One Fine Show: Samurai Armor at the High Museum of Art in Atlanta

We don’t pay enough attention to armor. This is probably because it’s the part of the museum you visit to placate your bored nephew, because look at all those cool swords! But if fashion has revealed itself to be the dominant medium of the 21st century, why not regard armor as its precursor?

Recent shows at the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Neue Galerie have shown us a level of attention that contemporary lords probably didn’t bring to most other kinds of dressing. These fellas were even into branding their clunking drips. Consider this set worn by a knight who seemed to be Elizabeth I’s boyfriend. The Tudor Rose crawls over everything like the LV on Louis Vuitton. Might not the battlefield have been, at the time, the ultimate place to see and be seen?

This week the High Museum of Art in Atlanta opened Samurai: Armor from the Collection of Ann and Gabriel Barbier-Mueller, an impressive show that features over 150 objects, among them nearly 20 complete sets of armor, “many dating from the Edo period (1603-1868), marking the rise and expansion of the samurai, and ultimately, their dissolution in the face of changing political and military structures.”

With armor, I do think there’s something to be said for the smaller stories. Take the object designated Ridged Helmet with Large Rivets (Ōboshi Sujibachi Kabuto) (c. 1730). Though its design is still Darth Vader-adjacent, the front piece and swooping sides depict what appears to be a field of wheat, complete with dragonflies buzzing about the stalks. These were done by the Myōchin school of artisans and made with such layering and finesse that you can almost hear them rustling in the wind. Looking at this I’m reminded of Trevor Paglan’s awesome series that examines the patches of the secret branches of the U.S. Armed Forces. The imagery our warrior poets want to put on their bodies is quite different.

Not to say that the samurai were totally Zen. Yes, there is an abundance of flowers in these designs—peonies being the symbol of imperial authority back then—but the monster created for a Frontal Crest (Maedate) (18th century) merges fish, bird, hair and teeth to yield something that would terrify you if you saw it in a Hollywood movie today. It is the complexity and level of detail that really sets this armor apart from the kind that was being made in the West during this time period, and while that isn’t as immediately threatening as shiny steel, it suggests a quieter kind of threat. The woven elements of the armor speak to an attitude about war that is patient and methodical. Plates of armor are tied together with tiny knots, as if the taking of a life was, for them, a delicate act.

It’s intimidating, as is the fact that this collection was assembled by a single family in Dallas over the course of four decades. But the passion for this kind of material runs deep. The Met’s own armor collection was started by someone who started exploring Japan for such treasures in 1912. In another half century, there’s no telling how many pieces they’ll have collected, to say nothing of the quantity of nephews they’ll have entertained.

Samurai: Armor from the Collection of Ann and Gabriel Barbier-Mueller is on view at the High Museum through September 10.