The First Emperor - China's Terracotta Army

Armoured General, courtesy The British Museum

"The stuff of China's soul turned into masterpieces of realist," cooed The Observer. "It is a spectacle that is rare as it is magnificent," gushed The Telegraph. Waldemar Januszczak in the Sunday Times called it "spellbinding". As for The Times this was "the greatest work of mass-production art in history." My, my. Some claims.

But is The First Emperor, the British Museum’s landmark exhibition of the treasures including a handful of warriors from the Terracotta Army gleaned from sites around the tomb of Qin Shihuangdi, China’s First Emperor as good as everyone says it is?

Well I was there on opening night last week and it did indeed take my breath away. The sheer perfection of the 140 chosen objects, the command of scale by the curators, the beauty of every object, the subtle lighting and the informative guides, was first rate.

 I cannot recommend it enough.

Perhaps what is most remarkable, and what you take away from this, is the personality of the first Emperor himself, a man whose tomb lies undisturbed underneath a huge mountain in his burial place of Xi’an and whose personality and hubris radiated from the show.

The starting point of the exhibition, which is held in a specially constructed room above the BM’s reading room, was the discovery, in 1974 of its ostensible stars: the terracotta army.
This is the remarkable accumulation of life-sized clay figures of soldiers with which the First Emperor decided to be buried, all ghostly figures now bleached of the paint that once adorned them but huge, impressive, lifelike.

They were found by a farmer digging his well, and are described here as the greatest archeological find of the 20th century. That is no exagerration.

By being buried in the ground with his army and also a travelling band of clay civil servants and entertainers, the First Emperor hoped to reign supreme in the nether world, his forces giving him the power in the spirit world that he already enjoyed on earth.
What a man. What an ambition.

The site where the terracotta army was found, about a mile or so from the First Emperor’s tomb in Xi’an, China, contains at least 7,000 of these clay soldiers, arranged in military formation and ready to fight again for their ruler.
So far, only 1,000 or so have been excavated – and 20 of the complete figures are on show here, taken to Britain, after a deal was struck between Tony Blair on his 2005 visit to China and the Chinese premier.

Ah the delicious irony of a man such as our former PM who is obsessed about his legacy and place in history facilitating a show such as this.

Ying became the King of Qin (pronounced ‘Chin’ and the derivation of the name of the modern day country), the westernmost of the seven provinces that were to make up the united China after he subjugated all the other provinces, creating what we now know as modern China. 

He ruled as First Emperor until 210BC, when he died, aged 49 and his army was there to protect him from the dark spirit world of the afterlife, especially those from the other kingdoms he has conquered (lots of dead enemies, lots of angry spirits, we were told by an Oxford academic on opening night).

He was also a practical genius who oversaw this mass production of all this 2,000 years ago at a site which bears testament to his huge personality by its massive scale – the whole thing is 35 miles square and so enormous that it probably won’t even be in our lifetime when his actual tomb (said to contain a recreation of his kingdom on earth and with fake mountains, skies of pearls and rivers of mercury) is excavated.

How can that not blow your mind?

We must also remember , though, that he was a man fond of burning books and burying the authors alive.
When he was buried he also buried alive childless concubines, as well as some of the craftsman who helped build his netherworldy society.

But when you go back to the soldiers, cast in clay with imperfect machinery, you cannot be but grateful to this nasty piece of work.
Just look at the charming little touches - Qin even commanded acrobats to be made for him, and administrators, musicians and plate-spinners – and you can marvel at the marriage of brutal ancient savagery with a delicate humanity.

As for the soliders, at their home in China you look down on rows upon rows of them (only 1,000 of the 7,000 or so that exist have been dug up).
When you see photos of them it is almost as if they are quite small, doll-houselike even.

But here at the British Museum, and with only 20 or so available, a real sense of their scale is achieved by the perfectly lit display.
You look at them close up, face to face and  within touching distance of the life-size figures which range in height from 6ft to 6ft 6in (much taller than the Chinese of the time).
Each one is a sharply individually drawn creation with their own hats, and facial expressions standing in formation at the epicentre of a truly amazing display.

It is hard not to believe that so much of the people who worked on them are etched into these faces, people from their memories, their lives, maybe self portraits.
It is like getting in touch with the past, meeting people from an ancient and brutal world up close.

He may have been a self-obsessed brutal maniac this Last Emperor.
But from that you have one of the best examples of art on a grand scale that has ever existed.
And for lucky Londoners, one of the most breathtaking exhibitions you can imagine.
Go see!

Ben Dowell

The First Emperor, China's Terracotta Army, The British Museum, Great Russell Street, London, WC1B 3DG
www.thebritishmuseum.ac.uk


 

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