Five Magnificent Millenniums

Early next month, the long, spiraling gallery of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York will be filled with Chinese art--no, not the Political Pop or conceptual installations so au courant and so in line with the museum’s image, but rather Neolithic jades, ritual bronzes of the Shang and Zhou periods (1600-256 BC), landscape paintings from the Song (AD 960-1279) and vases from the Ming (AD 1368-1644).

Confounding as it may seem, the Guggenheim, known for its take on modern Western art and itself a modern architectural classic for its revolutionary Frank Lloyd Wright design, has undertaken a show called “China: 5,000 Years.” Numbering some 500 objects, the exhibition, opening Feb. 6 at its uptown and SoHo venues, ambitiously spans five millenniums of Chinese culture, from 3000 BC to our century. It is being billed as the first major museum show to unite the traditional with the modern, and the archeological treasures could well be the finest assembly ever shipped from the People’s Republic of China.

As Thomas Krens, the Guggenheim’s unapologetically self-confident director, says, “I predicted that I could get official [Chinese] cooperation at unprecedented levels.” And he has. The majority of the works come from 50 museums and institutions in the People’s Republic, with only a handful from private collectors elsewhere.

But the question sticks: Why the Guggenheim? Krens credits himself with thinking up the idea and pursuing it doggedly since 1994. His explanation is long, almost professorial, beginning with a discourse on the evolving role of museums and how the Guggenheim, with a limited but famous collection and space, had to finds its new identity in the global community. It takes a prompt for him to get to the China part.

“The big story is China’s emergence as a superpower at the end of the 20th century,” he says across the conference table in his expansive, bustling office. “In the relaxation of let’s call it the Socialist-imposed isolation, China’s a fascinating subject that has the attention of a lot of people. Point No. 2, if you know a little about China, you come to the old saw that it’s the oldest continuous civilization on earth.”

Superlatives come naturally to Krens, especially when discussing the Guggenheim and its projects. “We have over the last few years, I think, become one of the most--if not the most--powerful exhibition-organizing engines anywhere in the world,” he announces. “We organize 14 major exhibitions a year--on a big scale.” Pinned up on the long wall behind him is a series of illustrations and photographs of motorcycles from many nations and many decades--one of the exhibitions to come. “We have over 45 projects in development at the same time.”

Nor is the wide span of history covered in the China show daunting to his museum, he says, mentioning its previous compendium shows on Italian and African art.

“There is a strategy in place to truly embrace the international notion, to break the expectation that somehow us Western museums--the Guggenheim, the Museum of Modern Art--only do Monet, Manet, Degas, Matisse to Jackson Pollock and Robert Rauschenberg.” With such a philosophy, a museum need no longer be limited to its own collection or, in fact, its own expertise. Even though the Guggenheim had no Asian or antiquities department--and does not plan to create them--they simply went outside for organizers, curators and writers for this show. To put together the traditional part (Neolithic through Qing dynasty [17th century to 20th century]) to be shown at the Guggenheim uptown, they hired Sherman Lee, the dean of Chinese art history and retired director of the Cleveland Museum of Art. To curate the modern (mid-19th century to 1980s) section to be shown at the SoHo branch, they hired Julia Andrews of Ohio State University.

The tougher task, at least logistically, was Lee’s. He and a team visited China a dozen times before drawing up a “wish list” of objects from 50 institutions in 17 far-flung provinces. And what a list it is.

Some items are de rigueur basics of exhibitions of this genre, such as life-sized terra cotta warriors from the tomb of the Qin emperor (221-206 BC)--including a general with his hands folded elegantly in front of him--or a painting of an emperor on a horseback outing--in this case, the Xuande emperor of the Ming dynasty. But other works will be more surprising, such as the life-sized terra-cotta horse that goes with those warriors or the beautiful Han Dynasty (206 BC-AD 220) gilt belt buckle in the shape of two lively dancers holding cymbals. Also, there’s religious art from the Sui (AD 581-618) and Tang (AD 618-907) dynasties, stately stone and gilt metal heads and torsos of Buddhist deities.

One of the themes the exhibition explores--Lee’s thesis--is that for thousands of years China was at the forefront of technological and cultural innovation. Jane DeBevoise, the director of the China project, says, “Those who study Chinese culture know that China has been one of the most innovative cultures in the world, though of course there are periods of heightened creativity and of stagnation.”

Not unexpectedly, many in the field look upon the show with a certain horror mixed with awe--horror that anyone would attempt to reflect Chinese culture of 5,000 years in one fell swoop; awe that so many major pieces of that culture, at least in the textbook version, have indeed been assembled for this show.

