Visiting The Metropolitan Museum of Art is something I do often, because museums are such calm places and just wandering around admiring the work is very stress relieving. So you can assume when I found out I was doing an assignment on one of my favorite museums in the city right before midterms week, I was excited. I visited the Egyptian and Greek part of the museum, on the first floor, which hold some of the most beautiful art in the museum. I saw pieces such as “Marble Statue of a Wounded Warrior”. “Marble Statue of a Kouros (Youth)”, “Fragments of a Marble Statue of the Duadpumenos (Youth Tying a Fillet Around His Head)”, and “Marble Statue of a Wounded Amazon” in the Greek exhibit, as well as pieces such as “Offering Bearer”, “Three Figures From the Tomb of Merti”, “Statue of King Mentuhotep II Standing in the Jubilee Garment”, “Merti and His Wife”, and “Isis-aphrodite”, in the Egyptian exhibit. I name these pieces because, aside from their beauty and how well crafted they are, they show two different worlds living in one.
I say these pieces represent two different worlds because comparing them side by side one can see a big difference between them. The Greeks, embraced nudity and the body and thoroughly incorporated it into their art, while the Egyptians did not. Now I bring this up because this is one thing that stood out to me. It stood out because viewing this art in today’s world, people would look at the Greek sculptures and say they’re beautiful and amazingly done, but then proceed to shame someone for exposing their nudity or doing similar art. Now this correlates to the Egyptian art as well because seeing how they’re clothed, makes me wonder if this was near the start of modesty in society. Many of the women as well as men in Egyptian art are fully clothed, which, to me, shows that art in that time focused on how the person looked while in Greek sculptures, the men and women weren’t clothed however they were doing an action or posing in an empowering way. This not only shows the modesty in the different cultures but also shows the values that were present in art at the time.
One thing Greek and Egyptian art had in common was sculptures of people in that time were created for them to be thought highly of, from the way they dressed to the way they were posed. The warriors in Greek Sculptures were shown to have strong bodies and even if they were wounded they posed as if they were still standing and not broken. The royalty of Egyptian had exquisite jewelry and clothing on them and they were given staffs and were posed in empowering ways.
This visit allowed me to further analyze art I otherwise would have simply viewed and thought no further of. It also helped me get a better insight into the history of art and how it’s affected society which I appreciate. Lastly, this trip reminded me of how much I love museums and has reminded me that I still can go to one, because it’s not only a stress reliever, but beautiful. 