the most famous ceramic in the world began under the Mongols the foreign influences poured in and out this large platter created for the King of Portugal in the late 16th century blends purely Chinese motifs with emblems of the Portuguese court including the Kings coat of arms on this modest jug the king's coat of arms is upside down the chinese artisan who made this piece just didn't understand the European coat of arms concept in the 18th century you started getting pink as a colorant that comes from exchanges with Europe then after the American Revolution Chinese artisans began filling orders for American China adorned with American patriotic themes it's not true that China was a closed society from beginning to end and is always developed on his own from time to time China was a very open society of receiving influences from absolutely all over the world there is no such thing in a way as Chinese art because China has been invaded so many times by people from the north and from the west and these people have actually ruled China for centuries over 50 centuries China's ruling dynasties native and foreign have come and gone many have lasted longer than the United States has been a nation so how do we begin to comprehend a culture that's had a 5,000 year head start the Met collection is truly comprehensive so we begin with the Stone Age with the Neolithic Revolution the creation of works of art in ceramic but also in Jade the earliest pieces in the collection were made around 5,000 years ago during the Neolithic period the birthplace of Chinese art that's really the lower course of the Yellow River and in the lower yellow river valley they had is pottery culture all these beautifully painted patterns on the service of these parties in red or black pigment they are very abstract patterns there are curving lines they're spirals and some of them are the circles or triangles you may have five six or twelve or you know a row of life but they are in a very nicely arranged rhythm but all these patterns they reflect one very important factor in chart and that is the floating lines over the millennia the Chinese have valued fluid lines over vivid color this tenacious consistency lies at the heart of Chinese art and that actually is the same in Chinese category Chinese calligraphy is art of lies and that goes all the way back from 5000 BC all the way down to the present day for many Chinese art is synonymous with Jade and for good reason China's art practically began with it the love of jade began in the Neolithic several thousand years BC and the characteristic of the Neolithic work of course is polishing now je cannot be cut like diamond and sapphires but can only be polished already five thousand years ago you see that this most obdurate of materials harder than steel is being worked to a mirror finish in ritual shapes that continue to have meaning down through the centuries for this ritual Jade object from 2500 BC the meaning is lost but the workmanship endures this one does not see there any kind of practical function and these lines represent small faces a very mysterious mask the seemingly indestructible nature of Jade became associated with purity and protection the tinkling sound of Jade medallions worn by government officials signified their virtue the Chinese seemed to have had a genius for materials and traditionally in China what they did is they work this by grinding it with sand and they basically just ground into a piece of jade using sand and water this low polishing process became a metaphor for the arduous process of honing the human intellect many of the Jade's from this early period never were used it was just love for this tongue itself and that love never left China the Chinese never cut stones even stones that can used to lend itself to be cut would still be polished when the Chinese mastered bronze some 4000 years ago new artistic possibilities arose as well as deadlier weapons these dagger axes and knives were made in ancient times during two of China's earliest known dynasties the Shang and the Joe the Chinese Bronze Age started from about 2000 BC and lasted for some 2,000 years is a very long period of time by the eighth century BC China had disintegrated into numerous warring States all these honey bronzes were largely weapons and vessels but they were not ordinary vessels they were used at food or wine containers to serve sacrificial food to their ancestors sacrificial food and wine containers were buried with the dead who served as intermediaries between the living and the gods in ancient Chinese believed ancestors were like between heaven and earth so they could help people on earth to communicate with deities in heaven if they are served well if the sacrificial ceremonies were well perform they would bring blessing to people who live on earth excavations throughout China have uncovered rich droves of bronze vessels but this ritual altar said from the 11th century BC complete with a bronze altar table is a rare discovery only two such tables have been found the corrosion marks on the tabletop like this ring from the nearby cup reveal where each object was placed when it was buried three thousand years ago why you see the Chinese bronzes they all have relatively simple symmetrical shapes but the surface decoration can be extremely extremely intricate and complex the early