'Make love, not war" is one amendment I wouldn't mind seeing written into the United States Constitution, and into every other civic document across the world. The idea has a long history in art (as, of course, does its bellicose opposite). And it reigns supreme in the pulsing little valentine of an exhibition titled "Echoing Images: Couples in African Sculpture" at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
In the show, as in life, a couple means many things, all of which in African art are intended to be read as primarily spiritual rather than libidinal: man and woman, woman and woman, man and man, parent and child, human and divine, human and animal. Some individuals are couples unto themselves, fusing contrasting and complementary traits. The general idea seems to be that when a concept of personal allegiance is nurtured by a society, rather than fettered or enforced, the possibility of some larger harmony increases, encouraging further growth and variety.
Art operates more or less the same way. At its most stimulating, it signifies an ideal of equilibrium that is built on and embraces all that is mutable, transformative, unconventional, intrepid, unknown. That's why some of us love it the way we do. And you would have to have a heart of stone not to love the 50 sculptures brought together for the Met's show, organized by Alisa LaGamma, associate curator in the museum's department of the arts of Africa, Oceania, and the Americas, and installed in the Michael C. Rockefeller wing.
| Continue Holland Cotter's New York Times review "Procreation, Passion and Partnership," and consider stopping by the exhibit if you're in New York
posted in reviews on February 15, 2004 1:55 AM | t (0)
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