Sunday: drove to Tallinn. Got stuck in a massive traffic jam at Ülemiste due to some bicycle race that we didn’t know about. We could have taken an alternative route but the traffic authorities didn’t have the sense to inform drivers of the road blocks in advance. After half an hour we finally got to a place where we could escape the jam and zig-zag through Lasnamäe to Pirita where my friend V lives. Spent a most relaxing afternoon with V and family – the kids entertained each other, Adrian picked through their toy box, and we adults just lounged on the deck and ate and talked.

Monday: in Tallinn’s Old Town. The town was overrun with large guided tourist groups; they were everywhere. Both kids were in a bad mood, tired, didn’t want to eat at mealtimes and then complained of hunger a short while later, and generally complained about stuff all day long. We hardly enjoyed any of the stuff we saw.

Tallinn Flower Festival: small scale, low-key, pretty and fun.

Finally saw the much-discussed Victory Column with my own eyes.

Lunch at Olde Hansa: menu unchanged over the past 10 years, food still good, portions smaller than they used to be.

Climbed to the top of the tower of the old City Hall: good views but very windy; had to go down almost as soon as we got up because Ingrid wouldn’t keep still and got in everyone’s way, while Adrian squirmed all the time.

NUKU muuseum, the museum of Tallinn’s puppet theatre: far larger and more interesting than I had expected. But it was a total labyrinth, a tangle of rooms with confusing signs.

Kultuurikilomeeter, a kilometer of culture: “a lot of kilometer and not a lot of culture”. Instead of one kilometer the path is 2.2 km long but the culture along it is very, very sparse. From its name I had expected it to be lined with sculptures, installations, outdoor art… all we found was an “eco-island” (a cheap-looking café on some sort of floating island), a stage and some graffiti and another café in the old Patarei prison, a construction site which will at some point become a museum for sea planes, and a couple of historic ships. A lot of urban decay – hip and edgy, I know, I know, and quite nice-looking in places, but depressing in others – but very little of what I would actually term “culture”. We gave up about halfway through since Ingrid and Adrian were both bored as there was nothing at all to hold their attention.

I got to go on two roller coasters this year, Jetline and Kvasten (The Witch’s Broom). Both were great! Kvasten was fun because you’re hanging below the tracks so it feels like your feet are going to hit the house / tree / whatever you’re flying over, but the ride was a bit too short for my taste. Jetline is a serious roller coaster with steep ups and downs, and enough g-forces to give me a stiff neck. I totally agree that it is unsuitable for pregnant women, even though I found that rule most disappointing last year, when the most adventurous ride I could go on was the wave swinger.

Ingrid revisited all her favourites from last year, and also tried three new attractions: the bumper cars (that she was too short for last year), Blå tåget (a ghost train, which she found way too scary) and Rock-Jet, which had her literally squealing with laughter for the entire duration of the ride.

She was surprisingly utilitarian about her choice of rides. Nyckelpigan is her favourite, and Kärlekstunneln (the Love Tunnel) is a close second, but she only went once on each of those and then rejected them because the queues were too long, opting instead for the instant gratification of rides that were almost as good but with a much shorter waiting time.

Adrian had at least as much fun as the rest of us. There was so much to look at he could barely find time to eat. Things going swish and vroom and clang all around him, lots of people, never a dull moment. And he got the best value for money since they have free entry for kids up to the age of 3.

Jetline! Image borrowed from the Gröna Lund web site.

Today we went to Liljevalchs to see their Spring Salon, an annual exhibition of art by “everyman”. Anyone can send in photos of their works for consideration by the jury, who choose not the “best” works but works that make for a fun exhibition. You can see photos of the works selected for this year’s exhibition here. Ingrid complained about tired legs (par for the course); Adrian was mostly happy to be lugged around (also as expected).

If I did movie reviews, I’d write a rave review about The Secret of Kells. But I don’t.

This blog has a whole category for books, and none for movies. That’s no accident. Books are much more important to me than movies. If I had to live without movies, I don’t think I’d miss them much. Books, on the other hand, are essential. (So is the internet, for that matter.) And I often have opinions about the books I read, whereas I don’t know enough about the art of making movies to be able to say anything particularly intelligent about them. I don’t think in images, I think in words; I don’t process images as well as I process language.

