Noble Change: Tantric Art of the High Himalaya

Saturday, March 31, 2012 - Sunday, February 10, 2013

This exhibition of sculptures and textiles is the first presentation drawn from a collection of tantric art recently acquired by Trammell S. Crow. It inaugurates a series of presentations and programs that will unfold over the coming years, exploring the rich tradition of tantric art made in the Himalayan regions to serve the practices that developed there as Vajrayana Buddhism (in Sanskrit Vajra means “indestructible” and yana means “vehicle” or “path”).

The time is ripe. We are two centuries removed from the early Western fascination with or total rejection of tantra as titillating erotica or stultifying ritual, and more than fifty years removed from the crescendo of the hippie exploitation of tantra to pursue sexual pleasure and free-wheeling states of consciousness, like those offered by mind-altering drugs. In our time, we have a highly visible example of Vajrayana Buddhism in action in Tibet’s spiritual leader, the Dalai Lama, who is accomplished in the most advanced and subtle practices of tantric Buddhism. Followers consider him to be warm, precise, unshakable, generous, courageous, and firmly grounded in reality—its suffering and its nobility. He offers an invitation to come down to earth.

Tantric practices were first designated as distinct from those of other paths by extensive use of mantra. Vajrayana was sometimes labeled Mantrayana. Mantra (Sanskrit for “protection”) is the repeated vocalization of designated sounds in order to protect the mind from its ordinary ego-serving pathways and dedicate awareness to its original nature.

Tantric practices, unlike other Buddhist vehicles, explicitly use the body as the path. Visualization makes use of the power of sight to bring the outside in and the inside out, to dissolve the boundary of our body. Breath control, gestures (mudras), and positions of the body (yogic asanas) are tools to stimulate and direct the flow of energy, along with extensive ritual performances ordering and purifying space and summoning and dispelling energies. On images such as those seen here, as well as in paintings, drawings, and ritual tools, instructions for practice are mapped by a holder of knowledge. Each part of the image is a reminder of practice; art and ritual are memory palaces of teachings.

The effects of these practices are currently of great interest to neuroscientists who are investigating how we make our conscious world. Tantric practice observably changes patterns and places of activity in our brain, laying down new neural networks and reviving discarded pathways.  They work with organs and channels in the body that control temperature, mood, circulation, growth, decay, and energy—all of great interest to modern science.  And to those who realize the fruits of these practices, they expose a plenum of what is, free from delusions of ego-bound strivings, devoid of binding categories of self-reinforcing thought—vivid beyond our dreams and infinite in compassionate possibilities. This reality is held to be already here, inherent in all existence—its Buddha-nature—and available if we awaken to it. 

The art you will see in this exhibition was made to support Tantric practice. It is not art made for art’s sake. Nor are the figures representations of deities with any independent existence. They are empty forms. Some are peaceful, some semi-ferocious, and some fierce. All are compassionate. 

Qualities of Jade

Tuesday, November 22, 2011 - Sunday, January 06, 2013

Jade is more than a stone; it is an ideal.  Some 2,500 years ago, Confucius (Kong Qiu or Kongzi, 551-479 B.C.) provided a list of likenesses between particular sensual qualities of carved jades such as luster, surface angularity, and veining patterns and qualities of perfected human character such as benevolence, loyalty, and virtue.  Confucius elaborated his meaning in a passage from the Book of Rites:

Anciently, superior men found the likeness of all excellent qualities in jade.
Soft smooth and glossy, it appeared to them like benevolence.
Fine, compact, and strong—like intelligence.
Angular, but not sharp and cutting—like righteousness.
Hanging down (in beads) as if it would fall to the ground like (the humility of) propriety.
When struck, yielding a note, clear and prolonged, yet terminating abruptly—like music. 
Its flaws not concealing its beauty, nor its beauty concealing its flaws—like loyalty.
With an internal radiance issuing from it on every side—like good faith.
Bright as a brilliant rainbow—like heaven.
Exquisite and mysterious, appearing in the hills and streams—like the earth.
Standing out conspicuous in the symbols of rank—like virtue.
Esteemed by all under the sky—like the path of truth and duty. 

Fabled Journeys in Asian Art: East Asia

Saturday, July 16, 2011 - Sunday, August 05, 2012

This summer, the exhibition Fabled Journeys in Asian Art will expand to include East Asia. Viewed as a companion exhibition to Fabled Journeys in Asian Art: South and Southeast Asia, which opened in January 2011 in Gallery 3, the East Asian complement draws on works of art from the Crow Collection with distinctive literary and cultural terrain.

The first section of the East Asian portion of the exhibition presents selected paintings, carved jades, and porcelain sculpture inspired by Taoism, which developed in China. Another focus of the exhibition is journeys figured in images of women—with their own expressed balances of yin and yang. The third section of the exhibition features large ceramic horses and camels made for journeys into the afterlife in burial tombs. They are emblems of China’s “this-worldly” expansion into Central and western Asia during the Han and Tang dynasties along roads that came to be known as “the Silk Route.”
 
Looking farther east, the last section of the exhibition is an array of objects touching on the transmission of Buddhism to Japan, the transportation and exploitation of ivory for finely carved objects, and the search in Japanese ports by Western traders for porcelains that delivered the qualities of form, color, and translucency prized in Asian ceramics, ivories, and jades.
 
A journey is a compelling metaphor that has perhaps lost some of its caché in our time of high-speed travel and instant communication; however, whether swift or slow; internal or external; linear, ambling, or circular, a journey is a dynamic undertaking that addresses change, among the most persistent and puzzling qualities of our experience of ourselves and the world.

Fabled Journeys in Asian Art: South and Southeast Asia

Saturday, January 01, 2011 - Sunday, July 29, 2012

This winter, the museum offers up Fabled Journeys in Asian Art, drawn from the Crow Collection.  In works of art from all around Asia--paintings, fans, sculpture, carvings for the hand, furniture for the desk--rocks, jades, crystals, and corals-- journeys of many kinds are traced.  Wide rivers are crossed on a reed, deep caves explored in the whitest jade; cities visited under golden clouds.  Love is found on a mountaintop, babies are borne aloft in baskets, avatars descend to combat unrighteousness, pilgrims abandon home for a blessing, minds turn within to combat error. Journeys, it is acknowledged, bring change; follow some well-worn paths in fabled journeys from the cultures of Asia, and pave a road of your own.