The Terracotta Army
G2, September 5: "This wondrous underground realm needed guarding. Three pits full of terracotta warriors stood poised to protect the First Emperor from the vengeful ghost armies of his victims. And so they stand here, in London, in front of me - the most famous clay figures in the world. And the Emperor's plans subtly turn awry. Even in an exhibition called The First Emperor, which provocatively overturns thousands of years of Chinese vilification of a man remembered as a tyrant, he is not the star of his own show. These nameless soldiers are the stars.
Archaeologists insist that none of the terracotta warriors is a "portrait". The creation of so many figures was a triumph of mass production: after assembling the figures from modules, they were given final individualising touches such as facial hair. Yet I defy you to stand in front of them and not think of them as replicas of real people, as something more intimate and alive than a portrait, even. They are personages, beings, ghosts - they live.
In the western figurative sculpture tradition that began in Greece at the same time that Confucius was alive in China, and still flourished when the First Emperor's artisans created his tomb, movement and life are evoked through observation of muscle, proportion and action. The terracotta army is the final death blow to the long-enduring belief in the uniqueness and superiority of this Greek tradition because it achieves just as much life, animation and beauty, in a totally different and unrelated way. It is hard to describe the exquisite realism and simultaneous supernatural unreality of these sculptures. They move: they kneel, they crouch, and one looks as if he is performing martial arts, though in fact he was once holding a bow. More precisely, they have the power to move: they are silently awaiting orders. Their waiting has something exquisitely noble about it: the way they smile or look grave, the way they position their hands, the way they express strength in tranquillity.
There is a quality to these men that is absolutely disarming. They contain love. Whose love? You feel it comes from them, a warmth, a compassion. You get a sense not just of a slave army obedient to its ruler's command, but of real human beings with their own memories, commitments and responsibilities. Their loyalty to the emperor might be expressed, but also their duty to family, even to country. The love that endures in this art is above all the passion of the creator. What makes it a living art, despite lying in the cold grave so long, is that anonymous artisans, employed in the production system, put their own selves, their feelings, their love of life, into these sculptures. The terracotta army is not a tribute to power. It is a people's art - you might even say, the people's revenge".
