“The reliefs show people being impaled on spikes and the enemy being decapitated and sometimes flayed alive. I mean it’s absolutely brutal, and it was intended to intimidate.”
With a powerful empire centered on the Tigris River—today in northern Iraq—the Assyrians were one of the great and formative cultures of the ancient world. They used their military might to conquer and control an extensive territory, which at its peak in the seventh century BCE reached from Syria in the West into Turkey and Iran in the North. Today, much is known about Assyrian culture because of the sheer number of texts and narrative artworks they left behind. In particular, their shallow relief sculptures depict nuanced portrayals of battles, mythology, and court life. These stone reliefs decorated both public and private spaces in Assyrian palaces. Their detail and expressiveness make them among the most beautiful and important works of ancient art that exist today.
In this episode, Getty Museum director Timothy Potts discusses Assyrian culture and its masterful relief sculptures. A selection of these sculptures is on loan from the British Museum to the Getty Villa through September 2022 and will be on view when the Museum reopens to the public in 2021.
Reflections: Amanda Berman on a Pair of Decorative Groups
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We’ve asked members of the Getty community to share short reflections on works of art they’re thinking about right now. These recordings feature stories related to our daily lives.
This week, Amanda Berman considers how studying a set of eighteenth-century French porcelain sculptures reveals hidden racism and what that might mean for us today. To learn more about this artwork, visit: https://www.getty.edu/art/collection/objects/5617.
Over the next few weeks, look for new recordings every other Tuesday.
Transcript
JAMES CUNO: Hi, I’m Jim Cuno, president of the J. Paul Getty Trust. In a new podcast feature, we’re asking members of the Getty community to share short reflections on works of art they’re thinking about right now. We’ll be releasing new recordings every other Tuesday. I hope you’ll find these stories about our daily lives—from laundry on the line to a dog at a scholar’s feet—thought provoking, illuminating, and entertaining.
AMANDA BERMAN: I’m Amanda Berman, and I’m a curator of sculpture and decorative arts. While following news on the pandemic, I’ve been struck by stories of the targeted harassment of Chinese people and the boycotts and vandalization of Chinese-owned businesses. Many of my friends have reacted with shock and outrage, asking, “How could this happen here?” This question got me thinking about the subtle, less obvious forms of racism that foster and support the overtly racist behavior. And it reminded me of these “decorative groups” in the Getty’s collection.
They were constructed in the mid-1700s in France. I say constructed because they’re made up of different elements that did not start off life together. Each one is a combination of a few Chinese porcelain objects made after the mid-1600s—figures of boys wearing Qing dynasty tunics and trousers, rocks, spheres, and lions. These porcelain items were imported to France, where a bronze caster combined them on gilt-bronze bases and added French porcelain flowers. So, the result is this invented thing which uses Chinese elements to create a European decorative item. They’re beautiful pieces, but knowing how they were made makes me a little uncomfortable. It’s clear the European craftsman didn’t understand the cultural origins of the original porcelain pieces, and they had no problem with decontextualizing these objects to turn them into something that played on stereotypes.
These decorative groups fit into a larger category of art from this time that featured Asian-inspired themes, to put it generously. There were furnishings and other objects that used Chinese materials in the construction of a European-designed piece, like these objects. And then there were objects created entirely in Europe, with European materials, made to look vaguely Asian or decorated with stereotypically Asian imagery like pagodas and people in kimonos. European craftspeople drew on styles from Persia to Japan, mixing and matching to create designs that seem strange and culturally insensitive today.
Racist ideas about Asian people weren’t new in 18th century Europe. But increasing trade with Asia brought about a new fascination with Asian cultures and a rise in this Asian-inspired decorative style. This created and reinforced the idea of Asians as “other”—people who were not mainstream or didn’t fully belong. Exoticizing cultures, conflating them, and disregarding their distinct histories stereotypes and dehumanizes people from those cultures.
So I’ve been thinking about how these 18th century French objects relate to the question of how anti-Chinese racism can happen here. This obsession with Asian aesthetics, seen in this pair, is akin to cultural appropriation now. And I see a similar subtle racism in the model minority myth—another example of how Asians in America are considered not fully American, regardless of how many generations have lived here. Not to mention the long history of specifically anti-Chinese racism in US immigration laws.
Subtle racism can hide behind the idea of “cultural appreciation,” but in reality, this creates an atmosphere that supports and encourages acts of overt racism. That’s why it can be just as damaging as racist vandalism or racial slurs. This decorative pair reminds me of the continuous presence of these more hidden forms of racism. That’s why it’s important to study these artworks and understand their contexts, not just appreciate them aesthetically.
CUNO: To view this porcelain Pair of Decorative Groups, composed in France about 1740-1745 from pieces dating from about 1662–1740, click the link in this episode’s description or look for it on getty.edu/art/collections.
