Saturday, January 2, 2010

The Metropolitan Museum of Art


After our ramen lunch we headed over to The Met for my first visit ever to the museum. We really wanted to see the Egyptian exhibit, but we wound up spending the majority of our time in the Eastern art section. They also had an interesting special exhibit called "Art of the Samurai" which included many samurai blades, armor, robes, and some artwork.


Pitcher depicting frontiersman Bill Nye confronting a "Chinee" on the results of a card game. Very pitcher worthy, I'd say.


Ganesha

Very cute clay samurai man


Kick butt samurai armor


A very Japanese robe


I was super excited to see this, "View of Toledo" by El Greco. I studied this painting in high school Spanish class and it never made much of an impression on me until I went to Spain in my senior year of high school and went to Toledo myself and realized that it looks exactly the same. I took probably a whole role of film trying to figure out where El Greco must have been sitting to paint this landscape. Of course, I never found it, but that view of Toledo that I saw was really just breathtaking. No wonder why El Greco felt the need to paint it.

Some pottery from the Korean Art section. Pretty sure I saw this exact same vase in Insadong for 40,000 won. ^^

4 comments:

  1. Great museum! The object you said was a "Clay samurai Man" I think needs correction. Those were funerary objects placed above the tomb in Prehistoric Japan. Actually the tombs resemble Korean Silla tombs so there is some controversy. He is more of a warrior object to protect the dead...I don't think they had Samurai's back in the Prehistoric period...that came later...or developed more later..hmm

    ReplyDelete
  2. That's wierd, because it was in the "Art of the Saumurai" exibit...

    ReplyDelete
  3. http://www.metmuseum.org/special/samurai_armor/view_1.asp?item=0

    Here's a link with specific info about that particular piece.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Well that is a stretch to say it's a "Samurai" more like a proto-samurai if you ask me. Hmph...but it's from the Met so I am not going to argue.

    ReplyDelete