“Roads of Arabia,” a striking if sometimes visually austere show that opened Saturday at the Asian Art Museum, transports visitors through the vast and sparsely populated space of the Arabian Peninsula over an enormous stretch of time. A coda gallery at the end, featuring a ceremonial sword and robe and ornate Quran, is devoted to the present-day Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, formed in 1932. (The show, which is accompanied by an elegant doorstop of a 608-page catalog, pays tribute to Saudi King Abdullah bin Abdulaziz as its patron.) Along the way come sections on the opening of the incense routes; the connections with ancient Egypt, Greece and Rome; and the rise of Islam. The first comes in a group of taut, rectangular funeral steles (4th millennium B.C.) with simply rendered faces that peer back at the viewer through stylized, slit-like eyes. Just inside the glass doors to the Islam gallery stand a prodigious pair of 17th century engraved and gilded silver leaf doors that once served as the entrance to the Ka’ba sanctuary at Mecca. With a large scalloped mandorla at the center, surrounded by vertical bands of floral decoration and topped with dynamic calligraphy, these handsomely aged doors are both bold and delicate. Fashioned from free-form basalt slabs and inscribed with facts about the ancestors, tribes, geographic homelands and even the jobs of the deceased, these tombstones radiate a sense of felt life memorialized in an everyday way.
'roads Of Arabia’ At Asian” Review: Striking Objects
By Steven Winn, San Francisco Chronicle: Entertainment
Thu, 10/23/2014 - 11:50pm
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