U.S. gets view of Buddhist sculptures
(Agencies)
Updated: 2004-03-19 10:42

A limestone seated Budda, part of an exhibit at The Smithsonian Institution's Arthur M. Sackler Gallery in Washington. America will gets its first look at 1,500-year-old treasures of Buddhist sculpture, dug up in northern China with much of the original gilding and coloring intact.The artwork came to light in the leveling of a school athletic field at Qingzhou, southeast of Beijing in 1996. [AP]

America will get its first look Saturday at 1,500-year-old treasures of Buddhist sculpture, dug up in northern China with much of the original gilding and coloring intact.

One has a blue mustache.

Another, a life-size figure of the Buddha, has a bend in one knee. Traditional Chinese statues are stiff-legged, and scholars see a possible influence from far-away ancient Greece.

The statues, carved from blue limestone, came to light in the leveling of a school athletic field at Qingzhou, southeast of Beijing in 1996. Authorities quickly moved the pieces to the local museum where they will stay as one of the region's main tourist attractions.

Archaeologists were disappointed. They wanted to examine the site slowly for clues to why the statues were buried centuries after they were made.

"This haste was not unfounded for in recent years many figures from comparable sites in the area have found their way into the international art market and fetched high prices," says the catalog for the show.

The Smithsonian Institution's Arthur M. Sackler Gallery is showing 35 of about 400 objects found. It says they are among the 100 most significant finds of the 20th century for both the beauty of the carving and historical importance. It puts them on a par with the better known army of soldiers, made of terra cotta, unearthed near the tomb of China's first emperor.

Work of Greek sculptors was known in India, the birthplace of Buddhism. The army of Alexander the Great reached its western borders. Later the silk road, a great globalizing influence, brought luxury fabrics from China to the Roman empire and carried back Buddhism and Islam as well as Western goods. At times Greek and Indian art would influence Chinese sculptors, later they would go back to their own tradition.

"It was a pendulum," said Jan Stuart, the Sackler's associate curator of Chinese art, in an interview. She said she hoped visitors would ask about the Buddha with the bent knee. Unusually, this statue has a smooth surface with no lines carved to indicate clothing. It may have been garbed in cloth garments like religious statues in some countries today.

The balance of chest and hips is unusually naturalistic, Ms. Stuart noted. She explained that traditional Chinese statues give men and women different faces and hairdos but make no difference between male and female bodies.

"The bent knee is possibly unique in early Chinese sculpture, pointing to a strong foreign source," she wrote in the label describing the statue.

The exhibit will be on view through Aug. 8. Admission is free.

Close