In the evenings, when both kids are asleep, Eric will often watch a movie or part of some TV series, while I’d rather spend time reading blogs or a book. But I often listen to whatever he watches with half my attention. Sometimes I decide partway through that his movie sounds so interesting that I want to see the rest. And sometimes, very occasionally, I will take the time to watch a whole movie. Even more rarely, I will ask Eric for a particular movie, rather than just “tag along” with whatever he chooses.

I can only recall three movies that I’ve watched from beginning to end during recent months. (I may have seen more but in that case they didn’t make a very strong impression. And watching Ingrid’s “Barbie Rapunzel” with her does NOT count.)

The Secret of Kells, as I said, was wonderful. This one we all watched together on New Year’s Eve, in order to stay awake until midnight, and everyone loved it. It is beautiful, magical, gripping: a fairy tale excellently told.

Babies was one I had wanted to see. Just 4 babies doing their stuff: somehow totally riveting. Perhaps because I have one at home myself? (Review at Salon.com)

How to Train Your Dragon was just plain fun.

The title of the show was “Wear it like a crown”, after a song with the same title by Rebekka Karijord, who’s written the music for this show. It was a small and almost intimate performance, with just 5 people on the scene (the 6th artist was absent due to an earlier accident), a simple set, melancholy music and muted lighting. There was juggling (of everything from ping-pong balls to chainsaws and chairs), acrobatics, knife-throwing and trapeze, and more. It is apparently possible to make a circus show out of shoes, plastic bags and plungers.

This is not a children’s show in any way, but it was weird and whimsical enough, and not too loud or scary, so Ingrid enjoyed it. At over two hours (including the interval) it was a bit too long for her, but not so that we’d need to leave early.

I’ve looked for photos of the show but found none that made it justice. There is a trailer but unfortunately it shows nothing of the show itself.

A nice performance, fun, unpredictable, and personal – well worth seeing.

And what a disappointment the show was. A dull performance with unimaginative numbers, not exactly badly performed but totally uninspiring. Two of the numbers seemed to be pure fillers, to make the time pass: musicians in shiny circus attire playing ordinary musical instruments in the middle of the scene. If I wanted to listen to a guy play the trumpet, I’d go to a concert, not the circus. During the break children were offered pony and camel rides (for a fee), or to go backstage and see the animals (for a fee, again) – and that’s on top of the steep ticket price.

Note to self: stay away from Circus Maximum, and probably from all such travelling circuses.

The city centre was way more crowded than usual, of course, but not so bad that it would get annoying (and my threshold for crowd tolerance is low, believe me). The stalls were all spacious and spread out, which made the festival area easy to get around. It wasn’t even hard to get around with a buggy.

The music (where present) was provided mostly by wind orchestras and brass bands, since this year’s Hansapäevad coincided with a wind music festival.

Instead of cheap tat, there was a huge market for traditional Estonian handicrafts: wood working and wood carving, pottery, knitted wool, felted wool, embroidery and sewing, smithery, traditional food and so on. A lot of lovely stuff to look at! In some senses I may not be strongly Estonian any more, but I do feel a strong affinity to Estonian crafts. The feel of the Estonian woollen yarns (hand spun, slightly rough, unbleached), the smell of juniper wood, the look of the traditional striped fabrics – it all says “home” to me. I love Estonian traditional textiles in particular, and wish I could fit them into my wardrobe without clashing with everything else I wear.

They had even thought of families with children. Not just the usual bouncy castles (although there was an area with such junk as well) but also meet-a-policeman, pony rides, and a lot of craftsy activities for kids of all ages: stamp your own shopping bag, draw and paint, make a paper doll with real fabric clothes. Even better, the activities were not all in one corner of the festival area. We could alternate between window shopping (stall shopping?) for me and activities for Ingrid, so no one got bored.

Add ice cream, and a fountain to splash in, and great weather (below 30°C!) and it was a roaring success for us.

The bugg course ended in June, and then we were away in Estonia, but now that I’m back, I’m determined to go out dancing regularly.

During summertime there are several outdoor dancing venues in Stockholm. Skansen and Gröna Lund are two popular ones in central Stockholm. I’ve been to Gröna Lund these past two Thursdays, and it’s been great.

The standard setup for social dancing in Sweden is that you pay some sort of entrance charge, and then you get to dance for a couple of hours while a band plays live music. At Gröna Lund the band plays from 19:00 to 22:45. There’s a break (or several) in the middle to let everyone rest. And there’s free drinking water available somewhere near the dance floor, because bugg is sweaty business.

