A Last Visit to the Rubin

You have until October to visit, see the art and ponder eternity with the not-so-hungry ghosts who sold ties and measured suits.

The Rubin is a museum in Manhattan that specializes in Himalayan and Tibetan art filled with audacious images that make even more audacious demands. It’s been a regular stopping point every year or so since it opened in 2004.

It’s closing in October. If you’re in town, I’d recommend it.

I stopped by the other day with my wife. We banged a few gongs, spun a series of tin soup cans arranged like prayer cylinders, and watched a digital animation about a person coming apart at the seams, unwinding the illusion of life and rejoining the cosmos.

The bowl with three seams

In addition to paintings and sculptures, it also has a bowl made out of a lacquered human skull. Under the skull is a little placard explaining why it’s more or less okay to have it on display. I forget the reasons, but it’s pretty cool.

The skull-bowl is a pretty common image in the paintings. There’s always someone holding one, brimming with bloody pink brains. Usually, it’s a blue demon, fat, fearsome and all too happy with the situation. Usually, he’s also trampling the body of some poor fool.

There are some demons who are snacking while making time with a well-bangled, fanged woman. These are the hell realms. And if they fascinate you, then you might want to look into that. It can catch up with you in a bad way, or so I’m told.

Arrow in your eye

Of course, it’s not all demons and skull bowls. There’s a rainbow bridge and well-meaning bodhisattvas who’d like to help you out. They’re very calm but hard to please.

Up high, in the yellow and blue, they gesture with empty hands. Around them, clouds drift and flowers blossom as glowering death’s heads.

They’ll spend lifetimes daring you to do something like drive an arrow into your own eyeball.