Connections/The Edge

I'm Tom Campbell. I'm the director of the Metropolitan Museum, and my topic is "The Edge."

I think often what's going on at the edge of a picture activates it. Sometimes it's easier to come to an object from the outside in

seeing how the artist has played with the edges, or pushed against the edges,

the way the edges record the history of an object

give away the character, the inner soul of an object. It's a kind of a game I play.

So many of the works of art have been removed from their original context. The edges sometimes tell us that story. Our Duccio, its original frame has

on the bottom edge indentations where the frame has been burned by votive candles placed beneath the painting. You think of all of the people who've knelt or

looked carefully at this picture, trying to communicate with something beyond.

The edge of a work of art is a physical reminder of the medium, where you see the grain of the stone from which the sculpture's carved, or

where the staples hold the canvas onto the frame. You're reminded of the moment of genesis, what the artist started from. In this Jackson Pollock, I find my eye follow out the calligraphic wheels of paint. I always think about

how those that stayed on the canvas became part of this iconic painting, while the splatters that fell outside the edge of the canvas remained on the floor.

Edges provoke the history. In this beautiful, half-finished embroidery, made in England in the mid-seventeenth century, the stitching is so minute, the colors are as fresh as the day it was made, and you've still got all of

the ink lines of the pattern that the embroiderer was going to fill in, and yet didn't. And one wonders what happened. Was the maker of this embroidery a victim of the English Civil War? Did they die of the plague? Those edges provoke that question.

Edges are so resonant in terms of the silhouette, the outline

of this Moon jar, where you feel the wetness of the clay

slightly sagging under its own weight.

Or mid-eighteenth-century dresses where the silhouette is outrageous. You think of the guests having to step aside quickly as the lady wearing this ball gown came

barreling through, or no doubt tiptoeing through very daintily.

Very often, it's the edges of a work of art where you find the evidence that's going to help you understand it. In this Petrus Christus painting of a goldsmith and couple buying a wedding ring from him

you've got an inscription giving the name of the artist and the date he made it, but also the bottom edge of the picture is a

trompe l'oeil window shelf, and there's a little mirror balanced on the edge. So you're seeing people who are looking into the window over your shoulder.

Sometimes edges are challenges. The artist had to incorporate decoration within a strange shape of a functional object. You have the calligraphy thrown out against the edge of this bowl, almost like a centrifugal, explosive force driving the letters out from the center, giving a meaning, but also a beautiful pattern.

I love it when an artist makes me think that every square inch of the work is considered. He's been there. The Dance Class: the center of action is, of course, in the middle, where we've got young dancers going through their paces. You can hear the thud of the dancers' feet on the floor. But out on the left hand side, there's a girl, almost out of the frame of the picture,

her back turned to the main action. Degas makes you very conscious of the independent thought of all these different people in the room. He's gone right out to the edges of this canvas.

The soul of a work of art comes through at certain edges. For me, the part that

ignites this sculpture is one of the sleeping boys right up against the edge of the table.

His hand is under his cheek as his hair falls out of the space of the table. The sculptor had to anticipate this gentle, humane gesture and carve that

before he even began to explore the depth of this marble.

Edges take on a different dimension when you get into Chinese paintings. You have these

scrolls, sometimes five, ten, twenty feet long

so there's always this tantalizing sense of what would be seen

beyond the edge if you were to unscroll it further.

It's not always easy to get into a work of art. You have to think your way into it. But I always find that

the edge, the outline, the profile, the exposure of the underlying material helps

ground me as I go about my work.