I didn’t grow up going to museums, certainly not art museums. I think my first visit was an 8th grade field trip to the Iowa Historical Museum. Memorable because of the biplane suspended from the ceiling.
My first exposure to art as I think of it, was a college American Art History course. Required to visit the St. Louis Art Museum, I particularly enjoyed the great paintings. The more they told a story the better. I had no interest in the pottery, ceramics, jewelry, textiles. They were mere artifacts without narrative, or so I thought.
Later in life though, and particularly since leaving home, I’ve come to realize that the artifacts are the story, revealing a history of human progress in ways paintings and sculptures rarely do. They also reveal a genius for process, if you look closely enough, developed anonymously and perfected over generations.
We visited the National Museum of Thailand our last morning in Bangkok. Throughout, there were very few paintings on the walls or sculptures displayed.
But the sensitive, detailed art of the Thai people over many centuries was stunning.
There were miniature Kon masks made of paper mache, decorated with gilded lacquer and inlaid with gems.
And a great Ganesha Kohn mask with mother-of pearl inlay.
A ceramic dish telling the story of the Buddha and outlined with gold enamel.
A large gilded lacquer painting with multiple scenes from the Ramakian, one of which depicts Sita after her abduction.
Musical instruments were on display,
works of art as well.
Puppets, too,
that entertained with tales of passion and intrigue.
Panels
and doors
with a function beyond mere opening and closing.
And containers of various shapes
and sizes with value more than utilitarian.
Of course the Buddha
was ever present.
Near the end of the visit a notion arose, one that often does when I visit a museum. That much of what was on display, perhaps most of it, would not exist without the wealth that made it possible.
Without the monarchies and the ruling classes.
Without the rich taking from the poor.
It’s a notion that’s bothered me for a long time. But perhaps that’s a western way of looking at things. One hung up on good and bad, good and evil.
The Eastern mind, it seems, is more facile, better able to hold the irreconcilable.
It’s no wonder that it’s a mind long informed by the Tao te Ching:
The Tao doesn’t take sides;
it gives birth to both good and evil.
The Master doesn’t take sides;
she welcomes both saints and sinners.
And the Bhagavad Gita:
I am the ritual and the worship,
the medicine and the mantra,
the butter burnt in the fire,
and I am the flames that consume it.
I am the father of the universe
and its mother, essence and goal
of all knowledge, the refiner, the sacred
Ôm, and the threefold Vedas.
I am the heat of the sun,
I hold back the rain and release it;
I am death, and the deathless,
and all that is or is not.
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