bronzes really represented not only extraordinary technical mastery but an invention of the surface decoration and that is very highly developed there's a combination of elegance and and tough crustiness that makes a wonderful clash and is so aesthetically very appealing these vessels were really meant to carry offerings in the deck or on those vessels often times suggest the need to protect those offerings either with patterns of animals or maybe birds that would carry those offerings aloft to heaven many Bronze Age images depict fanciful animals ancestors of the dragon even in Neolithic times or in Boerne Bronze Age they had small symbols of dragons and that became a symbol of Chinese art in later times as well as an emblem of the Emperor's cosmic authority with the dawn of China's imperial age in the 3rd century BC came a remarkable transformation Bronze Age culture which was really concerned with animal spirit is transformed by a culture that is based on the human being based on human laws and regulations the art of the early Imperial Age would be filled with images of man this intriguing sculpture from the second century BC was created during the Han Empire one of the greatest dynasties in China's history even today the Han people represent the ethnic majority in China and the largest single ethnic group in the world one of the very highly accommodative forms of art in Han Dynasty was sculpture the pottery sculptures so this very element that we have here is a dancing figure and she's dancing this very traditional dance but what's special about this work of art is that it is trying to express motion or movement through a still object it doesn't matter from which angle you look at his ability you could almost feel it's just about to move forward and this is one of the great works of art ever created in any culture the Han ruled China for 400 years beginning in 206 BC by this time China unify the entire country it was an empire and these were the time that China started to have loud contact with the Western world very much like the Roman Empire which resisted at the same time the Han Empire was based on the rule of man and so you get a very humanistic culture arising it's the time when Confucian ideas are put into practice and the notion of morality as his most important principle for the emperor to govern with was really put into place at the center of the Han world stands man the Han believes that the realm of the dead was a lot like the land of the living even in death people would need to care for their most basic worldly needs these models of a han village or perhaps a large estate were built for the afterlife they simply go to another world to make sure that they would live happily they would have everything that they would need in other world what they would do it'll bury all these little fevers the little architecture models houses small pig paths chicken farms everything that he would possibly need in the other world practically everything they needed they could get this image of a Bactrian camel indicates the importance of desert caravans along the Silk Road controlled by the powerful Han Chinese rulers this 4,000 mile network crisscross the Eurasian continent the Silk Road led to the free exchange of goods and ideas including Buddhism which originated in India and spread through Asia and beyond being a culture now that is used to the concept of man as the center of the universe it's when the Han Dynasty Falls that we see that first inroads of Buddhism the idea of a human who has become deified who's transcended the cycle of rebirth and becomes like a God this paradise burial jar was created within decades of the demise of the Han Empire in 220 ad after the Hans confident worldview of Confucianism gave way to political chaos the jar portrays some of the earliest Buddhist images known in China here a row of tiny Buddhas meditate on Lotus Thrones circling the waist of the urn still the jar combines both Chinese and Buddhist ideas above the Buddha's mystical beasts and birds help support a model of paradise their mission was to guide the soul of the deceased inside the urn through the grand double tiered gate the remarkable thing about Buddhism is that we see how malleable it could be as a religion but the Buddhists images that look so Indian when they were created in northern India are subtly transformed when they reach China a comparison of an Indian Buddha with a Chinese version of about the same period shows the differences in interpretation the Indian one is stone probably dates about 435 450 ad you can see right away that it's it's about physical form it's a very idealized physical form but you have this very powerful figure who has a very subtly rounded body and always in the Indian sculpt you get this tiny little stomach that shows you that this figure is filled with life and it's breathing all of this and and the very Indian notion that if you're spiritually evolved you're physically perfect comes to China which is a culture which has thought more in line than in volume over the years China's version of Buddha downplays the body they didn't want to be distracted with the sensual qualities they really wanted to present the Buddha as a spiritual being rather than a physical one so the Chinese piece is a little bit square it's a little less soft and rounded and one of the