“Of course on the face of it the idea’s ridiculous,” admits Arnold Chang, a Chinese art consultant and artist, whose work is included in the show. Then he quickly adds, “but the show is going to be gorgeous. It will not only have some great stuff, it will have the textbook examples of Chinese art we’ve all been studying for years.”

“It’s obviously a spite show,” another Chinese art dealer says, because mainland permissions for it came so soon upon the heels of the opening of a blockbuster show from Taiwan, “Splendors of Imperial China.” That show, co-organized by the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York and the National Palace Museum in Taipei, opened at the Met in March 1996 and ended up at the National Gallery of Art in Washington the following year. Furthermore, in Taiwan, public outcry over the fragility of some works being sent away for nearly two years forced the Palace Museum to withdraw two dozen important offerings.

This dealer, as well as many other experts who declined to be named, believes that “China: 5,000 Years” is meant to show Taiwan up--to do what those from the “renegade province” failed to do, to put together a blockbuster show and stick to the exhibition list. Of course, this is easy for the mainland to do, because all provincial museums in China are beholden to Beijing, and they don’t have to deal with public protests--of which there are none, in any case. (Krens says that the final permissions came through following Clinton’s reelection in November 1996, though that certainly doesn’t discount China’s desire to compete with Taiwan.)

Add to that the fact that the Guggenheim show was originally slated for the summer of 1997--during the fanfare over Hong Kong’s return to mainland Chinese rule. In fact, the Chinese were busily organizing another big exhibition of their own, destined for the Hong Kong Museum of Art, around the hand-over. However, that show “National Treasures--Gems of China’s Cultural Relics” was also delayed, and finally opened in December, clearly billed as a “celebration of the reunion.”

Ironically, what was the most apropos-to-the-Guggenheim aspect of Chinese art--the contemporary art that has emerged with an explosion since the end of the repressive Cultural Revolution in 1976--was abruptly canceled by the museum last November. There have been the inevitable grumblings.

“We know the Chinese authorities don’t like this kind of art,” said New York-based Chinese artist Xu Bing whose room-sized installation “Tian Shu” (or “Book from the Sky”) had been slated for inclusion. He referred to the fact that in China the art of the avant-garde is considered subversive and rarely shown publicly. In rereading the Guggenheim letter of explanation about the change of plans, he shrugged and said, “It’s too bad they couldn’t include it, but the letter says it’s a postponement, not an outright cancellation.”

More outraged is Lawrence Wu, a New York-based dealer and collector asked to lend nine works, who holds a conspiracy theory. First, he questions the appointment of Howard Rogers, founder of Kaikodo, one of New York’s toniest galleries of Chinese paintings and antiquities, to help with the traditional section when Sherman Lee fell temporarily ill last year.

“Howard Rogers is a dealer,” Wu points out. “How can a dealer in Chinese art be overseeing a show of Chinese art at a museum? He’s bound to have biases.” Wu believes that Rogers is inherently prejudiced against Chinese art in nontraditional media--such as works on canvas and installations--but in fact the exhibition list had been firmed up by the time Rogers was brought on board.

Krens attributes the postponement to a delay in finishing the third-floor of Guggenheim SoHo, the intended venue for the contemporary art. As to whether there was any pressure from Chinese authorities to purge the section, Krens says categorically, “No. No, you knew it was an issue, but there was no pressure.”

DeBevoise argues that a lot of contemporary Chinese artists have already been seen in the West, since many of them now live in the U.S. or Europe. “But there is such important work in the modern show that has never been seen anywhere [in the West],” she says, including the paintings from the Shanghai School of the 19th century, as well as leftist woodcuts from the 1930s.

Then there is the section devoted to the Socialist Realist paintings and prints of the ‘50s, ‘60s and ‘70s. In Sun Zixi’s “In Front of Tian An Men” (1964), a dozen healthy, smiling workers and peasants gather joyously before the portrait of Mao Tse-tung hanging on the Gate of Heavenly Peace in Beijing; in Liu Wenxi’s “New Spring in Yan’an” (1972), beaming peasants and children surround the heroic young Mao at his Yan’an headquarters in the 1940s.

Of course, these are artifacts of pure propaganda, the promotional artillery of Chinese Communism and the Mao cult, but DeBevoise says, “To disregard this art, which is basically the art of 40 years, needs to be reconsidered in a big way. It’s one of the most powerful aspects of this show.”

