The Clark Gets the Bronze
But if you really want one that looks like an antique for small cost then call us and we can custom make any design you like from histories antiquities.
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Aug. 11, 2014 4:55 p.m. ET
Williamstown, Mass.
When
the Clark Art Institute showcased ancient Chinese artifacts and
sculptures in 2012, it brought attention to a little-known facet of its
founder: About a decade before he and wife, Francine, began collecting
European and American art, Sterling Clark trekked through northwest
China at the head of a scientific expedition. Last year, a selection of
the institute's Impressionist paintings went on view at the Shanghai
Museum. Now, more than 30 works from Shanghai's prized collection have
come to the Clark in "Cast for Eternity: Ancient Ritual Bronzes From the
Shanghai Museum."
The oldest is a simple 18th-16th century B.C. three-legged pot—a ding—used
to heat food over a fire, its only decoration a band of threadlike
circles and lines. By contrast, the most recent, a
second-to-first-century B.C. cylindrical container for cowrie shells
used as currency, features three-dimensional sculptures: Two tigers
slink up its sides toward yaks crowding atop the lid. Six of them circle
a central platform where a seventh beast looks out, neck outstretched,
horns tilted back. It takes little imagination to hear his bellow.
As
visitors step into the recently opened Tadao Ando building, "Cast for
Eternity" is the first exhibit they encounter. It is as though the
museum is announcing that, in enlarging its footprint, it has also
permanently expanded its horizons to include China. Indeed, according to
the show's lead curator, associate director Thomas J. Loughman, this is
the first of multiple collaborations with the Shanghai Museum.
All save the cowrie-shell container
played a role in ceremonial banquets held to honor ancestors. The set of
nine bells hanging at the back of the gallery and the nearby drum base
in the shape of three coiled snakes provided music, while the 29 vessels
that make up the bulk of the show variously held wine, food or water.
While not comprehensive, the show's selection manages to be wonderfully
representative. The plethora of shapes immediately stands out, from
variations on rounded pots and vases to an elongated flaring beaker (a gu), a houselike container for wine (fangyi) and a squared-off oval food dish (xu)
with legs in the shape of big-headed humans. Like a number of other
pieces, this xu has an ornamented lid that, when removed and upturned,
becomes a footed dish.
As clever and
elegant as these and other forms are, it is the vessels' surface
decoration that proves most intriguing. This is where Chinese artisans
excelled, achieving exquisite detail thanks to a multistep process that
involved creating molds in sections before assembling them. If you look
closely at some of the older pieces, you can see a vertical ridge where
the molds met and some of the molten metal pushed through. As artists
perfected the technique over the centuries, they produced vessels in
which you can't detect the seam and other works where they ingeniously
incorporated it into the design. In a 15th-to-13th-century B.C. vessel
with lobed feet, the raised seams form the noses of taotie, a popular animal-mask motif usually recognizable by its protruding eyes and stylized body.
By
displaying the works pretty much chronologically, Mr. Loughman moves us
from the modest 18th-16th-century B.C. ding through some of the complex
and layered decorative schemes on large vessels from the Shang dynasty
(c.1600 B.C. to 1046 B.C.), then into the somewhat lighter, highly
stylized designs of the Western Zhou (c.1046 to 771 B.C.) to finish with
the more luxurious ornamentation and inlay work that characterize the
Eastern Zhou (c.770 B.C. to 256 B.C.).
Among
the highlights are a late Shang wine vessel with several kinds of
surface decoration, including thin relief lines, sculptural buffalo
heads and abstracted taotie that seem to vibrate with repeating swirls
and spirals; a 10th-to-ninth-century B.C. ling, a large and
rare type of lidded wine jug with a striking feather- or scalelike
pattern; and a fifth-to-fourth-century B.C. vessel with lively scenes
from everyday life—men hunting long-necked birds with bows and arrows,
women picking mulberry leaves, musicians playing bells. These
silhouetted figures are a dramatic departure from the abstracted designs
of earlier periods. Cut into the metal and filled with copper, they
resemble in style artworks from the northern steppes. (It is easier to
pick them out with the help of the show's mobile app, which visitors can
either download or access via one of the museum's iPads.)
Historians
point to China's bronze age as laying the groundwork for many aspects
of the Chinese social order and ritual life. But what also makes these
works particularly relevant to art lovers is that, centuries later,
scholar artists from the Song dynasty (960-1279) onward collected them,
thereby reintroducing them into the flow of Chinese art history as
prized works and sources of inspiration. The masterly examples on view
at the Clark make it easy to see why.