things that's really fascinating is that when you look at the Indian piece the folds of the drapery tend to articulate the body whereas when you look at the Chinese piece the Falls of the drapery tend to obscure the body Buddhism taught that man could attain spiritual enlightenment an ideal state known as nirvana yet ultimately the Chinese found this spiritual concept too remote for practical everyday guidance Nirvana is literally kind of the extinction of the person so they became much more attracted to many of the Buddha's followers and one group in particular with a Lua hunt the low Hans were legendary early followers of Buddha who had not yet achieved Nirvana they came to be protectors of the religion those sculptures I think are phenomenally Chinese first of all their clay not stone they are covered with these wonderful three colored glazes which were actually developed in China in the 8th century unlike many other kinds of Buddhist art where you're always looking at these very idealized figures those low Hans look like two different people I mean they have real personalities they're almost hard to ignore I think these monumental stone books are relics of Buddhism's impact on a changing China over the centuries the sculptures have lost none of their power some of the sculptures you see in our collection from the 5th and 6th century actually come from these large cave temples that were carved out of the Living Rock and created as acts of piety by members of the royal family before the 5th century china had very little monumental stone sculpture but influenced by indian and central asian cave temples the Chinese began carving large-scale Buddhist images directly into the sides of mountains stone sculpture in China was never viewed as a high art it was religious art of course in the West stone sculpture has a long tradition of being appreciated as a high art so Westerners were much more willing to acquire these works of art when these things came on the art market it took nearly 600 years but by the time of the Tong dynasty in the 7th century AD Buddhism was the official religion of the imperial family and the predominant religion in China Buddhist art had a lot of influence on Nizar especially on chinese sculpture and this is what made in the seventh century by this time Chinese art already completely adapted all the foreign elements from Buddhist art this small Tong dynasty sculpture of a musician made of marble embodies a world of borrowed tradition the artist wrapped the figure in the soft draping lines typical of Indian Buddhist sculpture one other elements also shows the foreign influence on Chinese culture and that is the flute which was introduced into China from Central Asia during the Tong dynasty china celebrates a golden age china projects his power across the Central Asian Silk Route it becomes very open to traders from the West it was actually the most cosmopolitan state on the planet the Tang period in many people's minds in for so Chinese but in fact that the town art is very much Western influence you find in time dynasty gold and silver shapes that are very Chinese but they often have decoration on them that alludes to things that we might think of as Central Asian or Byzantine or West Asian this Tong dynasty Bowl from around the eighth century has a traditional Chinese shape for the temporary elements in the center of the bowl is completely uncharted different from anything that you will have seen in Chinese art the crouching deer with the crown of antlers comes from Central Asia and the technique hammered gold and silver is something the Chinese picked up centuries earlier from the nomadic people of the northern steppes throughout the Tong dynasty the world left its imprint on Chinese art and society but in the 10th century came a change starting in the Song Dynasty there is a great awakening of interest in China's own past this was very much shaped by a new class of men who owed their position in government not to their high birth but to their ability to command literature history poetry and calligraphy with the Sung dynasty came the rise of landscape painting in fact the reign of the Sun was culturally the most brilliant era in later Imperial China influencing the intellectual political and artistic climate of the country to this very day one of the most telling characteristics of Chinese art is that it manifests an awareness of and reverence for the past so you have this a constant returning to the past on the part of the artists of China for renewal for a sense of finding their way finding new ideas by using the past as a kind of touchstone in this room the past meets the present to assure the future this is the Asian conservation studio where art both ancient and recent is painstakingly restored the room is worthy of the task no shoes may touch the straw - Tommy mats that cover the floors here behind the scenes and away from the public the works find true sanctuary ot say : Toshi ter on equator at Alinea oh yeah boots on the Ginza yes they are change indicator LED enter so what we see here is a 17th century calligraphy where there were holes in the fabric of the original paper so we've placed new pieces of paper into the holes and they will gradually be toned to look as close as possible to the paper of the original boys on something that I can take home Ian alright