The Terracotta Army of Qin Shihuangdi
By Ludmila Rishkova
March 30, 2011
Genius is Madness. Madness is Genius. One does not necessarily imply the other, and as mentioned in my previous article, such things are rather relative in nature. Still, some mindsets always manage to blow us away. Ying Zheng was one of these people. His accomplishments began with his rising to the throne when he was but thirteen years old and continue to puzzle us up to this day.
I will not talk about the historical aspect of the exhibition of The Terracotta Army of Qin Shihuangdi at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts; the audio guides do it enough. What I mean to describe is the impressions, the feeling one gets as one realizes the extent, the magnitude of Ying Zheng’s determination regarding his death.
No one wants to die alone, and in ancient Egypt the Pharaohs made sure to have items from their day-to-day life with them in order to ‘cross over’. Ying Zheng, the self-proclaimed First August Emperor of the Qin, seemed to be of a similar mind set, magnified about a million times.
The excavation at his tomb reveals not just a penchant for preservation, but a mass-production and recreation of the Emperor’s life and realm, preparing him to rule in the afterlife. The soldiers are ready and equipped according to rank, the horses are saddled, frozen in movement; the fauna of the water garden carved with the smallest details, the geese larger than life, impressive and magnificent in the motionless state. One must not forget the acrobats, the archers, the chariots, the armour. All larger than life, all of them once painted bright colors, only a ghost trace of which now remains.
The tomb is not so much a tomb as a small-scale Empire, ready to answer its Emperor, ready to wage wars, entertain and even lead a daily life. The extent of his preparation for his own death defies anything ever seen before. It may be genius, it may be madness, but it may also be neither. For someone allegedly interested in investing far more into national defence rather than into art, Ying Zheng left the world an exceptional craftsman’s legacy. It may be suspected that he died in peace, knowing he had all he needed to accompany him to the other side. But it may also be suspected that he was urged on by the most basic of human needs: to leave a print, to say ‘I was here and I was someone’. ‘I had power’.
These are but speculations indeed, but these are also the lingering feelings one gets walking through the exhibition. Each soldier has unique features. Each has his hair parted and styled according to his rank. Each wears a particular expression on his face. Eerie and silent they seem to stand guard. They are mesmerizing in their natural stone state. One cannot but imagine the impression they must have made when they still wore their colors. Still, even in their bare, flesh-like tones, they are lifelike. Their blank eyes seem to follow you across the room, and while I had the audio guide, I had to turn it off and just let them speak for themselves on several occasions.
Walking away from the exhibition, one may say that it was madness on display, but one may secretly understand and identify with Ying Zheng and his final accomplishment. After all, who wouldn’t, given the means, wish to build such a world for oneself just in case it may all be useful on that ever-mysterious final day?
The exhibition is at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts until June 26 2011 and will definitely be twenty dollars well spent.
You can find more information on the exhibit at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts website.