Arte Marcial Tibetano

Art Review

In War and Peace, in Silver and Gold By KAREN ROSENBERG Published: January 4, 2008

Photo: Metropolitan Museum of Art Detail of a breast defense from a horse armor, Tibetan or Mongolian, 15th to 17th century.

Tibetan Buddhism, represented by the peace-loving Dalai Lama, is not normally seen as a religion that advocates violence. Earlier generations of followers, however, defended the road to enlightenment with armed horsemen. Tibetan Arms and Armor at the Met Beginning in the seventh century Tibetan Buddhists outfitted their gods as well as their warriors. In ancient Himalayan paintings, deities brandish weapons, including the Sword of Wisdom, in defense of religious doctrines. They also wear protective battle gear, as in the case of the eighth-to-ninth-century figure Tsenpo, described in an ancient manuscript as "a god who became the sovereign of men, due to his power derived from the great radiance of his sacred helmet."

Photo: Metropolitan Museum of Art "Sword" (detail) Tibetan or Chinese, from the 14th-16th century.

This paradox of militant Buddhism inspired the Metropolitan Museum of Art's fascinating 2006 exhibition "Warriors of the Himalayas: Rediscovering the Arms and Armor of Tibet," which presented some 130 examples of military art. Donald LaRocca, the museum's arms and armor curator, has created a follow-up installation of 35 objects from the Metropolitan's collection (including five acquired in 2007), which opened in mid-December in the Arthur Ochs Sulzberger gallery. (Mr. Sulzberger, chairman emeritus of The New York Times Company, is a former chairman of the Metropolitan Museum of Art.) This time, in "Tibetan Arms and Armor," the focus is on defense rather than offense: examples of horse and body armor, dating from the 15th through the 20th centuries, outnumber swords, guns and spears. Most of these objects have seen more ceremonial than military action, despite Tibet's long history of military involvement with India, Mongolia and China (its current ruler). All of them equate supreme craftsmanship with defense of the body and Buddhist principles. A mannequin representing an armored cavalryman shows how the typical Tibetan warrior, from the 17th century on, dressed for combat. Over a mail shirt he wore a set of iron discs known as the "four mirrors," protecting the front, back and sides of his torso. He carried a bow case and quiver, a matchlock musket and a spear. On his head was a domed helmet that came to a point at the top.

Photo: Metropolitan Museum of Art A Tibetan bridle from the 15th-17th century.

The exhibition includes seven of these helmets, which vary in age, construction and decoration. Some are made of segmented metal plates, while others have smooth, richly patterned surfaces. The oldest of the helmets on view has eight plates and a plume finial and dates from the 8th to the 10th century. The rarest is a one-piece bowl ornamented, in gold, silver and turquoise, with a Buddhist motif known as the Three Jewels. It was likely worn by a Mongolian follower of Tibetan Buddhism sometime from the 14th to 17th century. Another helmet, of Mongolian origin, is so heavy with text and imagery that one imagines the wearer collapsing under the spiritual weight. Encircling the conical form are inscriptions offering protection from bad planets and stars, destructive demons, weapons, harmful ghosts and a host of other threats.

Photo: Metropolitan Museum of Art A Mongolian helmet from the 15th-17th century.

Horses were as lavishly and thoroughly equipped as soldiers, to judge from the variety and intricacy of the saddles, bridles, shaffrons (head guards) and stirrups on view. The Tibetans, in the tradition of steppe horsemen, continued to use horse armor long after it went out of fashion in the West. One iron and leather damascened (decorated with gold and silver) shaffron is among the most striking objects in the arms and armor galleries. Dating from the 15th to 17th century, it is thought to have been owned by a king or high-ranking general. Delicate scrolls adorn the area above the eyeholes, which are outlined with tiny iron spheres. A long strip of textured metal extends from snout to mane, bulging into a disc in the center of the forehead.

Photo: Metropolitan Museum of Art A head guard, Tibetan or Mongolian, from the 15th-17th century.

Next to the shaffron a pair of exquisite leather neck defenses from the same period are painted with rows of gold lotus and peony blossoms. Pinned to the back of a display case, they resemble angels' wings from a medieval icon painting but are sturdy enough to function as armor. Similarly involved techniques were used in the making of stirrups, saddles and bridles. The Met's display includes a pair of stirrups with sloping dragon heads on the arch and a tread damascened with the motif of the Wheel of Law. On the underside are spirals, concentric circles and a lotus-leaf pattern.

Photo: Metropolitan Museum of Art An Eastern Tibetan saddle and stirrup.