on this side of the drawing board is a different kind of problem here this is satin and the satin has become abraded in places so that the color has changed on this top half of the scroll the abraded areas have been touched up these old paintings when they rolled up and unrolled over time they can be abraded it could be that this also had a hard life at some point so this is a way of restoring its youth it's a facelift for the painting or in this case a calligraphy Chinese artists painted on Scrolls not canvases all of the works of art that are handled here are very fragile they're works of paper or silk and yet these paintings have survived for really almost a thousand years and more to view a scroll is to interact with it scrolls were meant to be handled as we open the scroll up we encounter various patterns brocade there's this wonderful panel of Imperial yellow silk that band of silk is called a moat and the concept is that we are leaving behind the world outside the work of art and entering into its worlds along the way we see these red seals these are seals of ownership Chinese connoisseurs always valued the idea of knowing who else had viewed the scroll handled it owned it so these seals are not regarded as intrusions rather they are enhancements a connoisseur would also of course not fail to see the into the large seals that have been placed at the top of the painting the one on the left it belongs to the channel Emperor he was the great 18th century Manchu monarch who were formed what is still the most important collection of paintings in China and the Palace Museum in Taipei what's significant here is that he's placed his seal right next to one belonging to the early 12th century Emperor Wei Zhong rain from 1101 to 1124 so we know that this was in the imperial collection by around 1100 as we open the scroll further we could actually see a whole composition is quite small this scroll old trees level distance is by the 11th century landscape painter Guang XI who lived during the Song Dynasty the painting commemorates a last meeting between two old friends we know that this artist was she lived to be almost 90 years old and it's very likely that he painted this when he was already in his 80s for a friend who is about to retire from office and returned from the capital to his hometown in subtle ways the landscape signifies the relationship of these two men we see these two powerful leafless trees the rocks and the trees are emblems of this friendship the two trees are connected at the root so we have a sense that even though these men will not see each other again that their bond of friendship really will outlive them and that that's what's being commemorated in his paintings the end of the painting is not the end of the story behind the painting there is a large length of paper added to cushion the painting from the wooden dowel at the very heart of the hand scroll and the customer rose in the eleventh century of adding inscriptions to that paper people who viewed the scroll would write their reactions and impressions on it like an early form of blogging this is a 14th century master he mentions how the marvelous quality of Guo Xi's paintings is that it has color even with only an ink alone this is a very important principle from around the 10th century Chinese artists saw no need to use color to animate their landscapes these spare looking landscapes devoid of saturated color and surface texture are laden with deep shades of meaning the men who really define the directions of art were the scholar gentlemen who considered themselves amateurs and they didn't have the technical expertise to create lifelike portraits they used images of nature to symbolize the character of their human subjects bamboo would Bend in the wind of adversity but return to the upright rocks of course are emblems of survival and plum blossoms are the first blossoms to appear in the springtime so they are about rejuvenation these portraits also reflect the Sun belief that the proper political hierarchy for the human world was mirrored in the natural world landscape painting by around 1100 is celebrating the successful unification of the Empire by the ruler with the central mountain symbolizing the Emperor and the lesser mountains trees the rest of the natural world the subjects of the Emperor by 1127 the mighty song dynasty began to weaken and decline by the 13th century the central mountain was Mongolia and the Chinese were Mongolian subjects art in China has always had a political dimension it's always been something that is created by the class of men who were influential under the emperor and who were using art oftentimes to subtly suggest their point of view the painter of this scroll jail monk foo was a high official serving China's first Mongol Emperor Kublai Khan who established the Yuan Dynasty in 1271 one of the main point of Jeong Fu's artistry is he's rejecting that recent art styles of the Song Dynasty the late song because they had lost the mandate to rule to the Mongols they were conquered by the Mongols and so their art style was also invalidate 'add jamong foo was a revolutionary in Chinese art because he was the one who explicitly stated that painting and calligraphy were really the same thing one of the defining characteristics of Chinese art is this expressive line and of course the place where