ORIENTAL ART

Evening Star, Issue 19660, 13 September 1927, Page 3

ORIENTAL ART

KEEN AMERICA!! INTEREST Recent visitors to America from Asia and Europe have marvelled at the truly impressive collections which America, the new country, has already" formed of the art manifestations of, the Far East. No two races could be further removed from one another in habits of thought, it would seem, than the Chinese and the Americans." Why is it that the art of the one has made such an appeal to the other? (asks C, F. Kelley, in the ‘ Christian Science Monitor ’). Keen students from Japan, whose archaeological studies are setting a new pace, curators from European museums, globe trotters*, and writers on ‘‘ art subjects ” are amazed to find in several large American museums collections ot whose extent and quality they bad, no adequate idea. They all say: Why don’t you publish these things? They are necessary for the work of students in other countries. Only the' Americans can afford to travel. They should make their collections available to those who must stay at "home.” After due discount is in ado lor professional courtesy, it really is remarkable how many of the finest Oriental things have come to America within the last decade, and it is grsSkymg to know that most of them are to be seen in the great museums which are open to the public. In Europe the best Oriental things are found in the homes of the private collectors, although their generosity in showing their collections to those who are seriously interested is one of the things which makes the European trips of our. curators truly memorable events. .

Some of the earliest Chinese acquisitions were brought back to Salem by the Yankee skippers in their clipper ships, and, while many of these still repose in the homes of Salem, others are in the Essex Institute and the Peabody Museum. The Boston Museum of Fine Arts collection, in many ways the best in the world, owes its beginning to Ernest Fenollosa of Salem, who went to Japan as a professor of philosophy, and had come under the influence of Charles Eliot Norton at Harvard. Ho found many Chinese masterpieces in the Japanese collections. The metropolitan collection in New York is lareej; the resuit of the labors of S. C. Bosch Reitz, the genial Dutch curator, who recently resigned after twelve years of faithful service. The Freer Gallery at Washington is the outcome of years of passionate collecting by a whimsical and headstrong man, whose genuine love of the beautiful was often handicapped by too great confidence in a comparatively unknown field. , The Chicago collections in the Art Institute, for the most part the memorial gift of a woman who is keenly sensitive to Oriental ideas of beauty, are supplemented by the very discriminating loans of . two of the trustees, while the collections of the . Field Museum formed by that ardent sinologue, Dr Berthold Laufcr, though chiefly formed for ethnological purposes, yet contain much of true artistic interest.

There has been for some time in AVnerica a generous willingness on the part of private collectors to donate objects of supremo value to museums, and the .museums, realising this happy tendency, have naturally done what they could to help and encourage the private collector. While there arc not in America private collections to compare with the Stoelct collection ill _Brussels or the Eumorfoponlos collection in London, there are many collectors'who have smaller collections of objects of equal merit, and the American museums are far better off as a ( whole than the museums of Europe through the gifts of public-spirited . citizens. This discriminating collecting cannot be an affectation, nor can it be due solely to the advice of dealers who cannot, of course, argue from entirely disinterested standpoints. I believe that it is due to the keen desire for perfection which has permeated all the art of China, and has been sufficiently realised to become apparent to the thoughtful observer of another race and period of time. Due to economic causes, perhaps. China has never had what we call social consciousness, and for that reason has never had an idea of art lor the masses. Neither did the Medici, for that matter, I suppose. The Chinese artist prided himself upon being a “superior man,” a, person extremely sensitive to the spiritual values of things, and he desired hi.s_ work to appeal only to the “superior man.” The adulation of the masses meant nothing to him. Ho assumed always that he was painting for a kindred nature, and had no desire to mystify. Ho knew that his critics, although not necessarily painters, would always be masters of the brush-drawn lino, and realised that the craftsmanship of brush technique was absolutely essential. Most of us do not know how to road or write Chinese characters, and much of their beauty of execution is lost to us, but wc cannot help perceiving, albeit somewhat blindly, that there is an immense reserve of conscious_ power, the knowledge that the technique of expression will always respond to the exigencies of creation.

The Chinese, painters par ox -ollcnce, make their highest appeal to us in painting, but there arc very f>?a Chinese paintings of first cpiality m America outside of tho collections ot the Boston Museum and the Freer Gallery. Only the occasional woik of sculpture reaches the heights ol greaart.'and yet some of the finest mores are in American collections. Hi one of the lesser arts tho Chinese arc nrobably supreme. Never have they been surpassed in the, manufacture yf prttery and porcelain, and splendid examples of these crafts arc in many ol our American museums.

Although the brnshwoi'k • decoration (when it exists) is necessarily the work of minor artists, there is often in the profiling of a par or vase a sweep ol lino, a surety of movement, a perfection of execution, never surpassed even in the curve of the echinus of a. Parthenon capital. Although the lesser art creations of China are trivia! and often tardy, there is a sobriety of purpose, a dignity of conception, and a passion for beauty that ennoble the better work in all branches of artistic endeavor. One of the reasons that we arc able to appreciate and understand to some extent (he art of China is that it is never imitative. _Occidentals are learning that the best art of all ages lias never been purely imitative—the Chinese have never had to learn this. They seem instinctively to have realised from the first that art is an abstraction, hut an abstraction based solidly upon a knowledge of facts. A Chinese painting of a rocky hillside tells ns as much of its lasting verities as could a text book on geology, but it does not give us a photograph of a hill. Abstractions. of course, give rise to conventions of expression, and if we are impatient with them and give them no more than a careless glance Chinese art will say nothin" to us—we will think it curious or bizarre. If there is in our natures, however, anything akin to the Chinese thirst for perfection, a thoughtful study of Chinese art will satisfy us. For this reason it is gratifying to find that in hurrying America, too easily called materialistic, there is a widespread appreciation of one of the subtlest manifestations of the art impulse. ■ '