BWW Reviews: Metropolitan Museum Offers Riches and Reflection with ASSYRIA TO IBERIA

With Assyria to Iberia at the Dawn of the Classical Age, the Metropolitan Museum of Art sets out to show us where and how civilization as we know it began. To accomplish this, curator Joan Aruz has gathered stone reliefs, ivory carvings, gold plaques, bronze cauldrons, and more: approximately 260 items all told, all produced by the kingdoms and city-states that dominated the Middle East and the Mediterranean coast between 1000 and 500 B.C.E. This is an exhibition of supreme, even brutal opulence, yet it turns out that Assyria and Phoenicia and Babylon left behind much more than ravishing artifacts. It is to the influence of these cultures during these times that we owe a fair amount of the literature, architecture, statecraft, economics, and religion that shaped the occidental world.

This was the epoch of Homer's Greece and Solomon's Israel, two of the cultures that Aruz's exhibition explores and probably the two that are most recognizable, and most stimulating, to 21st-century imaginations. Despite its mythic aura and almost labyrinthine layout, Assyria to Iberia doesn't settle for mystique alone; as it turns out, the art itself is more pleasing and more accomplished than anyone, except for a career classicist, would expect. Though we may not have reached the era of sculpture-in-the-round just yet, we are well into the age of monumental wall reliefs, painstaking metalwork, and superbly rendered anatomical detail. Throughout, representational art intersects with other forms of culture and ambition--the cuneiform-inscribed obelisks and reliefs of Assryia serving as prime examples.

Those Assyrian artifacts rank among Aruz's most rousing selections, and provide the whole show with a spectacular opening act. If I had to name a protagonist for this exhibition, I couldn't go with Homer or Solomon, stirring choices though they are. Instead, the real stars are two Assyrian kings, Ashurnarispal II and Ashurbanipal, who oversaw the creation of sprawling palaces, well-appointed libraries, and an overabundance of warfare-happy wall reliefs and winged guardian sculptures. (Judging by this material, Assyrian civilization had much use for kings and monsters, and precious little for laymen and gods.) An absorbing CGI reconstruction of Ashurnarispal's Northwest Palace shows how the glorious fragments on display early in Assyria to Iberia all came together--though they are glorious enough on their own. One relief shows Ashurbanipal in the midst of a lion hunt: the beast emerges, leaps, and is slayed by the king's arrow. In each of its motions, the lion is carved with quivering energy. Ashurbanipal looks on, poised and undaunted.

This is a tough act to follow, for a civilization and for a curator. Once it has left these set pieces behind, Assyria to Iberia really begins to exploit its twining, meandering floor plan; there are cultural riches to come, but the abundant partitions and corners and corridors keep you wondering which glories, and which cultures, are right ahead. The treatment of Phoenicia and its heirs, in particular, is a high point. After a few maps and a little historical background, the showcase brings forth one of its best rooms of riches yet--gold pendants, bronze shields, large seashells transformed into carved cosmetic cases. As the catalog points out, Egyptian and Asian aesthetics influenced some of these works, complementing sophisticated craftsmanship with cosmopolitanism. I almost wish Assyria to Iberia had ended here, since the closing segment on Babylon--represented mainly by a model of the Ishtar Gate and by two imposing brick-relief beasts--has the air of an inspired afterthought. Fortunately, all you need for a better, bigger finish is to chart an exit through the Met's classical sculpture galleries--always showstopping, and next on the historical timeline.

Taken as a whole, Assyria to Iberia feels very much like a return to form for the Met. This doesn't mean that the museum's attempts to diversify beyond glorious artifacts and masterpiece paintings have been unwelcome: between Punk: Chaos to Couture and Balthus: Cats and Girls, the Met has shown that whimsical material can coexist with high production values. Enjoyable though they have been, such exhibitions have nonetheless felt off-mission and off-purpose, more appropriate to a middle floor at MoMA or to any floor at the Museum of Art and Design than to these echoing halls. Maybe the museum has yet to fully adapt, or maybe I do. After all, what has most deeply enchanted me about the Met, season after season, decade after decade, is watching civilization sweep by--with vigor, with opulence, and with complete seriousness--as I walk from one gallery to the next. Assyria to Iberia is exactly that enchantment, condensed and contained. For this art season at least, it is one of the most glorious displays in an ever-grand museum that only seems more grand, more generous, as the years roll past.