it is most clearly manifested is in Chinese painting jamming food doesn't simply paint he writes his landscapes and he demonstrated that in his art by using different kinds of calligraphic brush strokes this flying white where the bristles of the brush separate so that you have passages of white mixed in with the ink give a sense of the rough texture of the stone we really have a sense that he's distilled the landscape to its bare-bones to emphasize the quality of the line we're looking at the energy that is coming through the hand of the artist directly from his heart and mind and that enlivens the landscape not with its realism but with the graphic energy that he imparts through his brushwork he did something else is quite remarkable he wrote on the painting not once but twice to emphasize the fact that painting is no longer merely about representation it is about a new form of communication one in which calligraphy and painting are both trying to convey the heart and mind of the artist himself jamming Fu's Twin Pines level distance was painted around 1300 after the death of Kublai Khan fearing reprisals from political rivals Chou withdrew from government service obviously the choice of imagery is very important here the pine tree because it remains green in the winter is really a symbol of survival and endurance it's a very calm quiet scene or so we think because appended to the painting is inscription by one of Jaws close friends man named Young's eye the friend describes a small leaf like boat tossed about in a fierce storm that tears through the mountains he says the little leaf like boat wants to make its way up the river but mountain trees are trembling with the storm the waves reach up to the heavens so that it's hard to paddle so he's written a poem that describes a painting is very different from the one we see here these trees do not look like they're racked by winds the fisherman is not trying to make his way up the stream the tumult he described has nothing to do with Jang who's painting but it has everything to do with Jang foo he was at risk of perhaps a mortal risk from jealous members of cupola is court so John Wong Foos painting is concealing a sense that he is really a man making a political statement here like the pine tree he hopes to endure and he hopes to he aspires to a tranquil retirement like this fisherman but that is not assured for 100 years China was part of the vast Mongol Empire yet Chinese culture not only enjoyed it flourished China under the Mongols had ties throughout the world they had people of various ethnicities working in Chinese artistic centers and they had people bringing in new themes and new ideas despite the prosperity that came with Mongol rule China hasn't always welcomed outside influence as the Great Wall attests first begun over two thousand years ago the Great Wall was expanded during the Ming Dynasty after a peasant revolt drove the Mongols back into the northern steppes in Chinese Ming means enlightened this painting shows a gathering of nine officials three of whom were regions for the Ming Emperor who was only eight years old at the time China commanded a vast Navy and a standing army of 1 million troops so this painting which was done to commemorate an actual event that took place on April 6 1437 shows the most powerful men in China looking at paintings composing poems preparing to play musical instruments or play a game of chess all of these scholarly pursuits that they recognized as the real meaning of life rather than the notion of going exploring abroad they saw their nation as a great garden and it was a place so bountiful there was no need to look beyond its borders which is why they called off China's royal naval explorations generations before Columbus even began his epic 1492 voyage his expeditions were enormous they were flotillas of upwards of 300 ships as many as 30,000 sailors on board and the largest of these ships were so vast they could have put the Nina the Pinta and the Santa Maria on the foredeck so at the very time that the various powers in Europe were competing to colonize the new Hemisphere and the Chinese were turning inward these men triumph the notion of inner exploration of self cultivation and so they wanted themselves portrayed not planting a flag on a beachhead not wearing shining armor but enjoying the leisurely pursuits of a scholar gentleman in a garden the Ming rulers left an enduring aesthetic legacy but the dynasty crumbled militarily and technologically the Ming may have felt secure within the confines of their Forbidden City a sprawling palace complex that became the cultural and political hub of China but in 1644 the Manchus from north of the Great Wall invaded and established China's last dynasty which lasted nearly 300 years I just wanted to draw your attention to these four figures because I think they tell us such a fascinating story these are basically cloisonne sculptures of for Old Testament figures including probably David with the harp over here you can see that as is common with Old Testament figures they're holding writing in this case the writing is Chinese and these are references to the Ten Commandments these curious pieces from the Ching dynasty show China's vigorous involvement with the larger world a foreign art technique depicting a foreign religious theme in the 18th and 19th