Imran Qureshi: The Roof Garden Commission

The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Through Nov. 3

An awful vision currently greets visitors to the rooftop terrace of New York’s Metropolitan Museum, said Robin Cembalest in ArtNews.com. Pakistani artist Imran Qureshi has covered much of the granite surface in blood-red paint splatter. If you walk out onto the roof, you’ll notice that the faux gore only partially obscures various intricately painted patterns—most of them “bursts of ornamental foliage” reminiscent of the gardens that appear in 16th- and 17th-century miniature paintings from India’s Mughal empire. But the initial shock of the scene never fully recedes. Qureshi began working in simulated bloodshed in response to recent bombings in Lahore, where he works. Here, he’s transformed a normally serene perch above Eden-like Central Park into a “tragic landscape” that seems to “negate the idea of paradise on earth.”

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Don’t tell that to Qureshi, said Ken Johnson in The New York Times. In an accompanying statement, the artist stresses that his use of botanical imagery indicates how hope can emerge from violence and despair. It’s a “significant weakness” of the work that it’s so easily misinterpreted. On the day I toured the roof, I saw a family giddily taking photos of a dad who was pretending to be a bombing victim. I was amazed that someone could “react so buffoonishly” to the work, but Qureshi should have realized that in the U.S., fake blood “is as likely to suggest horror movies and episodes of CSI as current events.” On the other hand, that weakness might also be a strength. Qureshi’s “dream-like carpet” remains “generously open to meditative reflection.” He’s turned the Met’s roof into a place “that anyone from anywhere might come to pray for the healing of our wounded world.”