‘Seeking’ Peeks at Other Worlds

A curator of a historical exhibition inevitably has to make some tough choices. A good show is much like a good speech: It proposes a limited number of ideas in a vivid, authoritative way, rather than trying to blurt out everything there is to know about a subject.

Viewed in that light, Bowers Museum Asian art curator Janet Baker made a well-considered move to group together objects spanning hundreds of years in “Seeking Immortality: Chinese Tomb Sculpture From the Schloss Collection,” at the museum through March 16.

Influenced in turn by Confucianism, Taoism and Buddhism, tomb sculptures were not only a mark of filial devotion but also a way of making sure the deceased’s po (“heavy” soul, in Mandarin)--liable to become a malevolent ghost if it wandered away from the body--remained happily engaged within the tomb. Left there along with food offerings, furnishings and clothing, the clay sculptures represented the possessions and lifestyle of the deceased.

Rather than emphasizing the distinctive style of each historic period represented by these lively clay figures, Baker organizes them by subject (agriculture, society, military and so forth).

There are some problems with this approach. Baker’s categories can seem peculiarly arbitrary, though this is perhaps mainly a fault of their titles. (The unifying element behind “Military, Sports and Transportation” is the role of the horse.)

More important, the casual viewer may fail to fully comprehend the huge sweep of history involved--roughly equivalent in Western terms to the epoch between the carving of the Venus de Milo and the painting of the devotional manuscript pages in the Book of Kells.

Additionally, for those who studied each dynastic period as a separate aesthetic experience, Baker’s mix-and-match installation can be unsettling. Although she points out in the catalog that “the emergence of an artistic style did not necessarily coincide with political change,” much the same can be said for every attempt to differentiate one predominant form of artistic production from another.

But what Baker gains from viewing the ancient Chinese world in global terms is an almost cinematic freedom to peek into different realms of ancient Chinese existence, from life on the farm to court entertainment. The individual sculptures, drawn from a long-established private New York collection, paint vivid pictures of aspects of ancient China.

The show begins, appropriately, with figures mostly dating from the agrarian Han Dynasty (206 BC to AD 220)--farm animals, men performing agricultural tasks, demure housewives holding bowls and vases.

Animals are everywhere: inside the doorway of a miniature farmhouse, glimpsed within a multistory building where perching musicians look like so many architectural ornaments. Among the most appealing tableaux are those of two figures feeding goats that push this way and that in a tiny pen, and a dog relaxing while his master hulls grain.

Some of these pieces are arranged on a double-tiered platform with no plexiglass to interrupt the view--though the lighting is insufficiently focused to bring out all the winsome details.

A cosmopolitan flavor pervades the “Social and Cultural Life” section, dominated by court figures from the Tang Dynasty (AD 618 to 906): officials, ladies, visiting foreigners and entertainers.

Telling details of demeanor and fashion give these pieces life. Two officials--one beetle-browed and imposing, the other dryly noncommittal--loom in swaybacked postures. A bug-eyed foreigner--identifiable as such by his beard and casually chest-baring garb--looks utterly bemused, possibly deranged.

The five ladies in one serene group (the women tend to be much less expressive than the men) are slim, youthful fashion plates in lustrous green or mustard-yellow gowns with shawl collars. The ample physique of a famous imperial concubine gave chubbiness cachet toward the end of the Tang Dynasty--a trend seen in a group of ladies with tiny features sunk in fleshy faces, exaggerated topknots and matronly bodies that would have looked at home in a Helen Hokinson cartoon from the 1930s.

The more generalized yet vigorous sculptures from the Han Dynasty tend to exhibit an earthier charm. Two gesticulating men playing liubo, an ancient board game, seem to be arguing over the rules. A dancer’s sharp, jutting hip, bandy legs and expressive reach into space give him a startlingly modern expressionistic quality.

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Cavalry figures from the lawless, embattled Six Dynasties (220 BC to AD 589)--a period that followed the decline of the Han empire--show a variety of armor, some of it worn by miniature steeds that look as winsome as rocking horses.

The equine sculpture in this show is intriguingly varied. While a prancing Tang steed is a proud, exquisitely detailed creature with flowing contours and finely modeled volumes, a Han horse tends to be stubby, angular and more toylike. (Some visual differences, of course, relate to the breed; the Han used the short-legged Mongolian pony as a pack animal and the stubby, big-bodied Samanthian horses for combat.)

The final section of the show is devoted to a passel of mythological and supernatural beings, perhaps the most oddly memorable of which are “Fuxi and Nuwa,” who embody aspects of yin and yang.

Enigmatic, Dada-like creatures, they have human faces and mutant animal bodies culminating in a shared serpentine tail. They wear the pointed caps of educated bureaucrats, thus symbolizing the emperor’s wisdom in attracting smart guys for civil service jobs.

It is extremely encouraging to see the Bowers’ own curatorial efforts result in such a happy blend of scholarship, cultural context and visual appeal. The catalog, too, avoids both pedantry and superficiality; clear and concise (if somewhat stiffly written), it is well-illustrated and satisfyingly detailed.

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