
This transcription has been completed. Contact us with corrections.
Rare Chinese Art Shown In Varied Forms At the Jacques Seligmann Galleries C.T. Loo is holding an exhibition of a collection of Chinese eighteenth century ink-wash paintings, archaic bronzes, jades, pottery, porcelains and a few Hindu and Cambodian sculptures. As the exhibition reaches over two floors and has no listing, it is difficult to record its many varieties of interest. The large stela on the main floor, with a standing Maitreya in the center and two Bodisattva attendants, is one of the "important" items of the collection. On the walls of the gallery are delightful paintings of flowers and animals which illustrate the sympathy with nature characteristic of the Confucian philosophy. There is an exquisite fugitive quality in these delicate drawings of stalks of bamboo, of reed birds of the most tenuous records of flower, stalk and blossom. A gallery of Greco-Buddhistic sculpture in many forms sets one to wondering what form of Buddhistic art might have taken if the spread of Buddhism had not occurred exactly at the time when communication was established between the Hellenic West and the Far East. This realistic art, reaching India through the trade routes and imposing its ideals on Buddhistic sculpture, established conventions of posture, garments and decorative detail in the familiar type of the seated Buddha, which came to be accepted wherever Buddhism prevailed. Some beautiful tombs figures in terra cotta of the Han period, dancing figures as well as the realistically modeled horses so characteristic of the period, a beautiful Sung jar of ivory white glaze carved under the glaze a group of remarkable small carvings in jade and ivory are some of the many treasures that memory recalls from a wealth of rarities. A broze group of the Buddhistic trinity, somewhat similar to the one in the Boston Museum, is an unusual and important item. In addition there is a group of bronzes inlaid with gold and silver of fine workmanship, taken from a tomb in the Honan Province. A small bronze sculpture of Siva illustrates the art of Southern India, while heads from Cambodia and Java indicate something of the wide range of the exposition. CONTEMPORARY ARTS Kenneth Bates is holding an exhibition of paintings and pastels at Contemporary Arts. In his figure pieces particularly he reveals his powers of draftsmanship and his gifts of imaginative design, especially in the canvas, "Bathers," which has a remarkable beauty of fluent plastic design. Paintings Shown by Richard Guggenheimer At the Lilienfeld Galleries Richard Guggenheimer is holding an exhibition of his paintings-landscapes, still lifes and portraits. His landscapes are his most interesting and characteristic work, revealing a subtle palette which invests these canvases with delicate notes of color resolved into find harmonies. While the artist's attitude is apparently a political one, it is not sentimental, for his work is not romantic but expressive of a sensitive reaction to the things which he records. The curious blue-greens of the vines in Italy after they have been sprayed, the gray-green of olive trees, the dark greens and sharp stabs of the direction of the cypresses or the graceful contours of rock pines are all incorporated in his Italian landscapes effectively. There is graceful, effortless charm about these canvases, as though they grew into this pleasing relation of forms and lines and color patterns quite casually, yet this very appearance of ease implies a soundness of organization that has brought each slightest detail of the painting to contribute a definitely to the final impression. Nothing is left at loose ends, everything is made to count. SOme of the still lifes seem more definitely "arranged" and more forced than the landscape work, but others have the same fluency and beauty of color.
Transcription Notes:
bottom right hand side is an ad I was unsure how to transcribe into document.