On a cold, sunny day between Alberta Clippers, snow squalls, and blizzards, I drove up to Minneapolis to see the exhibition at the Art Institute of bronze figures made in Cambodia mostly around the second half of the 11th century AD. The battle of Minneapolis was ongoing, masked and heavily armed ICE agents fighting with protestors waving flags and signs and blowing whistles. (A woman had been shot dead on a residential street a mile and a half from the Art Institute -- this event demonstrates the inadequacy of visual evidence; on cellphone footage, the homicide can be seen from about five different angles from various distances and, yet, no one can really agree as to what the footage, filmed in broad daylight really means.) Trump is cracking down on Minnesota, apparently in a spasm of pique, induced by the fact that he has never won the State in the three elections in which he stood for the office of President. It's reputed that there is widespread chaos, but, the City is, in fact, mostly peaceful, people going about their business oblivious to the pepper spray and rubber bullets being fired elsewhere. I didn't see any trace of the riots or ICE goons attacking people. The sun was bright; there was a lot of wind and it was very cold.
The Royal Cambodian Bronzes are mostly petite figures, greenish with oxidized copper or scuffed by centuries of neglect. There are a number of figures, also four feet high, carved from dingy grey sandstone. The bronzes were once gilded with gold leaf and adorned with jewels but the precious substances are now long gone. The show involves many artifacts from a French museum (Guimet) and the original label material and catalog were written in French -- the exhibit isn't traveling anywhere but Paris and Minneapolis. (I assume that this is because show is technical and highly specialized -- it consists of variations on sacred figures that may look, at least to the unpracticed eye, highly similar; it's a show for connoisseurs of a particularly specialized type -- people who know the doctrinal differences between certain types of Buddhism and who can apply that knowledge to deciphering small variations in the iconography.) I found the show interesting and looked at everything as carefully as possible -- but the calm bronze faces in poses indicative of serene contemplation are introverted and don't really reach out to you. This is a hushed alien world. An exception is a monumental figure of Vishnu resting on his side between the ages of the world, a figure that is somewhat akin to the images of the Buddha at his Paranirvana -- that is, the figure crowned in architectural kind of headdress, tiered and vaulted like the Chrysler Building in New York resting on his side, often in a naturally occurring rock shelter or a chapel in a temple. Vishnu has swashbuckling features with a raffish moustache and each of his elbows are jointed with an extra set of forearms and hands so he can accomplish twice the work of salvation. The big figure, reclining on the ruin of his torso (the parts look like tubes from Civil War era submarines) startles due to its size and the rather eerie and indeterminate aspect of its features (or, more accurately, its state of disrepair): ruins have a sort of uncanny appeal and this wrecked bronze is big enough to seem to be a sort of ruin, an underwater temple, perhaps, with tubes and hollows where eels might swim under the degraded pumpkin-sized head of the figure.
Visitors glimpse the monster through the glass of a closed door as you enter the show. You, then, traverse several fairly dim galleries in which about 150 bronzes are displayed. There are fragments of figures, many Buddhas demonstrating the gesture for conversation or fearlessness (two hands pointed palm out to the viewer) or the earth witness gesture made when the Buddha achieved enlightenment and called the Earth to be his witness of the defeat of Mara and forces of illusion. There is a rare object called a lingakosha (that is, a ceremonial covering for a linga -- that is, Shiva's generative phallus); it looks like kind of round protective container for a manhole cover; a few feet away, there's a miniature linga, a small thumb-shaped bollard in a bath for ablutions. The bronzes seem to be meditating -- their eyes are half-closed and there is something comatose about the figures. Apparently, the bronzes demonstrate an epoch in which Buddhism and Hindu Gods co-existed in Cambodia at Angkor Wat. Indeed, the Hindu gods seem to be evolving into the stream-lined dome-form of the meditating Buddha -- the Hindu figures feel a bit more kinetic than the profound repose of the Buddhas. At Angkor Wat, the Cambodian King made a vast reservoir and, then, planted a walled island in the middle of the water. The reservoir was supposed to simulate the sea churning like milk for uncounted eons in the original chaos of the world. From the churning of the sea, a figure arises resplendent and immense -- this is Vishnu reclining on a heap of cobras as if on pillows. Vishnu uses his elbow-jointed forearms of two of his four limbs to bear up the weight of his mighty crowned head. Vishnu sleeps until a lotus grows out of his naval. From the lotus' moist petals, Brahma, the all-Father, is produced -- this is the inception of a new world. A video tells this story in the anteroom to the final chamber where the great Vishnu is reclining, his features eroded like the face of a burn victim, hands and feet like geological events. Elaborate floral arrangements have been left as offerings to the figure and, in the corners of the room, there are more heaps of flowers, large banners of the Kingdom of Cambodia, and crossed lances and pikes. The fragmentary figure casts a shadow like a mountain range on the wall. In 1936, a local monk dreamed that the Buddha came to him and pleaded to be released from his prison of mud at the center of the now-empty, jungle reservoir. When the monk dug in that place, the former island at the center of the artificial lake, the colossal figure was discovered.
In another gallery, there are some works by Sopheap Pich, a Cambodian artist who escaped the barbarous Pol Pot regime to come to America. His works are fragile made from rattan. One of the works is a Buddha form disintegrating so that it seems to float above the ground, disembodied, a mere outline of the Enlightened One dematerialized so the figure seems faint and vaporous. The tips of the rattan have been dyed in some red substance -- not fully but only a few strands. When Sopheap Pich returned to Cambodia, he went to the village temple near where he had lived as a boy and young man. The temple was in ruins, covered in ugly pock marks. The Khmer Rouge had used the temple as a prison, interrogation center, and had executed hundreds of people there. I wrote down the name of the temple in my moleskin: Wat Ta Min.
As I write, 18 monks and a dog named Aloka are walking 2300 miles from Fort Worth's Huong Dao Vipassana, Bhavana Center to Washington D.C. Originally, there were 19 monks but a truck crashed into their procession, resulting in the amputation of the leg of one of the men. The monks wear saffron robes and are shaved bald. The walk is for peace and to show loving kindness to all beings. (The dog, no longer able to keep up with the monks, had to be treated for dislocated hips -- Aloka meets the monks at intervals.) It's too bad that the 129-mile pilgrimage will not bring the monks to Minneapolis where peace and loving kindness are in short supply. There's another blizzard coming out of Alberta. If you happen to meet the procession of monks, step out of their way, put your palms together over your heart and bow forward -- don't talk to them and don't attempt to make eye-contact.
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