Rockefeller Asian Art Finally Gets Gallery

NEW YORK, Feb. 13 (UPI) -- The John D. Rockefeller 3rd collection of Asian art, one of the foremost in the United States, has finally gotten a gallery for permanent display at the newly expanded Asia Society headquarters on Park Avenue.

The society has renamed itself the Asia Society and Museum to mark the opening of a new floor of exhibition rooms that will be occupied by a continuous but a rotating showing of works from the Rockefeller collection and temporary exhibitions of other Asian art, especially contemporary art. The expansion, which doubles the society's exhibition space, cost $38 million.

The collection put together by Rockefeller and his wife, Blanchette Hooker Rockefeller, includes only the finest examples of sculpture, scroll painting, illuminated manuscripts, and ceramics from diverse Asian cultures stretching from Pakistan and Cambodia to Japan and Indonesia. It is particularly rich in Hindu and Buddhist sculpture.

Rockefeller, a second-generation collector in his family, and his wife, a member of an art-collecting Detroit family, were advised in their acquisitions by Sherman Lee, a leading Asian art scholar and museologist. Nothing was too rare or too expensive for their purchase budget and they were buying right up to the time of Rockefeller's death in 1978.

He bequeathed the collection to the Asia Society, which he had founded in 1956 to promote better understanding between Asia and the United States, and it has since been housed in a museum-like storeroom accessible only to art scholars. It was exhibited only once in its entirety, in 1981, and works have been shown only selectively in small thematic shows and occasional traveling shows since then.

All of the collection will not fit into the new permanent Rockefeller gallery but three exhibitions are planned than will put much of it on view through the summer of 2003.

The first of these exhibitions, which is on view through April 14, is titled "The Creative Eye" because it represents selections from the collection made by contemporary visual and performing artists, designers, choreographers, and writers including Maya Lin, Bill T. Jones, Francesco Clemente, Milton Glaser, Mary McFadden and Bill Viola.

Nicely spaced throughout the new all-white gallery floored in pale strips of bamboo bordered by blue marble, "The Creative Eye" exhibition opens with a quintessential Chinese scroll dated 1661 by the celebrated Qing-era artist Kuncan. It depicts vertiginous cliffs dropping to a seaside village, where only one living creature can be seen, a tiny fisherman in his boat.

One masterpiece after another follows. There is an early 13th century cypress wood sculpture of a bodhisattva, an enlightened Buddha, holding wisdom in his hand in the form of a jewel of great price. It radiates serenity, and Pico Iyer, the writer who selected it for the show, wrote, "This piece speaks to me because it speaks of everything that doesn't change in Japan and tells me that what doesn't change sustains us."

Joel Shapiro, a sculptor, chose a pair of 12th century stoneware bowl and saucer sets from Korea glazed in bluish celadon color and fashioned in the form of a water lily blossom. Shapiro wrote that "the idea that a bowl differentiates and contains space is so intrinsically human and so delicate and fragile ... Why not see this as a metaphor for life?"

Shapiro also selected a magnificently cast 8th century Thailand Maitreya, a four-armed, thinly mustached Buddha-Yet-To-Be shaped of copper with silver inlays, explaining that its impressive presence "sets a standard of behavior."

"I think that's what gods do," he wrote. "That is their job."

One of several highly polished Angkor-era sculptures from 11th century Cambodia in the show is a headless, armless fragment of a female figure, bare breasted and wrapped in a sarong below the waist. Ceramic artist Beth Forer who chose her likened the statue to a brief Japanese haiku poem, "expressing its meaning with a few syllables and expressing power with few gestures."

Father Thomas, a monk and ceramist, chose a 13th century Chinese crackle-glazed censure in white pottery because "the artist's real medium is not paint or stone or clay, but the mystic substance of the universe."

Another Chinese work, a 2nd century B.C. Tang-era earthenware tomb figure of a female servant that is elegant in its simplicity was chosen by Yong Soon Min, a multi-media artist, who wrote that she felt "eternal gratitude to the anonymous artist who fashioned her with such honesty, compassion and conviction."

Great Indian metal sculptures abound in the show, none finer that Shiva as Lord of the Dance, which some critics consider the crowning glory of the Rockefeller collection.

This is a 10th century Chola-era depiction in bronze of the four-armed Hindu god performing the "Dance of Bliss" in a ring of fire, left foot extended and his right firmly planted on a dwarf-demon. Gita Mehta, a filmmaker, observed that his work contains "the most complex philosophic perceptions in a single, simple image, and for me is the defining icon of India."

No collection of Indian sculpture would be complete without a voluptuously bosomed celestial dancer, and the Rockefeller collection offers one in sandstone twisted in sensual movement. Mehta notes that these female figures have no vulgarity..."only a perfect and perfectly desirable abundance."

Of all the sculptures, the least sophisticated is an earthenware figure of a man from 7th century Japan, possibly a grave marker. He has only pierced holes for his eyes and mouth and small arms awkwardly extended like flippers, and he wears a ridiculous hat. But his face exudes a raw power that choreographer Bill T. Jones describes as "cool assessment, unabated ambition and determination."

A Chinese two-handled bottle from the 15th century Ming era is possibly the most arresting work in the show, with barely perceptible vegetal designs beneath a rich glaze that the French call "claire de lune." It is praised for its transcendent beauty by dancer-choregrapher Malavika Sarukkai who said she selected it because it "looked like frozen moonlight, ethereal yet practical -- a bottle."