century Chinese goods were travelling to the west where they were being collected and admired but by the same token certain Western things were coming back into China these four Old Testament figures are a very good example of that were they made for the Chinese Court is kind of a record of this exotic religion or given the fact that there were so many Jesuits in China were they in fact made for a Christian missionary in cloisonne small metal enclosures are built onto the surface of the piece then filled with colored glass paste and fired it's a time-consuming intricate process like so much of Chinese art this gallery is filled with art objects made of lacquer another labor-intensive process that yields exquisite results lacquer is derived from colorless tree sap it is a highly toxic material because the lacquer tree itself is in the same family as poison oak and as it is exposed to air it hardens or polymerizes and it becomes very strong very resilient it becomes something that can hold liquids so it's I would almost argue that it's the world's first plastic lacquer was pigmented and painted on surfaces as early as the 6th century BC then made a resurgence in the Ching dynasty in the 17th century the date of this wall scream it's very very beautifully painted it interestingly enough conforms to the prospective traditions that we associate with Chinese painting if you're standing in front of it you look down at part of the composition you look directly across a part of the composition and you look up at part of the composition lacquer lent itself to more than being colored and painted this is my favorite it's basically a wooden box with black lacquer that has been inlaid with mother-of-pearl and I'm always astonished when I start looking at the composition of just the sheer tiny nosov the pieces of pearl shell that have been used to make this composition for example look at the trunk of the tree you can see that the pieces are very very small and they've been carefully placed in a somewhat random feeling pattern to really give you a sense of bark on a tree the women are picking peaches there's a tiny inscription indicating that this is the peach blossom grotto and the story itself is kind of fun there's a reference to a famous poem that tells about a fisherman who goes into a cavern and he comes into this shangri-la like land and he lives there for a while and then he eventually returns home and when he tries to get back he can never find it again so it's a really wonderful story many Asian cultures use lacquer but the Chinese made a specialty of carving it do takes months and months and months to build up a thick pile of lacquer before you can even copy and is very expensive it has always been from very beginning a luxury item up to 200 layers of lacquer might have to be applied this dish is a wooden dish on top of this dish there are several layers of lacquer and what happens is each layers put on individually it's allowed to dry and then it is the lacquer this plastic like resin that is carved and not the wood underneath I thought it might be fun to point out a dragon and the Chinese art galleries because of course we always think of the dragon as being Chinese and it's significant that this particular figure has four claws because in Chinese culture the emperor or the imperial family gets to have a five clawed Ragan in their visual arts other people have four and even sometimes three claws the red dragon stands out in much higher relief against the green delicately carved background someone had to get into this and carve that dragon down to the pre-existing layer particularly the scales of the dragon which are very very details it took a lot of work to make this the Chinese character above the dragon signifies longevity a word that captures the essence of Chinese culture a culture as enduring as Jade though jade has been worked since Neolithic times it reached a new level of craftsmanship in the Ching dynasty from the 17th through the early 20th centuries the Ching were the Manzo's but they came to China and really incorporated a great deal of Chinese culture one of the things they chose was this reverence for Jade which is so old these Jade animals from the 19th century represent the twelve animals of the zodiac they've been used to predict a person's character fortune life and even marriage prospects it's an old tradition it has to do with a very formal calendar that has 60 various um roots and branches that you can come from and many of us know which sign we are born under for instance the year of the horse the dragon or the ox jade was in such great demand that China exhausted its domestic supply more than three thousand years ago so they imported it this Ching dynasty Jade pillow in the shape of an infant boy is a variety called jadeite from Burma Shave actually is the most esteemed the most prestigious material in Chinese art much much more valuable than any other material or any precious metals there was this love of the polished stone with his translucency and his extreme hardness that somehow captured the imagination of the Chinese and and that imagination never left it you can push the whole business a bit further by saying that the Chinese in some ways never left the Neolithic period because what are the characteristics of the Neolithic pottery agriculture and polished stones