Page 18 - Art In The Age Of Exploration (Great Section on Chinese Art Ming Dynasty)

styles—African bronzes and ivories, Brazilian by the later, and Columbus' compass itself was with each idol displacing idols of the last gen-
featherwork, Mississippian stone effigies, Aztec an improved model. His voyage was promptly eration and destined to be displaced in turn.
codices, Costa Rican and Colombian works excelled by later navigators. So, too, the anat- Yet hero-artists like our Leonardos and Diirers
in gold. omy and physics of Leonardo and Diirer would never lose their starring role.
If we are puzzled and startled by this mis- be displaced. But Leonardo's Lady with an
cellany, still mostly hidden from Columbus 7 Ermine (cat. 170) and Diirer's Knight, Death The great civilizations produce their own spe-
European contemporaries, it is because we have and Devil would never become obsolete. The cial triumphs of both Discovery and Creation.
begun to see the distinctiveness of the two Cul- designs of Ming China and Inka stonework And each offers us its own distinctive large area
tures and the unique message of this exhibit. remain treasured originals. Textbooks can of overlap. Technology, bastard offspring of the
Here we can correct our myopia in this year of arrange maps in a clear line of progress, from two Cultures, uses the fruits of past discoveries
Discovery-Pride. We become aware of the limits Ptolemy and T-in-O medieval versions, advanc- for surprising future creations. And Technology
of the kinds of fulfillment that dominate our ing through Juan de la Cosa's planisphere, can mislead us into the illusion that there is
consciousness in an age of science. The Culture Waldseemiiller's world, and Battista Agnese's progress in art and that somehow the findings
of Discovery, an invisible community forged in portolan world atlas — and endlessly on into of science can be made immortal, immune to
the spirit of quest, focused on the same object, the future . displacement. The portable, durable, and
an earth to be mastered and mapped, winds and In the Culture of Creation there is no correct accessible works of craftsmen put their stamp
ocean currents to be harnessed, accumulating or incorrect, and in the long run no progress. on our popular notions of other civilizations.
and sharing fragments from everywhere. But Works of art reveal no linear direction but In this exhibit we will be impressed by the skills
the Culture of Creation was a host of countless experiments radiating in all directions. While of Flemish weavers, Portuguese silversmiths,
independents. Their only limits were their the post-Columbian maps of the world make Spanish ceramicists, Turkish swordsmiths, and
inherited styles and materials. Each was aiming their predecessors obsolete, works of art are Colombian jewelers, by the makers of Chinese
at a personal target. Their heterogeneous and always additive. They provide the pleasures of lacquer and Korean porcelains. Every triumph
chaotic worlds, instead of nourishing our pride novelty and addition without pains of subtrac- of craftsmen has been made possible by earlier
in a generalized mankind, inspires our awe at tion. Pre-Columbian arts only gain from discoveries of the properties of wool, silver,
the infinite capacities of atomic individuals. modern comparisons. jade, bronze, steel, or glass. The achievements
We see an astonishing, even bewildering, array The two Cultures differ too in the roles they of sculptors and painters become possible by
We must be struck by the diffuseness and discon- assign to the individual. Oddly enough, though discovering the special qualities of marble, of
nectedness of man's efforts in different places to Discovery is the arena of collaboration, it offers tempera and oil. The Cultures of Creation and
express himself. The subtle masks of No play- its historic prizes for individual priority. There of Discovery meet in a fertile limbo.
ers contrast spectacularly with the monumental is something decisive and exclusive about every "Circa 1492" was an era of awesome achieve-
palace paintings of Ming artists and the massive first discoverer. Although great discoveries, ments in the three hybrid arts of Cartography,
rotundity of Aztec sculpture. It is folly to try including those of Columbus, are a team prod- Perspective, and Anatomy. In these years Euro-
to put them in a line. Not progress, surely, but uct, it is somehow always the "Discoverer" who pean cartography probably made more progress
endless variety! In this fertile chaos we see gets the credit. Columbus has no peer. While than in the millennium before. Even after
individual artists, and mankind, moving infi- cities and nations are named after him, his- explorers on the real earth ceased to be satisfied
nitely in all directions. We see every artist torians still debate the Portuguese claims, some by the theological symmetries and mytho-
inventing an artist. As uncanny as the inevita- seeking the laurels for Leif Ericson or an Irish logical embellishments on their maps, they still
ble collaboration of Discoverers is the uncanny Saint Brendan. And the laurels that go to the expected their maps to be decorative objects.
uniqueness of Creators. one are lost to all the others. Discovery seems Accustomed as we are to the antiseptic sche-
Sometimes of course traditions converge or to be a history of firsts, as we see illustrated matic newspaper maps of our time, we can espe-
compete, and often artists learn from other in this exhibit. cially enjoy the elegance of the Islamic celestial
artists, just as the Japanese painter Sesshu Toyo But the Culture of Creation offers no super- globe of 1275, the whimsies of camels and ele-
learned from his visits among the artists of Ming latives or absolutes. While the arts celebrate the phants and giraffes, of sultans and emperors,
China, or as Diirer learned from Italian painters unique and the original, the uniqueness of the that still adorn the Catalan Atlas of 1375, the
in Venice. Then each does much more than artist, even the greatest, is usually incremental. many-handed monsters and monstrosities of the
translate. He transforms these predecessors. The individual differences between the works of Nuremberg Chronicle of 1493. We see science
While Discoverers are marching, or trying to Piero della Francesca and Leonardo da Vinci are translated onto a tapestry seen in this exhibit of
march to the same tune, the world of Creators minute, but they add up to reveal the works of the Mechanism of the Universe (cat. 111). The
tells us no such simple story. Each is his own different artists. These works can easily be dis- navigator's instruments, his globe and astrolabe,
compass, not finding but making his directions. tinguished, and the pleasures of the art histo- attain a filigreed elegance to equal that of the
This exhibit can remind us of how random and rian come from the irrelevance of "firsts" and silver for communion or for the royal table.
diffuse were man's efforts to create in an era "bests." We can speak of the style or "school" In the years of our exhibit, "Perspective," a
when, more effectively than ever before, leaders of a Leonardo or a Diirer which can diminish medieval synonym for the science of sight or
of Western Europe were competing for the the value of a work claimed for the master. But optics, became a name for a rediscovered ancient
common currency of discovery. Creations are we do not speak of the "School" of Copernicus, art. "Circa 1492" reveals epochal progress in
the strange fruit of diverging imaginations. Columbus, or Magellan. The Culture of Crea- man's capacity to capture space on paper or on
Vasco da Gama might not have reached India tion is full of minor variants and near misses, canvas, to translate the three-dimensional world
without that Arab navigator. But there was no but the Culture of Discovery insists on naming into persuasive two dimensions. We see the
Arab apprentice or mentor in Leonardo da the winner of first prize. The scene of Dis- fruits of this rediscovery in the studies of
Vinci's studio. The earlier maps were displaced coverers, then, is dominated by a star system, Uccello, the treatise of Piero della Francesca,

CIRCA 1492 17