Old & New Asia

Two of the year's finest exhibits of Asian art crossed paths in Washington last week. Together, they made a striking contrast of old & new:

P: For art lovers interested in classic rarities, the National Gallery's show of Japanese art was the one to see. The Japanese government itself sponsored the exhibition, selected 91 of Japan's most cherished paintings and sculptures from the 6th century to the 19th. They were all masterpieces, all precisely naturalistic and all as traditional as tea. On opening day, 25,000 people crushed into the National Gallery to see a regal, 8th century statue of the Buddhist saint Shuho-o, paintings of black-faced thunder gods, delicately colored trees, birds and flowers. A popular favorite: a dryly humorous Scroll of Animals (1100 A.D.) which shows monkeys, rabbits, and frogs playing like merry children. Next stages on the show's tour after a month in Washington: Manhattan, Seattle, Chicago, Boston.

P: For gallerygoers interested in contemporary art, the exhibit to see was the show from modern India at the Smithsonian. The catalogue lists nothing earlier than 1900, warns that "those who expect to meet only a pleasant exoticism are bound to be disappointed." To show how India's artists are breaking away from mannered tradition, Calcutta's Academy of Fine Arts and the All India Association of Fine Arts assembled some 300 objects from ivory elephants to embroidered shawls, and a full gallery of 172 contemporary paintings. In subject, the canvases range from old Hindu rituals to present-day Indian life, but in style they are uniformly modern. The artists show lithe water carriers posed like ballerinas, gay washerwomen and prancing bullocks, frenzied harvest dancers, impressionist landscapes, expressionistic fantasies and, here & there, even a nude. The net result is a bit as if India's artists had listened carefully to lectures from Picasso, Matisse & Co., then gone to work on Eastern subjects with Western ideas. Winter Park, Fla. will see the show next week. Thereafter, it is expected to travel to Chicago, San Francisco and Kansas City.

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