: The International Asian Art Fair, which returned to New York
March 26-31 as the cornerstone of the Asia Week shows and sales,
is perhaps the most stimulating of all the engrossing expos that
each year convene at the Seventh Regiment Armory. It is certainly
the most elegant.
Organized by Brian and Anna Haughton of London, the coolly
meditative sequence of 55 exhibits is dedicated to universal
excellence and unburdened by datelines. The March 25 preview,
which drew 1,000 and raised $500,000 for Asia Society, attracts
the most international of art-loving crowds, judging by the
well-traveled notables - among them chairmen Marie-Chantal and
Robert Miller, Lady Lynn and Sir Evelyn de Rothschild, and
Richard Holbrooke and Kati Marton - who mingled on opening night.
The peacock finery of the revelers - many of whom arrive wearing
kimonos, saris or Japanese designer clothing - suggests a return
of Whistlerian aestheticism, which mysticized the East in a
thoroughly Western quest for beauty. But while Neo-Aestheticism
is certainly afoot, the International Asian Art Fair is also a
geopolitical comment on shifting powers and increasingly porous
cultural borders. The joy and wonder of the International Asian
Art Fair is its complexity and dynamism.
The East-West cultural exchange that began with the Silk Route
and continued for centuries during the Age of Exploration thrives
today, as international dealers and collectors push forward new,
previously unrecognized talent. A fascinating example of artistic
exchange could be found at Jonathan Tucker/Antonia Tozer.
Specialists in Chinese, Indian and Southeast Asian works of art,
especially sculpture, the London dealers paired two Gandharan
terra-cotta heads dating to the Fourth or Fifth Century. The
first head was a classically Eastern portrait of a Bodhisattva;
the second, a classically Western depiction of Zeus or Atlas.
Another intriguing hybrid could be found in two Nineteenth
Century scroll paintings at A&J Speelman, Ltd, of London. By
a Chinese hand, the framed views on silk are a study in
Occidentalism (the opposite of now-discredited Orientalism),
showing exotic looking Caucasians in imaginary European settings.
A dialogue between old and new rather than East and West,
Lawrence of Beijing brings the metaphor up to date, each year
exhibiting oil on canvas paintings by the contemporary Chinese
artist Wei Rong. Rong's views typically place men and women in
colorful, contemporary garb in sepia-tone settings redolent of
Old China,
The contemporary scene at the International Asian Art Fair is one
of the show's most lively features. In addition to Lawrence of
Beijing, there are other dealers in contemporary Chinese
painting: Plum Blossoms; M. Sutherland, a New York dealer who
offered four 1997 watercolor and ink views of "Yellow Mountain"
in different seasons, $15,000; China 2000, which parted with its
most important work, "Red Hill Overshadowed by Snow," $150,000,
by Chang Dai-chien (1899-1983); and Goedhuis Contemporary, which
sold two oil on canvas paintings by Cai Jin.
Still other Chinese art specialists combine old and new. Andy Hei
Ltd of Hong Kong sold several pieces of Ming furniture, which he
showed with contemporary watercolors by Robert Powell, an
architect and painter who visited Chengkan village in 2002 to
study historic structures at the behest of China Heritage Fund, a
group organized by antiquarian Robert Ellsworth to preserve
China's historic architecture.
Jacqueline Simcox, Ltd., London.
Exhibitors have even taken to mounting demonstrations by
living artists and hosting receptions for them at the fair. Tai
Gallery/Textile Arts of Santa Fe, N.M., took two booths this year,
one devoted to their traditional inventory, the other the site of a
demonstrations by contemporary Japanese bamboo artists Honma
Kideaki and Kawano Shoko.
"We've sold over 50 pieces of ceramics dating from the 1930s to
the 2004, beginning with the founder of the contemporary Japanese
ceramic movement, Shoji Hamada," said Joan Mirviss, who devoted a
third of her tripartite display to recent work by the
internationally celebrated Kyoto ceramist Morino Hiroaki Taimei,
whose pieces are represented in 30 museum collections around the
world. "We had a reception for the Brooklyn Museum and another
dinner honoring curators who've already acquired his pieces,"
said the Manhattan dealer, who was virtually out of inventory by
the show's end.
Perhaps because the so-called applied arts have never been
secondary to painting in Japan, the country is a hotbed of
contemporary art in fiber, ceramics and lacquer. First-time
exhibitor Katie Jones of London offered a selection of pieces in
several media dating from the early Twentieth Century to the
present. Melbourne, Australia. dealer Lesley Kehoe has also
forged ahead in the past four years with contemporary Japanese
craft, her stand this year devoted to pieces by ceramist Kitamura
Tatsuo and screenmaker Maio Motoko. Lea Sneider of New York
showed contemporary sculpture by Kyoko Kumai woven of such
unexpected materials as steel, felt and jute, as well as a
selection of contemporary Korean decorative arts.
