British Museum, London
The staggering resourcefulness and fantastic originality of bygone artisans is showcased in earthenware so exquisite it will soothe your soul. But a lurch into the modern breaks the spell
Can they do it again? The runaway success of the Bayeux tapestry has put the British Museum in a league of its own, perhaps making it, at this moment, the leading museum on earth – and it’s rapidly following up with Korea, a survey of “2,000 years of creativity” in a land that, before its sufferings in the 20th century, enjoyed millennia of calm, at least to judge from its art. But it’s a blockbuster with a tragic flaw, a lovely broken vase badly stuck together.
You are lured at first into a nirvana of beauty. A giant bronze bell from a Buddhist monastery, cast in the eighth century AD and bulging with dragons, flames and flowery embossments, strikes the tone. It calls you to meditation. A gong adds to the harmony (and if you need that underlining, there are bells and gongs on the now obligatory exhibition soundtrack). I was held rapt by this Buddhist period in Korea’s history, when the contemplative religion from India interacted with the artistic influence of China to inspire ecstatic hand-copied sutras (spiritual scriptures) and slender little statuettes of bodhisattvas (Buddhist saints who have achieved enlightened holiness).
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