Playing with the Past
The Fraud, Zadie Smith’s first historical novel, asks if we might all be frauds of some sort, wearing masks and performing as people who are not quite ourselves.
The Fraud by Zadie Smith; Penguin Press, 454 pp
Vibrant, Cacophonous Buddhism
A groundbreaking show at the Metropolitan Museum displays, among other treasures from India, works of Buddhist art that bear the mark of ancient animist cults that long preceded the teachings of Siddhartha Gautama.
Tree and Serpent: Early Buddhist Art in India, 200 BCE–400 CE, an exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City, July 21–November 13, 2023; and the National Museum of Korea, Seoul, December 22, 2023–April 14, 2024
Catalog of the exhibition by John Guy; Metropolitan Museum of Art, 343 pp.
In 2003 Indian archaeologists working on a remote hilltop in the southern state of Telangana uncovered a remarkable early Buddhist monastic complex. Phanigiri, “the snake-hooded hill,” had clearly been one of the most important Buddhist monasteries in India. All around were found spectacular fragments of sculpture, including substantial sections of elaborately carved ceremonial gateways and a torso now judged to be one of the masterworks of Buddhist art. Many of the statues had been dismantled and carefully buried in soft earth for their protection after the monastery was abandoned in the fifth century CE, and they were found in almost mint condition.
Illustration by Eleanor Taylor
Intellicurious 