Plum Blossoms blazed the way for contemporary Chinese ceramics,
so far a rarity at the International Asian Art Fair. The Hong
Kong dealer featured campy, sexualized figures of headless women,
their legs flailing in the air, by Liu Jianhua.
Antique Chinese ceramics were represented by London powerhouse S.
Marchant and Son, whose sales included a blue and white Imperial
beaker, Kangxi period; and a pair of blue and white Imperial
Kangxi palace bowls, similar to a pair in the National Palace
Museum in Taiwan. Uragami Sokyu-Do Company, Ltd, of Tokyo
attracted notice, stacking 19 Han dynasty covered Hill jars,
their carved and glazed surfaces echoing the patina of bronze, in
an eye-catching pyramid.
Fiber arts - ranging from Tibetan thangka paintings on canvas at
Carlo Christi of Milan to Chinese carpets at Sandra Whitman of
San Francisco and Imperial Chinese costume at Linda Wrigglesworth
of London - are another unexpectedly vibrant category.
"This is a fantastically early Zoroastrian fragment dating to the
Third to Fifth Century AD," London dealer Jacqueline Simcox said
of the six-figure remnant that mingled Central Asian and Persian
stylistic influences.
The measure of the International Asian Art Fair is in both its
quality and its depth. Remarkably, both Cora Ginsburg, LLC, of
New York and Francesca Galloway of London offered exceptional and
exceedingly rare embroidered Seventeenth Century spreads.
Ginsburg owner Titi Halle identified her textile, $54,000, as an
Indo Portuguese example from Goa; Galloway's was Sino Portuguese
from Macao.
There were Buddhas and other devotional figures of every size,
age, description and price, beginning with Jan Van Beers'
imposing 643/4-inch Fifteenth Century Ming dynasty figure of dry
lacquer gilt; a large, polychromed carved wood figure of Manjusri
at Speelman; and an arresting Seventeenth Century Japanese carved
and lacquered wood sculpture of Oni Nembatsu at Sydney L. Moss of
London.
Traditional Chinese specialties included Tang pottery figures, a
universal bestseller. Berwald Oriental Art of London wrote up a
391/2-inch pottery horse dating to the Eighth Century. Priestly
& Ferraro of London sold a large camel with two riders.
Partitioned into three chambers, Chinese Porcelain Company's
large stand near the fair's entrance combined ancient and antique
pottery figures with contemporary painting. The New York firm
sold its catalog piece, a delicate pair of Eighteenth Century
Sino Tibetan gilt bronze figures that were only seven inches
tall.
Chinese furniture sold well for Grace Wu Bruce, M.D. Flacks and
Gerald Hawthorne. Bruce, a Hong Kong dealer, parted with a rare
cloud-spandrel pingtouan table of Huanghuali wood and a traveling
book cabinet dating to the late Sixteenth or early Seventeenth
Century with its original hardware, a rarity.
Terence McNally.
After a weak start when the show started a decade ago,
traditional Japanese art has also emerged as a very strong
component. Among the many superb displays was New York dealer
Hiroshi Yanagi's darkened enclosure, a dramatic backdrop for a pair
of six-fold screens decorated with gold leaf and mineral pigments
and a comical pair of carved, Edo period wooden monkeys with glass
eyes.
The show was upbeat for Flying Cranes, New York specialists in
Meiji art. Said Jean Schaeffer, "We brought a wonderful
collection of presentation tsuba that had been tucked away for 40
years. On opening night, a collector sauntered in, stopped,
thought for five minutes, then bought the whole group."
John Eskenazi's sumptuous stand arrayed sculpture from India and
Nepal against the backdrop of Edo Period six-panel screens
whimsically decorated with folded robes hanging on a rack.
Entitled "Whose Sleeves?," the screen's motif has its origin in
the poems of Kokin Wakashu compiled in 905 AD.
Notable sales in the Indian and Southeast Asian category included
a silver liter, made for the Maharajah of Ambikapur, circa 1860,
and used on state occasions. It sold to a Virginia institution
for $120,000. New York dealer Terence McInerney parted with a
collection of powerfully modeled Malabar Coast masks representing
gods and demons.
"Most exhibitors are happy and a few are ecstatic," said Joan
Mirviss, as the fair came to a close for another year on
Wednesday, March 31.