Some of the first shifts away from propaganda are also noted. Luo Zhongli’s “Father” (1980) was a scandal when exhibited. It is a close-up portrait of a wrinkled, sunburned old man, holding up a bowl of broth and looking none too happy--blasphemy in the Proletarian Paradise!

Chen Yifei’s 12-foot-wide painting “Looking at History from My Space” (1979) portrays the artist himself, seen from the back and surveying his own painting-in-progress of China’s turbulent modern history. The work is a quiet milestone, displaying an attempt to view Chinese history from a personal and cool perspective, as opposed to a collective and chauvinistic one. One irony is that during the Cultural Revolution, Chen was one of the darlings of heroic realist painting, and today, after a stint in the West, he has become perhaps the most successful Chinese painter living, producing commercially popular paintings of willowy Shanghai ladies of the ‘20s, or vignettes of sleepy canals in Suzhan.

When Krens was appointed director of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation in 1988, he embarked on an ambitious plan to run the museum like, well, a business. And that meant expanding profitable lines such as the gift shop--the entry into the SoHo branch is gained only via its boutique. To maximize the “economies of scale” the Guggenheim made a concentrated effort to send its exhibitions to other venues--for a fee.

It meant leveraging the assets of the museum--its arts management and curatorial expertise, that is, and not, it is maintained, its art. For example, to oversee the creation of the new Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Spain, which opened in its celebrated Frank Gehry building last October, the Guggenheim Foundation received $20 million from the Basque government.

Yet expansionism is expensive, and the Guggenheim seems to be continually battling uphill, its shows sometimes delayed due to funding crunches. “China: 5000 Years,” slated to open last summer, needed more time both for fund-raising and for preparation. This time the Guggenheim has raised the bulk of the hefty $5 million it is costing to bring together the show. It has found corporate benefactors in Coca-Cola, Nokia, Lufthansa, and Ford (not surprisingly, companies with business interests in China), and generous grants were obtained from Starr Foundation, the Spencer Foundation and the National Endowment for the Humanities.

But sometimes those ambitions that Krens embraces as globalism seem more like cultural imperialism to others. When the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao opened, a band of Basque terrorists unhappy with the American involvement staged an attack, killing a guard; in November German critics questioned the selection of the Guggenheim to run a satellite mini-museum, funded to the tune of an estimated $1.3 million a year by Deutsche Bank, in Berlin.

When asked about such protests, Krens points to a Roy Lichtenstein painting of a growling Doberman across the room. “This is our logo, right? Grrrr!!,” he gives a small laugh. “We do what we do--you can’t look over your shoulder all the time. I suppose there’s a certain amount of envy involved in all this stuff.”

For a moment he diverts the conversation to how successful Bilbao is--with 250,000 visitors in the first 8 weeks, when the annual projection was 400,000 visitors for the year.

“It’s not about cultural imperialism--we’ve got no message to communicate, this isn’t an American take on the world. Our museum in Spain is 99% staffed by the Basques,” he insists. “Look at it another way, we’re story tellers, we get involved in cultural narratives, and I think that the greater sin is in the other area and say that culture is only Western European, North Atlantic culture. This isn’t about dominance, it’s about engagement, it’s about communication.”

Krens likes to refer to what is happening as “technology transfers”--although he overlooks the issue that any transfer that involves culture or intellectual property also involves values.

“If you want to talk about cultural imperialism, look at the Getty or the Metropolitan, these are huge organizations,” he says. “The fact is that we happen to have discontiguous gallery spaces we operate in different places.” For Krens, the international, multicultural approach--both in collaborations with international institutions and in the content of art they will exhibit--is an ongoing and deep commitment.

Whatever the doubts and criticisms, “China: 5000 Years” will, of course, be attention-grabbing. Even those who criticize the show conceptually are planning to see it. Some of the objects may look familiar to museum-goers--the blue-and-white porcelain, the landscape and bird-and-flower paintings--but because archeology in China has had such a boom in the last 20 years, there will be much that is fresh to our eyes.

Furthermore, the propaganda art is, in some ways, a remarkable opportunity to see how Communist politics permeated every aspect of Chinese life and thought since 1949. Rarely have the originals of such pieces traveled West. The response to that ideological saturation--as well as to the dizzying influx of the new god, consumerism--will have to wait until the Guggenheim’s future, promised show of the Chinese avant-garde.

* “China: 5,000 Years,” Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, 1071 5th Ave., New York, Feb. 6 to June 3, and 575 Broadway, New York, Feb. 6 to May 24. (212) 423-3500.