BWW Reviews: Glory and Devotion in BUDDHIST ART OF MYANMAR

By: Apr. 14, 2015
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It's one of the frequent paradoxes of religious art: the more self-denying the system of belief, the more overpoweringly opulent the art that supports it. This is famously true of the Christianity of the Middle Ages--earthy and dun-colored in its dogmas, soaring and stained-glass bright in the architecture that those dogmas built. This is also true of Theravada Buddhism, which dominates religious life in Myanmar (formerly Burma) to this day. Though premised on renunciation of the world and supported by a firm monastic heritage, this exacting faith has been the motivation behind gilded reliefs, flowing color illustrations, and ethereal pagoda-like shrines, all products of preternaturally detailed craftsmanship. To truly appreciate such art, you need to get lost in its intricacy. It is possible to become disoriented in a Theravada painting or carving and yet feel that you are finding something of overarching value, aesthetically, spiritually: to sustain such exalting experience across an entire museum exhibit, work after work, intricacy after intricacy, is difficult, yet eminently possible.

Some of this explains why Buddhist Art of Myanmar, which is staged in fairly close quarters at the Asia Society Museum, could have pure overload on a larger scale. (Imagine this show in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and imagine how hopelessly it might have sprawled and how difficult it might have been to even locate.) In its actual size, this survey is both cogent and enlightening. Historically, the exhibition ranges broadly: the earliest of the roughly 70 works on display are from 400-500 A.D., while some of the most recent date from the 20th century. Ideologically, the show demonstrates how Buddhism, Hinduism, and local mythologies both played against and played into one another. And conceptually, the whole showcase is both a radical departure from the Asia Society's post-modernish recent offerings--Nam June Paik: Becoming Robot and the In Focus contemporary art series--and a perfect counterpart to these spirited displays. Here are the products of secular passions; here is what religion has crafted and continues to craft.

There is also a bit of a curatorial saga in the background of all this. Because Myanmar was ruled by a military dictatorship (and thus shut off from the Western world) from 1962 until around 2010, the exhibition that Asia Society has assembled would have been unthinkable a decade ago. Everything began to take shape in 2011, when the Asia Society began negotiating artwork loans. The final product was arranged by guest curators Sylva Fraser-Lu and Donald M. Stadtner, who worked alongside the Asia Society's own Adriana Posner; it occupies two solid floors but still (in a pleasant act of modesty) leaves room for the latest In Focus entry.

All this is worth knowing, but not worth thinking about as you stroll through the actual exhibition: the works on display transport you to a Myanmar that is at once ancient and ageless, starting with the opening section, "Images of the Buddha." The splendor of some of the images derives from the assurance of the craftsmanship: there isn't much ornamentation in the show's 700s-800s quartz Buddha, or the late 1700s marble Buddha, but the materials are elegant and the Buddhas themselves have been carved with purpose and serenity. In contrast, a Buddhist shrine from the late 1800s comes off as a flight of filigree. On the whole, the Buddha remains visibly bound to the world even as--paradoxically once more--he seems to transcend it. In many of the entries, two of the Buddha's fingers are extended downward in the a "touching earth" gesture, which both implies connection to the physical cosmos and indicates the Buddha's moment of enlightenment.

How to "read" Buddhist art becomes a much greater issue in the second segment, "Life of the Buddha". Depart just a little from the main exhibition space, and you will find a room populated by works of art depicting the Jakatas, or former lives of the Buddha. The accretions of figure and episode are as remarkable as the range of materials and formats--light-on-dark wall hangings, silver boxes, gold-leaf platter covers--that artists and artisans found for this material. Along with a decently-sized, inspire-you-to-visit photograph of the Golden Rock Pagoda of Kyaiktiyo, this material strikes the note of variegated luxury that Buddhist of Myanmar strikes more and more insistently later on. Yet elsewhere, the Buddha's life inspired art of a very different sort: a 1198 sandstone panel depicting the death of the Buddha is one of this exhibition's main attractions, and it balances the tiny, clustering, insistent figures of its periphery with the reclining, simple, transcendent Buddha at its core.

By the time it enters its final stages, an esoteric exhibition of riches like Buddhist Art of Myanmar should be just about ready to fizzle out. That it doesn't is a high-order curatorial accomplishment, almost as impressive as getting those Buddhas past Myanmar borders. The third and final section, "Devotion and Ritual", brings to the fore some of the tensions that have been present all along but that have not really been given their due--Theravada logic versus folk superstition, wise men versus monsters, polished-tone purity versus gold-tinted exuberance. Among the most striking objects here, on the purely Buddhist end, are a gold-paint-on-cotton Footprint of the Buddha and a glass-inlaid ceiling board. The combinations of materials give these objects a certain otherworldliness: that sole ceiling board almost shines forth. Just imagine what a whole gallery of such boards must amount to. Accompanying these are Hindu deities in everything from marble to sandstone, ogres carved in wood and covered in gold leaf, and kinnaris (half human, half bird figures) in equally lush materials. While many of these works can be traced to the late 19th and early 20th centuries--as do the show's most ravishingly complex Buddhist shrines--there is continuity with the earlier and, generally, more economical works. Beneath those accretions of detail and gold, the forms on display communicate immensities of control and discipline. Enjoy the things of this world, but know that they are not all.



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