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Of all the fascinating objects now on display on the Met Museum's rooftop garden, it is in the nine stone steles that comprise a long wall relief that the utter genius of artist Cai Guo-Qiang's installation is readily apparent. Even more extraordinary is how many visitors walk right by it and fail to notice it, or even bother to pick up a pamphlet that details the 70 fascinating motifs that have been masterfully carved into the stone. This phenomenal work recalls several thousand-Buddha grottoes along the old Silk Road throughout western China, where you can constantly observe the hordes of tourists passing by the most intricate carvings. (In the Met's Japanese galleries you might also observe groups quickly walking by one of the finest and most intricate works in the Asia collection—the Buddha achieving paranirvana—without even noticing it.)
The 70 motifs, hallmarks of this bizarre era in which we live, are chronicled in a fascinating manner, neither linear nor chronologically, but blended together much as the events traditionally depicted in a complex Chinese wall carving, a Tibetan thangka or even as seen in some Brueghel paintings. This snapshot, if you will, of everything from migrant workers in large cities to Iraqi children to Kim Jong Il, the Three Gorges Dam, Harry Potter—and of course, G.W. Bush, FDNY and twin towers—is both sobering and thought-provoking. This hodgepodge further reflects the artist's mastery of his subjects by paying homage to his own works, firmly placing himself in the pantheon of events of the new millennium. Serious, satire, or farce? Were you to stop and pause for a few minutes, perhaps you will decide for yourself.
Tags:
cai guo qiang, met, rooftop garden
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Posted on 5/1/2006
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