As a spectacle, it works miraculously. The dazzling display makes clever use of the space and of the visual diversity. True, it gives scant attention to the quality of the art. The selection is sometimes baffling. There is a Han Dynasty incense burner of a common type borrowed from an American museum in nasty condition. When dealing with ritual, the show bears a regrettable kinship to a kung fu film set. But it is done with such exceptional brio that you are even persuaded to look at some paintings that in any other context would be dismissed as appalling kitsch.
In the introductory vestibule, a single object is set in a wall vitrine like a mysterious symbol. The vertical jade tablet of the 18th century is wrought in low relief with a mountainous peak rising above rows of floating clouds. Only later does the visitor realize that this must be the Mountain of the Immortals dear to the heart of the Taoists. Unless, of course, it is just any mountain rendered for its natural beauty, as sung in the 11th-century Taoist treaty written by the painter Guo Xi. Who knows? There is much that is allusive and elusive in this show, which as you soon discover, is very much in the nature of Taoism.
Once inside you walk from hand scroll to stone relief, from bronze to porcelain, happily leaping back and forth across roughly 2,000 years, for here, the art is distributed according to themes, not chronology.
What could have resulted in an unpalatable mishmash is so brilliantly laid out that the visitor is irresistibly enticed from one case to the next and starts peering at the labels that provide keys to the reading of each object.
A Han bronze incense burner with a conical openwork lid depicting a mountainous landscape is thus said to reflect the fascination of Emperor Wu (141 to 87 B.C.) with the Taoist Immortals and their beloved mountain islands. So too, it would seem, is the case with one of those many green-glazed caskets with conical lids representing similar mountainous ranges.
A paper impression of a marvelous stone slab from a funerary chapel carved in A.D. 151 is understood to depict the Great Bear constellation in its lower register. Chen Yunru notes in the groundbreaking book edited by the exhibition curator Catherine Delacour that the beads defining the outline of a chariot stand for the stars. But the Chinese scholar remains silent on the subject of the mysterious processions progressing towards the chariot or the fantastic events taking place in the upper register. Seething with intriguing details, these evidently echo precise myths to which we have no clue because so much of Han literature is lost.
On closer inspection, many objects from early China retain their mystery, even when part of the motifs seem obvious.
A beautiful bronze mirror of the seventh century is thus cast with the 12 signs of the Chinese zodiac in low relief, but the meaning of the lion and three ill-determined mythical felines in the central area remains unexplained. A long inscription in tiny Chinese ideograms has so far defied analysis — “it seems to be of poetic inspiration,” the catalog prudently ventures.
As visitors progress on their path to enlightenment, much else that appears luminously clear at first glance raises questions. In an essay on “The Symbols of Long Life,” Ms. Delacour writes that the gourd shape, reproduced in porcelain, bronze and even lacquer, “became one of the most common attributes of the Immortals, essentially because it is characterized in many tales as the narrow opening leading into an enchanting parallel world.” Possibly. But, favored by travelers and ascetics, it was equally used by Buddhists and Confucianists. The context need not be Taoist.
In the introductory vestibule, a single object is set in a wall vitrine like a mysterious symbol. The vertical jade tablet of the 18th century is wrought in low relief with a mountainous peak rising above rows of floating clouds. Only later does the visitor realize that this must be the Mountain of the Immortals dear to the heart of the Taoists. Unless, of course, it is just any mountain rendered for its natural beauty, as sung in the 11th-century Taoist treaty written by the painter Guo Xi. Who knows? There is much that is allusive and elusive in this show, which as you soon discover, is very much in the nature of Taoism.
Once inside you walk from hand scroll to stone relief, from bronze to porcelain, happily leaping back and forth across roughly 2,000 years, for here, the art is distributed according to themes, not chronology.
What could have resulted in an unpalatable mishmash is so brilliantly laid out that the visitor is irresistibly enticed from one case to the next and starts peering at the labels that provide keys to the reading of each object.
A Han bronze incense burner with a conical openwork lid depicting a mountainous landscape is thus said to reflect the fascination of Emperor Wu (141 to 87 B.C.) with the Taoist Immortals and their beloved mountain islands. So too, it would seem, is the case with one of those many green-glazed caskets with conical lids representing similar mountainous ranges.
A paper impression of a marvelous stone slab from a funerary chapel carved in A.D. 151 is understood to depict the Great Bear constellation in its lower register. Chen Yunru notes in the groundbreaking book edited by the exhibition curator Catherine Delacour that the beads defining the outline of a chariot stand for the stars. But the Chinese scholar remains silent on the subject of the mysterious processions progressing towards the chariot or the fantastic events taking place in the upper register. Seething with intriguing details, these evidently echo precise myths to which we have no clue because so much of Han literature is lost.
On closer inspection, many objects from early China retain their mystery, even when part of the motifs seem obvious.
A beautiful bronze mirror of the seventh century is thus cast with the 12 signs of the Chinese zodiac in low relief, but the meaning of the lion and three ill-determined mythical felines in the central area remains unexplained. A long inscription in tiny Chinese ideograms has so far defied analysis — “it seems to be of poetic inspiration,” the catalog prudently ventures.
As visitors progress on their path to enlightenment, much else that appears luminously clear at first glance raises questions. In an essay on “The Symbols of Long Life,” Ms. Delacour writes that the gourd shape, reproduced in porcelain, bronze and even lacquer, “became one of the most common attributes of the Immortals, essentially because it is characterized in many tales as the narrow opening leading into an enchanting parallel world.” Possibly. But, favored by travelers and ascetics, it was equally used by Buddhists and Confucianists. The context need not be Taoist.
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