0 Chinese Art in Kansas City

A new exhibit of centuries-old paintings stored in Kansas City, Missouri and Lawrence, Kansas are now on display at the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art in Kansas City.

From The Kansas City Star:

 

The most enchanting show of the summer is tucked away in the Chinese paintings gallery at the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art. 

“Faces From China’s Past” is a walk-in album of charming portraits from the 16th to the 19th centuries. 

Their subjects — imposing matrons and fetching young women, stately ancestors and learned men — seem remote from us in customs and dress, yet seeing them enjoy their pets and favorite pastimes in lovely gardens and elegant interiors, one immediately feels a sense of kinship. 

And there’s just enough of a “boy meets girl” theme to keep things interesting. 

That notion gets quite an airing in a series of exquisite illustrations for an erotic novel, “The Plum in the Golden Vase,” chronicling the amorous adventures of a rich merchant, Master Ximen. He’s a randy and at times cruel character, not above climbing a garden wall to have a tryst with his brother’s wife or punishing a wayward concubine with a whip. 

Nearby, “Listening to the Qin by Candlelight,” a 17th-century piece showing a man playing the ancient stringed instrument for a female companion, presents a much more civilized approach to romance. 

Drawn from the collections of the Nelson and the Spencer Museum of Art in Lawrence, the artworks in this show were made for enjoyment and commemoration by mostly unknown artists. And many of the works have languished in storage for years. 

“Scholars weren’t interested in this type of painting; it’s not what Chinese consider mainstream,” said Colin Mackenzie, the Nelson’s senior curator of Chinese painting. The mainstream is landscape painting, he said, “created by the educated elite to express a philosophical view of art.” 

 

Read On  

The Nelson-Atkins Museum has one of the finest collections of Chinese art in the world. Here is a summary of the Nelson-Atkins' permanent Chinese collection:

Since it opened in 1933, The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art has actively collected, preserved, studied and exhibited works of Chinese art. Even before the Museum was built, its benefactors planned to include in it the first major gallery in America devoted solely to Chinese art. As early as 1930, the focus was to build a collection that would represent China’s highest achievements in every medium and from every historical period. As a result, the Chinese collection is one of the finest in the world. 

With more than 7,500 works of high quality, the Chinese collection comprises masterpieces from every historical stage and in every medium of China’s artistic activity – from Neolithic times to the 20th century. 

The collection of Chinese paintings is one of the best outside Asia particularly in the rarest and desirable period of early Chinese landscapes, the 10th through 13th centuries C.E. The richness of nature’s nuances can be seen in Xu Daoning’s Fisherman’s Evening Song, arguably the greatest surviving Northern Song landscape handscroll. Later period works include exceptional Ming and Qing paintings, such as Shitao’s A Landscape Album for Liu Shitou (K'u-kua miao-t'i). 

As a pioneer in collecting Ming furniture, the Museum’s collection is virtually unrivaled outside of China. The comprehensive ceramics collection spans 5,000 years and includes both sculptures and wares that chronicle the great epochs of Chinese ceramic innovations. 

Buddhist sculpture and wall paintings range from the Northern Dynasties to the Qing period and offer some of the best examples of Buddhist art in the west. A jewel of the Museum is the Chinese Temple Gallery (Gallery 230). Among Buddhist statues exhibited here is an 11th/12th-century C.E. polychrome wooden Avalokiteshvara, Seated Guanyin Bodhisattva, internationally heralded as the finest sculpture of its kind outside China.

Qian and I have been to the Nelson, which has free admission, several times in the three years we've been in Kansas City. The whole museum, on top of the Chinese collection, is just an awesome display.


The Nelson-Atkins Museum

The Chinese works of art are far superior to anything I ever saw in China. I haven't spent a lifetime checking out other cities' museums' Chinese collections, but I have to believe that the Nelson's is up there with any collection in the world.

If you ever find yourself in Kansas City, be sure to check out the Nelson-Atkins Museum's Chinese collection. Send me an email and I'll go with you. We can catch some BBQ after we see the museum too. Kansas City's BBQ, my favorites being Oklahoma Joe's and Jack Stack, is as good as it gets.

Detail: Chinese Art in Kansas City

0 More on Chinese Art in Kansas City

Frequent commenter on this blog and blogger himself, Ramesh, in the last post I made on the Nelson-Atkins Museum's Journey Through Mountains and Rivers asked me, "Why Kansas City? Why does Kansas City have such a great Chinese art collection?"

My generic response was that Kansas City is a great arts town. With the Nelson-Atkins Museum, the Kauffman Center for the Performing Arts, and the Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art (among others), it's safe to say that Kansas City is punching above its weight in terms of world-class art per capita.

That's not the entire story, though. Earlier this week, I was looking up some information on the scrolls currently being displayed at the Nelson and came across, what I think, are more specific answers to Ramesh's questions.

I'm going to post an entire article from the site viamei.com. I normally wouldn't post the entirety of an article like this, but ViaMei - a website highlighting the Xi'an/Kansas City sister-city relationship - appears to be a defunct enterprise. Their last post was in 2007.

Here is an article giving a nice introduction to how and why Kansas City is home to one of the very top collections of ancient Chinese art in the world:

Ancient China Lives in America 

By Scott Stuart 

 

Kansas City is the gateway to Asia.

