Metropolitan Museum of Art Paper

Metropolitan Museum of Art Trip

Sean Rallis

I took my trip to The Met on Saturday, November 10^th. This time around, I didn’t bring my wife or children. I felt it would be too cumbersome trying to take the children to NYC and I wasn’t comfortable with just the two of us heading there (I’m still in protective parent mode and my biggest fear is that there’d be an emergency and it’s an hour back to Stamford and then another half hour back to Bridgeport). My sister lives on Long Island, and she just got back from a trip to Japan, so I figured she would want to tag along and come see the Asian art.

It wasn’t an overly chilly day, but the wind between the buildings in the city is always cold in autumn. I got to Grand Central relatively early, while it was still empty. No trip to New York is complete without coming through Grand Central. I feel it makes for part of the experience. I met up with my sister, we took the subway to 86^th Street, and walked the remainder of the way to the museum.

I’ve only ever been to The Met one other time, probably 8 or 9 years ago. The building is always impressive to me, because no matter how you approach it, there is somewhat of a forced perspective you’re meant to view the building in that makes for an impressive entrance. Because it was a weekend, even at opening time there were many people, both inside and out.

The Met’s history dates to Paris, France in 1866. According to the website, “a group of Americans agreed to create a "national institution and gallery of art" to bring art and art education to the American people.” (metmuseum.org/about-the-met) The museum was advocated by a lawyer named John Jay, and on April 13, 1870, the building was opened to the public in the Dodworth Building on Fifth Ave. The building’s current location opened on March 30, 1880. The museum houses many different collections, ranging from a large European art section composed of 2,500 pieces, 26,000 ancient Egyptian artifacts, armor, statues, music instruments and various sculptures from all over the world and representative of various cultures.

It is highly recommended to grab the map as you enter the exhibits. I mean, this sounds like a common-sense move, but I didn’t until about midway through, thinking I’d wing it. Though it is easy to deduce what gallery you are in, trying to plan the route ahead proved to be difficult, and some of the galleries, such as the European art on the second floor take on an almost maze-like quality. We started with the “traditional” starting point of the tour, which is in the Egyptian exhibit of the museum. With 26,000 pieces on display, there is a very large portion of Egypt’s history covered. I was impressed that some of their pieces extended all the way up to more “modern” times such as early AD.

The wealth of human history in this gallery alone was enough to spend all day analyzing. Many of the artifacts pertain to reconstructed portions of excavated tombs and statues, serving as silent guardians to the deceased carefully housed within. Naturally, the gallery houses plenty of examples of hieroglyphs in painted, cast, and carved form. Though these were used for communicative purposes, to view them up close once can appreciate the detail and workmanship as an art form all its own.

One cannot go the The Met and not expect to see mummies or coffins on display! There are many spectacular examples in many forms of preservation or decay. The sarcophagus attached is part of an exhibit of pieces from the period that would have been used in temples and funerary rites. This is the gilded coffin of Nedjemankh, who was a proponent of traditional Egyptian religious rites during the reign of Cleopatra. The information provided next to the display states that there are, “…numerous vignettes and symbols designed to protect his mummified body and spirit. The most important aspect of the coffin is the hymn inscribed above the feet that speaks of gold and silver, both associated with divinity.” Clearly, this was a man who took the beliefs quite literally.  

From here, we made our way next into the Medieval art section, which covers a large amount of religious works from prior to and after the Renaissance. I enjoyed wandering the Medieval wing of the museum for the same reason that I enjoyed the European art section in Yale University Art Gallery. The quiet atmosphere invokes a sense of wandering the halls of an ancient cathedral. I would have loved to get some pictures of the interior where most of the statues, paintings and tapestries are houses, but they were beginning to install a Christmas tree for display, and much of the central interior is partitioned off.

This statue of Saint James the Greater, one of the Apostles of Christ, I felt was a good representation of the stonework that adorns the gallery. I liked the way they positioned the lighting above him, almost in an answering a Divine call sort of manner. Much of the statues pertain to the Catholic persuasion, so there are many saints and representations of Mary and Jesus on display.

There are also beautiful and massive tapestries on display. This one below is a pictorial representation of The Apostle’s Creed. It is beautifully woven, each panel handling a different statement from the Creed.

Up close you can see it both as the textile it was created from and the image without losing one in the other. It spans 11 x 15 feet and was created between 1550-1600. If you are unfamiliar with Christianity, creeds were a set of stated beliefs among believers that set forth the doctrines that they commonly accepted. The Apostle’s Creed is an early form of that belief system (most churches today base beliefs and affirmations on much later affirmations like the Nicene Creed because these earlier representations did not have theological concepts that were adopted in later centuries).

I’m going to briefly pass over the European art section that we had passed through next in order to discuss some of the Asian art gallery (the European gallery is where I found my paintings that I chose to put as the focus of my paper). In my first post on the blog about my trip to The Met (If you haven’t checked out, please do so because there are a few more great examples of what I saw on display in the galleries) I shared an example of a Gautama Buddha statue, one of many that decorate the halls. There were also beautiful examples of “traditional” art as well.

