Tomb It May Concern

To find out about life in China 1,500 years ago, you’ve got to go beyond idealized landscapes and decorative ceramics. In fact, you’ve got to go beyond the grave--and into the tomb.

Ancient Chinese burial chambers were repositories not only for the deceased’s remains, but also for sculpture created to accompany them in the tomb and to serve them in the afterlife.

“Tomb sculpture was created by anonymous craftsmen working from real-life models, people’s animals, existing architecture,” says Janet Baker, curator of “Seeking Immortality: Chinese Tomb Sculpture From the Schloss Collection,” opening Sunday at Bowers Museum of Cultural Art.

Those craftsmen “made realistic renderings of what things really looked like in China more than a millennium ago,” Baker said. “There are no other art forms from that period that do that, very few images of any kind that survive. There are religious icons, but they don’t tell us about the people, what they look like, how they approach everyday life.”

Baker first mounted a show based on the clay funerary sculptures known as mingqi (pronounced ming-chee) three years ago. (“Appeasing the Spirits: Sui and Early Tang Tomb Sculpture From the Schloss Collection” ran at two New York venues--Hofstra University in Hempstead, Long Island, and at the State University of New York, New Paltz.)

The new exhibition is on a much larger scale, consisting of more than 200 pieces dating from the 3rd century BC to the 8th century--from the Han through the Tang dynasties--and representing the bulk of the New York-based Schloss Collection, widely considered the finest such collection in the United States. Baker has compiled a show catalog with detailed text.

Ezekiel Schloss was among the first collectors of the ceramic figures, which replicate humans, animals and everyday objects that might have been used by the deceased; he published the first major study of the items--a highly detailed two-volume work weighing in at 14 pounds--almost 20 years ago, and was considered the foremost expert in the field before his death in 1987.

Although a political cartoonist for the New York Times, New Republic and France-Amerique, and art director and later editor of a magazine for Jewish children, World Over, Schloss was never wealthy. He began his love affair with mingqi in 1958, building his collection solely by buying and trading with the art dealers, and even the thrift shops, of New York City.

According to Lillian Schloss--whom Baker met the year Ezekial died and who continues to expand the collection--Americans at that time didn’t appreciate tomb art, and because of the stigma attached to tomb art, the Chinese didn’t want it. Amazingly, the Schlosses never visited China; in fact, they never left New York in pursuit of their passion for mingqi.

“Seeking Immortality” is the first Bowers-curated exhibition since the facility’s reopening in 1992 that will travel to other museums. After the show’s local run, which ends March 16, it visits Taft Museum in Cincinnati (Sept. 11-Nov. 9, 1997) and the University of Tennessee’s Frank H. McClung Museum in Knoxville (Dec. 6, 1997-March 31, 1998).

Baker believes the exhibition will hold wide academic appeal.

“This show crosses lines,” she said. “Anthropologists and historians can see graphic illustrations of what the military did in the 3rd century, what kind of armor they wore in battle, what kind of horses they were breeding. . . . The female figures alone show great variety in terms of costumes, physical types, ideals of beauty, vogues of hairstyle and makeup, the activities the women engaged in.”

The sculptures are not arranged chronologically but, rather, in categories ranging from “Social and Cultural Life” to “Mythical and Supernatural Beings.” The former category includes a trio of seated female musicians, a favorite of Baker’s.

In the latter are fantastic imaginary beasts that served as tomb guardians; Fuxi and Nuwa, intertwined male and female deities; and rare pieces such as a human-faced fish, the precise significance of which is unknown.

Agricultural objects include a sculpture of a pen with goats being fed and an ingenious pigpen with privy, a perpetual recycling plan that makes contemporary efforts (and anybody who gives this some thought) simply pale.

Earlier pieces in the collection tend to be clean and unadorned, more recent items more flamboyant, almost garish. “Three-colored” glazes--brilliant green, yellow and golden brown--were deliberately designed to have an uncontrolled, splashed effect.

If some objects seem half-glazed, that effect was not deliberate.

“Originally, part of the sculpture was glazed, then some areas were painted in, particularly facial details and patterns and prints on costumes,” Baker explained. “Over time painted details wore away. The glazes, being permanently fired, lasted fairly well through the centuries, while the paint flaked off very readily. It only looks as if part of it were glazed.”

Chinese tomb sculpture from the 3rd century BC to the 8th century may sound esoteric, but Baker believes that those who see the show will find quite the opposite true and that the “Seeking Immortality” exhibition will be one of the museum’s most accessible yet for the public at large.

“Many [Chinese] art forms are difficult to appreciate by people who are not deeply knowledgeable about Chinese culture,” she said. “Chinese bronze vessels, for instance, take in-depth study for people to be able to understand and appreciate their significance.

“One of the characteristic factors of tomb sculpture is that it depicts recognizable things, things we can relate to very directly in our own lives.” It’s immediately apparent “how much people in another culture, another millennium, can have the same interests and goals and aspirations that we have,” she said.

“They filled their lives with fast vehicles, beautiful entertainers, stylish outfits, lavish houses,” she said. “You don’t have to flip through Orange Coast Magazine to see that our ideas of life and comfort haven’t changed that much from one culture to another, one time period to another.”

* “Seeking Immortality: Chinese Tomb Sculpture From the Schloss Collection” opens Sunday at the Bowers Museum of Cultural Art, 2002 N. Main St., Santa Ana. Museum hours: Tuesday through Sunday, 10 a.m.-4 p.m.; Thursday, 10 a.m.-9 p.m. Adults $6, seniors and students $4, children 5-12 $2, under 5 free. Through March 16. (714) 567-3600.