Viewing the Course of History And the Yuan Dynasty In Gold Thread and Silk

The Metropolitan Museum of Art’s new exhibition, “The World of Khubilai Khan: Chinese Art in the Yuan Dynasty,� is a quietly magnificent show of some 300 objects, many never before exhibited outside China, that raises as many questions as it answers.

    Ranging from monumental pieces to small domestic objects, the show attempts to illustrate the influence of the Mongols under Khubilai, the first alien conqueror of the country, on art and artistic direction. After all, Khubilai was the builder of Xanadu, the magnificent square city that dazzled Marco Polo and inspired Coleridge to write about the Khan’s “stately pleasure dome.â€� Although the Mongols’ Yuan dynasty lasted only  from 1271 to 1368, it changed the course of Chinese history.

   But all history is in the mind and pen of the historian. And the Met has apparently chosen to follow the lead of the Chinese art history establishment (the catalog preface is written by the director of the Chinese Cultural Property Promotion Association) which announces the Yuan period as one of “exchange and harmony among various ethnic groups.â€� Contrast this with the catalog for an earlier Cleveland Museum show of Chinese Mongol art: “It was a time dominated by foreign barbarians … a time of universal discrimination and humiliation,â€� especially of the Confucian scholars who were the pillars of pre-Yuan society and culture.

   There are no barbarians in this show, although they are mentioned in a companion show elsewhere in the museum. Instead, the magnificent objects are identified with neutral, rather tame words that hardly represent a culture in ferment and upheaval. Xanadu itself is mentioned only once and inside  parentheses.

   The most compelling objects are the largest. There is a mighty, square stone post, carved and embellished with intaglio writhing dragons, from Xanadu itself. Even grander is a magnificent roof ornament, a mythical beast in green and yellow glazed pottery that rested on one of the four corners of a house. And there is a marvelous, pensive, life-size wooden “Arhat,â€� a guardian of Buddhist teachings.

     But perhaps the most intriguing pieces are either small or textile. If the great Khan was civilized by the Chinese, as the catalog would have us believe, and which doubtless in some measure was true, then a lovely blue cup and saucer represent that conversion perfectly. Shaped like a lotus blossom, the cup is made of cut glass, a Western material, and was used in the ancient tea ceremony that must have captivated and soothed the nomadic Khan.

The cup and saucer also say much about Mongol reach and practice: They pillaged far and wide, then brought home artisans and craftsmen who could provide the vast array of domestic and luxury goods they traded all along the Silk Road and into the West.

   Mongol textiles fairly gleamed with metallic threads, mostly gold, that traders brought back from Constantinople and farther west. Indeed courtiers at Xanadu were required to wear cloth of gold. And since the Mongols preferred their portraits woven in cloth rather than painted, important figures in this show are shown in softly burnished silk and metallic threads.

   The Mongols were a peculiarly eclectic people in regard to religion. While Jubilation, Khubilai’s favorite consort, adopted Buddhism, his beloved mother was a devout Christian, and two of his generals were Nestorian Christians. Thus Christians and Buddhists of various sects lived with the remnants of the formerly elite Confucians and Taoists, and all produced art (the Confucians as protest against Mongol rule, perhaps) showing fascinating juxtapositions of art, dogma and iconography:  Christ sits on a lotus leaf, and saints wear Chinese robes and have Chinese eyes.

   And finally there is Khubilai himself, here in an ink painting on silk, probably a cartoon for the tapestry that he would prefer. He is heavy, sleekly groomed. He gazes at us enigmatically with the large ears that in his China symbolized good fortune. The picture tells us little about the man, but in its sumptuousness and calm, it may tell us all that he was willing for us to know.

 showing fascinating juxtapositions of art, dogma and iconography: Christ sits on a lotus leaf, and saints wear Chinese robes and have Chinese eyes.

   And finally there is Khubilai himself, here in an ink painting on silk, probably a cartoon for the tapestry that he would prefer. He is heavy, sleekly groomed. He gazes at us enigmatically with the large ears that in his China symbolized good fortune. The picture tells us little about the man, but in its sumptuousness and calm, it may tell us all that he was willing for us to know.