Bearing a Timeless Quality

Take an elevator to the third floor of the Ahmanson Building at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, turn right, walk a few steps and you’ll come face to face with a chunk of Afghanistan’s cultural legacy--imposing stone figures that curiously morph classical Roman details with elements of ancient Indian art.

Or step down the spiral staircase at the Norton Simon Museum, on your way to its seductive installation of Indian and Southeast Asian art, and note the life-size--and toga-clad--bodhisattva, in a niche just outside the temple-like main gallery. Once again, you’ve detoured to Afghanistan.

These works, and a few examples at the Asia Pacific Museum in Pasadena, are a tiny and often unnoticed part of the permanent collections in L.A.’s museums. But they have acquired new meaning since the Taliban launched a violent campaign to rid modern Afghanistan of such human images, or “false idols.”

Like the bulk of figurative sculpture that the Taliban turned into rubble--the giant Buddhas in Bamian that were blown up last March or invaluable smaller pieces smashed last year at the National Museum in Kabul--this is Buddhist art, created long before Islam became Afghanistan’s dominant religion. It represents what art historians consider to be a golden age of sculpture that encompassed the 1st to the 5th centuries and flourished along the trade route linking the Roman Empire with China.

Even in small concentrations, it provides plenty of material for a crash course in cultural history. Present-day Afghanistan and Pakistan were a cosmopolitan area in the ancient world, where the interchange between Roman and Indian artists produced a blended style known as Gandhara art. Named for the city of Gandhara in Pakistan, it spread throughout the territory that now comprises northwest Pakistan and eastern Afghanistan.

“What’s significant about the art of Gandhara is that it marks the beginning of Buddhist art that depicts the Buddha,” says Christine Knoke, a curator at the Norton Simon Museum. Earlier art indicated his presence with symbols, such as a footprint or throne, but in the 1st century a new school of Buddhist philosophy emphasized his miraculous life. Artists began representing the Buddha in human form as they interpreted stories of his life for temple artworks.

For those who have studied Greek and Roman classical art, the most striking aspect of Gandhara figures is how familiar they look. They have square jaws, straight noses, wavy hair, naturalistic features and, of course, those togas.

There are two life-size statues in the Simon’s collection--the largest sculptures of their kind in America, Knoke says. One depicts the Buddha, the other a bodhisattva in Roman dress. The Buddha’s monastic robe has thick folds of fabric covering much of his body, unlike the more form-fitting drapery typical of Indian statuary. Even his cranial bump of wisdom has been transformed into a topknot of Roman-style hair.

The bodhisattva sculpture represents a divine being who has attained enlightenment but rejected nirvana to help suffering mankind. This one is a commanding prince of a figure, also clad in a toga but adorned with necklaces and protective charms. Unlike his barefoot counterparts in Indian art, he wears Roman-style sandals.

Both figures are carved of schist, a hard gray stone that’s indigenous to the region of Gandhara, Knoke says. And that’s important. While the skill of the unknown sculptors accounts for the quality of the art, the material has a lot to do with its longevity, she says. The sharp folds of drapery, intricate patterns of hair and other details have held up much better than works from nearby areas, where the readily available material was much softer sandstone.

Strolling around the gallery, Knoke points out nine schist reliefs--depicting miracles performed by the Buddha and other stories. In one work, the Buddha tames a deadly snake that jumps into his begging bowl; in another, the Buddha finds the bodhi tree, where he meditated and reached a state of enlightenment.

A fragment of a sculpture depicting a woman holding a baby elephant is a bit of a mystery. Elephants usually symbolize virtues attributed to men, but this one probably illustrates a tale about the Buddha’s mother, who dreamed he entered her womb as a baby elephant, Knoke says. Yet another curiosity is an Atlas-like winged figure, straight from Greek mythology.

At LACMA, where curator Stephen Markel presides over Indian and Southeast Asian art, 17 pieces of Gandhara art are on view. A large, free-standing bodhisattva is flanked by a smaller Buddha and a piece titled “Pensive Bodhisattva,” depicting a seated figure who leans to one side with a finger to his forehead. LACMA also has a fragment of an Atlas figure, along with several heads and pottery.

The Buddhist temples adorned by Gandhara sculptures crumbled hundreds of years ago, and little is known about the art’s original physical context. But some pieces were made to be seen well above eye level, Markel says. Among them is a schist head of a bodhisattva with a wavy mustache and an elaborate headdress that hangs above the other works.

“We have tried to be true to the art by putting a number of works up high that were designed to be,” he says.

LACMA acquired some of its Gandhara items in 1969 with the Nasli and Alice Heeramaneck collection. Another piece that particularly pleases Markel is “The Aristocratic Women,” a sculpture of two classically attired women, which he persuaded the museum’s collector’s committee to purchase in 1999.

“Members of the committee were rather taken with what they thought of as Roman style in a Buddhist piece,” he says. “And we’ve been able to identify the subject. Two women are arguing over who is the owner of a necklace, and the Buddha solves the problem. It was a necklace of thread, and each of the women said she had put a particular scent on it. The Buddha got a perfume merchant, who dipped the necklace in hot water and identified the owner.”

Western interest in the ancient art of Afghanistan began in the 18th century and grew stronger in the 19th century, as explorers and archeologists uncovered parts of the nation’s cultural heritage. The Franco-Afghan cultural convention of 1922 gave the French exclusive rights to survey and excavate in Afghanistan for 30 years; the finds were divided between the two countries. Since the 1960s, other nations have sponsored excavations in Afghanistan, which, in turn, have sparked more interest and scholarship.

There’s no making up for the artistic casualties of Afghanistan’s decade of civil wars and the current international conflict. But major museums in Europe and the U.S. have built important collections of Gandhara art over the last 80 years or so. The Musee Guimet in Paris and the British Museum in London have the largest holdings by far, but several American museums, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York and the Cleveland Museum of Art, own fine examples and display them in their Asian galleries.

Gandhara art has been avidly collected in the West partly because of its familiar look, Markel says. The figures “don’t have multiple arms and the esoteric nature of other Indian and Buddhist sculpture. People were comfortable with it and accepted it early on.”

Some of the artists who created this art may have been Roman itinerants, but most were probably Indians who incorporated Roman styles, Markel says. In the case of “The Aristocratic Women,” the artist was most likely “a South Asian who was trained by a Roman artist,” he says. “When we were acquiring the piece, I discussed it with Sandy Rosenbaum, our curator of classical Western dress. She pointed out how the garments were precisely accurate for 2nd century Rome. But the hands of the figures are oversize. I don’t think a Roman artist would have done that.”

Southern Californians may see Gandhara art as one more manifestation of multiculturalism, but it also indicates that the influences of international travel and commerce are far from new.

“Centers of great trade and wealth and cosmopolitan activity in the periods of great empires have always attracted artists from around the known world,” Markel says.

“The world was just as global then as now. It took a little longer; they didn’t have instantaneous e-mail, but things moved around.”