While London is a culturally active city, Toronto has the Art Gallery of Ontario and the Royal Ontario Museum.
I find it’s worth taking the train to spend an entire day at either place. The ROM is my target for this visit. The last time I was there, I didn’t sketch much but wandered the endless collections until I felt the vertigo and had to get off the ride.
My mission this time has focus. Find the Buddhist boys.
Baran Mong’s sketches from the Royal Ontario Museum, July 2011.
In the World Culture Asian galleries, there are a couple of collections of Buddhist statures. whether standing tall or seated with a round belly, they are painted, gilded, jeweled. Then there’s a group of what looks like plain, unembellished limestone monks.
Another artist, Baran Mong, has also found the boys and included one among his really spirited sketches.
My impression of them from my last trip was that they were very hungry souls, and that the artist had rounded out their faces, which to me, didn’t match the thinness of their bodies beneath the robes. While the statues might have been commissioned as propaganda (I’ll try to find out more), the artist shows an exceptional compassion for his models. Maybe even love.
What delights me is that they’re real men, young and quite frankly, thin and not so perfectly spiritual as The Buddha. Imagine your meditation or yoga group carved in stone. Then imagine sitting before the that group, each a singular expression captured in stone, and meditating on that — 500 to a 1000 years later.
Love,
Laura
laurawythe 