nwasianweekly.com
Jan. 21, 2006

(Photo by Patrick Young)
“Scholar With Two Roosters,” a 19th-century Chinese hanging scroll by Jen I, is part of the exhibit “The Orchid Pavilion Gathering.”

Asian Art Museum reopens in grand style

By N.P. Thompson
For the Northwest Asian Weekly

At the newly reopened Seattle Asian Art Museum in Volunteer Park, the scrolls of a master calligrapher are on display now through April 2 in tandem with an exhibit on Chinese painting that spans eight centuries. As if the contrast of these adjoining art forms (painting evolved from calligraphy) weren’t enticement enough, there’s an ongoing configuration of Buddhist sculpture that rounds up representations of Buddha from as far back as eighth-century Korea.

Add a Koran-inspired video installation by the Iranian filmmaker Shirin Neshat, in which the soul of a woman merges with the soul of an ancient tree, and you have a multitude of reasons for visiting SAAM this winter.

Looking through “Fragrance of the Past: Chinese Calligraphy and Painting by Ch’ung-ho Chang Frankel and Friends” gave me the intimate feeling that I was in the artist’s studio. The tools of her trade — the brushes made from different types of animal hair, the seals by which she presses red stamps onto the periphery of her scrolls and the ink — are all on display, along with the finished works they were used to create. But then Frankel, who will turn 92 this year, has a way of converting nearly any space into her workshop; in her travels, she always carries paper and brushes, practicing calligraphy in hotel rooms and at friends’ houses.

Born in Shanghai in 1914, she began copying calligraphic masterpieces from age 5, and by the time she was 9, her classical education in poetry and painting had begun. She sang in kunqu opera (“The Peony Pavilion” was a particular favorite of Frankel’s; two costumes that she wore in past productions, including a dramatic red cape, are in this exhibit too), played zither and flute, and taught Chinese art at Yale for 23 years. The painter is also an accomplished poet, and her husband of 55 years, the late Hans Frankel, translated her verses into English. Her imagery in “Autumn Thoughts,” meticulously scripted on a fan-shaped scroll, weaves indelible magic:

In my dream of returning home

The smartweed blossoms are red

At days ending the floating clouds scatter;

Softly humming, I stand in the evening wind.

The most historically significant work in this collection is the 1944 figure painting “Lady Playing the Lute.” The lady, with her eyes closed as she cradles the stringed instrument, would be beautiful on her own, yet surrounding her on either side and above are inscriptions of poems by admirers within the young Ch’ung-ho’s circle of literati. Red Guards confiscated the scroll during the Cultural Revolution, and it was thought to have been destroyed. The “Lady,” however, surfaced unscathed at a 1991 auction. A key to its survival: One of the approving inscriptions was penned by Zhang Shizhao, a teacher whose most famous student was … Chairman Mao.

Among the 60 scrolls in “The Orchid Pavilion Gathering: Chinese Painting From the University of Michigan Museum of Art,” the one that leaped out at me involves a damsel in a different kind of distress. “The Goddess of the Luo River” (circa 1847) depicts a female figure who appears to be floating along, shivering on a sea of nothingness. Her head tilts to the right, and she clings to a peach-colored blanket that envelops her narrow frame. The blanket billows (against the wind? the water?) and ribbons trail beneath her. Scholars attribute the painting to Fei Danxu (1802-1850); but while questions remain as to the “authorship” of the picture, no one can dispute the haunting quality of its subject, the ambiguous fate of a young woman, fluttering and isolated in a background of white.

The exhibits “Fragrance of the Past” and “The Orchid Pavilion Gathering” are on display from Jan. 14 to April 2 at the Seattle Asian Art Museum, 1400 E. Prospect St., in Seattle’s Volunteer Park. For more information, visit www.seattleartmuseum.org.  

N.P. Thompson can be reached at scpnwan@nwlink.com.

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