East West

Having spent the better part of the morning in the Asian part of the Gulbenkian (Persian lustres, Turkish tiles, Chinese famille rose and verte) and taken delicious lunch (lentil soup, a pastry stuffed with mushrooms in cream sauce, an Alentejan red) I considered what to do with the one hour remaining before my movie date. I realized that it could not be the Western section – even though the paintings and the applied arts are, like everything else here, superb. To go from Asian art to European art is simply too much of an aesthetic violence, it is too much of a turn. The western bits are simply too damn crude; too large; too violent; too loud; too full of contrasts; too small on detail; too big on meaning; too confrontational; too in your face. It is like stepping from cool shadows into violent sunlight; from a peaceful garden into a raucously busy street. I couldn’t do it. It would have hurt. So instead I went back East and looked at some Islamic book covers. The experience was cool, calm, and shadowy; like sitting by a brook in a forest