Comment on this story What: Chinese Tang Dynasty Art When: Through Jan. 3, 2005 Where: UT’s McClung Museum, 1327 Circle Park Drive. Call 974-2144 for info or visit their site.

Tang Dynasty art reflects a golden age in China

by Heather Joyner Spica

Being cooped up in the extended-release germ capsule that is a trans-Pacific flight to China can result in a mighty nasty cold. It happened to me a few years ago, and it’s why my memories of Xian are so fuzzy. But even if I’d been in top form, something about seeing a giant Ferris wheel in modern-day Xian while on the way to the 8th century Big Goose Pagoda was jarring. Try as one might to picture the city’s previous incarnation as an eastern terminus of the famed Silk Road, there’s no escaping the present.

The same could be said for looking at art from the Tang Dynasty era (AD 618-907); refined as it is, it’s hard to believe it’s more than 1,000 years old. It’s also hard to wrap one’s mind around how it relates to art and architecture from elsewhere during the same time period, whether it’s Early Christian icon painting or Iraq’s great mosque at Samarra. However, the McClung’s exhibition of more than 70 Tang Dynasty objects affords us an opportunity to find out.

Tang art on view was donated to the museum last December by Simone and Alan Hartman, and UT is privileged to now own it. Included in the show are maps, diagrams, photographs of paintings, Buddhas and bodhisattvas and bronze mirrors, as well as a large assortment of ceramic pieces. And, as is generally the case with the McClung, there’s an amazing amount of stuff to see in a somewhat small space. I’ll add that in eight years of writing about museum offerings for Metro Pulse, I’m still impressed by the McClung’s in-house exhibition design and use of space. The lighting is always appropriate, color is creatively but unobtrusively utilized, and the positioning of pieces is inviting. Like former exhibitions, the current one is well organized and rewarding.

Presented are many “objects for the afterlife,” called mingqi, once placed in the tombs of deceased individuals. Like their ancient

Egyptian counterparts, such objects were considered necessities for the surviving souls of the dead. In addition to food and everyday articles, symbolic versions of goods and people were frequently buried with a body.

The McClung’s companion brochure reads, “...of particular interest...are the numerous sculptures of figures and animals that were placed in tombs to provide protection, entertainment, companionship and sustenance in the afterlife.... a fascinating glimpse into the cosmopolitan, multi-cultural society of Tang Dynasty China, apparently so beloved that the Chinese hoped to recreate it in the afterlife.”

One especially informative aspect of this show is a timeline near the gallery entrance that includes actual objects from different dynasties in small wall-mounted cases. Moving from a Neolithic clay jar to a Shang Dynasty cup, Zhou bowl, Han jade pig, and so on, we get a feel for changes in art throughout the 1st millennium AD and beyond, into the Ming and Qing Dynasties (the latter ending with the “last emperor” in 1911).

When we think of Tang art, we tend to think first of ceramics, and it’s fitting that the timeline’s Tang object—like numerous other items on display—assumes the form of earthenware with sancai glazing. Meaning “three colors,” sancai is a process that usually employs a clear glaze, an amber glaze made from iron oxide, and a greenish copper oxide glaze (a combination that can get old fast, although pointing it out as typically Tang will surely impress your friends). Blue glaze made from cobalt oxide was used less often. Being lead-based and poisonous, all glazes were limited to sculpture and funerary vessels.

As distinctively Tang as certain glazes are, technique alone does not express the spirit of Tang Dynasty art. Trade was flourishing, and cultural and religious differences were tolerated. Sea routes to Japan, Indonesia, and India, as well as the Silk Road extending west to Iran, meant that China was energized by outside influences.

Michael Sullivan writes in The Arts of China: “Never before had Buddhism stood so high in Chinese history; but it was not the only foreign religion on Chinese soil. There were also Zoroastrian temples, and Manichaean and Nestorian Christian churches...and, from the mid-8th century onwards, Muslim mosques; and the art of this period is as full of imported motifs as were the streets of [Xian] with foreigners.”

Just as it now brims with “counterfeit” western merchandise, China was known during the Tang period for its skilled replication—albeit with less emphasis on appearing authentic—of things like Greek amphorae, Iranian metalwork, and nomadic flasks, examples of which are included in the Hartman collection. But even forms borrowed from non-Chinese sources or figures depicting foreigners (such as a groom with a decidedly Greek coif and a pair of African-looking attendants) were somehow imbued with a Tang sensibility—a sensibility fusing the serenity found in Buddhist temples and the languid grace of classical Greek sculpture with a quirkiness and quiet sense of humor.

Regarded as one of the most glorious periods in Chinese history, the Tang Dynasty encompassed three centuries, and its military strength, relatively stable rule, and prosperity might explain the placid confidence of its art. In that art, sculpted Bactrian camels transport goods, lions carved from limestone protect the dead, ceramic equestrian drummers sit atop robust horses, and dancing female figures twirl “like circling snow,” as Tang poet Bo Juyi put it. And like all golden eras, the Tang period had a beginning and an end.

The Tang Emperor Taizong supposedly once said, “With bronze as a mirror one can correct his improper appearance; with history as a mirror one can understand the rise and fall of a nation; with good men as a mirror one can distinguish right from wrong.” As we near this most crucial presidential election—one in which funding for education and therefore institutions like the McClung Museum hangs in the balance—the words of Taizong perhaps take on new meaning.

October 21, 2004 • Vol. 14, No. 43 © 2004 Metro Pulse