ART REVIEW : Remnants of Ancient Beauty at LACMA

It’s tempting to call the Los Angeles County Museum of Art’s agenda a three-ring circus, but that term is far too modest. The museum has opened three refurbished galleries in the last two weeks, an exhibition of Walter Annenberg’s celebrated collection--expected to be a blockbuster--will be launched next week and other big shows are in the works for autumn.

But don’t look too far ahead or you’ll miss this week’s attraction: “Antiquities From the Collection of Varya and Hans Cohn,” which opens today and continues through Nov. 14. It’s a small but stately exhibition of about 70 works from ancient Greek, Roman, Etruscan, west Asian and Egyptian civilizations. Ranging from tiny Luristan finials to a magnificent Egyptian falcon that stands at the entrance of the exhibition, the pieces are installed on the plaza level of the Ahmanson Building, where they invite examination.

The falcon, for example, is a wonder of meticulous bronze work from the Ptolemaic period (circa 300 BC). While the form of the bird is dramatically simple, the feathers are described in hairlike detail. A mercury-gilded silver vessel adorned with female dancers from Persia’s Sasanian period (AD 600-800) provides another astonishing example of technical prowess. Unlikely as it may appear, the high-relief figures were hammered out from the inside of the narrow-necked vessel.

The show is easiest to appreciate piece-by-piece because it contains an eclectic assortment of objects that covers a wide swath of history and geography. Dating from 2575 BC to AD 800, the works come from all over the Middle East, ancient Greece and outposts of the Roman Empire. These objects, of marble, terra-cotta, gold, wood and steatite (soapstone), served both ceremonial and domestic functions.

All this disparity does not amount to chaos, however. A collector’s eye for sculptural detail and high craftsmanship lends an intriguing unity to the exhibition. In piece after piece, you discover graceful forms and delicate workmanship that defy the age of the art.

Beyond that aesthetic link, geographic categories provide coherence. Egyptian pieces proceed chronologically from a calcite lion’s head (2575-2465 BC), which may have been part of an embalming bed, to a bronze “Winged Isis” (332 BC-AD 395). From Greece comes a pair of bronze horses (circa 725-700 BC) and elegantly painted ceramic vessels from later periods.

Animal motifs recur with such frequency that the show is a sort of antique menagerie. There are geometric horses on an early Greek bowl, and naturalistic horses’ heads on a Roman knife and lamp. Real beasts--baboons, lions, deer, rams, a cow, a dolphin and an ibis--appear as adornments on functional objects or as free-standing sculptures. Such mythical beasts as winged griffins were also favored by ancient artists.

Considered collectively, the show leaves an impression of lively imagination, love of craft and a way of life that incorporated beautiful artifacts into everything from food service to transportation to worship.

The Cohns, who have lent these works to the museum, are best known as collectors of glass. The museum opened a permanent installation of ancient glass donated by the Los Angeles couple just last week and another gallery for their gift of European glass is in the works.

According to curator Nancy Thomas, who organized the antiquities exhibition, the Cohns’ collecting interests extend far beyond glass. Hans Cohn, reputedly an incorrigible collector, began buying art in the 1930s in his native Germany, but he lost an early accumulation of treasures when he fled to the Netherlands and then to the United States prior to World War II.

After establishing himself in Los Angeles, first as a paper manufacturer and later as a real-estate investor, he went back on the trail of precious objects. Currently he and his wife, Varya, have the most comprehensive private collection of antiquities in Los Angeles, Thomas said. A catalogue of their entire collection is expected to be published this fall.

Los Angeles County Museum of Art, 5905 Wilshire Blvd.; Tue.-Fri., 10 a.m.-5 p.m.; Sat.-Sun., 10 a.m.-6 p.m.; to Nov. 14.