“The fifteen years of civil war did not produce as much damage as the few seconds did on August 4th.”
On the evening of August 4, 2020, Beirut—the capital of Lebanon and one of the oldest cities in the world—experienced a devastating explosion, when more than two and a half tons of ammonium nitrate detonated at its port on the Mediterranean Sea. The explosion was felt across the region, killing nearly two hundred and injuring and displacing thousands more, many of whom were already struggling to cope with the effects of a global pandemic and economic crisis. Settlement in Beirut dates to the Bronze Age, and this long history has made the city a vibrant cultural center for thousands of years. The immense destruction caused by the recent explosion threatens not only Beirut’s built cultural heritage but also its social fabric.
In this episode, Lebanese architect Fares el-Dahdah discusses the crisis in Beirut, the dangers facing people, communities, and buildings, and the innovative responses underway. El-Dahdah is a professor of architecture and director of the Humanities Research Center at Rice University, Houston, Texas. He is currently living in Beirut.
We’ve asked members of the Getty community to share short reflections on works of art they’re thinking about right now. These recordings feature stories related to our daily lives.
This week, educator Anna Sapenuk finds parallels in Herakles and Iolaos’s fight against the Hydra and our global battle against the coronavirus. To learn more about this artwork, visit: https://www.getty.edu/art/collection/objects/10600/.
Over the next few weeks, look for new recordings every other Tuesday.
JAMES CUNO: Hi, I’m Jim Cuno, president of the J. Paul Getty Trust. In a new podcast feature, we’re asking members of the Getty community to share short reflections on works of art they’re thinking about right now. We’ll be releasing new recordings every other Tuesday. I hope you’ll find these stories about our daily lives—from laundry on the line to a dog at a scholar’s feet—thought provoking, illuminating, and entertaining.
ANNA SAPENUK: Hello my name is Anna Sapenuk, and I’m an educator at the Getty Center and the Getty Villa. Lately, I’ve been thinking how relevant certain works of art are to the struggle of the coronavirus and us battling this multi-dimensional monster, so to speak. The work of art that I have in mind is this really wonderful hydria or water jug from the Getty Villa. It is one of my favorite pieces there.
And the star of the show on this hydria is this Hydra or watersnake, this mythical watersnake, that is nine headed. And in antiquity, it was known to kill people, even with the smell coming from it.
And on the hydria itself, the watersnake is coiling its body and its nine heads are emerging out of it, ready to strike. In this work of art, not only the watersnake is shown, but also there are two characters that are fighting with it. Those two figures are those of Herakles and his nephew Iolaos. And of course, you know, Herakles, he’s a super strong mythological figure, and what he’s doing is he’s raising his club to take off one of Hydra’s heads. And Iolaos, his nephew, kind of his henchmen, he has a sickle to cut one of the heads of the Hydra.
But the issue of the Hydra, much like the issue that we have with the coronavirus, is that, you know, if you cut one of his head, two heads grow in its place. So it’s a very complex problem that they’re dealing with and that we’re dealing with today.
So they come up with a really smart solution to this problem. There’s actually a flame, and they use the heat from the flame to cauterize where the heads were chopped off so that new heads don’t grow in its place. And it’s just immediately so connected, I feel, to our struggle with the coronavirus that is also a many-headed monster, in many ways, and we need so many different approaches to battle with it. Like we have to continue social distancing, and wear masks, and the vaccine is still in development.
These two heroes, Herakles and Iolaos, end up defeating the Hydra, and I hope that the same can be said for us and our fight with the coronavirus. I hope that we find those solutions that we’re seeking, and that we defeat this many-headed monster in our own right.
CUNO: To view this hydria, or water jug, featuring Herakles and Iolaos slaying the Hydra, made in Etruria around 520 to 510 BCE, click the link in this episode’s description or look for it on getty.edu/art/collection.
“I think we can all empathize with someone who’s like a son, or in this case, an adopted son, trying to kind of make his own mark and escape the shadow of his father, and leave something on the world of his own.”
In the year 79 CE, Pliny the Elder set out to investigate a large cloud of ash rising in the sky above the Bay of Naples. It was the eruption of Vesuvius, and Pliny did not survive. A trailblazing naturalist, he is best remembered today for his multivolume encyclopedia Natural History, and we are able to retrace his final hours thanks to a vivid account by his nephew, Pliny the Younger. Inspired by his beloved uncle, the young Pliny became a lawyer, senator, poet, and representative of the emperor. His published letters are fascinating reflections on life and politics in the Roman Empire.
In this episode, Daisy Dunn, classicist and author of The Shadow of Vesuvius: A Life of Pliny,and Kenneth Lapatin, curator of antiquities at the Getty Museum, discuss the two Plinys and their profound impact on our understanding of ancient Rome.
