nwasianweekly.com
Jan. 19, 2008
A
chronicle of Chinese art in Seattle 1933 – present
By N.P. Thompson
Northwest Asian Weekly
“You don’t want your afterlife disturbed by an intruder,” explained
Josh Yiu, the Foster Foundation assistant curator of Chinese art, to
a crowd of patrons gathered on a recent weeknight at Seattle Asian Art
Museum. We were on a group tour of the exhibit, “Chinese Art: A
Seattle Perspective,” which opened at SAAM in late December, and
we’d just entered a gallery that rightly belongs to a set of five
elevated ceramic figures known as “Tomb Guardians.” The grotesque
faces of these inanimate sentries, according to Yiu, were intended to
scare away evil spirits. And one can imagine them doing exactly that,
during their heyday from the seventh to the ninth centuries.
Of the five attendants, two are standouts. A female figure stands tall
in boots that curve upwards at the toes; her eyes bulge out of their
sockets, and her lips part defiantly, as if she’s got something
tough to say to a would-be tomb raider. The finishing touch? Hands down,
it’s the helmet she wears that comes with oversized flaps jutting
outwards like baby elephant ears. The fiercest of her male counterparts
exemplifies a “Lokapala,” one of the few Buddhist subjects
incorporated into Chinese funerary iconography. Like her, he’s
got one hand clamped on an outward thrust hip. Frozen in midmotion, he
appears to be doing a dance; from his frenzied facial expression, it’s
clearly a war dance, a point driven home (or to the next life) by the
body of a deer that serves as his pedestal.
In this wide-ranging survey of the museum’s Chinese holdings (a
showcase for 165 pieces chosen from the permanent collection), the Lokapala
isn’t alone in having an animal at his feet. A 17th- or 18th-century
blanc-de-Chine representation of the goddess Guanyin situates her on
top of a dragon’s head, which gazes upward at her in a mix of helpless
admiration and surrender, its own body coiled in masses of curlicues.
One of the great things about the way Yiu curated this show lies in placing
contrasting interpretations of the same figure side-by-side. Adjacent
to the all-white dragon and Guanyin stands a caramel-colored beauty,
equally buttery smooth in texture, who resides on an ordinary pedestal,
and whose serene face seems in keeping with a goddess noted for her compassion.
The lady on the left may have a dragon, yet her mute expression suggests
a deity more indifferent than loving.
Another religious figure represented in sculpture, the Damo (or Bodhidharma)
also receives starkly dissimilar treatment from a pair of anonymous artisans.
One of them conceived of this South Indian monk, who brought Buddhism
to China in the early sixth century, as a gaunt icon of richly hued brown
wood. This Damo’s rib cage sticks out prominently, a testament
to the nine years he spent meditating in a cave. Next to him, a smaller
white Damo that dates from the Ming period has a rounder physique; he’s
almost roly-poly by comparison, yet this ostensibly well-fed monk (He
even has a robe; the other doesn’t) sports an angry scowl beneath
knotted eyebrows.
Sometimes a huge disparity occurs within the same work. Chen Jiru’s “Poem
on Plum Blossom” features calligraphy that upstages the painting
it accompanies. There’s an unmistakable force and energy to the
letters brushed in dark ink on the left half of this late 16th-century
horizontal scroll, whereas the artist’s childlike, primitive depiction
of watery branches shooting out in all directions exudes a deflating
banality.
Several pieces caught my eye on our whirlwind tour, among them a 12th-century
silk oval, “Buffalo and Herder Boy in Landscape,” an example
of ox-herding genre painting. I was likewise moved by Wu Guxiang’s “Scholar
on a Boat Beneath Willows,” a seaside vertical well worth contemplating
for the waves that are delicate little frissons undulating across the
width of the scroll. My favorite? That would have to be a Cizhou porcelain
vase decorated with a fertility motif. Eight drawings of a child nestled
amid petals and reeds lend a wistful sweetness to an impeccably elegant
form.
“Chinese Art: A Seattle Perspective” is
an ongoing exhibit at the Seattle Asian Art Museum, 1400 E. Prospect
St., Seattle. For more information, call 206-654-3100.
N.P. Thompson can be reached at info@nwasianweekly.com.
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