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A passage to China: not just a conduit for merchandise, the ancient Silk Road also brought new religions and foreign populations into China—as is reflected in the hybrid objects in a traveling Asia Society show - Import/Export
Art in America, March, 2002 by Charles Ruas
The inaugural exhibition for the Asia Society and Museum's newly renovated, intimate galleries opens up a vista of the Silk Road, that ancient route stretching from Byzantium on the Mediterranean coast to the Chinese capital, Changan (modern Xian). Almost 5,000 miles long, the Silk Road was defined by a series of caravan stops across Syria, Mesopotamia and Persia to the oasis cities of Central Asia, including Merv, Bukhara and Samarkand (in what is now Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan). Northern and southern byways converged and diverged, following the oases skirting the edge of the Taklamakan desert, eventually reuniting in the thousand-mile Gansu Corridor--wedged between the Gobi Desert and the Quilian Mountains--before coming to the Yellow River and separating again into many branches in China. (In this show, all the different routes are included under the comprehensive term Silk Road.) Merchants worked along the road, taking their goods to a certain point and then returning. Trade was of three types: individually marketed merchandise; diplomatic gifts (tribute); and administered trade, such as lucrative silk markets that were organized by the government at trade fairs and in the foreign quarters of Chinese cities. These mercantile events were often festivals that included cultural exchanges, bringing in performers from Central Asia.
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"Monks and Merchants: Silk Road Treasures from Northwest China," an innovative and thought-provoking exhibition now on view at the Norton Museum of Art, Palm Beach, brings before the public various rare objects and works of art excavated by the Chinese government, many of them unearthed in recent decades. They are on loan from regional museums. These artifacts have caused a radical reassessment of the Silk Road's impact on the cultural identity of China, overthrowing the deeply entrenched notion of a monolithic, continuous Chinese culture and race since the first Chin emperor in 259 B.C. The show's excellent and comprehensive catalogue will remain the last word on the subject for a while, since the Metropolitan Museum's planned exhibition on the Silk Road has been postponed for three years.
The curators, Annette L. Juliano of Rutgers and Judith A. Lerner, an independent art historian, combining their respective expertise in Chinese and pre-Islamic art, worked with Colin Mackenzie, the associate director and curator of the Asia Society Museum. They concentrate on essentials by means of a tight geographic focus on the section of the Silk Road that lies within the boundaries of China proper, present day Gansu province and the Ningxia Autonomous Region. The chronology is set within a little-studied interim time of political turmoil between two defining periods of Chinese history, from the fall of the Han Dynasty in 220 A.D. to the rise of the Tang Dynasty in 618 A.D. Within this geographical and historical frame, one sees how archeology has challenged accepted ideas that underly Chinese xenophobia and prejudice against other peoples and races: the objects on view present a picture of a constantly shifting ethnic population traveling the Silk Road into northern China, a region divided by internecine strife, with nomadic tribes invading and taking power to form 16 ephemeral kingdoms in succession (304-439 A.D.). Throughout this unnamed interim, there was a constant influx of religious influences and foreign goods through monks and merchants from the West, who were eventually assimilated into the population and in turn influenced Chinese culture.
The first half of the exhibition concentrates on archeological discoveries from tombs, which reveal the influence of imported goods on the everyday life of the ruling classes. Some objects from Byzantium, Persia and India have seemed so out of context that their authenticity was doubted until similar objects were discovered elsewhere, ultimately shedding light on the general taste at that time. Looking at two sculptures of unicorns, I was completely taken by this mythological beast shared by East and West. In China, it is a composite creature with the head and body of a deer, the tail of an ox, cloven hooves and a single horn. Both sculptures show the unicorn in a defensive posture, head down as if ready to thrust, legs braced as if to withstand an attacker. The wooden unicorn is vigorously painted and ornamented, while the one of bronze is decorated with a stylized pattern. In China, the unicorn is a symbol of perfect goodness--a mythical beast with a lifespan of a thousand years. This made me reflect upon its mythological significance in the West: it is first mentioned in accounts of the expeditions of Alexander into India, but takes on its definitive meaning in the Middle Ages, when it is tamed by pure, virginal love.
Many of the objects on display are grist for similar speculations, including a silver ewer from ancient Bactria (northern Afghanistan and environs) embossed with Greek mythological subjects: the Judgment of Paris, Helen carried off by Paris, and Helen returned to Menelaus. The presence of foreigners in China is indicated in many ways. A gold ring with an intaglio stone depicting a Persian woman performer shows the lithe figure doing a scarf dance, rather like Isadora Duncan; finger rings as personal ornaments were introduced from the West at this time. A bronze statuette of a Persian dancing boy with a high hat, long sleeves and pointed shoes also testifies to the ubiquity of foreign performers. The popularity of glass from Rome and Persia is indicated by the number of examples found in tombs throughout China, exemplified here by a clear glass bowl of greenish tint with protruding roundels, from Sasanian Persia. Coffin paintings depicting people in Sogdian dress, wearing tall hats typical of the Zoroastrian religion, are elegant in their simplicity. Tomb figures with distinctive large noses, belted tunics, trousers and boots suggest that they are foreigners accompanying their master to the hereafter. A bronze lamp decorated with three camels also shows exotic origin.
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