The band always plays two slower tunes (for quickstep/foxtrot) followed by two faster ones (for bugg), and this pattern repeats throughout the evening. In order to dance, one person (usually, but not always, a guy) approaches another person (usually, but not always, of the opposite sex) and asks if they want to dance. An affirmative answer is a commitment for one “dance” consisting of two tunes, but if both are happy, a couple can go on dancing for as long as they want.

The crowd can be very varied, ranging from 20-ish girls dancing with each other to 70-ish couples, and everything in between. Some are there for serious dancing, showing off competition-level moves. Some are more casual. Some only come for a few dances after their dinner. Some are there with the very explicit goal of meeting women. (I’ve gotten polite but very thinly-veiled invitations both times.)

There was a slight excess of women both evenings. Turning up without a partner, and not knowing many people there (although I did recognize a couple of people from the dance school where I took my bugg course), I spent some time partnerless both times. It’s much easier to dance with someone you know – the first dance with a new partner can be a bit awkward when both try to figure out the other’s style – so most people are hesitant to invite a stranger to the dance floor. But I spent much less time standing on the side yesterday, so the trend is looking good.

Most guys on a dance floor are reasonably good at bugg. You either know how to dance it, or not – and if you really suck, you won’t go out dancing. There’s also some scope for the girl to dance “better” than the guy – if he’s hesitant or unclear in his signals, the girl can compensate for it. But quickstep/foxtrot is trickier. It seems so simple on the surface, so guys think they can do it. But it’s not at all easy to really do it well. Yet when both partners know it well, and their styles “match” or mesh well, it is fabulous. Out of all the dances yesterday I had a single fabulous foxtrot, and it eclipses the entire rest of the evening.

Bugg is fast, sporty, somewhat technical, with lots of twirling. It takes focus and energy. Foxtrot done well, on the other hand, is smooth and sensuous, especially the so-called “dirty fox” style with lots of body contact. It’s a bit like meditation: a combination of relaxation and concentration. I can close my eyes to shut out the world (just like when listening to music), even forget about the music and just follow the guidance of the guy, and I’m floating around like on a cloud. When the music ends, it feels like waking from a dream.

About six weeks ago I attended a cocktail party. The first for a long time, actually: I haven’t been moving in circles where people organize cocktail parties.

Adult conversation, dressing up, live music, dancing, and all that… very nice. And the best part was the dancing. I have really missed dancing. I used to dance quite a lot during my university years, performance dance as well as social dancing – Swedish jitterbug (bugg), quickstep (which is generally called foxtrot in Sweden), tango, lindyhop. But I never got around to finding a dance club after moving to London so I lost my dancing habit. Now this cocktail party gave me the push I needed, and I decided to finally take up dancing again.

Most social dancing in Sweden is quickstep and bugg – if you know those two, you’ll get by in almost all situations, unless you specifically go to a tango or gammeldans event or a salsa venue, which I don’t plan to do. In quickstep most guys, even the really good dancers, stick to the basic moves, and I can follow those without much work. But I haven’t danced bugg for almost 10 years now, before I can go out and dance, I felt I needed to refresh my memory. So yesterday I started on a seven-week bugg course. Once that’s done, I’m going out dancing!

Yesterday we went to the Nationalmuseum to catch their exhibition about trompe l’oeil art, “Lura ögat”, during its last weekend. The objects on display were many and varied, ranging from 17th-century paintings to video installations.

Based on the exhibition poster I was expecting most of the works to be modern, but the bulk of the exhibition consisted of works from the heyday of trompe l’oeil painting: pictures pretending to be plaster reliefs, or deceiving the eye about the dimensions of the room, or simply attempting such verisimilitude to make the viewer believe that what we see is not a painting but the real thing.

The video installation I mentioned showed a woman balancing on a tightrope that’s runs just along the horizon, where the sky meets the sea. Other modern works included what seemed to be a photo of Queen Elizabeth II but turned out to be a photo of a wax statue at Madame Tussaud’s.

The exhibition topic was interesting and so were the contents, but the presentation was suboptimal. There were too many objects in too few rooms: many of them would have made more of an impression if they had had more space around them. Especially the small rooms were way too small (or way too crowded) – I skipped several rooms because I could not see past all the other people in there. It’s partly my own fault for waiting until the last weekend, of course. The poster image was particularly badly placed, in a corner, opposite a three-dimensional installation which left a relatively narrow passage in front of the image, so everyone was queueing to go past there.

