DECEMBER 1, 2024 – Today we hiked across Central Park to the Met, where we wandered slowly through the special exhibition, Siena: The Rise of Painting, 1300-1350, featuring works of the very early Renaissance, Sienese artists Duccio (ca. 1250/60 – ca. 1318/19) (in the main), and Simone Martini, and brothers Pietro and Ambrogio Lorenzetti. After ogling at the exquisite sacred paintings of these characters, we crossed the second floor to the permanent collection of ancient Chinese art. (We breezed by the Korean and Japanese collections, saving them for “next time.”)
Over the past month I’ve been reading, The Shortest History of China by Linda Jaivin, and I figured that my grasp of the order of Chinese dynasties would be reinforced if I could see pottery, paintings, decorative cooking ware, and figurines representative of works produced during the Qin, the Zhou, the Han, the Jin, the Tang, the Song, the Yuan, the Ming, and the Qing dynasties (Whew!).
By the time we emerged from China’s past, I felt as though we’d been aboard a time machine that made umpteen stops along a 4,400-year-timeline in just under 80 minutes. My rudimentary knowledge of Chinese history provided only a hint of color and context to what tantalized my eyes, but today’s experience stoked my curiosity, my interest in knowing, learning more about China’s complicated story.
As I imitated a slug’s crawl across a garden and paused in front of every plaque and the object it described, I pondered the design and execution of each objet d’art and objet de vertu. In the forefront and across the backdrop of every single item was the sprawling history of a culture—no, cultures—as crude, refined, low, lofty, good, evil, tumultuous, colorful, advanced, retrograde, progressive, destructive, productive, murderous, corrupt, divine, strong, fragile, violent, ugly, beautiful, expansive, crumbling, inscrutable and enduring as any elsewhere in the world.
Over time I’ve often reminded myself that I could not pretend to understand much about the world without knowing a lot about China. But as we exited “China” and headed for the Met’s balcony eatery, our path led through “India.” Weaving our way past intricate examples of Shiva and the ponderous statues of Buddha, I was reminded that given how India has now exceeded China in population, I had to amend my maxim about Cathay: “To understand the world, one must understand China and India.” Except . . . today we had no time for India—let alone Persia, the ancient empire that profoundly influenced Bharat or, for that matter, Britain, whose imperial hand left a heavy impact on the subcontinent.
Upon exiting the Met we turned south, directly into a sharp wind and blinding mid-afternoon sun. I pulled my wool hat down over my ears and dug my sunglasses from an inside pocket of my jacket. In organizing myself against the elements, I fell a few paces behind my fellow travelers. As I then quickened my stride to catch up, I pondered further our “trip to China” and contemplation of art in repose from centuries past. None of that art had been produced in a vacuum. All of it reflected the once powerful forces and dynamic influences that came and went with the predictability of ocean tides.
This train of thought led back to the present—to the impending upheaval initiated by the recent election; to the grinding issues of our day and how they will afflict and affect the future. Of most immediate concern, I considered the devastation in Gaza, tied as it is to the plight of the hostages, as we were reminded by the orderly and heart-wrenching demonstration just getting underway as we had entered the park before our walk to the Met.
The sizable crowd bearing dozens of Israeli flags and chanting, “Bring them home . . . now!”—a crowd that since October 7, 2023 has gathered at 90th and Central Park West every single Sunday morning beginning at 11:00 local time—accomplished its goal with us visitors. Led by families of the seven hostages who are American citizens, the marchers reminded us of the unbearable pain, the unspeakable anguish that weighs upon the hearts and minds of those mothers, fathers, siblings, aunts, uncles, cousins most directly affected.
A thousand years from now, the hostage episode will have been long buried under the dust of a thousand storms. Yet each layer of civilization is rooted in the influences that preceded it, reaching back to the era when our earliest ancestors dropped from the trees. What happened on October 7 more than a year ago and what’s happened to Gaza since can never be removed from the story of humankind.
Likewise, I thought, the Chinese pottery and figurines arranged now in isolated sterility behind glass shields nonetheless bear stolid witness to their relevance to my own time and world despite my (lack of) knowledge and awareness. Yet, however briefly, this mere acknowledgment seemed to link my myopic consciousness to the greater scheme of my species. Even across millennia, we humans are “all in this together.”
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© 2024 by Eric Nilsson
