By Luna Lovegood Aug 28, 2004, 19:30 GMT
Drawn entirely from the Harvard University Art Museums' collection, an exhibition at the Arthur M. Sackler Museum will showcase painting, calligraphy, ceramics, jades, and one Chinese imperial robe that together span some 900 years of artistic accomplishment. The 80 objects in A Compelling Legacy: Masterworks of East Asian Painting not only survey the history of East Asian painting but also reflect Harvard's long and continuing tradition of collecting and teaching the arts of Asia. The exhibition, which runs through March 20, 2005, represents a periodic rotation of the Asian department's permanent-collection galleries.
The principal subjects of East Asian painting are landscapes, figures, and flora and fauna. The interest in landscapes, which typically feature towering mountains and rushing streams, reflects the philosophical search for the principles that underlie the harmony of the universe, a search intricately linked to Daoism. The goal of figure painting in traditional Asia was not the celebration of the human form, as in Western art, but the presentation of paragons of wisdom and virtue whose noble deeds and lofty attainments might inspire emulation. Portraits of ancestors and of historical personages found favor especially in China and Korea, while narrative scrolls and genre paintings were popular in Japan. The Chinese developed a deep-seated interest in the plants and animals about them, which led both to gardens filled with rare and beautiful plants as well as unusually shaped rocks and to the well-known genres of bird-and-flower painting and of bamboo, orchid, and plum painting.
"The Art Museums' collection of Asian art has matured significantly in the last 50 years because of the many generous donors and supporters whose contributions have made significant differences in the lives of our students and scholars," said Thomas Lentz, Elizabeth and John Moors Cabot Director of the Harvard University Art Museums. "And thanks to the expertise of our curators, a wide range of visitors can appreciate the fruits of this expanded largesse, such as one of the most comprehensive collections of Korean paintings in any Western museum, with works dating from the 14th through the 20th century."
The Art Museums have been working diligently over the past 15 years to develop these holdings in Korean painting and calligraphy. All eight of the Korean paintings featured in A Compelling Legacy have come into the collection during the past ten years. Acquired in 2000, the 18th-century folding screen Bamboo through the Four Seasons, painted by Yu Tok-chang (1675-1756), is widely regarded as the finest Korean literati screen in the West; it is accompanied in this exhibition by several Korean paintings being shown for the first time.
Through the Song dynasty (960-1279), the goal of Chinese painting was largely naturalistic depiction, so that such formal elements as line, texture, brushwork, and color were subordinated to representational goals. During the Yuan dynasty (1279-1368), scholar-amateur painters began to experiment with expressionism, in the sense that they discovered the expressive value of formal elements and began to prize them for their own sake. In their paintings the subject matter became a vehicle for the expression of the ideas, feelings, and personality of the artist. Such personal expressionism became the norm in Chinese literati painting during the succeeding Ming (1368-1644) and Qing (1644-1911) dynasties. Included in the exhibition is a notable Ming-dynasty hanging scroll, painted in ink on silk, dating to the 16th century and titled Branch of Blossoming Plum. The painting is by Liu Shiru, one of the foremost specialists in ink-plum painting during the 16th century. Impressed by the work of the renowned 14th-century plum-blossom painter Wang Mian (1287-1359), Liu vowed to devote his life to mastering the same subject. Not content with merely copying, Liu wandered the hills of his native district, studying plum trees to enrich his understanding. Because it blooms in February, before donning its leaves, the Chinese flowering plum (Prunus mume) is associated with winter and is regarded as a symbol of strength in the face of adversity. In addition, its blossoms symbolize feminine beauty, and its weathered trunk, the humble scholar.
The 15th CenturyVery few Netherlandish drawings have survived from the 15th century. Preparatory studies on paper did not become commonplace in northern European workshops until the following century. Painters worked directly on the supports themselves, making preliminary drawings in charcoal that disappeared as the artists covered them with layers of paint. Most 15th-century drawings are copies from other works of art and served as aide-mémoire for the journeyman or the workshop. The sheet of studies by Gerard David is one of the very rare 15th-century Netherlandish drawings whose author is securely identified.
In addition to these holdings in Korean and Chinese art, the Art Museums are fortunate to house an impressive collection of Japanese works, including printed books and calligraphy that rank among the best of any Western museum. Among the examples of Japanese art in A Compelling Legacy will be a fragment of a handscroll mounted as a hanging scroll, titled The Former Affairs of the Bodhisattva Medicine King, Chapter 23 of the Lotus Sutra, from the mid-12th century. The Lotus Sutra became the most popular and influential of the many Buddhist texts brought to Japan. This was the case especially among women, who were regarded as a lower class in the Buddhist cosmological order and thus barred from the direct attainment of enlightenment. The Lotus Sutra was the first scripture to recount that even women could be transformed into bodhisattvas, or enlightened beings, without having first to be reborn as men. Delicately painted lotus plants line the upper and lower edges of the scroll fragment. The lotus is the international symbol of the Buddhist faith, signifying the beauty and purity of the Buddha's teachings despite their origins in this impure world of illusions. Another section from this same scroll will be featured in Marks of Enlightenment, Traces of Devotion (see below), linking the two exhibitions.
"While including several recently acquired works-particularly Korean-the exhibition presents an historical overview of an entire East Asian tradition through the display of works of the highest quality," said Robert D. Mowry, Alan J. Dworsky Curator of Chinese Art. "By periodically mounting such comprehensive exhibitions, we can give each generation of students an opportunity to learn something of the great traditions presented here, just as frequent museum-goers can reacquaint themselves with the collection's masterworks."
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