Many of the older hyperrealistic paintings lost much of their effect because of the frames around them – they became nothing more than impressive still lifes. That’s the traditional way to display oil paintings, I know, but it was not very appropriate for this exhibition. On the other hand, Escape from the Critique looked great.

I also thought there were disproportionately many paintings of quod libets (paintings of small objects on a wall, like this one), which became much of a muchness after a while.

My favourite was Yrjö Edelmann’s Packed Picasso (Blue period). What you see here is a photo of a painting of a parcel containing a painting.

You can see many more pictures on the exhibition’s press relations page.

On Sunday we had our first evening out since April. We went to see Cirque du Soleil’s Varekai. We’ve seen, I believe, all their shows that have come to London, and generally buy tickets for each one as soon as as they become available (about a year in advance).

The show wasn’t bad, but I felt it was not up to their usual standard. It was not as innovative as I had expected. Are they running out of ideas, getting stale? Or is it just me, getting used to their thing? In any case it wasn’t quite worth the money I thought (given how horrendously expensive the tickets are, plus the expense of 5 hours of babysitting).

Nevertheless a good show. As usual, a Cirque du Soleil show has to be seen as a whole rather than separate parts. The costumes, music, the acts themselves, etc all have an overarching theme and a coherent feeling. The costumes in particular were fabulous, impressive enough on their own and then even more impressive when you stop to think that the artists can move freely in them without destroying the costumes.

You can’t go wrong with skilled acrobats and tumblers, and two of the strongest acts of this show were acrobatic. One was a tumbling act: two men reclining on their back, spinning their partners with their feet. (Youtube video – you can skip the first 2:30 of the clip which is just general prancing around.) The other one was a Russian swings act – acrobats launched from swings high into the air where they turn and tumble, and then impossibly land on each others’ shoulders, or gracefully “land” high up on a large canvas nets stretched out behind them. (Youtube video.) In both acts the feats that the acrobats perform become gradually more and more impressive until I sat there with my mouth open and could hardly believe the things I was seeing.

At the other extreme of the scale were some totally boring swirlers (marketed as a Georgian dance) and an almost-as-boring hand-balancing contortionist doing nothing new. The swirling dancers were so boring I don’t understand why they were even included in the show. If someone turns up at a circus with swirling as their only skill, you wouldn’t generally expect them to be hired!

My favourite act was an aerial one – two men hanging from wrist straps, swinging high and wide across the scene, sometimes together, sometimes apart. When they first appeared, in tight low-cut black leather, my first thought was, “how much did they pay them to wear those costumes?”. But the act itself was beautiful, well-coreographed and very expressive. Refreshingly, they were not aiming for a pretty result (which is where most aerial acrobatics end up sooner or later) – it was angular and sharp, full of heels and elbows. Very fittingly the performers are two brothers (Andrew and Kevin Atherton). (Youtube video.)

This Saturday we went to see the First Emperor exhibition at the British Museum. Advance tickets are all sold out but they release 500 same-day tickets every morning. I was there when the ticket desk opened and had no trouble getting tickets – if you haven’t seen it yet you still have a chance. (By the way they now keep the exhibition open until midnight Thursday to Saturday – the demand for tickets must be enormous.)

The exhibition space was rather crowded. One has the choice of queueing and moving at a snail’s pace, or standing outside the queues and therefore viewing some of the exhibits over other people’s shoulders. We chose the latter.

This First Emperor of China is the man who united various warring states into a Chinese empire, and who built a 7000-man terracotta army to stand guard over his tomb. I’m not going to write even a short overview of all the other things he did and achieved; you can find all of that elsewhere on the Internet (starting with Wikipedia for example). Instead I’ll just focus on what I saw and what I thought about it.

The focus and main draw of the exhibition was a small fraction of the terracotta army. There were archers, warriors, horses and chariots and charioteers, and more unexpectedly, acrobats, musicians and civil officials. Before seeing the exhibition I thought the army existed to guard the tomb, but I understand that it was really to provide the emperor with all he might need in his afterlife. And of course, for a good life one needs much more than just warriors.

The statues were surprisingly realistic and also surprisingly individual. I imagined that they would be stylized and mass produced – because there were so many of them! The main body parts were indeed mass produced but from multiple moulds, and faces, hair, mustaches etc were added by hand, making each one different. The emperor must have been something of a perfectionist given how detailed the statues were, all the way down to individual rivets on plates of armour, and hobnails on the soles of their shoes.