One exceptionally well-preserved saddle appears to have been made in China for the Tibetan market, during the 17th or 18th century. Its original seat cover, of silk embroidered with dragons, and the form of its gold-foil pommel plate resemble features of saddles made in imperial Chinese workshops. The underside of the saddletree, however, has been branded with the Tibetan letter "ka." The most riveting of the new acquisitions is a war mask, in iron trimmed with copper, thought to have been made sometime from the 12th to 14th century. Unlike the many surviving examples of ceremonial papier-mâché, leather and gilt copper masks, it was meant to be used in battle. Its fearsome scowl resembles the expressions of Japanese samurai masks meant to intimidate the opponent (which can be seen in the adjoining galleries of Ottoman, Chinese and Japanese arms and armor).

Photo: Metropolitan Museum of Art A war mask, Mongolian or Tibetan, from the 12th-14th century.

Unlike most of the other peoples represented in the Metropolitan's arms and armor galleries, Tibetans continued to wear their armor into the 20th century. As recently as the 1940s they wore traditional arms and armor at events like the Great Prayer Festival in the capital city of Lhasa. At this annual event government officials engaged in contests of skill with the spear, bow and arrow, and matchlock musket — a case of Buddhism's war of art running parallel to the art of war. "Tibetan Arms and Armor From the Permanent Collection" continues through the fall of 2009 at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, (212) 535-7710 .

Multimedia SlideShow Tibetan Arms and Armor at the Met

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Copyright by the New York Times 2007

Lista de películas destacadas en el 2008 NYT

FILM

A List, to Start the Conversation By MANOHLA DARGIS Published: December 23, 2007

Melinda Sue Gordon/Paramount Vantage Daniel Day-Lewis, right, and Dillon Freasier in "There Will Be Blood," directed by Paul Thomas Anderson

THE whole point of a Top 10 list, a friend recently scolded me, is to number them. (I was declining to do so.) My friend was wrong, but only because Top 10 lists are artificial exercises, assertions of critical ego, capricious and necessarily imperfect. (I have a suspicion that the sacred 10 is meant to suggest biblical certainty, as if critics are merely worldly vessels for some divine wisdom.) More than anything they are a public ritual, which is their most valuable function. I tell you what I liked, and you either agree with my list (which flatters us both) or denounce it (which flatters you). It's a perfect circle. Mostly, these lists give me an excuse to remind readers of good and great films that they may have missed. (That's the evangelist speaking, not Moses.) They allow me to revisit favorites, sift through the year and share a few thoughts that I didn't or couldn't get into print earlier, along with fragments, digressions and a few jabs. In some respects the actual list is the least of it, which is why I'll dispatch with it now with minor annotation and, save for the first two titles, without numbers. Paul Thomas Anderson's "There Will Be Blood," which I will write about in detail when it opens on Wednesday, and David Fincher's "Zodiac," which I wrote about when it was released in March, together constitute my 1 through 10. These aren't necessarily the year's best (impossible to determine given the glut of films), just the two that matter most to me, that dug in the deepest and rearranged my own givens. They made me feel like the woman in the start of Orson Welles's film "Touch of Evil" who says, "I've got this ticking noise in my head," just before she's blown to smithereens by a time bomb. I'm still intact (more or less), but these films shook up my world in the best possible way. My other favorite releases of the year are:

There Will Be Blood Zodiac Into Great Silence I'm Not There Killer of Sheep The Bourne Ultimatum Eastern Promises Michael Clayton 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days I Don't Want to Sleep Alone Lady Chatterley Colossal Youth Monika Superbad Southland Tales No End in Sight Before the Devil Knows You're Dead This is England The Savages Year of the Dog Paprika The Host The Kingdom

Each of these was reviewed in this paper, and most are now available on DVD or soon will be. Photo: Peter Mountain/Focus Features Viggo Mortensen, far left, stars in "Eastern Promises." The movie, set in London's expatriate Russian underworld, is one of Ms. Dargis's top choices for the year.

