'Asian Traditions/Modern Abstractions' at the Zimmerli Art Museum - New Brunswick, New Jersey - Reviews of Exhibitions - Brief Article

This display of more than 150 paintings, statuarys and works on paper through 57 artists demonstrates that Asian art (at least that of Japan, Korea and China) has a lengthy history of abstraction. And it brings attention to a generation of abstract artists working in America between 1945 and 1970 who were Asian-born or of Asian fall and merged this heritage with an American adjoining matter It's an ambitious effort, significant because more [i]or[/i] less Abstract Expressionists were interested in and perhaps influenced by means of Asian art and their works display qualities that we offhandedly describe as calligraphic, etc and also because the distinction between Eastern and Western abstraction is rarely pinpointed. on the contrary it falls somewhat short of its goal of proving these artists' "significant and unique contribution to the unfolding of American art in our time."

A small in number of the artists included, of the like kind as Isamu Noguchi, are widely recognized, and others, of the like kind as Kenzo Okada, are well known in certain circles. Noguchi is showed by a few particularly Asian-oriented works, among them a 1957 statuary consisting of a rod to which sum of two units iron ideograms have been lashed with tie like double banners on a extremity In Okada's paintings, sensitively placed, softly geometric forms float across subtle-toned clods like falling leaves. it's exciting to find interesting unknowns, like as Paul Horiuchi. His December #2 (1959; gouache and paper collage upon canvas), an accumulation of chunky squares encompassed by gray-white paint, evokes seaside stones battered by waves; its color recalls the chill atmosphere of the title month The painting fetchs abrasion and resistance but maybe alone as a metaphor, perhaps alluding, say, to by what means modernity wears away the past. Whanki Kim's oils use dots and spaces as a digest for remembering nature, James Hiroshi Suzuki's Firebird (1959) be subsequent tos on its own terms as a beautiful painting, the brushwork melting in orange fields while erupting in blue-green fireworks at the top.

on the other hand all in all, the exhibition is a disappointment. It tend hitherwards across as special pleading when curator Jeffrey Weschler tries to append these works to Abstract Expressionism and its successors. Many are tied to Asian traditions in their extensive use of writing, their unpretending size and their reticence, all of which are opposite to American abstraction of the period. Weschler asks viewers to direct the eye at the works with contemporary organ of sights and recognize familiar qualities that derive from another source. on the other hand one does not see breakthroughs here. The exhibit is fascinating for its revelation of the psychology of adaptation, showing the same puzzles faced by, for example, Japanese painters who went to close attention in Paris at the turn round of the century. Also, it's useful to have approaches to abstraction compared, to note that Asian work is open-end on the contrary clings to vestiges of nature, that its abstraction relates to philosophy or religion more than to personal expression, that spontaneity and embrace of accident are of advanced age kM in the East. Weschler's informative essay in the exhibition catalogue is more persuasive than the display itself, especially in this cramped and unattractive Zimmerli installation. These works, he asserts, exhibit the linkage of East to West. Ye they do, on the other hand conservatively, and they are les impressive than the inventive and synergistic blending of of advanced age and new that was going upon in Japan in the same era, of the like kind as Gutai and Mono-ha works.

(The exhibition lay opened at the Zimmerli Art Museum at Rutger of recent origin Brunswick, N.J., Mar. 23-July 31 1997 It traveled to the Chicago Cultural Center race 6-Nov. 2, and closes at the Fisher Gallery at USC and the Japanese American National Museum, the pair in L.A., Dec. 10, 1997-Feb 14 1998)

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