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Montreal Hosts Show of 7,000 Years of Chinese Art
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10137 |
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Section : |
THE ARTS
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8 / 1986 |
1,599 Words |
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Christopher Hume
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China: Treasures and Splendors, on exhibit at the Palais de la Civilisation on Montreal's Ile Notre-dame until October 19, is being billed as the greatest collection of historical art and artifacts ever to leave the Orient. For once it looks as though the publicity mongerers were justified in pulling out the superlatives. With about 200 objects, a good many of them of the spectacular variety, this show spans 7,000 years of Chinese history. Beginning with the Neolithic period, it goes through to the Ming and Qing [also known as Ching] dynasties that ruled from the mid-1300s to the early twentieth century, when this ancient civilization finally collapsed.
Designed to give "a panoramic view of the ancient arts of China," the exhibition will appeal to scholar and layperson alike. Indeed, it is expected to attract 600,000 visitors. Roughly half the objects on display have never left the People's Republic of China. Few have been shown in North America before.
The man credited with making it happen is Montreal's long-time mayor, Jean Drapeau. Well aware of the drawing power of the blockbuster exhibition, Drapeau led his city into an ambitious five-year program of major shows, each devoted to a different civilization. The series kicked off last summer with the exhibition Ramses II and His Time. Before leaving Montreal for Vancouver and Expo '86, it was seen by nearly 750,000 people. Even more amazing, perhaps, was the fact that Ramses made a profit of over $2 million (Canadian).
If quality has anything to do with popularity, the Chinese show should attract an even larger number of visitors. Most of the works were unearthed during the past decade from the magnificent tombs of the emperors. On loan from twenty-six museums and institutions throughout China, the objects are insured for $90 million (Canadian).
Displayed throughout the entire three floors of the Palais, the show is arranged to take the visitor on a tour of ancient China. The main level of the building, the former French pavilion at Expo '67, is devoted to the Bronze Age. Extending from the seventeenth to the third centuries B.C., the Bronze Age was a highly important period for Chinese art. It was at this time that the philosophical and material foundations of Chinese society were established.
The first of three Bronze-Age sections documents life in the Shang dynasty. Among the chief splendors of this exhibition area are the marvelous bronze receptacles and jade pieces discovered in 1976 in the tomb of Princess Fu Hao at Anyang, Henan, the capital of China during the Shang period. The tomb, which contained more than 1,900 items, 468 of them bronzes, indicates that Fu Hao was a woman of extremely high rank. Interestingly, all mention of her in the official histories of the dynasties had been meticulously removed after her death.
The opulence of her burial chamber is proof that women occupied positions of power in ancient China. The wife, or concubine, of a Shang king who lived about 1200 B.C., Fu Hao was also a shaman-priestess and a general of an army of 130,000 troops.
The Shang dynasty was an age of remarkable metalwork and ceramics. The work from the period is technically sophisticated and highly decorated. Yet Shang society's greatest contribution to Chinese
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