MET-itations by Leslie Sewell

 Galleries 340 to 363 have been totally reconfigured into the Michael Rockefeller Gallery.  This new amazing section of the Met has been redesigned to be bright and cheerful and showcases the works of sub-Saharan Africa, Arts of the Ancient Americas and Art of Oceania.  The first section is art of Africa and includes statues, ceremonial objects and everyday objects.  The carvings and detailings are exquisite. Many of the artworks show complex and evolved civilizations that had complex social structures both within different societies and between groups who traded goods and had various diplomatic relationships.  Spending time with this art destroys many of the boundaries between what I have thought of as the primitive and more developed societies.  There seem few true distinctions as I look at these.

  John Keats said it best Ode on a Grecian Urn Thou still unravish’d bride of quietness,      Thou foster-child of Silence and slow Time, Sylvan historian, who canst thus express      A flowery tale more sweetly than our rhyme: What leaf-fring’d legend haunts about thy shape      Of deities or mortals, or of both,         In Tempe or the dales of Arcady? What men or gods are these? What maidens loth?      What mad pursuit? What struggle to escape?         What pipes and timbrels? What wild ecstasy?   Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard      Are sweeter; therefore, ye soft pipes, play on; Not to the sensual ear, but, more endear’d,      Pipe to the spirit ditties of no tone: Fair youth, beneath the trees, thou canst not leave      Thy song, nor ever can those trees be bare;     ...

  This gallery is not just a room like many others but a long passageway with a high arched ceiling and tall white pillars to create the effect I think of a temple of the ancient world.   This statue of a young man is actually a composite.  The lower part is Roman from the first century CE and the upper part a more modern recasting.  Like many of the works in this gallery it is a mix of various centuries and includes original works and copies.  It raises the question of what is real and what not and does it matter.  If there is beauty in the contemplation or an object does it matter its provenance.  These classical statues became a model for artists of much later periods.  They were highly influential in the Renaissance and beyond.  Because this is such a large gallery I spend a lot of time roaming from object to object and find it difficult to focus on just one as I often do.  This gallery with its many perfect bodies does raise questio...