One of the more recognizable pieces that I was amazed to find was Kautushika Hokusai’s The Great Wave. Hokusai lived from 1760-1849. According to biographical information on his website, “Hokusai began painting around the age of six, possibly learning the art from his father, whose work on mirrors also included the painting of designs around the mirrors.” (katsushikahokusai.com/biography) As he grew up, he embraced and mastered the style of ukiyo-e, wood block print and paintings. His Mount Fuji series was his most famously recognizable work, but he never saw himself as the artist the world did. On his deathbed, he proclaimed, "If only Heaven will give me just another ten years... Just another five more years, then I could become a real painter." (katsushikahokusai.com/biography)

The Met houses one of many original prints of this piece (I had incorrectly assumed there was only ever one original). Being able to view the print up close I had never noticed the boats caught in the wave before. When I saw the mountain in the background, I also noticed the waves also took on this similar mountainous, impassible quality, especially the smaller one in the foreground; a truly terrifying event for those caught in the middle of it!

There was a few Hokusai on display (part of his Thirty-Six Views of Mount Fuji series), so this was one of a handful of prints from the series. The other print that I liked in the series was Viewing the Sunset Over Ryōgoku Bridge from the Onmaya Embankment. The scene depicts a group of boats docking their boats at the end of the day, I am unsure if it is a ferry boat or if they were out fishing. Hokusai’s usage of the progressively darkening sky gives the viewer an indication that nightfall is approaching. I didn’t see the title at first until I included this piece in my paper. My first assumption on seeing the sky depicted in this manner was that a storm was approaching.

So we are going to circle back around and return to the European gallery. I was disappointed when we first arrived at the entrance because it was closed off! We had come to find out that it was only that portion of the gallery that was empty inside and therefore the entrance was relocated. The European gallery was a mixture of portraits, religious scenes, and landscapes. As we wandered the halls of the gallery, examining different interpretations of historical figures, I felt intrigued that, given the religious landscape of European history and art, that there was still such a heavy emphasis on the human individual through these paintings. One of the more fascinating paintings to me that exemplified both human and divine qualities was by Moretto da Brescia. I have not chosen this as my focal painting for my paper, but I include it here because of its representation of Christ. The Entombment approaches the pivotal Christian moment in a different manner than I think we are accustomed to. Here, da Brescia is not handling the image of Christ with care, as we see in most interpretations. This is the real Christ; the lifeless body that would have been removed from the cross. The paleness is what stopped me to look over this painting.

What caught my attention was, if I recall, in the same room or adjacent. The Penitent Magdalen is a painting by Georges de La Tour, a French 16-17^th century painter. Georges was born in 1593 in Vic-sur-Seielle France. Of his painting style, Encyclopedia Britannica writes, “The paintings of La Tour’s maturity, however, are marked by a startling geometric simplification of the human form and by the depiction of interior scenes lit only by the glare of candles or torches. His religious paintings done in this manner have a monumental simplicity and a stillness that expresses both contemplative quiet and wonder.” (Britannica.com)

The story behind the painting is somewhat familiar to me, it isn’t canon according to biblical tradition but is an extra narrative in the vein of other miraculous tales of the lives of saints. Following the death and resurrection of Christ, Mary winds up in Marseille after being set adrift to sea in a boat to die, and she spends the remainder of her live as an ascetic in a cave.

I had bounced back and forth between this painting and another nearby, noticing very similar qualities, though they were two different painters. This painting was the more “pleasing” of the two; I’m going to attribute it mostly to the geometric layout of the painting. What really got me about it was the usage of the shadow and the singular light source. I looked at this painting and I felt almost sorrowful for Mary Magdalene. If you’re familiar with the Bible, she was one of the most devoted women to Jesus and his ministry and I wondered if in her continued devotion, there was a sense of abandonment from the object of her devotion? Her face looks away from us, longingly at something else, perhaps the mirror, perhaps something out of frame. The placard next to the painting mentions the symbolism of the painting, “She is shown with a mirror, a symbol of vanity; a skull, symbol of mortality; and a candle that probably stands for her spiritual enlightenment.” The mirror reflects back not her own image, but her spirituality in this case.

La Tour’s usage of the shadow looked a lot like the style of Caravaggio, whose painting, The Denial of Saint Peter was found on a wall in an adjoining room.

Caravaggio was a 16^th-17^th century Italian painter, who was known for this type of feature in his paintings. In this painting, Caravaggio utilized light and shadow on the individual in a similar manner. Here, we have the story of Peter, having followed the tribunal procession that arrested Christ into an adjoining courtyard, is questioned by a group surrounding s fire whether or not he had been a follower of Christ. I enjoyed this painting for the similar blending of shadow and light found in Le Tour’s work, but it was the melancholy that drew my interest to study Penitent Magdalen longer than Denial of Saint Peter.

My overall impression of The Met is it is clearly not something one can see all of in a single visit. There is a wealth of not only art and sculpture, but within there are countless tales of our history on display also. There will be other times, and other works to see and hopefully these old friends will remain on exhibit to come back and view once again.

 Works Cited

About the Museum - Metropolitan Museum of Art.Retrieved from https://www.metmuseum.org/about-the-met

Katsushika Hokusai Biography. www.katsushikahokusai.com/biography.jsp

Britannica, T. E. (2018, March 12). Georges de La Tour. Retrieved from https://www.britannica.com/biography/Georges-de-La-Tour