Re-visioning Asian arts in the 1990s: reflections of a museum professional - The Problematics of Collecting and Display, part 2

Not drawn out ago, The Asia Society organized sum of two units very different exhibitions, which were upon view simultaneously and generated replys relevant to the discussion of the display and perception of Asian arts in the West. individual of the exhibitions, "Buddha of the Future" featured an eighth-century and zinc sculpture of the Buddhist deity Maitreya, from Thailand [ILLUSTRATION FOR FIGURE 1 OMITTED]. Admired by means of collectors and scholars as individual of the finest works of Asian art in this region the figure was surrounded by means of forty-six other sculptures from Southeast and southern Asia from approximately the same period. The intention of the exhibition, part of a series called "Object in Context" was to explore the unravelling of Buddhist art and ideas in Southeast Asia and to highlight the compounded nature of intra-Southeast Asian connections from the sixth [i]or[/i] part of to the other the ninth century.(1)

The next to the first exhibition, entitled "Asia/America: Identities in Contemporary Asian American Art," was the first exhibition organized by means of The Asia Society to focus upon Asian American themes. It explicitly sought to highlight the complexities of porous national and cultural boundaries and questioned the notions of "authentic" Asian expression as being from faraway lands and from distant periods. Featuring the works of twenty artists greatest in quantity of whom were born in Asia,(2) the exhibition explored the issues and opportunities associated with bicultural identities [ILLUSTRATION FOR FIGURE 2 OMITTED].(3)

In limits of period and visual forms, the sum of two units exhibitions could not have been more different. In contrast to "Buddha of the Future" which displayed a remarkable cohesiveness of phraseology and iconography, "Asia/America" was distinguished through a cacophony of diverse voices and forms. of the like kind differences notwithstanding, there were points of conflux as well. Issues raised by the agency of the perception and/or misperception of images from individual community by another and the problematics of interconnections, among different regions were at the heart of the two exhibitions.

A colleague specializing in twentieth-century art from another fresh York museum who saw one as well as the other shows had very strong reactions to them, particularly to the interpretative strategies occupyed for the articulation of their primary theses. He admired the sheer beauty of the Maitreya figure and other related images in the first exhibition and appreciated the information that accompanied the displays. He explained that he could derive pleasure from the images as great works of art because they "transcended" their time and place; the label information simply amplified his visual pleasure.

The same colleague was quite disturbed by means of the contemporary Asian American present to view While he enjoyed many of the works exhibited, he did not understand wherefore The Asia Society was involved with things that were not "purely" Asian. Moreover, he did not approve of bringing contemporary or novel Asian art into The Asia Society since he felt that of that kind works were at best "derivative" of Western idioms and definitely not as authentically "Asian" as the older works. In contrast to his positive reaction to the labels in the Maitreya present to view he was quite critical of the fact that there were interpretative labels in the other. smooth though he was almost as ignorant of the specific connected thought [i]or[/i] thoughtss of the works ill the contemporary display and as unaware of the specific circumstances of the Asian American artists as of the circumstances of the creation of the early Buddhist images in the Maitreya exhibition, this museum colleague was a great deal of more willing to accept the interpretation (at least more [i]or[/i] less part of it) provided for him in the more traditional, historical Asian art exhibition than in the contemporary show

This viewer's reactions brought into focus more [i]or[/i] less of the issues that underlie the replications to and perceptions of Asian art in the West. At the greatest in quantity obvious level, the reaction of the museum colleague to the Maitreya exhibition highlights individual of the most intractable puzzles facing the study of Asian art. smooth though many scholars in the academy have favorably begun to question aspects of the Kantian aesthetic which emphasize the intrinsic and universal quality of a work of art transcending time and place, when it advances to the study or exhibition of Asian art in this political division it is very difficult to advance beyond the notion of a timeless masterpiece, usually an phenomenon from a distant past.

It has been allude toed by a number of anthropologists, including James Clifford, that this notion of other tillages and their visual products as ahistorical and distinctly different in form from the produces of our own time, on the contrary embodying aesthetic values which can be perceived and judg through the West as "universal," is an enduring characteristic of traditional "Orientalist" approaches to non-Western art.(4) This has meant that any analysis of those forms of art which may not fit the idea of "authentic otherness" are considered suspect and not real "good."

This is particularly real of the study of a great quantity [i]or[/i] amount of of the traditional sculpture of Asia. Many of its examples exhibit religious ideas, and it is difficult to propel the discussion beyond their religious and philosophical symbolism. Given the predisposition to emphasize the "timeless spirituality" of plastic arts the very process of problematizing the Western perception of Asian art can be compromised by the agency of saying that such postmodern queries are not appropriate because they turn aside the inherently spiritual nature of plenteous Asian art. This argument in favor of seeing Asian art in its be in possession of terms, and as fundamentally different from Western traditions, was made greatest in quantity recently by Holland Cotter in the of recent origin York Times: