Date: Fri 24-Jul-1998

Publication: Ant

Author: SHIRLE

Quick Words:

Buddhist-Nava-Cleveland

Full Text:

Buddhist Treasures From Nava National Museum On View At Cleveland Museum Of

Art

CLEVELAND, OHIO -- Over fourteen centuries ago, Buddhism's migration across

Asia along the famous Silk Route brought it to Japan. Two hundred years later,

(AD 752), with the blessing of Japan's ancient Shinto sun goddess, a colossal

gilded bronze statue of Buddha, weighing hundreds of tons and towering more

than 50 feet tall, was consecrated in the vast new imperial monastery of

Todai-ji in Nara, Japan's capital at the time. Ten thousand Buddhist monks,

many from China and Korea, attended the ceremony. Buddhism, founded 3,000

miles away in India, had become one of the most penetrating and enduring

hallmarks of Japanese culture. And the city of Nara had become so central to

Japan's self-understanding that today, virtually every Japanese citizen has

visited its National Museum and historic temples as a school child.

Now 87 of the most remarkable sculptures, paintings, manuscripts, and

decorative works of art ever to emerge from Buddhist beliefs, long housed at

Nara's National Museum and in its nearby temples, have been lent exclusively

to the Cleveland Museum of Art. The most significant loan of Japanese Buddhist

art ever viewed outside Japan, the exhibition "Buddhist Treasures from Nara"

opens August 9 and remains on view in CMA's main special exhibition gallery

through September 26. Admission is free.

The exhibit was organized over the past four years by CMA Curator of Japanese

and Korean Art, Michael R. Cunningham as part of an exchange of exhibitions

between the Nara National Museum and CMA.

Commenting on the project, Cleveland Museum Director Robert P. Berman said:

"It's been my particular pleasure to work with Hiroyasu Uchida, director of

the Nara National Museum, in the most cordial and fruitful of partnerships. I

have delighted in the expressions of esteem for Cleveland's great Asian

collection that have emerged during the times CMA staff have spent with our

Japanese colleagues and visitors, and I look forward with great anticipation

to opening "Buddhist Treasures" here. Cleveland's star as a cultural tourist

destination will certainly rise even higher with our unique presentation of

these rare and amazing works of art."

Japanese authorities consider the Nara National Museum collection its most

important ensemble of Japanese Buddhist art. Indeed, only a few works from

Nara's holding have been loaned to U.S. museums in recent decades. The nearly

90 works in "Buddhist Treasures from Nara" are sacred materials dating from

the Seventh through Fifteenth Centuries, particularly rich in works from the

Tenth through Fourteenth Centuries, including 32 paintings, 20 sculptures,

five works of calligraphy, and 31 objects of lacquer, metal-work, and

textiles.

One of the distinguishing aspects of this one-time-only array is the number of

National Treasures" (12) and "Important Cultural Properties" (45) included.

Such designations have been established and reassessed for about 75 years by

Japan's Bunka-cho (Agency for Cultural Affairs) to ensure the preservation of

the country's cultural legacy. A National Treasure (the highest ranking) or

Important Cultural Property may be a building, a festival, a person such as a

musician or artist, or works of art such as these. Buddhist materials make up

the vast majority of National Treasures, indicating the central role Buddhism

has maintained in Japanese cultural history. Elaborating on the rare

privileges of this show, curator Cunningham says: "Even in their repositories

at the Nara National Museum or at the nearby temple complexes, any

light-sensitive National Treasures such as the beautiful calligraphic

scriptures on colored paper or painted silk scrolls would only be on view for

a month each year. We in Cleveland are extremely fortunate to have secured

these loans for eight weeks."

The exhibition focuses on objects that helped transmit Buddhism, the oldest of

the world's three major international religions (the later two being

Christianity and Islam) as a new religion to Japan and demonstrates how these

precedents were adapted over the centuries. Critical to the Buddhist faith and

its rituals are the building of temple complexes, the copying of scriptures,

and the creation and contemplation of religious images. One of the most

historic manuscripts on view is a sutra transcribed in gold dust on

purple-dyed paper for the Eighth Century emperor, Shomu, under whose reign the

new religion was embraced and a system of national temples instituted. (The

word sutra comes from the Sanskrit for "string" or "thread," meaning Buddha's

teachings sewn together as scripture.) Incorporating such luxurious materials

constituted an offering to Buddha, in addition to the very act of the copying.

Among the National Treasures in the exhibition that have never left Japan

before are a pair of mandalas from the Eleventh Century, painted in gold and

silver. A mandala is a visual diagram of the path to Nirvana or enlightenment,

a kind of map or chart populated by various deities divided into their courts,

or spiritual realms. Cunningham says that, at nearly 15 feet in height, these

monumental paintings would have been hung facing each other between column in

a large devotional hall. Not only does their scale set them apart from any

other works, but they are in more pristine condition than any related

mandalas. Also, as he puts it, "a mesmerizing display of elegant brushwork has

rendered golden ranks of deities that seem to emerge as low-intensity beacons

glowing in their background of indigo-dyed silk."

Colorful decorations that would have relieved the overall solemnity of a

temple atmosphere include a pair of interior ornaments made of lacquered and

painted cowhide, which would have been suspended from the horizontal beams of

temple halls and would have swayed in the breeze of these rooms open to the

elements. Called keman, they represent sprays of tied flowers that were once

used to adorn temples, with bells and pendants attached at the bottom. Given

the perishability of flowers, artists conceived such floral decorations over

time in textiles, leather, metal, then wood.

Among the most unforgettable images in the show are two Twelfth Century

painted scrolls, each a National Treasure. One has graphic depictions of the

tortures of hell specific to thieves, purveyors of unclean food, persons who

set fires, and others -- their bodies ground by mortars, surrounded by

maggots, or torn apart by the beak and talons of a flame-spewing bird. The

other scroll portrays benevolent deities vanquishing evil spirits, in one

example by the gruesome method of dipping them into a vinegary sauce and

biting off their heads. As Cunningham says, these "epitomize that rare and

unusual melding of visual elegance and appalling subject matter in Japanese

art."

Especially hypnotic to view in person is one of the sculptures on loan from

Nara's many temples, in this case the Great Eastern Temple (Todai-ji) where

the giant bronze Buddha still resides. Not quite 16 inches tall, the

compelling Ninth Century figure of carved cypress wood in this exhibition

depicts the "Future" Buddha. The subtleties of his pose convey the promise of

rebirth in the Western Paradise to the discerning faithful. The sculptor

disdained traits of natural proportion in favor of giving the figure a massive

head and shoulders and chiseling a direct, intense gaze into his facial

features.

Of particular interest to Cleveland visitors is that the Nara National Museum

is lending the mate to Cleveland's own Twelfth Century lacquered tabernacle of

identical dimensions, a lavishly decorated cylindrical container some

five-and-a-half feet high, meant to contain half of a 600-volume set of

scriptures. CMA recently lent its tabernacle to the Nara National Museum for

its 100th anniversary exhibition, where it has remained to be conserved by

their lacquer experts under the auspices of a Japanese government conservation

project.

Cunningham acknowledges the general unfamiliarity with the appearances and

ideas represented in these works, but is confident that museum visitors -- not

only at CMA but in all major museums -- are aware of the increasing prominence

of Asian art. He feels that "the cumulative effect of these seemingly arcane,

mysterious objects will be profound." The works in this show convey the

fundamental religious messages and spiritual values of the various schools of

thought and practice that emerged as Buddhism, like Christianity, evolved over

the centuries -- mostly the branches called Esoteric Buddhism and Pure Land

Buddhism and the images that grew from Buddhism's melding with Japan's

indigenous Shintoism. But understanding of the intricacies of Buddhist thought

is not required to sense the psychological impact of the devotional images or

to marvel at the technical wizardry involved in a gilt bronze icon or crystal

reliquary. Similar religious objects appear in Christian art, too. The variety

among the works on exhibition is such that the same personality in Buddhist

religious life may be portrayed as an austere figure, smoothly carved from one

piece of Japanese nutmeg, or in a seductive painting in color and gold on

silk, framed by a moon and set in a landscape of cherry blossoms and rushing

water.

A conference, supported by the Metropolitan Center for Far Eastern Art Studies

and open to the public, will mark the closing weekend of the exhibition. The

keynote speech, on Friday evening, September 25, at 6:30 pm, is free: "The

Japanese Buddhist Image: Magic, Power and Art," by catalogue essayist John

Rosenfield. Saturday's events will include the following presenters in

addition to Rosenfield and curator Cunningham: James Dobbis of Oberlin

College, Robert Scharf of the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor, Elizabeth

ten Grotenhuis of Boston University, and catalogue essayist Mimi

Yiengpruksawan of Yale University. The conference will take place on Saturday,

September 26 from 9 am to 5 pm. The cost is $20; $10 for CMA members and

students. A free evening lecture series will also bring local and out-of-town

speakers to the museum stage. For information call 216/421-7340.