Exhibitions 2
China syndrome
Martin Gayford
T. see the art of the East, at the moment it is a good idea to fly west. At the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, there is, until 3 June, China: 5,000 Years, in all probability the most ency- clopaedic array of the visual arts of the Middle Kingdom which has yet been brought together. As an exhibition it is comparable in ambition with Africa — The Dwelling in the Qingbian Mountains, Yuan dynasty (1279-1368), by Wang Meng Art of a Continent at the Royal Academy a few years ago, but to my mind considerably more rewarding (which doubtless merely means that I personally prefer Chinese art to African).
China: 5,000 Years climbs all the way up the notorious snail-spiral ramp at Frank Lloyd Wright's uptown Guggenheim which tends to kill paintings, but in this case works well, since the objects on dis- play are three dimensional — and spills over into the downtown Guggenheim in SoHo. Admittedly, in the autumn show at the Guggenheim, a single living artist Robert Rauschenberg — took up even more space. But this is an account of Chi- nese art rich and full enough to satisfy anyone.
Its fascinations are twofold. First, the his- tory of China is taking shape before our eyes — in the way that of Egypt and the Middle East did a century ago — as more and more remarkable things appear from beneath the soil. Many of the finest objects Pair of dragon-shaped pendants, Eastern Zhou period (475-221 BC) on show were excavated within the last couple of decades — an extraordinary cache of beautiful black and red Han dynasty lacquerwork, virtually unaffected by the passage of 2,000 years. (The most spectacular finds of all are probably still to come, when the tomb of the first emperor is finally excavated.) We were given some idea of the new dis- coveries by the show at the British Museum 18 months ago, which was excellent in itself, but restricted in size and scope. There is far, far more at the Guggenheim — not just one of the guardian soldiers from the first emperor's tomb, but a small detachment, led by a general, looking mur- derously real in their padded jerkins. And the story, rather than breaking off millen- nia ago, continues to the present day.
This leads on to the second fascination — the chance to make generalisations about the aesthetic strengths and weak- nesses of a whole civilisation, just as one might otherwise in the case of a single artist. Obviously, this is hazardous — if only because there are areas of oriental art, such as calligraphy, of which it is very hard for an outsider to form any judgment at all.
Still, wandering up and down the ramp at the Guggenheim, it is hard not to turn over tentative conclusions. Stone sculpture right up to the final twist of Wright's roller- coaster — does not seem to have brought out the best in Chinese artists (the medium was imported from India, along with Bud- dhism). On the other hand, ceramics from the earliest eras onwards, are superb. The pale blue-green and white vessels of the Song dynasty — produced about the time of King Canute and the Norman Conquest — have an abstract refinement and subtlety that makes Brancusi look a little crude.
But the most exciting sections, to me, were those, in side galleries off the ramp, devoted to Chinese painting. The poet Kathleen Raine has suggested that the Chi- nese have been the greatest landscape mas- ters of all — and it's a conclusion that doesn't seem that outrageous in this con- text. In Chinese painting, mountains and water expand horizontally and vertically, rather than into the picture, as in Western art. One may wander upwards past peak after peak, or laterally along paths through groves of bamboo, over little bridges, around lakes, through a far wider expanse than could possibly be encompassed by Renaissance perspective.
In some paintings, 'Six Gentlemen' , for example, by Ni Zan (1301-1374) from the Shanghai Museum, there is a masterly use of nothingness. At the base of thd pitture are six trees on an islet, above a gulf of blank paper wonderfully representing water, and at the top a few low coastal hills. Mist, clouds, water and empty space are one of the great themes of Chinese art, just as solid sculptural mass is of the art of the West.
This isn't a comprehensive selection of classical Chinese painting at the Guggen- heim — and couldn't be since all the exhibits in China: 5,000 Years come from the People's Republic, and many key paint- ings are in collections in Taiwan and Amer- ica. But there is quite enough to demonstrate the individuality within a genre that — like so many things — at first glance looks rather samey. The difference between the scholar gentleman Ni Zan, austerely dragging an almost dry brush across the paper, and the violent dabs and splodges of Xu Wei (1521-93), a murderer and madman, is at least as great as that between, say, Vermeer and Caravaggio. It is also enough to make the point that the creativity of Chinese painting continued much longer than used to be thought well into the Ming and Manchu dynasties, but not, unfortunately, as late as the more recent works on show in the downtown Guggenheim.
In a side gallery at the main Guggenheim is a nicely focused small show of Visions of Paris by Robert Delaunay (until 25 April). It documents how from 1909 to 1912 his views of Paris fragment into almost entirely abstract facets, in which, however, the ghost of the Eiffel Tower is almost always just discernible. This little exhibition sug- gests that Delaunay, a half-forgotten figure in Britain at any rate, was one of the more interesting and individual contemporaries of Braque and Picasso in Cubist Paris.
Meanwhile, at the Metropolitan Museum there is a fine show devoted to the even more forgotten late-18th-century French sculptor, Augustin Pajou (until 24 May). This is an excellent complement to the Pru'dhon show, which I reviewed when it was in Paris last autumn; but it is still well worth seeing in its own right. Admittedly, Pajou has not had a good press. Even Sir Michael Levey, an enthusiast for 18th-cen- tury French art, describes his talents as `basically anaemic'. But this installation, admirably lit, the walls neo-classical grey and dark blue, makes out a good case for him.
`The terracottas are magnificent' was the word among the New York cognoscenti, and turned out to be quite right. Like most sculptors between Bernini and Rodin, Pajou (17304809) thought primarily in terms of modelling, not carving. As a result, his marbles, cut by assistants, have a slick, over-finished air. The terracottas, however, ranging in colour from capuccino to ginger-nut biscuit, have a great liveliness of touch and effect. The portrait-busts in particular make up a fine gallery of Enlightenment types showing the smile of reason, the animation of salon wit, and, in a late series done in Montpellier at the height of the revolutionary terror, the dazed expression of survivors of a catastro- phe. This show is a reminder of how well the Met does its job in mounting exhibi- tions of sculpture and the decorative arts. When did we last have a major show in London of any sculptor prior to the late- 19th century?
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