This year'sCannes Film Festival supplied a remarkable bounty that included Hou Hsiao-hsien's "Flight of the Red Balloon," Gus Van Sant's "Paranoid Park," Catherine Breillat's "Last Mistress" and Carlos Reygadas's "Silent Light," all of which are scheduled to open next year. You're probably wise to "The Bourne Ultimatum," so instead let me share a few words about "Colossal Youth," from the Portuguese filmmaker Pedro Costa. Obscure in more ways than one, this movie has not been picked up by an American distributor, making it hard for even intrepid filmgoers to see. Shot in digital video, it is a cryptic, arresting work that reveals its mysteries slowly. With their deliberate movements and long silences, Mr. Costa's cast — nonprofessionals culled from a Lisbon slum — seem as monumental as marble, a heaviness that all but stops the flow of the movie and forces your attention directly on them. You really watch this movie or you flee. If it makes it to DVD, I promise to let you know. "The Bourne Ultimatum" and "Colossal Youth" (now there's a double bill) could not be more different: they're limpid/opaque, frantic/composed, global/local, star-driven/real-peopled. Neither looks like the other or like anything else out this year. Each brings you into worlds through different formal means. "The Bourne Ultimatum" fragments the image, thereby mirroring the fragmented nature of its title character, and accelerates the pace, creating a shattered, violently trembling world that forces you to pay close attention or risk missing something, like the sight of Bourne jumping from a roof and through a window. "Colossal Youth," by contrast, allows the world to cohere (almost congeal) around its characters, and it slows down its pace so drastically that unless you adapt your rhythms to it, you will never find a way in. These films exemplify the perceptual extremes of my moviegoing year; somewhere in the middle is the Norwegian film "Reprise," from the young director Joachim Trier. A coolly funny, touching, exhilaratingly intelligent mediation on identity and friendship, "Reprise" has a self-conscious visual style (jump cuts, freeze frames) that perfectly expresses the worldview of its two self-conscious lead characters, first-time novelists and increasingly alienated best friends. The film has bumped around the international festival circuit for the last year and a half, scooping up awards and love, though not until recently did it land an American distributor. (Look for it next year.) Enthusiastic reviews, intelligent filmmaking, even hot sex are no longer automatically enough to persuade a distributor to jump. The problem is that the art-house audience that supported the French New Wave filmmakers to whom "Reprise" owes an obvious debt can no longer be counted on to fill theater seats. Or maybe it's overwhelmed. For a variety of reasons, including the glut of releases, movies are now whisked on and off theater screens so fast that it's hard for the audience to discover them, much less build a popular film-going culture. In 1984 Jim Jarmusch's "Stranger Than Paradise" hung around in theaters long enough for people to learn how to spell his name. These days too many cool movies are just passing through on the way to your Netflix queue.

Click over image, or here, to see the Slideshow. "The Year's Best Movies"

I don't think anyone knows what the solution is, but this year IFC Entertainment hit its stride with its First Take series. Twice a month the company simultaneously opens a film theatrically, including at the IFC Center in the West Village, and releases it via video-on-demand on cable television. If the film does well in theaters, it might go wider than initially planned. IFC isn't the first company to go the day-and-date route, but so far it's letting people with great taste buy films — during a multifestival shopping spree, they picked up "The Flight of the Red Balloon," "The Last Mistress" and "Paranoid Park" — so, until someone comes up with a better idea, more power to them. IFC also had the smarts to snap up the Romanian film "4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days" at Cannes before it won the Palme d'Or. (It had a brief Oscar qualifying run in Los Angeles and reopens in January.) Directed by Cristian Mungiu, this is one of those putatively dark, difficult movies that industry mouthpieces try to use as proof that critics are out of touch with the audience when it is actually the audience that is out of touch with good movies. Americans consume a lot of garbage, but that may be because they don't have real choices: 16 of the top box-office earners last weekend — some good, almost all from big studios — monopolized 33,353 of the country's 38,415 screens. The remaining 78 releases duked it out on the leftover screens. I doubt that most moviegoers would prefer the relentlessly honest "4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days," which involves a young woman seeking an illegal abortion, over "Juno," an ingratiating comedy about a teenager who carries her pregnancy to term. But I wish they had the choice. "4 Months" is aesthetically bracing, but "Juno" has easy laughs, dodges abortion quicker than a presidential candidate and provides a supremely artful male fantasy. Like "Knocked Up," it pivots on a fertile hottie who has sex without protection and, after a little emotional messiness (and no scary diseases), delivers one baby and adopts a second, namely the man-child who (also) misplaced the Trojans. Both comedies superficially recall the male wish-fulfillment fantasies of "Sideways," but without the lacerating adult self-awareness. This year's baby boom — more bellies popped in "Waitress," " Margot at the Wedding," " A Mighty Heart," " Bella" and even the latest " Shrek" — may be purely coincidental or cyclical or just evidence of the limits of imagination. But because this year our movies also marched off to war — in " Redacted," " Rendition," " Lions for Lambs" and " In the Valley of Elah," among other titles — I can't help but think we have embarked on a symbolic flashback to the 1940s and 1950s. In the way-back machine of the movies, we are simultaneously returned to the glories, agonies and clichés of cinematic war and to atavistic gendered stereotypes, embodied this year by beatific, inevitable maternity. Filmmakers may be shooting blanks on the war front, but back home they're getting plenty of action.

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Copyright by the New York Times 2007