From where Asian art expert Marc F. Wilson sits in his position as Director and CEO of The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, this is not an audacious claim. Though situated in the center of the continent, Kansas City's Nelson-Atkins connects visitors with a comprehensive collection of treasures from China's long, unbroken artistic tradition spanning from Neolithic times to the 20th century.

Masterpieces among the museum's amazing collection of 7,500 works of Chinese art include:

- A polychrome wooden Avalokiteshvara, "Seated Guanyin Bodhisattva," possibly the best-preserved and most magnificent sculpture from this period of Chinese Buddhist art:

 

- A limestone frieze from the Longmen Grottoes, "Procession of the Empress as Donor with Her Court," whose counterpoint "Emperor as Donor" resides at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York:

 

- A painting from circa 1049, Xu Daoning's "Fisherman's Evening Song," scholars hail as perhaps the greatest Northern Song landscape handscroll in existence:

 

- A rare, nearly complete earthenware "Tomb Model of a House" from the Han dynasty (25 to 220 C.E.):

 

- A precious ritual disk, or bi, some consider the most beautiful piece of jade to have come out of China:

 

Scholarly superlatives aside, what can visitors to the Nelson-Atkins glean from their individual encounters with these rare masterpieces and how did this amazing collection of 7,500 works of Chinese art in every medium and from every historical period, including tomb figures, sculpture, porcelain, furniture and scroll paintings, come to the American Midwest in the first place?

The short answer to this last question lies in the person of Laurence Sickman (1906-1988), the Asian art specialist who advised the Nelson-Atkins on purchases of Far Eastern art when the museum's collection was being assembled in the 1930s. Acting as the museum's agent in Beijing, a young Sickman exercised a keen eye and a shrewd business sense to send Chinese art works to Kansas City. Sickman went on to become the first curator of Oriental art at the Nelson-Atkins, and led the museum as its second director, from 1953 to 1977. His book with Alexander Soper, The Art and Architecture of China, first printed in 1956, remains a classic work on the history of Chinese culture.

Sickman's legacy of collecting Chinese art of the highest quality is unmistakable in the Nelson-Atkins' holdings in two areas in which he specialized: ancient bronzes and Chinese paintings. A series of ceremonial bronze vessels, weapons and chariot fittings range from about 1200 to 500 B.C.E. The museum's collection of Chinese paintings is among the best outside of Asia, including Ming dynasty masterpieces by Shen Zhou, Wen Zhengming and Lu Zhi.

Although the entire collection of fine Chinese art cannot be on view at any one time, a handful of star works representing the highest achievements can convey the creative impulse, cultural context and visual solutions across the ages.

Seated majestically in a reconstructed Chinese temple in the Nelson-Atkins, "Seated Guanyin Bodhisattva," is the destination for pilgrims from around the world. This monumental image of the deity of compassion and mercy appeals to those within its gaze today, just as it would have in the 11th to early 12th centuries. Designed to make supplicants feel enlightened, beings were accessible to the living, the Guanyin's emotional approachability offers a sense of calm and inspiration.

"Procession of the Empress as Donor with Her Court" is from the Binyang Cave chapel at Longmen, Henan Province. Besides being important as a work of sculpture, the large, 7-by-9-foot limestone frieze reveals clues about Chinese painting techniques in this early period of Chinese Buddhist history. The composition of the eight figures and the modeling that provides maximum effect from light filtering in from the cave entrance demonstrates the great skill of the unknown sculptor. Its Kansas City installation, anchoring the museum's gallery of Early Chinese Buddhist sculpture, attempts to recreate this sense of directional light.

The handscroll format of "Fisherman's Evening Song" allows a close-up encounter with the viewer. Although nearly 7 feet long, the landscape scroll was meant to be seen only about 2 feet at a time. By focusing on a single section, the viewer can appreciate painter Xu Daoning's virtuosity with ink washes and directness of line. Taken as a whole, the 11th-century painting has been likened to a musical composition, with calm passages swelling to dramatic crescendos, expressing the overwhelming vastness of nature.

The jade "Ritual Disc with Dragon Motif" is among the best-known objects in the collections of the Nelson-Atkins. Although its exact function or meaning is lost to the ages, the delicate, 6 ?-inch bi is remarkable from a technical standpoint. Jade, which the ancient Chinese valued more than gold or jewels, is so hard that it must be ground instead of carved. The space between two rings of nearly transparent jade is filled with small, spiral bumps the size of kernels of grain. Two tigers on the outer rim befit this object's likely role in the grave of a great prince or statesman.

Besides promising a rewarding experience of visual enjoyment, the Chinese collection in The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art invites a better understanding of human nature and the creative impulse to Western and non-Western visitor alike. Via the Nelson-Atkins -- in the words of Wilson, who began his career there as a Ford Foundation Fellow under the tutelage of Sickman -- Kansas City is the gateway to Asia.

There's still a lot I don't know or understand about the Nelson's collection of Chinese art and Kansas City's relationship with China in general. Seeing that I'm a China news/history/culture junkie living in the middle of America, these topics are something I'll probably be exploring more in depth as time passes.

I was born and raised in Kansas City. It's also where Qian and I have ended up after moving from Xi'an to the US in 2009. Kansas City isn't the most amazing place on Earth, but it's a surprisingly interesting place in a lot of respects and I'm proud of where I grew up and currently live. I'm excited to learn more about its relationship with my other favorite place on the globe - China.

I'll surely be posting whatever more I find on these topics here.

Detail: More on Chinese Art in Kansas City