As with antique statues from other cultures (ancient Greece for example) the statues were originally coloured but have now lost all colour. So photos of 7000 clay-coloured statues give a somewhat misleading impression of what the ranks of the army would have looked like originally. Based on traces of paint found on the statues, one was reproduced in an approximation of its original state – and just as with ancient Greek statues, the result looked garish and loud compared to the stylish dignity of terracotta (or white marble).

While the statues were fine and interesting, I was a bit disappointed to see so few of them. They were far too few to really convey the sensation of grandeur and immensity that 7000 of them would do. So in a way, the Terracotta Army can be more impressive on picture. But on the other hand, seeing the statues up close, you can see and appreciate the details. The statues were very nicely exhibited in such a way that we could see them from all angles, and reasonably close up as well. It made a big difference to have no glass between us and the statues.

The rest of the exhibition was really there to provide a background to the army. There was a brief intro to the emperor’s life and works, explanations of how the army and the emperor’s tomb were built (by conscripted workers and convicts), and how they fit into the general fabric of his society. For example, the legs and bodies of the terracotta warriors were built much like the water pipes in the emperor’s new palaces. And the manufacturing process was highly standardised, just as the emperor standardised many other things (including coinage, weights, writing and the manufacture of weapons). One of the more interesting exhibits was a miniature panorama sculpture showing a team of workers making one statue of a warrior and one of a horse.

Emperor Qin must have been an extraordinary man. It is one thing to conquer your neighbours (other warrior kings have done that, too). But this emperor obviously had a grander plan. He was not just a great general but must also have been a great administrator, in order to successfully rule an empire. And he certainly achieved immortality, just as he wanted.

The BBC has some photos (not good but the best I could find).

Here’s an interesting review.

Today we made it to the Shell Wildlife Photographer of the Year exhibition that we missed last time.

This year’s exhibition was set up just like last year’s, and the one before that, and was as pleasant an experience as the previous ones were. The organisers have obviously worked out a great concept and continue to run it successfully year after year.

The exhibition is relatively small – 45 minutes’ worth of photos, an hour tops – but well worth seeing. The photos, of course, are generally interesting and all of high quality (although Eric said this year’s best photos were not as striking as last year’s, and I had to agree).

The photos are also well presented, so the atmosphere of the exhibition is quite pleasant. The number tickets sold is limited (which is why we didn’t get to see it last time) so it never gets too crowded. The room has good but soft light, and the photos all back-lit and displayed with no glare (which can otherwise kill any exhibition of photos or paintings). Each photo is accompanied by a brief one-paragraph comment by the author, and another paragraph about the subject of the photo.

Like last year we noted without much surprise that almost all the photos had been taken with a digital camera. Interestingly the two exceptions I noticed were both photos of plants.

Another trend was towards more and more technology (remote cameras, infrared triggers etc) which felt, well, sort of like cheating. If you just point your camera at animals and let it automatically take thousands of photos, then the result may be original, educational, beautiful etc, but to what extent can you really say that you took that photo?

There were also several photos which had been produced in highly contrived settings that in my mind are not really suitable for such an exhibition. Putting out food to attract animals is one thing, but putting out an aquarium to catch a view of a heron or a window frame to frame a swallow definitely feels like cheating.

But despite these minor quibbles I found the majority of the exhibition well worth seeing. If you are in London and have a spare few hours, this would be a great way to spend them.

If you’re not, try the online gallery which has all the photos. It’s not a very satisfying way of viewing them (too small) but will give you a taste at least.

She was both a model and a photographer, doing a bit of everything: fashion photography, portraits, photojournalism etc.

The exhibition notes described her as an extraordinary photographer, an icon of photography, or something in that vein. There were some nice photos but on the whole I found her work rather unremarkable. I got the impression that she was famous by association (she was the lover of Man Ray, and friends with Salvador Dali and Jean Cocteau), rather than because of any remarkable talent. Yes, she had guts – photographing the Blitz as well as Nazi concentration camps – but the importance of those photos seemed more documentary than artistic to me.

It didn’t help that all introductory and explanatory texts seemed written by a gushing friend rather than anyone with any real knowledge. This, for example, is all they had to say about why she is important or interesting:

Lee Miller (1907 – 1977) is one of the most remarkable female icons of the 20th century – an individual admired as much for her free-spirit, creativity and intelligence as for her classical beauty. Charting her transformation from muse to ground-breaking artist, this centenary exhibition provides a unique exploration of her life and unprecedented career as a photographer.