and the Chinese still love pottery porcelain most Chinese are still farmers in peasants and the Chinese still love the polished stone in 1970 America was finding its voice through political protest artistic expression and increased cultural awareness 1970 was also the year the Metropolitan Museum of Art celebrated its centennial the Mets Board of Trustees used the occasion to reevaluate the museum's collections by 1972 when President Nixon shook hands with Chairman Mao former nemesis of the US and so-called Red China the Met had already begun to establish one of the world's premier collections of Chinese masterpieces it was then a matter with those growing collections of creating the right galleries to house them because different cultures demand a different form of installation you can't just have the same everything to present the art of the world the Met designed its galleries according to classic Chinese architectural principles it in a sense takes you away from the din of Fifth Avenue of New York City and plunges you right away in a more reflective and exotic mood the heart of the Mets Chinese galleries is a scholars card opened in 1981 the Astor Court was the brainchild of New York philanthropist Brooke Astor there are so many meanings to this garden it gives you not just a garden but it give you a very eccentric aspect of Chinese art that is to say a garden which is open but enclosed there you have a very very Chinese concept of architecture what is inside is open what is outside is enclosed the main entrance is through a moon gate then a small vestibule creating bands of light and darkness that define rhythm and space the first thing you step on is a natural rock step and that step tells you subliminally that you're leaving the man-made world behind and entering the world of nature where things are a little unpredictable to construct the garden craftsman were brought in from China when on a very personal level the Astor Court gave me an opportunity right after the Cultural Revolution in 1979 to be directly involved with the negotiations with all of the Chinese authorities and also working with Brooke Astor in bringing some of this extraordinarily beautiful and important material here the met and Chairman Mao's Chinese government worked together to assure absolute authenticity they reopened the Imperial kilns to create the tiles that are on the roof there was a special exemption from a ban of cutting certain trees with precious wood in order that we would have the right columns in the court we set up kitchens for them so that they could eat their own food ping-pong table knifes really played ping-pong with a few of them and the whole process was wonderful choosing and working with the Chinese workmen in building this Court I think people who walk into the Astor Garden Court for the first time are probably puzzled by the strange rock formations that they see here they don't look natural in some sense the rocks of course a very special that also is another aspect of later Chinese art I mean this love of irregular form these holes that you see in these rocks were originally made by wave action in the Great Lakes of China the Chinese began to see these rocks as wonderful examples of how nature can sculpt itself can shape itself so they would take these limestone rocks out of the beds that they were lying in stand them upright and create these somewhat top-heavy sculptures that look as if they're maybe a little imbalanced as if they're almost ready to move beyond the garden stands a contemporary Chinese sculpture a rock cast in stainless steel we agonized a bit before we acquired that contemporary interpretation it may or may not be a legitimate interpretation of a traditional Chinese culture because it negates one of the critical qualities of a good rock it has a smooth surface the wonderful paradigm for how China can take old ideas and reformulate them in a new substance and still retain something of the same spirit that has always been there for the five millennia that China has traded and adopted ideas it has always kept a strong sense of itself through all this time the world has reaped the benefits of this deep yet dynamic culture there's no reason to think the future will be any different learn more about great museums at great museums org you can order this episode of great museums on DVD for 2495 plus 595 shipping and handling call 1-800 to three zero four four five three or order online at great museums org museums hold the treasures and tell the tales of the people and places that make America great major funding for great museums is provided by the Eureka foundation dedicated to the educational power of television and new media exercise your curiosity explore America's great museums

Channel: Great Museums

Views: 189,891

Keywords: museum, metropolitan, york, manhattan, china, chinese, culture, asia, asian, montebello, art, decorative, bronze, porcelain, buddha, statues, sculpture, statuary, qing, dynasty, tang, earthenware, mongols, yuan, ceramics, jade, jadeite, neolithic, pottery, calligraphy, dragons, painting, han, silk, buddhism, nirvana, luohans, lacquer, lacquerware, history, restoration, conservation, scrolls, mongolia, mongolian, kublai, khan, ming, cloisonne, zodiac, garden, Ming Dynasty

Id: tQhqs1iFHDQ

Length: 56min 43sec (3403 seconds)

Published: Sun Dec 13 2009