Surviving war through fusion

As Baghdad fell to American and British forces Wednesday morning, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art was holding a preview of its new exhibition, “The Legacy of Genghis Khan: Courtly Art and Culture in Western Asia, 1256-1353,” set to open Sunday. The juxtaposition was vaguely unnerving.

When Mongols entered Baghdad in 1258, they concluded 40 years of devastating invasions throughout central and western Asia. Baghdad, once the cultural center of the Islamic world, was almost at the new empire’s farthest reaches. Five centuries of Arab dominance came to an abrupt end, and a Pax Mongolica was installed.

The 206 objects gathered in “The Legacy of Genghis Khan” survey the artistic production of the region in the wake of Mongol conquest. On the evidence of the often visually pleasing ceramics, textiles, metalwork and manuscript illuminations, however, it cannot exactly be called a golden age. Instead, the occasionally unrefined and awkward look of some of this work suggests a kind of starting over.

The Mongols weren’t exactly genteel when they decided to conquer territory. The devastation they wrought had a profound effect on the highly refined indigenous traditions of the region. Genghis Khan, “emperor of all emperors,” had been dead for 30 years when the era covered by the exhibition began. A grandson ruled the region, a territory centered on modern-day Iran.

Mostly, fusion rules. The century that followed conquest saw complex syntheses of traditional Chinese, Persian and Turkish forms and motifs. Byzantine interlaces, Yuan dynasty landscape elements, Iranian calligraphy -- the ins and outs can be difficult to follow, even arcane.

The show opens with a lovely gold cup from southern Russia, its fish-shaped handles distinctly Chinese in style. A Chinese stone cenotaph is covered with formally staid relief-carvings of peonies, lotuses and other floral motifs, while an elegant Arabic inscription -- “There is no God but Allah. Muhammad is the messenger of Allah” -- carved in slender script into one end demonstrates the presence of Islam among the higher echelons of Yuan dynasty society.

These and other objects show how elements of Mongol and Chinese culture were moving in one direction, toward the Caspian Sea, while Arabic traditions were traveling in the other. Porcelain and other ceramics were also conduits of cross-cultural fertilization, partly because cobalt ore mined in Iran went to China for the production of coveted blue-and-white vessels.

There is great variety and finesse in the numerous examples of ceramic tile on view. Some of that comes from technical invention. Fritware -- a clay mixed with porcelain, fused glass and quartz -- can possess a luminous quality, especially when luster glazes have been applied.

It’s the patterning and glaze-painting, though, that are most impressive. As architectural embellishments, tiles can be heavy and imposing. Thick clay interlaces echo the structural intricacies of building. At the same time, the interlacing creates the illusion of a lattice screen, which lightens the otherwise heavy look of masonry. Light-reflective glazes enhance the effect.

This sort of decorative tile, when repeated in wall-size patterns, simultaneously reveals and conceals a room’s visual properties. Some incorporate calligraphic verse from the Koran. Together they make for almost mystically ebullient surfaces.

The show, organized by LACMA curator Linda Komaroff and Stefano Carboni, her colleague at New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art, proposes a special role for textiles. More than any other decorative medium, fabric was likely the principal means by which motifs were exchanged between East and West. (Not for nothing did they call its medieval predecessor the Silk Route.) Portability and functionalism helped.

When it comes to fabrics made from fine silk thread wrapped in gold, however, a craving for sumptuous luxury cannot be discounted as a driving force. A panel from what could easily have been an enormous royal tent hung with coral and purple silk with richly patterned “tree of life” medallions simmers with voluptuous power -- even in its fragile, somewhat faded condition.

The highlight of the exhibition is its illuminated manuscripts, which bring us back to Baghdad. Calligraphy had been brought to a high level of achievement there, and the production of illuminated manuscripts continued after the Mongols swooped in. Together with other manuscript centers, Baghdad produced remarkable examples.

The show’s centerpiece is a selection of 48 sheets from the so-called “Compendium of Chronicles,” made in Iran around 1300. Essentially a history of the world, it meshes the story of the Mongols with that of Iran, creating a kind of self-congratulatory gloss on the foundations of established power.

At LACMA, pages from the first autograph copy of the “Compendium of Chronicles,” dating from around 1315, are handsomely displayed in bays in a circle. The installation deftly suggests the sequential nature of a book, which can also be casually perused at random.

Old Testament scenes, episodes from the life of Muhammad, even pure landscapes surprisingly devoid of people are here. Figures, whether representing Noah or a sultan or Buddha, always have Chinese features, while mountains and trees appear to have been plucked straight from a Chinese scroll painting. With its fluid Arabic script and frequent Byzantine friezes and flourishes, more than one page suggests that its global story is not just located in the narrative. It also resonates in the style and manner of presentation.

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‘The Legacy of Genghis Khan’

Where: Los Angeles County Museum of Art, 5905 Wilshire Blvd., L.A.

When: Opens Sunday. Mondays-Tuesdays and Thursdays, noon-8 p.m.; Fridays, noon-9 p.m., Saturdays-Sundays, 11 a.m.-8 p.m. Closed Wednesdays

Ends: July 27

Price: $7, adults; $5, seniors and students; free, under 18

Contact: (323) 857-6000