Lots of superlatives and big words, little information, and very little to put any of it in any context.

We went to Tate Modern to see the famous crack and an exhibition of Louise Bourgeois.

I found the crack a baffling waste of money – digging up the floor along the entire length of the turbine hall just to put in place a new concrete floor with a crack in it is not art.

The exhibition was not too interesting either. I like her giant spiders. There was one outside on the river bank, and I also saw it when it was first set up in the Tate turbine hall, and happened to see them in New York in the summer of 2001 as well.

But much of her work was just weird. Too modern for my taste, the kind of thing that is art only because an artist says it is. Too modern, even though the majority of the works were done before I was even born.

I liked her marbles and bronzes, like the one in the photo here – a nice contrast between soft forms and hard materials, and shapes that seemed both organic and mineral at the same time.

]]> http://www.toomik.net/helen/blog/2007/10/20/louise-bourgeois/feed/ 0 http://www.toomik.net/helen/blog/2007/09/15/today-open-house-weekend/ http://www.toomik.net/helen/blog/2007/09/15/today-open-house-weekend/#comments Sun, 16 Sep 2007 03:12:23 +0000 Helen http://www.toomik.net/helen/wordpress/?p=487

Eric and Ingrid went to the baby swimming class this morning, which totally knocked her out so she slept for 1½ hours when they got back, so I got lots of work done.

In the afternoon we went out for Open House weekend. We saw St George’s German church (mostly because it was so close to home), and walked from there to the old Turkish baths that now houses a restaurant. We finished our tour with Guildhall and Guildhall Art Gallery. This was actually the first time I visited Guildhall, despite having lived in London for over 6 years. The art gallery was also a pleasant surprise, with some fine Victorian and Pre-Raphaelite paintings.

The programme consisted of Bach (a partita), Beethoven (a sonata), Schumann (Fantasiestücke) and Chopin (a ballade). The Bach piece was my favourite – no surprise there. Bach is the one classical composer whose music I could put on a continuous loop for days without tiring of it. Beethoven has “too many notes” – I find his music a bit difficult to follow. Schumann’s Fantasiestücke were, as the title implies, a mixed bag: very varied. Chopin’s was technically impressive but again not as gripping as Bach.

Despite this I thought that Perahia’s style was better suited for the lighter, more romantic composers. He played very emotionally, gently, almost tenderly. I like my Bach performed firmly, with gusto and confidence – Glenn Gould’s version of the Goldberg Variations is more to my taste than Perahia’s. Not that I didn’t enjoy this, though!

I was also intrigued to simply see Murray Perahia as a person. He appeared very quiet and introverted, almost bothered by the huge crowd. His bows were polite but small, his introductions of the encores quick and clipped – I got the impression that he would have preferred to walk out as soon as he finished playing.

Last week we visited the Royal Academy to see Chola, an exhibition of Indian sacred bronze statues from the time of the Chola dynasty (9th–13th century). I had previously seen a similar exhibition in Antwerp at the Etnographic Museum and enjoyed it a lot, so I was really looking forward to this. But the exhibition was disappointingly small – only three rooms, around 40 pieces in total, about half an hour’s viewing – and quite expensive for its size (£8 per person).

The statues were impressive, especially the signature pieces of Shiva as the Lord of Dance, and Krishna dancing. These were also the most dynamic ones – many of the others were simply straight, upright figures, all quite similar to each other. Which was interesting in itself, in a way, because it demonstrated how the statues were not primarily works of art but expressions of a concept, and thus bound by strong conventions. The same is true of much western religious art, in particular Russian Orthodox icons, where all the saints look the same except for their characteristic accessories and poses that symbolise some part of their role. The same was true here: god X always holds A in his left hand and B in his right hand, etc.

Unlike western religious imagery, though, many of these gods were elegant and physically beautiful, with a strong focus on the naked body, and lively rather than serene or serious. These gods appear far more physical than most Christian saints.

While the individual statues were beautiful, I missed a larger framework or story around them. I would have liked to see photos of them in their ordinary settings in a temple or in use in a processions; some understanding of how this art form changed over time; more about the meanings of the symbols, etc. Perhaps the audio guides gave some of that, I don’t know, but it wasn’t present in the exhibition.